19 September 690 A.D. Theodore of Tarsus
Died—One of the Good Archbishops of Canterbury (7th of 105)…Scholarly,
Pastoral, Kindly & Christian
Editors. “Saint Theodore of Canterbury.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 18 Jun 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/590646/Saint-Theodore-of-Canterbury. Accessed 22 May 2014.
Saint Theodore of Canterbury, (born c. 602, Tarsus, Cilicia, Asia Minor—died Sept. 19, 690, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.; feast day September 19), seventh
archbishop of Canterbury and the first archbishop to rule the whole English
Church.
Appointed by Pope
St. Vitalian, Theodore was consecrated in 668 and then set out from Rome with
SS. Adrian,
abbot of Nerida, Italy, and Benedict Biscop, later abbot of Wearmouth and
Jarrow, Durham. In 669 they reached Canterbury, where Theodore made Adrian the
abbot of SS. Peter and Paul monastery, afterward named St. Augustine’s. There
they created a famous school influential in the lives of such brilliant scholars
as the celebrated historian St. Bede the Venerable and the skilled church
architect St. Aldhelm.
Theodore organized
the English Church, many sees of which were vacant on his arrival and others of
which needed to be divided. In 672 he called at Hertford the first general
synod of the English Church to end certain Celtic practices and to divide
dioceses. The division issue was postponed, but the synod imposed the date of
the Roman Easter, established obedience for clerics and monks, forbade bishops
to interfere in other dioceses, and reaffirmed the church teaching on marriage
and divorce.
During this period
Theodore came into sharp conflict with Wilfrid,
whom he had made bishop of York but whom he soon deposed. Wilfrid went to Rome
in 677/678 to protest. Meanwhile, in 678, Theodore helped settle relations
between King Aethelred of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, whom Aethelred had defeated in battle. Theodore’s synod at
Hatfield in 679 cleared the English Church from associations with the heresy of the
Monothelites. In 686 he mended the conflict with Wilfrid by admitting his error and
effecting Wilfrid’s restoration. Theodore’s Penitential, a collection of his rulings made by his disciples, became influential in England and on the Continent.
Theodore’s greatest
achievement was to adapt the Roman ideal of a centralized church to English
conditions. His establishment of a centralized church under the archbishopric
of Canterbury in close alliance with secular rulers was maintained by his
successors. No biography of Theodore has survived.
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