Pioneers, Power Brokers and Saints: St Theodore of Tarsus, the 7th Archbishop of Canterbury AD602-690

The Churches Committee is always keen to emphasise that its remit encompasses beliefs and people as well as ecclesiastical buildings and artefacts. Accordingly this series (the first article of which appeared in Spring, Issue 80 this year) focuses on people in our own county whose impact has been noteworthy. The contributors will be those knowledgeable in their areas of interest. The series will run to about ten articles.

St Theodore of Tarsus, the 7th Archbishop of Canterbury AD602-690

One of the most remarkable Archbishops of Canterbury was the 7th one: St Theodore of Tarsus. As his name implies, he was not an Englishman, but was born in what is now south-eastern Turkey in the Greek-speaking province of Cilicia. It seems likely that he was a refugee either as a boy or as a young man and that he went to Constantinople, a renowned centre of learning and culture where a man with his scholarly attributes could thrive. It is thought that he became a monk and he is next seen at the monastery of St Anastasius outside Rome, but no record exists of how or when he came to be there. As far as we know his life had been one devoted to prayer and study and little more might have been known had he not been nominated to be Archbishop of Canterbury-designate (Wighard) who died of plague in Rome when he went to collect his pallium in 667. This, naturally, caused a problem, not least because the post had been vacant since the death of Archbishop Deusdedit in 664.

Pope Vitalian first of all nominated Abbot Hadrian for the job, but he declined and himself suggested Theodore. This might not attract comment but for the fact that Theodore was then aged 65; he had more than exceeded the average lifespan and was being asked to make a dangerous journey to take on a difficult province. He agreed on condition that Hadrian accompanied him, although the truth behind this will never be known. It may be that Vitalian required Hadrian to go to make sure that Theodore carried out his duties in the Roman rather than Greek tradition and we will never know if the pope would have been dismayed or delighted if he had known that Theodore would live to be 88, fulfilling over two decades in the post he arrived in England on 27 May 669 and (as Lapidge has put it) "set about reforming the English church with the urgency of an old man in a hurry". He was sixty-seven.

The problem facing him was an England in which emotions were still running high after the so-called Easter Controversy which had come to a head at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Although five years had passed, Christian religious feeling was still split between the Roman way of practising Christianity and what might be termed the Celtic way. The administration of the Church in England was in disarray; some dioceses such as Rochester, Dunwich and Winchester lacked a bishop whilst others were of an unwieldy size, making them profitable to the incumbent but impossible to administer. Bishop Wilfrid's in Northumbria being a case in point. Bede tells us that Theodore "visited every part of the island where the English peoples lived". He made appointments to the vacant bishoprics, corrected the position of St Chad who had not been properly consecrated, rectified numerous things that were irregular, and was "the first of the Archbishops whom the whole English Church consented to obey", a telling remark revealing much about Theodore's charismatic personality and leadership. "Never", wrote Bede contentedly, "had there been such happy times since the English first came to Britain."

Had Pope Vitalian had any doubt about Theodore's conformity to Rome, it seems that he need not have worried. In 672 he called a national synod at Hertford, the details of which are repeated in Bede's History. He began by asking the bishops if they were acting within canonical decrees (they said that they were) and then laid down rules that would prevent one man from interfering or practising in the area of another which still hold true today down to parochial level. Other matters discussed included precedence, marriage and the frequency of Synods. Indeed at the Synod at Hatfield in 679, the matter of orthodoxy was again addressed by Theodore.

His reforms had far-reaching effects on the Church in England. Not only was Theodore an excellent administrator, but he appears to have been a man of some physical force, even in his old age. Bede tells how Bishop Chad preferred to carry out his evangelistic work on foot for reasons of humility. Theodore, with characteristic impatience, ordered him to ride if the journey was to be a long one. When Chad demurred it is said that Theodore "lifted him on the horse with his own hands since he knew he was a man of great sanctity and he determined to compel him to ride a horse when necessity arose."

His remarkable energy also allowed him to address education and music in the Church and it was here that he made his greatest impact. Theodore and Hadrian founded a school at Canterbury, the site of which is now lost, at which scholars learned about the holy scriptures, the art of metre (poetry), astronomy, calligraphy, medicine, music and ecclesiastical computation. Theodore's intellect and the standard of education offered was so high that students flocked to be admitted to the school. Such a high standard was achieved that it could be argued that this set the tone for other centres of learning around the country, subsequently allowing a child called Bede to thrive academically in the north and paving the way for England to be regarded as producing the best academics in Europe.

Although Bede's life did coincide with Theodore's, they never met (Bede lived from c.673 - 735 and therefore would have been about seventeen when Theodore died). It is plain from his writing, though, that he had the highest regard for him.

Recording St Theodore's death in 690, Bede writes: "To put it briefly, the English Churches made more spiritual progress whilst he was Archbishop than ever before." He then goes on to record the first and last verses only of a thirty-four verse poem someone else originally wrote on his tomb, the rather greetings-card style somewhat detracting from the greatness of Theodore's intellect:

"Here lies a holy bishop's mortal frame: In Grecian tongue is Theodore his name. A Grecian priest was he, the church's head, Who in sound doctrine his disciples fed.

September was the month, the nineteenth day, When from the flesh his spirit took its way, Climbing in bliss to share new life and love With angel-citizens of heaven above."

He was buried at Canterbury where a modern stone at St Augustine's Abbey commemorates his life.

Imogen Corrigan

Bibliography:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, M Swanton (trans. & ed.), Phoenix Press, London, 2000
• Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, M McClure & R Collins (eds), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999
• M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes & D. Scragg (eds), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999
• P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Archbishops of Canterbury, Tempus, Stroud, 2006
• M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes & D. Scragg (eds), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, p.444
• Bede, p.190
• P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Archbishops of Canterbury, p.44
• Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, p.12
• ibid, p.190
• ibid, p.13
• ibid, p.14
• ibid, p.12
• ibid, p.265