Who is Saint Theodore?
St. Theodore of Tarsus is also known as St. Theodore of Canterbury.
Nearly everything we know about St. Theodore comes from the writings of the Venerable Bede. Born in Tarsus, Theodore was a Greek, educated in Athens and who became a monk. While in Italy Theodore was introduced to Pope Vitalian who considered him an appropriate candidate for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He was ordained at the age of 65 on 26th March 668.
St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury
Upon his arrival in England on 27th May 669 he found the church decimated by plague and divided between rival Celtic and Roman customs. Strong leadership was required and Theodore offered this at an age that people today would be retiring. He visited much of the country bringing unity between factions and customs. He established a school at Canterbury that gained a reputation for excellence and breadth of learning in scripture, Latin, Greek, poetry, Roman Law, calligraphy, astronomy, music and medicine. Theodore filled vacant sees and held the first synod of the Anglo-Saxon church in Hertford in 672 - which settled the annual timing of Easter - followed by a second synod in Heathfield.
Theodore's abiding legacy was the creation of more dioceses in England and ensuring that each diocese had definitive boundaries with an orthodox bishop who could give better pastoral attention their people. In similar vein Theodore laid the foundations of the parochial system. In this sense the Church of England and the Church in Wales' present day diocesan and parish structures arise directly from Theodore's work and mission.
The Venerable Bede's judgement is that the English church prospered under Theodore who was the first Archbishop to be willingly obeyed throughout England.
Theodore died on 19th September 690 aged 88 years and was buried close to St. Augustine in the Abbey Church of St. Peter and Paul, Canterbury founded by St. Augustine in 598. Bede writes in The History of the English Church and People Book V Chapter VIII :
Where Saint Theodore's resting place is marked
The year after that in which Caedwalla died in Rome, that is 690 after the incarnation of our Lord, Archbishop Theodore, of blessed memory, departed this life, old and full of days, for he was 88 years of age;
which number of years he had been want long before to foretell to his friends that he should live, the same having been received in a dream.
He had the bishopric 22 years and was buried in St. Peter's Church where all the bodies of the bishops of Canterbury are buried.
Of whom, as well as his companions, of the same degree, it may rightly and truly be said, that their bodies are intered in peace, and their names shall live from generation to generation.
For to say all in few words, the English Churches received more advantage during the time of his pontificate than ever they had done before.
His person, life, age and death are plainly described to all that resort thither, by the epitaph on his tomb, consisting of 34 heroic verses.
The first whereof are these -
Here rests famed Theodore,
a Grecian name,
Who had o'er England an archbishop's claim;
Happy and blessed, industriously he wrought,
And wholesome precepts to his scholars taught.
The last four are as follow -
And now it was September's 19th day,
When, bursting from its ligaments of clay,
his spirit rose to its eternal rest,
And joined in heaven the chorus of the blest.
Berthwald succeeded Theodore in the archbishopric. He was a man learned in the Scriptures and well instructed in ecclesiastical and monastic discipline. Yet not to be compared to his predecessor.
In 1091 Theodore's incorrupt body was translated along with other Archbishops from the Church of SS Peter and Paul to the new adjoining Norman Abbey Church. The location of St. Theodore's body was lost at the Reformation. Today, when visiting St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury his original resting place in the Church of SS Peter and Paul is marked out beside that of St. Augustine.
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