Anglo-Hellenism: Anglicans and the Orthodox Part IIb. A Greek Archbishop of Canterbury

In my earlier two posts in this series of three, I looked at the relations between the English and Greek churches in two periods: first after the foundation of the Greek state in 1830 and then in the period between the English Reformation and the Greek revolutionary war.  

Before the correspondence in the early seventeenth century between Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria and Archbishop Abbot of Canterbury, there is no evidence of direct contacts between the English and Greek churches for nearly a thousand years. But on 27 May 669AD, a remarkable man, known in English as Theodore of Tarsus, arrived in Kent, as the duly consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, to take up position as the head of the Church in Great Britain. He was already 67 when he landed on our shores, but he steered the church with energy and skill for 22 successful years, leaving a legacy that endured for centuries and is still reflected today in the structure of the Church of England. He is the only Greek to have exercised primatial authority over the English Church and, like all the earliest archbishops of Canterbury, he is revered as a saint by Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans alike. 

 

The story of who he was, how he arrived here and what he achieved in England deserves to be more widely known. It rests primarily on two sources: first, the highly favourable account of Theodore’s archiepiscopacy in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum), written in the monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow in the 730s; and secondly, inferences that can be drawn from the Biblical Commentaries written in the school established by Theodore himself at Canterbury.[1]

 

Bede tells us that Theodore died at Canterbury in 690AD, aged 88. He was born around 602AD, at Tarsus in Cilicia, the city of St Paul. At the time he was born, the Eastern Roman Empire still controlled Palestine and Syria, though that would end during Theodore's lifetime. He was Greek-speaking and was educated in the exegetical traditions of the theological schools of Antioch, most likely at Antioch itself. Many Syrians were bilingual and Theodore may also have acquired a knowledge of Syriac Christianity in its most important city of Edessa. It seems likely that he remained in Syria after the Persian occupation of 613, which was finally ended by Emperor Heraclius in 630AD. But he must have left his homeland no later than 636AD, when Syria fell to the Moslem Arabs. 

 

There is ‘incontrovertible evidence’ that Theodore spent time in Constantinople. The range of interests in the Canterbury Biblical Commentaries matches what is known of the university curriculum at Constantinople in the seventh century. Bede mentions Theodore’s knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, plus their secular and sacred literatures, alongside metrics, astronomy and mathematics; on top of which modern scholars add philosophy, medicine and Roman civil law. He may have gone to Constantinople either as a scholar or refugee (or both).

 

By 667AD, however, Theodore was in Rome, living as a monk among other refugees of the Arab invasions, probably in the Cilician Monastery of St Anastasius Magundat (a Syrian who had been martyred by the Persians in 628). In that year, Wighard, who had come to be consecrated as the successor to Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury, died unexpectedly of a fever in Rome. At first, Pope Vitalian turned to Hadrian, Abbot of the Monastery of Nirida near Naples, to lead the English church, but he refused and the choice eventually settled on Theodore. On 6 March 668AD, Vitalian duly consecrated him as Archbishop of Canterbury and sent him off to England, accompanied by Hadrian himself, who was to keep an eye on this very Greek archbishop, in case he stirred things up in England on the still unsettled monothelete controversy. 

 

In the event, Theodore turned out to be the greatest of all the early occupants of St Augustine’s throne. He arrived only five years after the Synod of Whitby had settled the argument between the Celtic and Roman wings of the Church about the dating and observance of Easter. Following the victory of the Roman party at Whitby, he was thus the first Archbishop to enjoy authority over the whole English church in the Kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Essex, Wessex and Kent alike. 

 

Ruins of St Augustine's (once St Peter's) Abbey

Together with Hadrian, whom he appointed Abbot of St Peter’s Abbey in Canterbury, he toured the English kingdoms, establishing his personal authority with the Anglo-Saxon monarchs and the Church’s often powerful and strong-willed hierarchs. He ordained bishops to long vacant sees; he split the powerful Northumbrian and Mercian dioceses, creating new sees at Hexham, Lindisfarne, Lindsey (northern Lincolnshire), Lichfield, Hereford and Worcester. Despite disruptions and changes arising from the Viking and Norman invasions, Theodore’s administrative reforms underpinned the basic territorial patterns of English dioceses until the Reformation and largely subsist still today. 

At Hertford in 673, he called the first synod of the Church in English lands, bringing canonical discipline to ecclesiastical and monastic administration. A second synod, held at Hatfield in 680, firmly established Catholic Orthodoxy across the Anglo-Saxon lands, proclaiming the authority of the then five Ecumenical Councils and the First Lateran Council (which had repudiated monotheletism). 

 

In 679AD, Theodore made the peace between King Egfrid of Northumbria and King Ethelred of Mercia, proving himself not only the master of the Church in England but also a major powerbroker in secular politics.

 

But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his establishment, with the help of Abbot Hadrian, of the first great school of international learning in English lands.[3] Alongside the parallel foundation of the Monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow by Benedict Biscop, who had also accompanied Theodore from Rome to England in 668/9, the school at Canterbury brought advanced knowledge and intellectual method to England and set in train their transmission across the Anglo-Saxon centuries. From Canterbury and Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, the torch of learning was carried by men such as Aldhelm and Bede, until it reached its florescence under, e.g., Alcuin of York in the Carolingian Renaissance of the eighth and ninth centuries. 

 

St Theodore of Tarsus was buried in the Abbey of St Peter at Canterbury; his grave is still marked today in the abbey ruins.[2] Living before the Great Schism of 1054 between the Eastern and Western churches, he was in a unique position to mould the still nascent English church, intellectually and administratively, enriching it with the sophistication of Greek knowledge. He achieved this through an example of clear-sighted authority, commanding persuasiveness and personal holiness. The presence of this Greek saint in Canterbury in the early years of Anglo-Saxon Christianity never ceases to astound and inspire me. Truly he is one of the greatest saints of the English Church. His feast is celebrated on 19 September. He should not be forgotten. Αιωνία του η μνήμη.

 

John

Monday, 7 June 2021

 

[1] The relevant passages of Bede are largely in Eccl.Hist. IV (chapters 1, 2, 5, 12, 17, 21); his death is recounted in book V (ch.8). The reconstruction of Theodore’s intellectual life from the Biblical Commentaries is set out in Bernhard Bischoff & Michael Lapidge (ed.), Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge: CUP, 1995); there is a useful summary in chapter 1 of Michael Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence (Cambridge: CUP, 1995). 

[2] In the course of time, St Peter's Abbey was rededicated to St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The abbey ruins are open for viewing and are managed by English Heritage.

[3] The career of Abbot Hadrian, an African, is almost as extraordinary and fascinating as that of Theodore himself. See the articles in the bibliography below by Michael Wood.

 

 

Further reading

 

If you have enjoyed these three blogposts and want to read more (or simply check out my sources), you can find much more in the following bibliography:

 

Bede, Historical Works II. Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Books IV-V. (trans. J.E. King) (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP 1930)

 

Bernhard Bischoff & Michael Lapidge (ed.), Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)

 

Stanley Casson, Greece and Britain (London: Collins, 1943)

 

William Chauncey Emhardt, Historical Contact of the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican Churches: A Review of the Relations between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Anglican Church since the Time of Theodore of Tarsus (New York: Department of Missions and Church Extension of the Episcopal Church, 1920)

 

Richard Clogg, Βρετανία και Ελλάδα (London: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 1995)

 

J.A.Cramer (ed.), The Second Book of the Travels of Nicander Nucius of Corcyra (London: Camden Society, 1841)

 

Theodore E. Dowling & Edwin W. Fletcher, Hellenism in England: A Short History of the Greek People in This Country from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London: Faith Press, 1915)

D.E. Eichholz, 'A Greek Traveller in Tudor England', Greece & Rome 16.7 (Apr. 1947): 76-84

 

M. Epstein, The Early History of the Levant Company (London: Routledge 1908)

 

Bryn Geffert, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2010)

 

Jonathan Harris, ‘London’s Greek Community’, in George Kakavas (ed.), Treasured Offerings: The Legacy of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St Sophia, London (Athens: Byzantine & Christian Museum, 2002): 3-8

 

Michael Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)

 

Robert Liddell, The Morea (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958)

 

John Mole (ed.), The Sultan’s Organ: The Diary of Thomas Dallam, 1599 - London to Constantinople and Adventures on the Way (London: Fortune Books 2012)

 

Mark S. Nestlehutt, ‘Anglicans in Greece: The Episcopal Mission and the English Chaplaincy at Athens’, Anglican and Episcopal History 65.3 (1996): 293-313

 

Bernard Randolph, The Present State of the Morea (London: Wm. Notts et al. 1689³)

 

Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968): 289-319

 

Dimitris Salapatas, ‘Anglican-Orthodox Relations: A Dead End or a Way Forward?’, Koinonia 63 (2014): 15-31

 

F.H.W. Sheppard (ed.), ‘The Greek Church (Later St. Mary's, Crown Street)', in Survey of London: Volumes 33 and 34 (London: London County Council, 1966): 278-287 (available at British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols33-4/pp278-287)

 

Bp. Theodoritos of Nazianzos, ‘History of the Greek Cathedral of Saint Sophia in London’ in Kakavas, op.cit.: 21-26.

 

Paul Watkins, ‘An English Church on Kythera’, Argo: A Hellenic review 11/12 (2020): 44-46

 

Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (London: Frank Cass 1964) 

 

Michael Wood, ‘Anglo-Saxon Christianity’, BBC History Today (December 2017): downloaded (3 June 2021):

https://www.historyextra.com/period/anglo-saxon/michael-wood-anglo-saxon-christianity-refugees-hadrian-theodore-syria-libya/

 

Michael Wood, ‘The African who transformed Anglo-Saxon England’, BBC History Today (October 2020): downloaded (3 June 2021): https://www.historyextra.com/period/anglo-saxon/hadrian-clerk-libya-african-who-anglo-saxon-england/