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Who
is St Theodore? |
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| 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
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 - |
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| 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 - |
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| 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. |
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Berthwald succeeded Theodore in the archbishopric, being abbot of the monastery of Raculph, which lies on the north side of the mouth of the river Genlude. 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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