Mellitus

Journey to England

Pope Gregory I sent Mellitus to England in June 601, in response to an appeal from Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine needed more clergy to join the Gregorian mission that was converting the kingdom of Kent, then ruled by Æthelberht, from paganism to Christianity. The new missionaries brought with them a gift of books and "all things which were needed for worship and the ministry of the Church." Thomas of Elmham, a 15th-century Canterbury chronicler, claimed that in his day there were a number of the books brought to England by Mellitus still at Canterbury. Examination of the remaining manuscripts has determined that one possible survivor of Mellitus's books is the St Augustine Gospels, now in Cambridge, as Corpus Christi College, MS (manuscript) 286. Another Gospel, in an Italian hand, and closely related to the Augustine Gospels, is MS Oxford Bodelian Auctarium D.2.14, which shows evidence of being held in Anglo-Saxon hands during the right time frame. Lastly, a fragment of a work by Gregory the Great, now held by the British Library as part of MS Cotton Titus C may have arrived with the missionaries. Along with the letter to Augustine, the missionaries brought a letter for Æthelberht, urging the King to act like the Roman Emperor Constantine I and force the conversion of his followers to Christianity. The king was also encouraged to destroy all pagan shrines.

The historian Ian Wood has suggested that Mellitus's journey through Gaul probably included the bishoprics of Vienne, Arles, Lyons, Toulon, Marseilles, Metz, Paris, and Rouen, as evidenced by the letters Gregory addressed to those bishops soliciting their support for Mellitus's party. Gregory also wrote to the Frankish kings Chlothar II, Theuderic II, Theudebert II, along with Brunhilda of Austrasia, who was Theudebert and Theuderic's grandmother and regent. Wood feels that this wide appeal to the Frankish episcopate and royalty was an effort to secure more support for the Gregorian mission. While on his journey to England, Mellitus received a letter from Gregory allowing Augustine to convert pagan temples to Christian churches, and to convert pagan animal sacrifices into Christian feasts, to ease the transition to Christianity. and was later included in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Usually known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, it conflicts with the letter sent to Æthelberht, which the historian R. A. Markus sees as a turning point in missionary history, when forcible conversion gave way to persuasion.

Bishop of London Exactly when Mellitus and his party arrived in England is unknown, but he was certainly in the country by 604, in the province of the East Saxons, making Mellitus the first Bishop of London after the Roman departure (London was the East Saxons' capital). The city was a logical choice for a new bishopric, as it was a hub for the southern road network. It was also a former Roman town; many of the Gregorian mission's efforts were centred in such locations. Before his consecration, Mellitus baptised Sæberht, Æthelberht's nephew, who then allowed the bishopric to be established. Æthelberht, rather than Sæberht, probably founded the episcopal church built in London. Although Bede records that Æthelberht gave lands to support the new episcopate, a charter that claims to be a grant of lands from Æthelberht to Mellitus is a later forgery. After Augustine's death in 604, Canterbury continued to be the site of the southern archbishopric, and London remained a bishopric. It may have been that the Kentish king did not wish greater episcopal authority to be exercised outside his own kingdom. Boniface had Mellitus take two papal letters back to England, one to Æthelbert and his people, and another to Laurence, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also brought back the synod's decrees to England. No authentic letters or documents from this synod remain, although some were forged in the 1060s and 1070s at Canterbury.

Both Æthelberht and Sæberht died around 616 or 618, causing a crisis for the mission. Bede says that Mellitus was exiled because he refused the brothers' request for a taste of the sacramental bread. Whether this occurred immediately after Sæberht's death or later is impossible to determine from Bede's chronology, which has both events in the same chapter but gives neither an exact time frame nor the elapsed time between the two events. The historian N. J. Higham connects the timing of this episode with a change in the "overkingship" from the Christian Kentish Æthelberht to the pagan East Anglian Raedwald, which Higham feels happened after Æthelberht's death. In Higham's view, Sæberht's sons drove Mellitus from London because they had passed from Kentish overlordship to East Anglian, and thus no longer needed to keep Mellitus, who was connected with the Kentish kingdom, in office.

Mellitus fled first to Canterbury, but Æthelberht's successor Eadbald was also a pagan, so Mellitus, accompanied by Justus, took refuge in Gaul. because the East Saxons remained pagan. The East Saxon see was not occupied again until Cedd was consecrated as bishop in about 654.

Archbishop and death Mellitus succeeded Laurence as the third Archbishop of Canterbury after the latter's death in 619. During his tenure as archbishop, Mellitus supposedly performed a miracle in 623 by diverting a fire that had started in Canterbury and threatened the church. He was carried into the flames, upon which the wind changed direction, thus saving the building. Bede praised Mellitus's sane mind, but other than the miracle, little happened during his time as archbishop. Bede also mentioned that Mellitus suffered from gout. In the ninth century, Mellitus's feast day was mentioned in the Stowe Missal, along with Laurence and Justus. He was still venerated at St Augustine's in 1120, along with a number of other local saints. There was also a shrine to him at Old St Paul's Cathedral in London. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, Goscelin wrote a life of Mellitus, the first of several to appear around that time, but none contain any information not included in Bede's earlier works. These later medieval lives do, however, reveal that during Goscelin's lifetime, persons suffering from gout were urged to pray at Mellitus's tomb.