Cuthbert of Canterbury

Cuthbert
Archbishop of Canterbury
Appointed	740
Term ended	26 October 760
Predecessor	Nothelm
Successor	Bregowine
Other posts	possibly Bishop of Hereford
Orders
Consecration	740
Personal details
Born	unknown
Died	26 October 760
Buried	Canterbury
Sainthood
Feast day	26 October
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church Anglican Communion
Canonized	Pre-Congregation

Cuthbert (died 26 October 760) was a medieval Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury in England. Prior to his elevation to Canterbury, he was abbot of a monastic house, and perhaps may have been Bishop of Hereford also, but evidence for his holding Hereford mainly dates from after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. While Archbishop, he held church councils and built a new church in Canterbury. It was during Cuthbert's archbishopric that the Diocese of York was raised to an archbishopric. Cuthbert died in 760 and was later regarded as a saint.

Of noble birth, Cuthbert is first recorded as the Abbot of Lyminge, from where he was elevated to the See of Hereford in 736. The identification of the Cuthbert who was Bishop of Hereford with the Cuthbert who became archbishop, however, comes from Florence of Worcester and other post-Conquest sources. The contemporary record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Cuthbert was consecrated archbishop, where if he had been Bishop of Hereford, he would have been translated. No consecration is needed when a bishop is translated from one see to another. Given the nature of the sources, the identification of the bishop of Hereford with the archbishop of Canterbury, while likely, must not be regarded as proven.

If Cuthbert was at Hereford, he served in that capacity for four years before his elevation to the See of Canterbury in 740. He is credited with the composition of an epitaph for the tomb of his three predecessors at Hereford. The cathedral church of the see may not even have been located at Hereford by Cuthbert's time.

Whoever Cuthbert was prior to his election to Canterbury, he probably owed his selection as archbishop to the influence of Æthelbald, King of Mercia. A number of Mercians were appointed to Canterbury during the 730s and 740s, which suggests that Mercian authority was expanding into Kent.

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