Theodore of Canterbury

Theodore of Tarsus
Archbishop of Canterbury
Eastern Orthodox icon of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Term ended	19 September 690
Predecessor	Wighard
Successor	Berhtwald
Orders
Consecration	26 March 668
Personal details
Born	602
Died	19 September 690
Buried	Canterbury
Sainthood
Feast day	19 September
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church Anglican Communion
Canonized	Pre-Congregation

Theodore of Tarsus (602 – 19 September 690) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690, best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury.

Theodore's life can be divided into the time before his arrival in Britain as Archbishop of Canterbury, and his archiepiscopate. Until recently, scholarship on Theodore had focused on only the latter period since it is attested in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, and also in Stephen of Ripon's Vita Sancti Wilfrithi, whereas no source directly mentions Theodore's earlier activities. However, Michael Lapidge and Bernard Bischoff have reconstructed his earlier life based on a study of texts produced by his Canterbury School.

Theodore was of Byzantine Greek descent, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, a Greek-speaking diocese of the Byzantine Empire. Theodore's childhood saw devastating wars between Byzantium and the Persian Sassanid Empire, which resulted in the capture of Antioch, Damascus, and Jerusalem in 613-614. Persian forces captured Tarsus when Theodore was 11 or 12 years old, and evidence exists that Theodore had experience of Persian culture. It is most likely that he studied at Antioch, the historic home of a distinctive school of exegesis, of which he was a proponent. Theodore also knew Syrian culture, language and literature, and may even have travelled to Edessa.

Though a Greek could live under Persian rule, the Muslim conquests, which reached Tarsus in 637, certainly drove Theodore from Tarsus; if he did not flee earlier, Theodore would have been 35 years old when he left his birthplace. Having returned to the Eastern Roman Empire, he studied in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, including the subjects of astronomy, ecclesiastical computus (calculation of the date of Easter), astrology, medicine, Roman civil law, Greek rhetoric and philosophy, and the use of the horoscope.