[My wife, who is an Episcopal parish administrator, occasionally needed some fillers when the parish sent out its monthly newsletter.  I wrote these silly “lives of the saints” to fill in the blank spaces.]

Died 19 September 690

  It is impossible to know much about Theodore of Tarsus’ first 65 years, at least if you are cribbing from elvis.rowan.edu, who presumably was cribbing from Bede, but let us imagine that he showed precocity as a child and managed to get out of Tarsus without falling off his horse in the Pauline tradition.  This would have left his faculties in good shape for our story.  We first meet Theodore at age 65, a learned monk in Rome, when Pope Vitalian (known as Vitalian the Italian) fingers him to be Bishop of England.

  Actually Wighard was supposed to be Bishop but, regrettably for his career, Wighard  died in Rome.  Vitalian then picked Adrian, an impressive candidate from Africa who turned down - very politely one assumes - His Holiness’ offer.  It was then, on Adrian’s recommendation, that Vitalian picked Theodore, a choice that necessitated not only the usual consecration, but presumably an ordination as well, since Theodore was only a monk.  One hopes that the Pope did not forget this since it would put  apostolic priestly succession -  still very dear to many Episcopalians -  under grave suspicion.  Well, never mind.

  The Celts, driven to Scotland and Ireland when then Anglo-Saxons invaded England, now returned as missionaries to convert their earlier pagan menace.  Gallo Romans from the south also sent missionaries to convert the Anglo Saxons.  Thus surrounded, one assumes that hardly a day went by in 7th century England when some Gaul or Celt wasn’t knocking at your hut wondering, so to speak, if you’d like to read some pamphlets.

  Interestingly, what resulted, according to the above source, were “two flavors” of Christianity in England, a Celtic and a Continental one, and these were deeply divided on the question of how to calculate the date of Easter on the calendar.  Since this sounds a bit trivial, even for the Dark Ages,  people have suggested that perhaps this issue stood as a kind of proxy for something more socially or politically divisive, something perhaps involving early soccer.  The question was resolved in 663, alas in the Continental way, not the last example of French intrusions on Britain.  403 years later, for example... oh well, never mind.

  In any case, despite his age, and the weather, and not knowing Old English at all well, Theodore did much to unite these two factions.  He defined clearly the dioceses of England, and took it from a missionary outpost to a full fledged churchly province.  According to Bede, Theodore was “ the first archbishop whom all the English obeyed.”  Among his other accomplishments, he founded a school at Canterbury that respected both Celtic and Roman traditions.  In a nice turn, it happened that this school was headed by the aforementioned Adrian, an able administrator and brilliant scholar, who might have been archbishop himself, had he not, for reasons unknown to us deferred to the elder Theodore.