ST. THEODORE OF TARSUS AND CANTERBURY (SEPT. 19TH)

 

A Contemporary Icon of St. Theodore of Tarsus and Canterbury

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

St. Theodore was born in AD 602. His parentage was of the patrician elite, and his father, like many fathers of the great Western saints, was a lawyer. He was raised as a Christian, Greek-speaking Roman, with a classical education in rhetoric, astronomy, mathematics and law. Antioch, where Theodore’s father held an official post, fell to Persia in AD 613, when Theodore was just a young teenager. He grew up as a captive “Rum”, serving the Persian empire as a subjugated class. It is thought that he was a gifted young man, and that he probably was married and had a family, employed in a secular capacity as a lawyer or minor official, until some unknown tragedy befell him and he devoted himself to the ascetical life of a monk. He then studied the Antiochian school of biblical exegesis, traveling to Edessa, and learning from scholars of the Church of the East. It was also probably through him that the Persian Syriac hagiographies came to England, where they exerted influence in the British Tradition. 

Later, St. Theodore went to Constantinople. There he studied astronomy, mathematics, Biblical exegesis, iconography and music until AD 660, when he was sent to Rome as a representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In Rome, he resided with the Basilian Monks of St. Anastasios, was a canonical consultant to the Popes, possibly attending local synods as the representative of the Eastern Patriarch, and was consecrated to be the Archbishop of Canterbury in AD 668. 

St. Theodore called the Synod of Hertford in AD 673, where he further aligned the British Church with the Papacy, affirmed the Filioque as an appropriate theological innovation (probably without realizing the greater issues at stake that would later force the Christian East and West into schism), and generally tried to finish the work of St. Augustine of Canterbury in stamping out indigenous Celtic Christian authority in favor of a centralized Roman vision. He did, perhaps inadvertently, introduce several Byzantine liturgical practices, such as the sung Litany of the Saints, which influenced the rest of Western Christendom from England later on, and also introduced a more elaborate liturgical rubrics that would later become known as the Serum Rite, which shares much with Byzantine and Syriac traditions. The seminary that he founded in Canterbury was so influential and so thorough that, even one hundred years after his death, it was said that “all the learning of the East is alive and well in England.” His students were extremely fluent in Greek, so much so that they were sought by Roman bishops as translators and commentators on Greek Fathers and Canon Law. 

St. Theodore died in AD 690, at 88 years of age, on the 22 year of his archepiscopacy. He was a faithful witness to the Christian Faith, a bridge between East and West, a brilliant teacher and a paradigm for the expansive inclusion of the English Patrimony. He was canonized shortly after his death by popular piety, and is remembered to this day as an important milestone in the growth and development of English scholarship and spirituality. Everything changed for the better after his long and peaceful pastorate over the English archbishopric. 

May we strive to be like St. Theodore of Tarsus and Canterbury, and may his prayers illuminate the way, as we follow his good example and pass down his love for Christ! May Our Lord year His faithful servant’s prayers before His throne in heaven! St. Theodore, pray for us! 

COLLECT

O God, whose Bishop Theodore was called to England to set the Church on a firm foundation: by his prayers, build us always anew on the rock that is Christ; and keep thy household faithful to the call we have received; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.