With Church practices thus
set on a path to unification, it remained for hierarchical unity to be forged
in the Church. The pious yet weak
archbishop of Canterbury, St. Deusdedit, reposed the same year as the Synod of
Whitby. The pope of Rome replaced him
with a venerable Greek from Tarsus, who would become the first hierarch to
preside over a synod of bishops governing all the Anglo-Saxon Church. St. Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of
Canterbury (+690), brought with him to Britain an abundance of knowledge and
culture gathered from across the Byzantine-Roman Church, in a refined Orthodox
form opposed to the monothelite heresy holding sway in the East. For over twenty years, he taught the people,
traveled widely, held councils, consecrated bishops, and everywhere established
canonical norms, so that there was unity and harmony in the Anglo-Saxon Church
as never before. St. Bede would write,
“Never had there been such happy times as these since the English settled in
Britain.”
In such an environment
shone forth one of the holiest of English saints, St. Cuthbert, bishop and
abbot of Lindisfarne (+687). Raised in
the Northumbrian Church, he became a repository of the grace of both the Celtic
and Anglo-Saxon traditions, and as such provided a bridge of reconciliation
that forged a spiritual unity among the people, complementing the canonical
unity achieved by St. Theodore. As a
hesychastic hermit, he attained the heights of humility, prayer and love, and
as an archpastor he worked such copious miracles as to be compared with the
likes of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Martin of Tours.
--Fr Geoffrey Korz, Saint Herman Calendar 2010: Orthodox Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, Platina, Cal., pgs. 3-4
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
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