Bishop Mellitus

Mellitus was a Roman cleric of the late sixth and early seventh centuries who became one of the principal figures of the Gregorian mission to the Anglo-Saxons. Almost nothing verifiable is known of his early life: no reliable source records his year or place of birth. He belonged to the circle of Pope Gregory the Great and was associated with the monastic community Gregory had founded on the Caelian Hill in Rome. In 601 Gregory sent him from Rome at the head of a second group of missionaries, including Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus, to reinforce Augustine of Canterbury. The party carried books, relics, sacred vessels, and a pallium for Augustine, together with papal letters. While Mellitus was still travelling, Gregory addressed to him a well-known letter of pastoral advice, directing that pagan temples in England should not be destroyed but cleansed and rededicated, and that local customs might be adapted so that conversion would be less abrupt.

In 604 Augustine consecrated Mellitus bishop for the East Saxons, with his see at London. King Sæberht of Essex received baptism, and a church dedicated to Saint Paul was established in the city, the first episcopal church of London in the Anglo-Saxon period. Mellitus’s position depended on royal protection. After Sæberht’s death, around 616, the king’s sons, who remained pagan, demanded the eucharistic bread although they were unbaptized. Mellitus refused. They expelled him from Essex; Justus of Rochester was likewise driven out. Both bishops withdrew to Gaul. Laurence of Canterbury prepared to follow them, but according to Bede was restrained by a vision of Saint Peter. King Eadbald of Kent then adopted a firmer Christian policy, and Mellitus and Justus were recalled. Mellitus could not recover London, because the East Saxons stayed pagan, and he remained in Kent.

On the death of Laurence in 619, Mellitus became the third Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Boniface V wrote to encourage him. Bede records that Mellitus suffered from gout, which sometimes kept him from travelling, but that he continued to govern the Kentish church. He is credited with consecrating a church in honour of the Mother of God within the monastery at Canterbury. He died on 24 April 624 and was buried in the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul at Canterbury, later known as St Augustine’s Abbey, near Augustine and Laurence. Justus succeeded him.

Bede also relates a posthumous miracle: when fire threatened the monastery, the monks laid Mellitus’s burial pall on the flames and the fire went out. He was venerated as a saint from an early date, without a later formal process of canonization whose agent can be named. His feast is kept on 24 April. Beyond his Roman origin, his part in the mission of 601, his London episcopate, his exile and return, and his brief archiepiscopate, the sources, chiefly Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, do not permit a fuller personal biography.