Saint Mellitus

Augustine had written from Kent that the harvest was great and the laborers few. ¹ In 601, Bede says, Gregory sent him more, "of whom the first and principal were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus." ¹ With them went "all things in general that were necessary for the worship and service of the church," sacred vessels, vestments, relics of the apostles and martyrs, "besides many books," and the pallium for Augustine. ¹

Bede says Mellitus "was noble by birth, but much nobler in mind." ² Gregory calls him abbot, and the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia says it is thought he may have been abbot of Saint Andrew's on the Caelian Hill in Rome, the monastery to which Gregory and Augustine both belonged. ¹³ The encyclopedia adds that several of Gregory's letters commending Mellitus and his companions to bishops in Gaul survive. ³

After the party had left Rome, Gregory sent a letter after them, addressed "to his most beloved son, the Abbot Mellitus," which Bede copies in full. ¹ It was a message for Augustine, telling him what Gregory had decided "upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English." ¹

The temples, he wrote, "ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed." ¹ The people would then come more readily to places they already knew. ¹ Their feasts of slaughtered oxen were to become feasts on the days of the martyrs, kept in huts of boughs around the churches, with the cattle killed "to the praise of God in their eating." ¹

His reason was the slowness of real change: "he who endeavours to ascend to the highest place, rises by degrees or steps, and not by leaps." ¹ The letter is dated June 17, in the nineteenth year of the emperor Maurice. ¹

Bede says that in 604 Augustine ordained two bishops, Mellitus to preach to the East Saxons, whose chief city was London, and Justus to Rochester. ² The encyclopedia places the consecration "soon after his arrival." ³ The East Saxon king was Sabert, Ethelbert of Kent's nephew, and when the province received the faith through Mellitus's preaching, Bede says, Ethelbert built the church of Saint Paul in London as the bishop's see. ² The encyclopedia credits Mellitus with building it with Sabert's support, and Butler says it was founded in 604 by Sabert's liberality. ³⁴

Butler also says Mellitus founded the monastery of Saint Peter at Thorney in 609, the abbey now called Westminster. ⁴ The encyclopedia says that legend attributes Westminster to him, "but this is almost certainly incorrect." ³

About this time, Bede writes, Mellitus went to Rome to confer with Pope Boniface IV about the English church, and sat in a synod of Italian bishops on February 27, in the eighth year of the emperor Phocas. ² He brought its decrees home, with the pope's letters to Archbishop Laurentius, to the clergy and to King Ethelbert. ² With Laurentius and Justus he also signed a letter urging the bishops of Ireland to keep Easter with the rest of the Church. ²

In 616 Ethelbert died, and soon after him Sabert, leaving three sons who were still pagans and who gave their people leave to serve idols again. ² When they saw the bishop giving Communion at Mass, Bede says, they would ask him: "Why do you not give us also that white bread, which you used to give to our father Saba (for so they used to call him), and which you still continue to give to the people in the church?" ²

Mellitus answered: "If you will be washed in that laver of salvation, in which our father was washed, you may also partake of the holy bread of which he partook; but if you despise the laver of life, you may not receive the bread of life." ² They would not be baptized, and they would not stop asking. "If you will not comply with us in so small a matter as that is which we require, you shall not stay in our province." ² They sent him and his followers away. ²

He went to Kent, where Ethelbert's son Eadbald had refused the faith, and the bishops agreed it was better to go home than to stay on without fruit. ² Mellitus and Justus left first for Gaul. ² The encyclopedia dates it about 616. ³ Sabert's sons were killed soon after in battle against the West Saxons, but their people, Bede says, did not return to the faith. ²⁴

Laurentius, the archbishop, was about to follow them when, by Bede's account, Saint Peter appeared to him in the night and scourged him for leaving his flock. ² Eadbald, shown the marks, gave up his idols and his unlawful marriage and was baptized, and sent to Gaul for Mellitus and Justus, who came back a year after they had gone. ²

Justus went back to Rochester. London would not have Mellitus. Bede says the Londoners chose "rather to be under their idolatrous high priests," and that Eadbald had not the authority his father had to force them. ² The encyclopedia says Mellitus "was never able to regain possession of his own See of London." ³

When Laurentius died in 619, Mellitus succeeded him as the third archbishop of Canterbury after Augustine. ²³ He was not well. Bede says he suffered from gout, "but his mind was sound, cheerfully passing over all earthly things." ² The encyclopedia notes that he seems never to have received the pallium, which may explain why he consecrated no bishops in his five years. ³ He consecrated the church of the Mother of God that Eadbald had built in the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul. ²³

Bede gives one story "by which the rest may be guessed at." ² A fire broke out in Canterbury through carelessness, and water was thrown on it in vain; much of the city was already lost when the archbishop, who could not walk, had himself carried toward it, to where it burned hottest by the church of the Four Crowned Martyrs. ² There he prayed, and the south wind that had driven the fire through the city turned to the north and then dropped, and the flames went out. ² Butler says the fire had "already laid no small part of that city in ashes." ⁴

He died on April 24, 624, after ruling the church five years, and was buried with his predecessors in the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, later called St Augustine's. ²³ The encyclopedia records that some of his relics were kept in London in 1298. ³

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Mellitus, so none is given here. ²³⁴⁵

Saint Mellitus's feast is April 24, the day of his death in 624. ²³ The encyclopedia says "his feast is observed on April 24," and the Roman Martyrology enters him that day. ³⁵ In its Italian text, translated here, it remembers him as the bishop sent by Gregory to England as an abbot and ordained by Augustine for the East Saxons, who came "after many adversities" to the see of Canterbury. ⁵

He carried to England the letter that told the missionaries to keep what could be kept and to change people by steps rather than leaps. ¹ His own career went by steps too, and several of them were backward. ²

He was turned out of his diocese by three young kings because he would not give them Communion without baptism, and he did not give way. ² When he came back, the city that had been his would not take him, and it never did. ²³

He spent his last five years as archbishop with a body that could not carry him to a fire, and had himself carried. ² Bede, writing a century later, chose that story as the one that showed the rest of him. ²