Litany of Saints
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Mellitus

Archbishop of Canterbury; Bishop of London

SaintBenedictinesPre-congregation

Feast: 24 April (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)

Born
600
Died
624
Beatified
not needed: before formal processes
Canonised
By tradition
recognised before formal processes began

Who they were

Mellitus (; died 24 April 624) was the first bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity. He arrived in 601 AD with a group of clergy sent to augment the mission, and was consecrated as Bishop of London in 604. Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs.

Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), until this page is written up in full.

The miracles

Limited information available on this saint.

Why that counted as sanctity

Limited information available on this saint.

Connected on this site

  • Gregory I Saint
    “Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs.” — Wikipedia
Sources
  • Wikidata Q366198 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
  • English Wikipedia — Mellitus (CC BY-SA)

Not yet written up in full: no Church source with an account of this person has been found yet. The name, dates and step come from Wikidata and are not yet checked against Church records.

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