Theodore of Tarsus (602-690) was the most important Archbishop
of Canterbury between St Augustine and Lanfranc. His achievement
was largely, though not exclusively, administrative. It was also
timely. His archiepiscopate began in 669, five years after a
great plague had carried off many of the English clergy, so that
in places the countryside reverted to heathenism. Yet Theodore
probably never gave England a thought before the age of 66. He
had been born, like St Paul, in Tarsus, at the north-eastern end
of the Mediterranean; and his native tongue (again like St Paul)
was Greek. Scholars have speculated that he may have studied 140
miles east of Tarsus at Antioch, where the teachings of St John
Chrysostom (d 407) still carried authority. Later, Theodore
applied himself to philosophy, medicine, rhetoric, astronomy and
astrology in Constantinople. Later still he became a monk in
Rome, probably at the Greek-speaking monastery outside Porto San
Paolo, one of the southern gates in the Aurelian walls. This
house da