ST. MELLITUS, BISHOP & CONFESSOR, April 23rd

Collect

WE beseech thee, O Lord, graciously hear the prayers which we offer unto thee on the solemnity of blessed Mellitus, thy Confessor and Bishop : that, like as he was found worthy to do thee faithful service ; so by his merits and intercession we may be absolved from all our sins. Through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the legend

MELLITUS was abbot of a monastery in the City of Rome when, in the year 601, Pope Saint Gregory the Great chose him to be the leader of a second band of missionaries to go to England, whither he had already sent Saint Augustine with the first band. And for three years Mellitus preached the Gospel in Kent. After which he was made Bishop of the East Saxons, by virtue of which he is reckoned as the first Bishop of London. And in that place he laid certain spiritual foundations, whereon there were afterwards reared those houses of God now known as Saint Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

HE it was that baptized King Sigbert, which good King afterwards aided him in his apostolic labours. The King's sons, however, were not brought to Baptism, but were only catechumens ; and after their father's death they relapsed into idolatry. But even so, they demanded to be fed on the Eucharist, as their father had been. And when the holy man refused to admit them to the Communion of Christ's sacramental Body, unless they forsook their heathen ways, and became members of Christ's mystical body, they drove him from the kingdom, and he retired to France.

BUT shortly his fellow-labourers at Canterbury asked him to return to Kent. And on the death of Saint Lawrence, namely, in 619, he ascended the throne of Saint Augustine as third Archbishop of Canterbury ; and in 624 he went to the eternal reward of his labours. Of him it is related that once, whilst suffering greviously from an illness, he saved the City of Canterbury through his merits and prayers, from destruction by fire.

From the Anglican Breviary