Tatwine of Canterbury, St.
TATWINE OF CANTERBURY, ST.
Ninth archbishop of Canterbury, also known as Tatwin, Tatuini, Tadwinus; d. July 30, 734. He was a Mercian who was a monk in the monastery of Bredon, Worcester, when consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in 731. The contemporary preeminence of the Mercian king probably explains the election of a Mercian to the Kentish See, but bede, who was finishing his Ecclesiastical History at the time, describes Tatwine as a religious and learned man. He was consecrated by the bishops of London, Lichfield, Rochester, and Winchester, the most distinguished, by and large, of the English episcopate. A little later he received the pallium from the Pope. A letter of Pope Gregory III alleging that he went to Rome for it in person is not thought to be authentic. He was a man of some learning, and left a collection of riddles, a popular form of Anglo-Saxon intellectual exercise. His relics are enshrined in Canterbury Cathedral.
Feast: July 30.
Bibliography: bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.23. a. w. had dan and w. stubbs, eds., Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 3 v. in 4 (Oxford 1869–78) 311–313. w. hunt, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 63 v. (London 1885–1900; suppl. 1901–) 19:383–390. m. manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 v. (Munich 1911–31) 1:203–206.
[e. john]