Who was St Mellitus?

The College is named after one of the least known but most significant figures in the establishment of the church in London and Essex - a key moment in the conversion of the British Isles.

At the end of the 6th century, inspired by his growing awareness of the needs of this far-flung part of Europe, Pope Gregory the Great sent a group of missionaries to the island of Britain. There had been Christian churches in the island since at least the 4th century, but the land was still largely pagan. This new mission was headed by Augustine, who quickly became a key figure in this new attempt to establish the faith, and who was appointed the first Archbishop of the town in which the new mission was based: Canterbury. After a few years’ hard work, in 601 AD, Augustine sent back to Rome to ask for help in evangelising the mainly pagan East Saxon tribes, and so Gregory sent a small band of dedicated missionaries to help him, including its leader, Mellitus. Mellitus was probably a well-off Roman nobleman, whose devotion to Christ had led him to enter the monastic life and later become abbot of the Monastery of St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill in Rome, to which both St. Gregory and St. Augustine had belonged. In 604, with the help of the Christian East Saxon King Saeberht, Mellitus was made the first bishop of the growing city of London, the capital of the East Saxons, with its new church dedicated to St Paul, built on Ludgate Hill at the heart of the city. His jurisdiction covered the city of London, but also the land to the east - what we know as Essex, or the two dioceses of London and Chelmsford.

As a result of the work of Mellitus and his friends, the church grew. Yet it was not without cost. After Saeberht died, his sons reverted to pagan worship. Seeing Mellitus celebrate the Eucharist one day, they demanded they be given the bread, as he had given it to their father, even though they had not the slightest commitment to Christ and his church. Mellitus refused it to them unless they were baptised, and as a result, Mellitus was banished from the kingdom, spending the next few years in Kent and then from about 614, in Gaul, or France. A year later, Mellitus was recalled to Britain by Laurentius, Augustine’s successor in Canterbury. He never returned to his former base in London however, and in 619, he was appointed the third Archbishop of Canterbury, after Laurentius’ death. Despite constant illness, he continued in that role until his death in 624. Many miracles were said to have taken place as a result of his prayers, including the quelling of a dangerous fire in Canterbury that threatened to destroy the town and its churches. His story is told in Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ (I, 29, 30; II, 3-7).

Mellitus was a missionary bishop. Naming this new college ‘St Mellitus College’ is not an act of antiquarian curiosity – it is laying claim to that same costly spirit of missionary love, the desire to see Christian churches growing and building for God’s kingdom across this region and beyond, and seeing theology in service of that aim. That spirit is needed by Christians in pluralist C21st London and Essex as much as in the pagan C7th land of the East Saxons. As the Bishop of London writes: “Mellitus came with news of a new way of being in the world, a way of building the city of the living God whose foundation is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ invites us to true freedom and to human flourishing. He said “I have come that they might have life and have it in all its fullness.” Mellitus dared to go into the lion’s den because he had been entrusted like us with the story of how human beings flourish and it would have been unloving not to be a missionary.”