The 'Laterculus Malalianus' and the School of Archbishop Theodore.

In the year 690 Theodore the Greek, who had been for twenty-one years the seventh archbishop of Canterbury, died. It was one of the dates included by the Venerable Bede in his list of dates important for the history of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. But for Bede, Theodore was not only the archbishop of his childhood and a friend of his monastery, but a scholar: 'vir et saeculari et divina litteratura et Graeca instructus et Latine' (Ecclesiastical history of the English people iv. 1). He wrote about the teaching done by Theodore and his companion, the African Hadrian, at Canterbury with a certain wistfulness: 'never had there been such happy times since the English first came to Britain ... all who wished for instruction in sacred studies had teachers ready to hand' (ibid.). Bede remembered Theodore most of all as a teacher. It seems appropriate therefore that the 1300th anniversary of Theodore's death should be commemorated by a wealth of scholarship from the distinguished school of Cambridge.

The works published by Cambridge University Press in connection with the anniversary provide new material of very great interest. The volume which contains the Biblical commentaries, edited by Bischoff and Lapidge, provides a variety of excellent fare. In 275 pages the background of Theodore and Hadrian is discussed, a theme further expanded in several essays in Archbishop Theodore. …