Berhtwald

Saint Berhtwald was a monk, then abbot of Reculver in Kent, and from 693 the ninth archbishop of Canterbury. He reposed in 731.

He was born around the middle of the seventh century; from 679 he is named as abbot of the monastery of Reculver in a charter of King Hlothere, the earliest Anglo-⁠Saxon charter to survive in the original. He was chosen after the death of Saint Theodore of Tarsus, and the see stood vacant for two years, perhaps because some wished to place Saint Wilfrid there. Since not all the kings and bishops supported him, he travelled to Gaul and was consecrated on 29 June 693 by Godwin, archbishop of Lyon; he then went to Rome, where Pope Sergius I gave him the pallium and wrote to the English kings and bishops in his support.

He established the bishopric of Sherborne in Wessex, and during his time Sussex, the last pagan kingdom in England, was converted. He worked closely with King Wihtred and obtained the exemption of the Church from taxation in the law of 695. Much of his time in office was taken up with the dispute with Wilfrid over the see of York: he presided at the council of Austerfield in 702 and at a second council in 705 that settled the matter. He was less learned than Theodore, but well versed in Holy Scripture and in ecclesiastical and monastic discipline.

He is a saint of the undivided Church, commemorated on 9 January (new style).