Deusdedit of Canterbury

Saint Deusdedit of Canterbury was the first native-⁠born archbishop of Canterbury, successor of Honorius. He reposed in July 664, probably of the plague.

He was a Saxon of Wessex; according to a tradition after the Norman Conquest, his birth name was Frithona, perhaps a form of Frithuwine. The name Deusdedit, Latin for "God has given", he adopted, like many Saxon bishops, from a recent pope; the historian Richard Sharpe thinks he received it at his consecration as archbishop. He was chosen after an interregnum of eighteen months, through an agreement between Eorcenberht of Kent and Cenwalh of Wessex, and was consecrated by Ithamar of Rochester on 12 or 26 March 655, as the sixth archbishop since the arrival of the missionaries of Gregory the Great.

His archiepiscopate lasted more than nine years, at a time when the see of Canterbury was in comparative obscurity; his authority did not extend beyond the kingdom of Kent. He consecrated only one bishop, Damianus, Ithamar's successor at Rochester. He founded a nunnery on the Isle of Thanet and helped in 657 with the foundation of Medeshamstede, now Peterborough. He does not seem to have been present at the Synod of Whitby in 664, perhaps because of the plague. According to Bede, he died on 14 July of that year, when an eclipse was followed by plague; the exact date, however, is disputed.

After his repose he was considered a saint. When his relics were moved from their original resting place in 1091, the monk Goscelin wrote his Life. He is commemorated on 14 July by the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.