Hierarch
Hierarch Laurence of Canterbury
† февраль 619
Hierarch Laurence of Canterbury — the second Archbishop of Canterbury, who arrived in England in 597 with St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission and was consecrated by Augustine himself shortly before his death; he continued the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, worked to align the Celtic clergy's Paschal reckoning with Roman practice, and, according to tradition, was dissuaded from fleeing England by a vision of the Apostle Peter rebuking him for cowardice.
Hierarch Laurence arrived in Britain in 597 as part of St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the Anglo-Saxons. Shortly before his death (604), Augustine himself consecrated Laurence a bishop, making him his successor as the second Archbishop of Canterbury. After Augustine's death (609/610), Laurence continued the work of Christianizing England.
Together with Bishops Mellitus and Justus, he sent a letter to the Celtic and Irish clergy (prompted by Bishop Dagán's refusal to share a meal or roof with the Roman missionaries), urging them to bring the local method of calculating the date of Easter into conformity with Roman practice — one episode in the long dispute between the Roman and Celtic Churches over the Paschal reckoning, finally resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664.
After the death of King Æthelberht of Kent (616), his son and successor Eadbald reverted to paganism and married his father's widow. Unable to persuade the king, Laurence prepared to flee to Gaul, but, according to tradition, on the eve of his departure the Apostle Peter appeared to him and scourged him for cowardly abandoning his flock. The next morning Laurence showed the king the marks of the scourging, which so impressed Eadbald that he converted and was baptized.
He reposed in February 619.
His feast is kept on February 2.
IMPORTANT CORRECTION: category righteous→hierarch — Laurence was an archbishop, already reflected in the stub's own text ("Hierarch"), which contradicted the stated category of "righteous." As a saint of the undivided Church before 1054, his feast is kept on a fixed civil date without separate Old Style/New Style reckoning.