In 610, Mellitus returned to Italy to attend a council of bishops, and returned to England bearing papal letters to some of the missionaries.

Together with Mellitus, the Bishop of London, Justus signed a letter written by Archbishop Laurence of Canterbury to the Irish bishops urging the native church to adopt the Roman method of calculating the date of Easter.

The historian Ian Wood has suggested that Mellitus ' journey through Gaul probably took in the bishoprics of Vienne, Arles, Lyons, Toulon, Marseilles, Metz, Paris, and Rouen, as evidenced by the letters that Gregory addressed to those bishops soliciting their support for Mellitus ' party.

During his time as a bishop, Mellitus joined with Justus, the Bishop of Rochester, in signing a letter that Laurence wrote to the Celtic bishops urging the Celtic Church to adopt the Roman method of calculating the date of Easter.

One is written to Justus after he had succeeded Mellitus as Archbishop of Canterbury in 624, conferring the pallium upon him and directing him to " ordain bishops as occasion should require.

Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs.

Mellitus was exiled from London by the pagan successors to his patron, King Sæberht of Essex, following the latter's death around 616.

In letters, Pope Gregory I called him an abbot, but it is unclear whether Mellitus had previously been abbot of a Roman monastery, or this was a rank bestowed on him to ease his journey to England by making him the leader of the expedition.

Passion scenes from the St Augustine Gospels, possibly brought by Mellitus to England

" Thomas of Elmham, a 15th-century Canterbury chronicler, claimed that in his day there were a number of the books brought to England by Mellitus still at Canterbury.

Exactly when Mellitus and his party arrived in England is unknown, but he was certainly in the country by 604, when Augustine consecrated him as bishop in the province of the East Saxons, making Mellitus the first Bishop of London after the Roman departure ( London was the East Saxons ' capital ).

Mellitus fled first to Canterbury, but Æthelberht's successor Eadbald was also a pagan, so Mellitus, accompanied by Justus, took refuge in Gaul.

Mellitus was recalled to Britain by Laurence, the second Archbishop of Canterbury, after his conversion of Eadbald.

During his tenure as archbishop, Mellitus supposedly performed a miracle in 623 by diverting a fire that had started in Canterbury and threatened the church.

Boniface wrote to Mellitus encouraging him in the mission, perhaps prompted by the marriage of Æthelburh of Kent to King Edwin of Northumbria.

Their king, Saeberht, was converted early and a diocese was established at London, but its first bishop, Mellitus, was expelled by Saeberth's heirs.

* The future Archbishops of Canterbury, Mellitus, Justus, and Honorius, and the future Archbishop of York Paulinus, are sent to England by Pope Gregory I to aid Augustine in his missionary work.

According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, the Abbey was first founded in the time of Mellitus ( d. 624 ), Bishop of London, on the present site, then known as Thorn Ey ( Thorn Island ); based on a late tradition that a fisherman called Aldrich on the River Thames saw a vision of Saint Peter near the site.

With a capacity of 800 people it was designated St Mellitus, the name probably derived from the legend, propagated by Sir Montagu Sharpe, the Middlesex historian, that Mellitus, Bishop of the East Saxons, was instrumental in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons of Hanwell.

Paulinus was a monk from Rome sent to the Kingdom of Kent by Pope Gregory I in 601, along with Mellitus and others, as part of the second group of missionaries sent to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

At about this time Mellitus, bishop of London, is expelled by the sons of Sæberht in Essex, and goes to Kent.

* 619 – 624: Eadbald builds a church which is consecrated by Archbishop Mellitus.

The pallium accompanying that letter indicates Justus was archbishop by that time, and the duration of Mellitus ’ s archiepiscopate means that even if Bede ’ s dates are somewhat wrong in other particulars, Eadbald was converted no earlier than 621, and no later than April 624, since Mellitus consecrated a church for Eadbald before his death in that month.

According to Bede, Justus received letters of encouragement from Pope Boniface V ( 619 – 625 ), as did Mellitus, although Bede does not record the actual letters.

Pope Gregory I sent Mellitus to England in June 601, in response to an appeal from Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

* Epistola ad Mellitum on Wikisource – complete Latin text of the letter to Mellitus from Pope Gregory I.

Pope Gregory issued more practicable mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: he desired that temples become consecrated to Christian service and asked Augustine to transform pagan practices, so far as possible, into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since " he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps " ( letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30 ).

Reformatting native religious and cultural activities and beliefs into a Christianized form was officially sanctioned ; preserved in the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a letter from Pope Gregory I to Mellitus, arguing that conversions were easier if people were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditions, while claiming that the traditions were in honour of the Christian God, " to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God ".

Pope Gregory the Great instructed Abbot Mellitus that:

Boniface had Mellitus take two papal letters back to England, one to Æthelbert and his people, and another to Laurence, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

During the pontificate of Boniface, Mellitus, the first Bishop of London, went to Rome " to consult the pope on important matters relative to the newly established English Church ".

* Mellitus ( d. 624 )

It produced relatively few Anglo-Saxon Charters and no version of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle ; in fact the only mention in the chronicle concerns Bishop Mellitus.

The earliest English record of the kingdom dates to Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which noted the arrival of Bishop ( later Saint ) Mellitus in London in 604.

After the death of Saebert in AD 616, Mellitus was driven out and the kingdom reverted to paganism.

The second group included Mellitus, who later became Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury.

A pagan backlash against Christianity followed Æthelberht's death in 616, forcing Justus and Mellitus to flee to Gaul.

Mellitus also returned to England, but the prevailing pagan mood did not allow him to return to London ; after Laurence's death, Mellitus became Archbishop of Canterbury.

The ninth century Stowe Missal commemorates his feast day, along with Mellitus and Laurence.

It is known that Laurence returned to England with Mellitus and others of the second group of missionaries in the summer of 601, but there is no record of Peter being with them.

Mellitus ( died 24 April 624 ) was the first Bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity.

King Æthelberht of Kent, Mellitus ' other patron, died at about the same time, forcing him to take refuge in Gaul.

Mellitus returned to England the following year, after Æthelberht's successor had been converted to Christianity, but he was unable to return to London, whose inhabitants remained pagan.

Mellitus was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 619.

After his death in 624, Mellitus was revered as a saint.

The medieval chronicler Bede described Mellitus as being of noble birth.

The first time Mellitus is mentioned in history is in the letters of Gregory, and nothing else of his background is known.