Saint Ithamar

In the annals of the early English Church, a significant transition occurred when leadership began to pass from foreign missionaries to the indigenous people they had evangelized. It was during this pivotal era of spiritual consolidation that a figure emerged to mark the dawn of native episcopal leadership in the region. At Rochester in England, a bishop presided over the faithful whose tenure signified a profound shift in the ecclesiastical landscape. He is known to history as the first among the people of Canterbury to be called to the episcopal order, a distinction that elevated him above his contemporaries and secured his place in the memory of the faithful.