# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nothelm

​NOTHELM (d. 739), tenth archbishop of Canterbury, a priest of London, and apparently not a monk, was a friend of Albinus [q. v.], abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, who employed him to convey to Bede [q. v.], both by letter and by word of mouth, information respecting the ecclesiastical history of Kent. Nothelm visited Rome during the pontificate of Gregory II, and, with his permission, searched the registers of the Roman see, and copied several letters of Gregory the Great and other popes, which, by the advice of Albinus, he gave to Bede, that he might insert them in his ‘Ecclesiastical History.’ He is described as ‘archpriest of the cathedral church of St. Paul's, London’ (Thorn, col. 1772). Archbishop Tatwin having died in 734, Nothelm was consecrated to the see of Canterbury in 735, the archbishopric of York being re-established about that time, and probably a little earlier than Nothelm's consecration by the gift of a pall from Gregory III to Egbert (d. 766) [q. v.] Nothelm received his pall from Gregory III in 736, and then consecrated Cuthbert (d. 758) [q. v.], who succeeded him at Canterbury, to the see of Hereford; Herewald to Sherborne, and Ethelfrith to Elmham (Sym. Dunelm. Opp. ii. 31, 32). He received a letter from St. Boniface, then archbishop in Germany, asking for a copy of the letter containing the questions sent by St. Augustine [q. v.] to Gregory and the pope's answers, together with Nothelm's opinion on the case of a man's marriage with the widowed mother of his godson, and for information as to the date of Augustine's landing in England (Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 335 sq.). Either in 736 or 737 he held a synod which was attended by nine bishops. In 737 a division was made between the Mercian and Mid-Anglian bishoprics by the consecration of Huitta to Lichfield and Totta to Leicester. Nothelm witnessed a charter of Eadbert, king of Kent, in 738. He died on 17 Oct. 739 (Sym. ​Dunelm.; Rog. Hov. i. 5; and see Bishop Stubbs's Preface for the chronology of the ‘Northern Chronicle;’ according to Elmham, p. 312, in 740; in Flor. Wig. i. 54, in 741), and was buried in the abbey church of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. The works attributed to him by Leland, Bale, and Tanner are merely suppositions. He sent thirty questions to Bede on the Books of Kings, which Bede answered in a treatise addressed to him [see under Bede]. Wharton has printed a eulogy on him in ten lines from a manuscript in the Lambeth Library.
[A life by Bishop Stubbs in Dict. Chr. Biogr. iii. 54, 55; Haddan and Stubbs's Eccl. Docs. iii. 335–39; Hook's Archbishops of Cant. i. 206–16; Wright's Biogr. Brit. Lit. i. 291; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 71, where the eulogy is printed, on which see Hardy's Cat. Mat. i. 468 (Rolls Ser.); Bede's Eccl. Hist. Pref. and Cont. ap. Mon. Hist. Brit. pp. 106, 107, 288; Sym. Dunelm., Hist. Regum, ap. Opp. ii. 31, 32 (Rolls Ser.); Kemble's Codex Dipl. i. Nos. 82, 85 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Thorn's Chron. col. 1772, ed. Twysden; Elmham's Hist. Mon. S. Augustini, p. 312 (Rolls Ser.); Flor. Wig. i. 54 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Rog. Hov. i. 5 (Rolls Ser.); Leland's Scriptt. p. 131; Bale's Script. Brit. Cat. ii. 8, p. 100; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 552.]
W. H.