Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Romanus (fl.624)

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692007Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 49 — Romanus (fl.624)1897Raymond Beazley

ROMANUS (fl. 624), bishop of Rochester, was probably among the missionaries sent with Augustine to Britain in 597 by Pope Gregory the Great. In 624, on the death of Mellitus, Justus was moved to the metropolitan see of Canterbury, and the bishopric of West Kent thus became vacant. Romanus was consecrated as second prelate in the same year by Justus, his predecessor, who soon after despatched him on a mission to Rome. He was shipwrecked and drowned in a storm off the coast of Italy, apparently before the death of Justus in 627, ‘being sent to Pope Honorius by Archbishop Justus as his legate.’

[Bede's Hist. Eccl. ii. 8, 20; cf. Bishop Stubbs in Dict. Christian Biogr.]

C. R. B.