Baring-Gould’s sources: The Bollandists, Greven and Castellanus. Authority: — Bede, Hist. EccL] Bede, in the Preface to his Ecclesiastical History, says that his principal authority and aid in his work was the abbot Albinus, who transmitted to him by “ Nothelm, the pious priest of the church of London, either in writing, or by word of mouth of the same Noth elm, all that he thought worthy of memory, that had been done in the province of Kent, or the adjacent parts, by the disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory, as he had learned the same, either from written records or the traditions of his ancestors. The same Nothelm, afterwards going to Rome, having, with leave of the present Pope Gregory (III.), searched into the archives of the holy Roman Church, found there some epistles of the blessed Pope Gregory (I.), and other popes; and returning home, by the advice of the aforesaid most reverend father Albinus, brought them to me, as inserted in my history.” The Saxon Chronicle, under date 736, says, “ This year Archbishop Nothelm received his pall from the bishop of the Romans.” He succeeded Tat win as archbishop of Canterbury. The continuer of Bede places the death of Nothelm in 739, the Saxon Chronicle in 741.

S. Boniface [English missionary to Germany, martyred 754] wrote to Nothelm for a copy of the celebrated letter of instructions given by S. Gregory to S. Augustine, when he came to preach the Gospel to the English. Nothelm wrote certain animadversions on Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)]’s “ Commentary upon the Books of Kings,” and Bede sent him a letter on the subject, addressed “To his dearest brother.” Bale and Pits attribute to Nothelm several books, which he is stated to have composed chiefly from the materials he brought from Rome, but their genuineness is so problematical that it is unnecessary to repeat their titles. The Lutheran Magdeburg Centuriators mention the reply of Nothelm to S. Boniface, which they had seen in MS., and say that it contained “ many errors, for he attributed merit to good works. He commends the labours of Boniface, in that he meditated day and night the conversion of the pagan Saxons for the sake of the redemption of his own soul. He promises to make mention of Boniface at mass, and to pray for him that he may win many souls to Christ” The Centuriators add absurdly, “ But he knew nothing of invocation of the dead, or of prayer for the dead.”

Nothelm was an Angle, or rather Saxon, by birth, as we may gather from the verses given by Goscelinus in his Life of Augustine: — “ Octo patres Romae, reliqui comitantur honore Ex Anglis nati, mentis horum sociatL Hanc manat divis Evangel ii via rivis: Hi sunt Brithwaldus Tatwinus, vosque, Nothelme Et jam Berta (Cuthberte), patres primos proceres imitantes. Tot simul ecclesise cingunt frontem pietate.” Radulf de Diceto (d. 1210) says that he was consecrated at Rome by Gregory II.; but he wrote so late as not to be trusted, and he may have hastily concluded that Nothelm received consecration at Rome because the Saxon Chronicle mentions his receiving the pall from the pope. At all events he received it from Gregory III., and not from Gregory II.