Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Tobias
TOBIAS (d. 726), bishop of Rochester, is said to have been a native of Kent and to have been educated at Dover and Canterbury. He ‘was one of the scholarly ecclesiastics who had been trained in the great school at Canterbury’ (Bright, Chapters of Early Church History, 1897, p. 429). There he was a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, and Bede describes him as ‘a man of multifarious learning in the Latin, Greek, and Saxon tongues’ (Hist. Eccles. v. 8, 23). He was consecrated ninth bishop of Rochester by Brihtwald in succession to Gebmund, who died probably in 696. The first genuine charter attested by him is dated 706; he was present at the council of Clovesho in 716, when King Wihtred promulgated his law against the alienation of church property (Bright, pp. 430–1). He died in 726 and was buried in St. Paul's Church in St. Andrew's Cathedral at Rochester (Thorpe, Reg. Roffense, p. 5; Shindler, Registers of Rochester, p. 64). Bale ascribes to him a book of homilies and Pits a book of letters; neither is known to be extant.
[Authorities cited; Leland's Collectanea; Bale's Scriptt. 1559, p. 90; Pits, p. 124; Baronius's Annales Eccl. 1762, xii. 364; Wilkins's Concilia; Fabricius's Bibl. Lat. Medii Ævi, vi. 768–9; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, i. 330; Bernard's Cat. MSS. Angliæ, i. 241; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy; Wright's Biogr. Literaria, i. 242; Haddan and Stubbs's Councils; Bishop Stubbs in Dict. Christian Biogr.]