St Wilfrid

Today is the feast day of the great Anglo-Saxon bishop and missionary St Wilfrid 

 

A modern icon of St Wilfrid 

Image: northumberlandtraveller.wordpress.com - Hexham

Due to the biography written soon after his death by Eddius Stephanus as well as the work of the Venerable Bede we probably know more about the life of St Wilfrid than about that of any of his contemporaries in the episcopate other than the very different life of St Cuthbert.

Wilfrid, born in 633 or 634, probably in what is now Yorkshire, lived to be seventy six, dying at his monastery at Oundle in Northamptonshire in 709. His life was rich and varied as, probably, a monk, the spokesman for the Roman option at the Synod of Whitby, a founder of monasteries and churches, a bishop influenced strongly by Frankish practice, a political figure often clashing with Northumbrian kings, a political exile, who used exile to evangelise in Frisia, and later in Sussex and the Isle of Wight, and later still in the East Midlands, and man who travelled three times to Rome to argue his case before the Pope.

  

 His impact on the long term development and life of the Church in England was probably greater than any of his contemporaries amongst the bishops other than Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus who began the establishment of the parochial system.

 

The biography of him on Wikipedia is, like their others on Anglo-Saxon figures, much better than the average on that website, and indicates a serious academic background. It can be read at Wilfrid

The York Oratory website has a short account which very properly brings to the fore the Roman element in St Wilfrid’s formation and ecclesiastical vision. It can be read at Saint Wilfrid of York 

Tradition in Action has an extract from Eddius Stephanus’ life of the saint in which he received a vision of St Michael as messenger of the Virgin Mary, and refers to his church building activities whilst seriously ill in Meaux in France in 704. This in itself is interesting as it is from the time Marian devotion began to develop in the West, and close in date to the Evesham apparition of Our Lady. It can be accessed at The Vision of St. Wilfrid by Eddius

 

St Wilfrid as depicted in a fifteenth century panel in Hexham Abbey

Image: History Extra  

 

May St Wilfrid pray for us