Saint Wilfrid, Part Two

Wilfrid's knowledge of Roman Christianity and his opposition to Celtic Christianity made him the ideal candidate to attend the Synod of Whitby in 664 to determine which form should take precedence in England, especially regarding the date on which Easter is celebrated each year.

His arguments won, and Ahlfrith, son of King Oswiu of Bernicia, appointed Wilfrid Bishop of Northumbria. Wilfrid felt that there were no validly consecrated bishops in England who could consecrate him, so he traveled to Gaul—where earlier he had spent several formative years—to be made bishop. He was consecrated by Bishop Agilbert of Paris, who had attended Whitby. (Agilbert did not speak the local language, and so Wilfrid was his interpreter.) While he was out of England, his patron Ahlfrith led a revolt against Oswiu. When Bishop Wilfrid returned to Northumbria, he found his appointment there had been canceled and another man put in his place, so he went to stay at the monastery at Ripon.

In 668, Theodore of Tarsus became Archbishop of Canterbury. Theodore re-appointed Wilfrid as bishop of Northumbria. Wilfrid spent the next nine years building churches and founding monasteries. Wilfrid also wanted to make changes to the liturgy nd establish some religious reforms, but so did Theodore of Tarsus, and the two did not always agree. When Wilfrid had a dispute with Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria (another son of Oswiu), the archbishop took the opportunity to step in, establish his reforms over Wilfrid's, and also break up the large diocese into smaller divisions that would be easier to administer with three new bishops. Ecgfrith expelled Wilfrid, who traveled to Rome to get the pope's support. Pope Agatho (577 – 10 January 681) determined that the division of the large diocese was acceptable, but Wilfrid should be allowed to name the new bishops. Ecgfrith ignored the pope's wishes and imprisoned Wilfrid when he returned to Northumbria, because Wilfrid convinced Ecgfrith's wife, Æthelthryth, that she should practice saintly celibacy.

Later, exiled from Northumbria, Wilfrid went to the Kingdom of Sussex where he converted them to Christianity. Theodore, pleased, made peace with Wilfrid and persuaded the new king of Northumbria, Aldfrith (also a son of Oswiu), to take Wilfrid back. This only lasted until 691, when Aldfrith found reason to expel Wilfrid again. Aldfrith, like his brother, did not support Bishop Wilfrid's pope-granted right to name bishops. Moreover, Aldfrith still embraced Celtic Christianity. Wilfrid was banished and went to Mercia.

He enjoyed a good relationship with King Æthelred of Mercia, who made him bishop of the Middle Angles. A papal-initiated council was held in South Yorkshire in 702 to determine Wilfrid's rights and authority. The assembled English prelates decided that Wilfrid should have all his titles and possessions (parishes) confiscated. Wilfrid appealed to the pope, and regained the northern monasteries of Ripon and Hexham (the Wilfrid Chapel at Hexham Abbey is shown above). He died in 709/710. Although he created controversy for many, including his fellow religious, he was revered as a saint.

It is past time to give Theodore of Tarsus some attention, the Greek who fled Persia as a child and wound up in the top position of the English Church. See you tomorrow.

Haunted by Demons

Want to own a speaker that plugs into your laptop
and depicts the ordination of Guthlac? You can!

Today is the feast day of an English saint, Guthlac of Crowland (673 - 714). Like many saints of his time, he was born into a noble family and chose a religious life either out of piety or because he was a younger son who was not in line to inherit much (and he needed some means of support that did not involve starting his own farm). His sister, Pega, is also considered a saint.

Although he fought under Æthelred of Mercia, by the age of 24 he was a monk at Repton Monastery in Derbyshire. By the age of 26, he had decided to become a hermit and went to live on an island called Croyland, which is now no longer an island and is called Crowland. The Vita Sancti Guthlaci ["Life of Saint Guthlac"] written by Felix in the 8th century tells us:

Now there was in the said island a mound built of clods of earth which greedy comers to the waste had dug open, in the hope of finding treasure there; in the side of this there seemed to be a sort of cistern, and in this Guthlac the man of blessed memory began to dwell, after building a hut over it. From the time when he first inhabited this hermitage this was his unalterable rule of life: namely to wear neither wool nor linen garments nor any other sort of soft material, but he spent the whole of his solitary life wearing garments made of skins. So great indeed was the abstinence of his daily life that from the time when he began to inhabit the desert he ate no food of any kind except that after sunset he took a scrap of barley bread and a small cup of muddy water.

 Life was not that simple, however, because his time there was spent being assailed by demons:

They were ferocious in appearance, terrible in shape with great heads, long necks, thin faces, yellow complexions, filthy beards, shaggy ears, wild foreheads, fierce eyes, foul mouths, horses' teeth, throats vomiting flames, twisted jaws, thick lips, strident voices, singed hair, fat cheeks, pigeons breasts, scabby thighs, knotty knees, crooked legs, swollen ankles, splay feet, spreading mouths, raucous cries. For they grew so terrible to hear with their mighty shriekings that they filled almost the whole intervening space between earth and heaven with their discordant bellowings.

Interestingly, Guthlac (Felix tells us) could actually understand the demonic speech, described as strimulentes loquelas ["sibilant speech"].* The reason he was able to understand it? Because of his time spent among the British-speaking natives of the island of Britain who had been displaced by the incoming Anglo-Saxons. (One wonders if the wind whistling through his rough-constructed living space made noises that imagination told him were words of temptation.)

Guthlac was a very popular figure in British history. The oldest surviving collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the Exeter Book, contains two poems, called Guthlac A and Guthlac B; B is based on the Vita, but A comes from some other source. A collection of illustrations of events in Guthlac's life was created after the Norman Conquest and put into the Orderic Vitalis. Today, a Guthlac Fellowship unites the several churches and parishes dedicated to Guthlac.

*Reminds me of Parseltongue from the works of J.K.Rowling.