Heavenfield

Did you know that St Patrick isn’t the only early saint who is said to have driven snakes out of the land? Patrick’s driving the snakes from Ireland is well known, but how many know about St Hild’s driving the snakes from the estate of Whitby? Ok, not quite as impressive as driving them from all of Ireland, but Hey! Hild left evidence! Did you ever notice that icons, paints, heraldry of her schools and churches, and sculptures like this one have all these coiled structures around her? They are shown in this picture under her feet and the coil of her staff. These coils represent the snakes that Hild turned to stone and left embedded in the rocks of the Whitby headland. In reality, Hild’s snakes are fossil Ammonties found in the cliffs of Whitby. These fossils are generally known as snakestones in England. According to legend, as if just to make sure they were really dead, St Cuthbert later came along with a beheading curse and so the snakestones have coils but no heads!

~Sceopellen~ recently found a news report of a new ‘royal’ Anglo-Saxon cemetery found in Teesside (Tees Valley) of Old Northumbria. Initial dates claim it to be mid-seventh century. Here is the full newspaper article: “A real gem of a find”and from the BBC at “Dramatic ancient cemetery found”. The site is said to be near Redcar, which happens to be on the first headland south of Hartlepool.

The first article refers to a ‘bed grave’ of a female near the center of the cemetery. This could be of similar type to the Essex prince found a couple years ago. So far I have heard of nothing to suggest that they were Christian and southern style doesn’t mean much considering how little has been found in the north. If we must associate it with Edwin of Deira, then I would think that it would be more likely his first wife Cwenburgh. There is no evidence that she was Christian and would have been with Edwin in exile in the south to pick up southern style jewels. Hmm…do we make anything of the location of the cemetery near the sea and the incorporation of a sea shell in the pendant?

Of more interest I think is why is there a royal cemetery here far from the usual royal centers of Deira and Bernicia? Traditionally the River Tees has been seen as the border between Deira and Bernicia. So a prominent royal burial and perhaps royal center on the first headland south of the River Tees could have been a way to stake a claim to the border. To say to the northerners, ‘Now you cross into Deira’! Hartlepool is also located in the same area perhaps for the same reason. So the question now is did Deira control the entire mouth of the River Tees, or is Hartlepool in Bernician territory. This all tells me that it comes from a period when that border was important and when Bernicia was a threat to Deira. In other words, the early to middle seventh century… but maybe that is how they are getting to their date too?

The location and use of the border has implications for St. Hild’s career since she starts out as abbess of Hartlepool and apparently keeps control of it when she moves on to Whitby. Although as the first female monastery/convent under the Bishop of Lindisfarne who had authority in both kingdoms, perhaps being on the border and serving both kingdoms was part of the point in using Hartlepool.

We often talk about how easy and bloodless the conversion of England was, and yet it seems to me that we ignore some pretty obvious royal martyrs. It is true that we don’t know of any missionaries who were martyred while at work, such as the Hewalds among the Old Saxons or Boniface among the Frisians. Yet, if we define a martyr as someone who dies because of his or her Christian actions then we have several royal martyrs. And if we have so many royal martyrs, how many regular folks must have been murdered/martyred for their beliefs?

Royal martyrs to about the year 869 when St Edmund of East Anglia (whose feast day is today) dies: (some of the names below are links)

• King Eorpwald of East Anglia (c. 633): killed by a heathen Ricberht; he kept Christianity out of the kingdom for three years until the kingdom was taken back by Eorpwald’s brother Sigibert.
• King Sigiberht of East Anglia (c. 640s): Died in battle because he had taken the vows of a monk and refused to carry a weapon.
• King Oswald of Bernicia and Deira (5 Aug 642): died defending his kingdom and therefore the kingdom of Christ he built therein. Considered a martyr early.
• King Oswine of Deira (15 Aug 651): executed for refusing to fight a battle he was doomed to loose. Questionable martyr, early records just call it an unjust murder. Veneration of Oswine does not seem to begin until his body was rediscovered by Earl Tostig in c. 1065.
• King Anna of East Anglia (c. 653): died in battle against pagan Penda of Mercia, the same king who slew Oswald of Bernicia and Deira. Bede talks about King Anna being very pious and the Addendum on Foillian calls him the “Divine Right Hand of God”. The Addendum specifically talks about him defending monasteries from Penda’s destruction, making him as much of a martyr as Oswald. There is some evidence of local veneration but it may have been wiped out during the Danish invasions.
• King Peada of South Mercia and Middle Anglia (656): Murdered with the help of his wife, Queen Alhflæd, daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria “during the very time of the Easter festival.” Questionable martyr but we know very little about his death or Mercia during this period.
• King Sigiberht the Saint of East Saxons (c. 660s): Sigibert was murdered by two of his kinsmen. “When they were asked why they did it, they could make no reply except that they were angry with the king and hated him because he was too ready to pardon his enemies, calmly forgiving them for the wrongs they had done him, as soon as they asked his pardon. Such was the crime for which he met his death, that he had devoutly observed the gospel precepts.” (Bede, HE III:22)
• Princes Æthelred and Æthelberht of Kent (669): Murdered and considered saints immediately. Minister-in-Thanet was given to their sister Eormenburgh, wife of King Merewealh of the Magonsæte, as a blood price for their deaths. St. Mildrith was Eormenburgh and Merewealh’s daughter.
• Queen Osthryth of Mercia (697): Murdered by her own thanes; considered a saint at Bardney. Too little is known about her veneration to know if her murder was part of the reason for her veneration or if she was a founder saint due to her support of Bardney.
• King Ælfwald I of Northumbria (788): Murdered, considered a saint almost immediately.
  
• King Æthelberht II of East Anglia (794): Murdered by Offa of Mercia, considered a saint almost immediately. He is the patron saint of Hereford Cathedral.
• King Kenelm of Merica (811): Murdered at about age 25 and considered a martyr almost immediately. His legend has warped to such a degree there is no certainty on the facts of his death.
• King Edmund of East Anglia (869): Tortured and murdered by the Danes after being defeated in battle; considered a martyr and saint almost immediately. Unlike a recent History Channel episode (Barbarians II), there is no evidence that I know of that Edmund got the ‘bloody eagle’. This is another elaboration of the myth. The most common story of his martyrdom has him shot full of arrows like St. Sebastian.

Of course not all kings who met violent deaths are listed here. Edwin of Deira is a notable absence because he died at the hands of a Christian, Cadwallon of Gywnedd, in battle. Whatever the ultimate cause of Cadwallon’s ‘rebellion’ it is unlikely to have been due to Edwin’s Christianity or his bishop’s authority. There is no real evidence that Paulinus of York tried to take control of British churches. For the first couple Christian centuries many, if not most, kings died violent deaths, so this is not a matter of just being a violent death.

So what made some of these kings major saints, and others were nearly forgotten? The early spreading of veneration is of course a major boon to a burgeoning cult. If the veneration had spread west, as it did for Oswald, Æthelberht of East Anglia, and Edmund of East Anglia, then it is more likely to have survived Danelaw. But even before Danelaw there are some obvious differences. King Sigibert the Saint of Essex is a good example. Bede goes out of his way to show that Sigiberht is a saint, in obvious contradiction to the information he got that tried to claim that Sigiberht’s death was because he defied Bishop Cedd’s orders not to visit kinsmen who had made a marriage that the bishop did not approve. Bishop Cedd’s attitudes to royal saints are a vital piece of the puzzle and Lindisfarne in particular did not venerate royalty. Oswald became a saint in spite of Lindisfarne’s attitude. Recognition of martyrdom is very much in the eyes of the beholder and we are certainly influenced by our attitudes toward martyrdom when we evaluate the past.

For more information:

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. McClure and Collins, eds. Oxford UP, 1994.

This past weekend is the feast day of St. Hild of Whitby. According to Bede, she died on 17 November 680 and her feast is celebrated in the Episcopal Church on November 18th and in the Church of England on November 19th.

Hild’s return to Northumbria from East Anglia in 646 was one of the most important events in the development of the early Northumbrian church. She had been in East Anglia staying with her nephew King Ealdwulf waiting for a ship to take her to Gaul (France) where she could join her sister Hereswitha in the convent at Chelles. Like her sister, Hild was almost certainly a widow. She was 32 years old and for a woman of her time, she would have been expected to either marry or enter a convent long before, particularly since her closest male kinsmen were all dead.

Hild and her sister Hereswitha remind me of Mary and Martha of Bethany. When she was widowed, Hereswitha decided to leave England and enter a convent in Gaul (France) where she could be free to lead a contemplative life, free of all the hassles of royal, secular life or even royal religious life. She left behind at least one son who became a long reigning king of East Anglia. Gaul was a common destination for southern English women before the 650s because there were very few convents or double monasteries in England. Had she remained in the land ruled by her brothers in law, she would have had to found her own monastery as most other royal women of her era did if they wished to remain in Britain. Its also possible that her brothers in law would rather she leave the kingdom than require support from them. So at age 32 Hild goes to East Anglia to wait for a whole year for transportation to join her sister at Chelles when Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne and probably her cousin King Oswine calls her home to Northumbria (Deira?). If she was a widow, then presumably she could have refused and continued to join in her sister in Gaul. If she wasn’t a widow, then her cousin King Oswine, the head of her father’s kindred in 647, could have demanded that she return home, but it seems likely that King Anna of East Anglia could have seen to it that she made it to Chelles, if they wished. So, there is no reason to believe that Hild didn’t return home to a world of work of her own accord. There were no convents in Northumbria; she would have to build everything from scratch.

So why did Bishop Aidan want to to come home so badly that he would make a last ditch effort to catch her before she boarded a ship for Gaul? It was finally time for the Lindisfarne mission to begin to found women’s monasteries (convents) and Aidan was certainly searching for capable women. He needed a Martha. I believe that with the help of King Oswine, Aidan identified Hild as just the woman he needed probably because she had a reputation as been a good manager of a household. Aidan had previously given the veil to Heiu, the first nun in Northumbria, but she doesn’t seem to have been cut out to be an abbess. Aidan gave Hild the veil at the age of 33, and placed her on one hide of land (big enough to support one family) on the north side of the River Wear (possibly near Abbot Utta’s monastery of Gateshead?) where she remained for one year while she was learning to be a nun.

After her year of training, Hild moved on to become Abbess of Hartlepool in her homeland of Deira. Abbess Heiu who had earlier founded Hartlepool retired to Calcaria (Tadcaster?). Bede does not connect Heiu’s retirement to Hild’s arrival at Hartlepool; he simply says that Heiu retired shortly after founding Hartlepool. Running the first convent, really double monastery (both men and women under an abbess), was not an easy job! Bede tells us that when she came to Hartlepool she set to work establishing the Rule of Life in accordance with that she had been taught by Bishop Aidan with great industry. In 651 her cousin King Oswine was executed by his rival King Oswiu and Bishop Aidan died within a fortnight of each other. Despite the bitterness that Oswine’s execution must have held for Abbess Hild, as it did for Oswiu’s Queen Eanflæd another cousin of Oswine, Hild seems to have had at least the respect of Oswiu. While at Hartlepool she was entrusted the infant oblate Ælfflæd daughter of King Oswiu and Hild’s cousin Queen Eanflæd, whom she raised and eventually succeeded her as abbess of Whitby.

Two years later, in 657, Hild went on to found a new monastery at Whitby (Streanæshalch), one of the greatest monasteries of the age. It was here that the famous Synod of Whitby was held in 664 with Abbess Hild as the hostess. Synods are not usually held at convents or double monasteries; that it was held here is a testament to the respect Hild and her monastery as held by the entire Northumbrian church. Here as Lees and Overing famously entitled an article, she was ‘birthing bishops and fathering poets’. Throughout the seventh century, Whitby was the lead training and learning monastery in Northumbria. Among the young men trained at Whitby, five went on to become bishops — Bosa of York (678-86, 691-706), Ætla of Dorchester (670s), Oftfor of the Hwicce (c. 691-?), John of Beverly (bishop of Hexham 687-706 and York 706-721) and Wilfrid II of York (721-732). Another of Hild’s students Tatfrith had been chosen to become bishop of the Hwicce died before he could be consecrated. It was also Hild who recognized that the shy cowherd Cædmon had been blessed by God with the ability to compose songs of praise to God in the English language. Bede considered Cædmon to be the first Christian poet in the English language and he includes a snippet in his History, translated into to Latin. Some of the early scribes who copied Bede’s History translated it into Old English and they are the among the earliest examples of Old English poetry (in at least two dialects, if I recall correctly). One of the most impressive modern crosses (below) raised in Britain is dedicated to Cædmon and Hild and placed near modern Whitby. The four panels are from top down: Christ, David with his lyre, St. Hild (surrounded by the faces of her five students who became bishops) and Cædmon near eye level. We know during this time Hild was also expanding her monastic network to include at least another monastery at Hackness and perhaps another monastery near Carlisle.

Cædmon’s Cross (modern), Whitby

(available here via a creative commons license)

Hild did not escape being pulled into the politics of her day. She had been baptized by the Roman Bishop Paulinus of York in c. 626 with her uncle King Edwin. Yet, she returned to Northumbrian at the summons of Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne, who followed Iona’s practices and was, as we would say today, not in communion with Rome. We know that she was on Lindisfarne’s side at the Synod of Whitby and consistently was a leader among the Anglo-Celtic party in Northumbria. This made her the rival of Bishop Wilfrid. When Wilfrid was deposed and his see was divided in 678, Hild’s student Bosa became Bishop of York with authority over Whitby. According to Stephan’s Life of Wilfrid, when Bishop Wilfrid appealed the loss of his see and his exile to Rome (the first such appeal from Britain), much to his surprise when he reached Rome in 679 he found representatives from “holy” Abbess Hild and Archbishop Theodore waiting for him. They lost their case to Wilfrid, but King Ecgfrith would not allow Bishop Wilfrid to return to Northumbria. We don’t know if Hild heard the outcome of their case against Wilfrid, she died the following year on November 17th. Despite Wilfrid’s various wins and losses over the next 25 years, Whitby managed to keep a bishop of its own training at least through the lifetime of Hild’s successor and foster child Abbess Ælfflæd who died about 714.

Hild was considered a saint immediately upon her death. Although Bede does not tell us that she was buried in the Church of St. Peter at Whitby we can probably assume this is so. Her legacy at Whitby became a complicated one that I shall save for another post. However, material in Bede’s History, deference given to her memory even by her rivals disciples in the Life of Wilfrid, and the beautiful account of her death in the Old English Martyrology both confirm that information of Hild’s life was preserved in detail outside of Whitby. We might suspect that her five bishops and the countless numbers of students who enjoyed her hospitality and instruction ensured her sainthood. The works of Anglo-Saxon England’s own Martha have stood the test of time and her memory flourishes today as one of the few early female saints of the Church of England. She is the only female English “Celtic” saint recognized today; books on female Celtic saints must always make room for this one Englishwoman. There are probably more church and school dedications to St. Hild within the Anglican Communion than any other non-biblical female saint.

~~~

Updated 20 Nov 2007

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book III Chapter 25 and Book IV Chapters 23, 24. McClure and Collins, eds. Oxford UP, 1994.

Stephan of Ripon, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, D. Farmer, Ed. The Age of Bede, Penguin.

Lees, Clare and Gillian Overing. “Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Bede, Hild, and the Relations of Cultural Production.” Exemplaria 6 (1994) 35-65.

Thinking more about Willibrord’s devotion to St. Oswald and Oswald’s placement on Willibrord’s calendar with its Deira-centric focus, recalls the stress Bede places on Oswald’s kinship with King Edwin of Deira.

“By the efforts of this king the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia, which had up to this time had been at strife with one another, were peacefully united and became one people. Now Oswald was the nephew of Edwin through his sister Acha, and it was fitting that so great a predecessor should have so worthy a kinsman to inherit both his religion and his kingdom.” (Bede, History, III:6; McClure and Collins, 1994:119)

This is one of the few times in the History that Bede bothers to mention the mother of a king. We are usually left to assume (and today argue/discuss) about the mothers of kings. It is worth noting that Bede never actually states that Oswald is the son of Æthelfrith; he says he is the brother of Eanfrith, Æthelfrith’s oldest son.

I think it is significant that Bede claims that Oswald was the first to unite the two kingdoms and became one people, considering he has narrated how Æthelfrith and Edwin each controlled the opposite kingdom. Bede is claiming Oswald was the person who created Northumbria, in effect ethnogensis for Northumbria begins with Oswald (as discussed here).

Succession of the Sister’s Son is known elsewhere among the peoples of the British Isles. According to Bede, this was the primary method of succession among the Picts, although this still generates a great deal of academic discussion.

“As the Picts had no wives, they asked the Scots for some; the latter consented to give them women only on the condition that, in all cases of doubt, they should elect their kings from the female royal line rather than the male; and it is well known that the custom has been observed among the Picts to this day.” (Bede, I.1, McClure and Collins, 1994: 11).

Alex Woolf argues that this only happened under special circumstances and those circumstances happened to occur during Bede’s maturity (Clancy 2004, Woolf 1998). Woolf’s paper is probably the widest ranging discussion on historic succession in the last generation that I know of. He points out other successions bolstered by claims to the female line including the foundation of the second dynasty of Gwynedd by Merfyn of Man (c. 825-844). Interestingly, Woolf (1998:151-152) noted that King Cenwulf of Mercia claimed to be descended from a third brother of Penda named Cenwealh but probably was descended from Penda’s sister (who had been cast out by Cenwealh of Wessex). Thus, the children of Penda’s sister must have continued to have status in Mercia generations after the deaths of her brothers Penda and Eowa. In effect, Cenwulf of Wessex may have been a sister’s son succession several generations removed. Woolf notes that these successions, including Nechtan mac Der-Ilei, King of Picts whom Abbot Coelfrith corresponds, had to be supported by some fiction. (In Nechtan’s case that was an Irish influenced foundation legend.) Ironically, Woolf seems to have overlooked Oswald’s succession in Deira as a sister’s son or a form of matriliny.

Another possible example is the succession of Cadafael ap Cynfeddw to Gwynedd after Cadwallon’s death at the battle of Denisesburna. According to the Welsh triads, Cadafael was one of three kings whose father was a villein (low born, non-royal). He comes out of nowhere, I think I have read somewhere, don’t remember where, that he may have been a sister’s son of Cadwallon or related somehow through the female line. Alternatively, he could have been one of Cadwallon’s warlords. Cadafael is best known as being part of Penda’s army that besieges Oswiu, probably at Stirling. He pulls his army out of Penda’s Grand Army before Oswiu ambushes them at Winwæd and therefore survives the fall of Penda. For this his people nicknamed him Catabail Catguommed (Battle-Taking, Battle-Refusing), so its a pun on his name Cadafael/Catabail (Bartrum p. 72). Anyway, Cadafael seems to be a placeholder until Cadwallon’s son Cadwalader is old enough to succeed. For Gwynedd (North Wales), Cadwallon’s death and the loss of nearly all the army so far from home would have been about as traumatic for Gwynedd as the deaths of Edwin and Osric had been for Deira.

Woolf’s analysis of Anglo-Saxon royal successions (Kent, Berncia/Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex) showed that overall sons succeeded royal fathers only 1.44: 1 vs. non-royal fathers and intruders. Non-royal fathers could still be from the royal patrilineage, but had not held the throne themselves. Kent and Northumbria were more stable [Kent 2:1, Northumbria 1.86:1], but Mercia was much more unstable [1:1.16]. Woolf’s whole point is that Pictish succession doesn’t look much less patrilinear than Mercia, Wessex or Connacht and Munster, except that the Pictish list lacks the clusters of father to son succession seen in the successful Anglo-Saxon dynasties (such as the Æthelfrithings). There is not one father-to-son transmission of the throne before the late 8th century (Woolf, p. 154-158). Although Woolf sets out to prove that Pictish succession fits a patrilinear pattern, he also shows us how often the traditional patrilinear succession failed. Some of these kings have known female links to the royal lineage and some of the intruders may have as well.

If we turn to the church, many abbots and bishops are succeeded by their sister’s sons from Wilfrid’s sister’s son Beornwine who managed his estates on the Isle of Wight to Bishop Leuthere, nephew of Bishop Agilbert (although I can’t be sure he was a sister’s son). Plenty of abbots are kinsmen of a previous abbot, such as Eosterwine of Wearmouth and Tatberht of Ripon.

The sister’s son is a common motif in insular literature. Succession of the sister’s son is well known in the Old English poem Beowulf, where Beowulf succeeds Higelac as a sister’s son and it is implied that his successor will be Wiglaf, his sister’s son. The sister’s son motif comes up in the story within a story in Beowulf, as it is part of the Fight at Finnsburg story told in Beowulf. I’m sure this has been talked about in Beowulf circles for ages, and no doubt with the recent movie not one angle of Beowulf will be left unexamined. Sigh…I prefer heroes who pull swords from stones and there are sister’s sons a plenty there too! Gawain and his brothers are Arthur’s sister’s sons and Modred is the ultimate sister’s son — son of the king and his sister! It goes on, Tristan is the sister’s son of King Mark and I know there are sister’s sons in Irish literature.

Sister’s sons (and other female links) seem to have successfully succeeded in times of crisis. Oswald’s succession was certainly such a period of crisis. Deira’s two previous kings had been slain in battle in less than a year. The possibility that Oswald was embraced within Deira as an acceptable king, a member of the Deiran royal family, who achieved vengeance for the deaths of their last two kings has implications for how the succession of Oswine and Oswald’s son Œthelwald are viewed. The acceptance of Oswald as a member of the Deiran dynasty also may indicate how Ecgfrith son of Eanflæd son of Edwin eventually united the two kingdoms for the last and final time in 679. We really shouldn’t be surprised that such humane decisions were made even though they are not provided for in any law of succession that I know of. In an era where there are so many intruders seizing kingdoms, surely sister’s sons are preferable to an intruder.

For all his efforts to claim Deira, King Oswiu never quite managed it. I don’t believe that he and Oswald shared the same mother, so that Oswiu had no claim in Deira. Oswiu was buried in the Church at Whitby where, soon after his death, the remains of King Edwin were transported and became the royal focus, upstaged in his greatest monastery. His teenage son Ælfwine was made King of Deira indicating that it was not yet possible for Ecgfrith to unite them under his rule. They were united under Ecgfrith only when there were no other possibilities for an independent king of Deira with a connection to the Deiran royal family existed. Had Ecgfrith failed to unite Deira and Bernicia into Northumbria, his successor Aldfrith may not have been able to hold the kingdom at all. Under Kings Oswine and Œthelwald Deira had already shown sympathy with Merica, so it was imperative for Ecgfrith to unite the kingdoms before the Deiran bloodline was exhausted.

Bede’s claims that Oswald united the people of Bernicia and Deira into a single people may be a gilding of history. By c. 731, Northumbria had been united long enough for a more romantic version of history to develop. It is possible that Oswald showed the people that peaceful unity under a mutually acceptable king was a real goal for both kingdoms. After that unity was achieved again under King Ecgfrith with no apparently viable Deiran claimants left, unification of Northumbria became an accepted reality.

~~~

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. J. McClure and R. Collins, eds (1994). Oxford Classics.

Alex Woolf (199 “Pictish matriliny reconsidered’ The Innes Review 2:147-167.

Thomas Owen Clancy (2004) “Philosopher-King: Nechtan mac Der-Illei” The Scottish Historical Review 83(4):125-149.

Peter C Bartrum. (1993) A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to about AD 1000. National Library of Wales.

St Willibrord is the patron saint of ecumenical relationships between Anglicans and Old Catholics, manifest in the Willibrord Society, for good reason. An Englishman raised at Ripon in Deira, matured in Ireland, and Apostle to Frisia (Low Countries/ Netherlands) in his maturity. Today he is the patron saint of the Netherlands and Luxembourg, where his main monastery, Echternach, is located.

Our knowledge of Willibrord’s mission is limited. The only writings to have survived from his own hand are one or two entries in a liturgical calendar. Bede wrote about his exact contemporary in his History; Willibrord was still alive when Bede died. The Life of Wilfrid is the only source to claim that Willibrord had been raised at Wilfrid’s monastery of Ripon, and the Life tries to claim that Willibrord is continuing a mission started by Wilfrid. Alcuin wrote a hagiographical account of Willibrord in verse and prose. I will come back to Alcuin’s account on another day.

Willibrord spent about 40 years on his Frisian mission, but he remembered home on a regular basis. There are two ways to trace his contacts with England and Ireland: trace the insular manuscripts at Willibrord’s monastery at Echternach and by examining the insular figures in a liturgical calendar from his mission. Tracing manuscripts is quite a chore, fraught with highly technical arguments (that make my head just hurt), so I’ll look at the calendar here.

The calendar was written in about 702 from an Irish influenced exemplar, near the time that Echternach was founded, and then glossed over about a 50 year period. We know that Willibrord was at least one of the glossers from the language of a notation on his consecration.

The feast days for people from Britain and Ireland in the primary hand make quite a collection:

January 30: Abbot Wilgisl (Willibrord’s father)
February 1: Brigit the Virgin
February 9: Aeuda the priest (mission member?)
February 17: Wilfrid the priest (mission member?)
February 19: Swithred the priest (mission member?)
March 12: Saint Gregory in Rome
March 17: Saint Patrick the Bishop in Scotia
March 20: Saint Cuthbert the Bishop
April 29: Oethelwald the Monk
June 9: Saint Columba
August 5: King Oswald
October 4: Martyrdom of Saint Hewald
October 14: Bishop Paulinus in Kent

Four are intimately tied to the mission; three members who all died in February and then Willibrord’s father. The Hewalds (2) were English missionaries martyred in Germany. Althougth they were not with Willibrord’s mission, they would have been of interest to them.

Willibrord’s time in Ireland is also represented. Three main Irish saints — Brigit, Patrick, and Columba– are present, but note that there are no minor or local Irish saints. Nor are any Englishmen known to be in Ireland listed. Willibrord’s father Wilgils is the only insular figure (excepting fellow Frisian missionaries) that is now otherwise known, so we would not necessarily expect local Irish commemorations. Excluding those associated with his mission, the Irish represent one third (3/9) of insular figures in the original hand. The inclusion of Columba is in stark contrast to the opinions of Columba and Iona expressed by Bishop Wilfrid in both Stephan’s Life of Wilfrid and Bede’s History.

The English saints are odd. Cuthbert and Oethelwald were very newly translated when the calendar was written, so their appearance is most unusual. Knowledge of their translations and Cuthbert’s growing cult probably came from a priest of Willibrord’s who visited Lindisfarne before 705. He would have also brought news of Oethelwald’s recent death and commemoration inside the church at Lindisfarne. According to Bede, Oethelwald had spent many years as a priest at Ripon, so Willibrord or fellow missionaries may have had a personal connection to him. We know that Willibrord had a personal devotion to St. Oswald and carried a relic from his martyrdom with him to Ireland and Frisia. Then we are left with Gregory the Great and Paulinus of York, co-Apostles to Deira. We know from Whitby’s Life of Gregory the Great and Bede’s History that Northumbrians in particular saw Gregory the Great as their Apostle. This sentiment is likely to have been greater in Deira where Paulinus mission had been focused. Note the Deiran influence here and equally importantly who is missing. Neither Aidan of Lindisfarne nor Augustine of Canterbury are listed in the original hand. This is a very Deiran-centric calendar.

The glosses over the next few decades add a few more Englishmen, but the Deiran influence continues.

Glosses:

Saint Servantius.Sueafgild (mission members?), King Ecgfrith, Cynefrith (mission member?), King Edwin, King Oswine, Bishop Swithberht (mission member), Chad, Aidan, Archbishop Theodore, Abbess Eadburg, and Abbess Hild.

All of the kings listed in the calendar had been king of Deira and more importantly were relatives of Edwin, greatest king of Deira. Not all of Edwin’s kin are listed, though the deaths of several more must have been known in Deira. It should be noted that St-King Oswald is the only one metioned in the original draft. Just to summarize, here are the Christian kings of Deira, bold kings are listed in Willibrord’s calendar.

• Edwin
• Oswald - nephew of Edwin (sister’s son)
• Osric - first cousin of Edwin (apostatized)
• Oswine - son of Osric, cousin of Edwin
• Oethelwald - son of Oswald, great nephew of Edwin
• Alhfrith son of Oswiu (not related to Deiran royal family at all, patron of Bishop Wilfrid)
• Oswiu - (husband of Eanflaed daughter of Edwin, not otherwise related to Deirans)
• Aelfwine - son of Eanflaed daughter of Edwin
• Ecgfrith - son of Eanflaed daughter of Edwin
• Aldfrith - bastard of Oswiu
• Osred - son of Aldfrith
• (new Bernician lineages take over with no known links to Deira)

Paulinus and Chad are also the only Bishops of York listed in the original and glosses. Eventually Aidan, Chad and Hild were glossed into the calendar, but note that Chad and Hild were Aidan’s disciples who had been active in Deira. Its unclear who exactly Abbess Eadburgh is, but a couple southern English abbesses were active in supplying missionaries in Frisia and Germany, so she may be one of them. While maintaining a Deiran focus, the glosses do turn the calendar more toward the Lindisfarne allied churchmen who cooperated with Archbishop Theodore (who was usually at odds with Bishop Wilfrid).

Also missing from the calendar are both of Willibrord’s supposed mentors, Wilfrid of York (d. 709) and Egbert of Iona (d. 729). Even though Wilfrid had visited with Willibrord in c. 704, contact was not kept between them and Wilfrid was not added to this calendar. Needless to say, Willibrord did not remain in contact with either of these supposed mentors. There really is no evidence that either of them sent supplies to Frisia.

Willibrord’s calendar served as a constant reminder of home as insular dates came up during the calendar year. The calendar reveals a strong Deiran bias, not only of Willibrord, but also of his team members. The glosses are added in a variety of hands. The Calendar is the collective memory of his community remembering home in prayer.

Tomb of St. Willibrord at Echternach

“O Lord our God, you call whom you will and send them where you choose: We thank you for sending your servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve you, the living God; and we entreat you to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of your service for the service of false gods and idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the holy spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Episcopal Church, Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2003, p. 431.