Saint Cedd

The Catholic Encyclopedia says he was born of an Angle family settled in Northumbria, one of four brothers who all became priests. ¹ Bede names them, Cedd and Cynebil, Celin and Ceadda, the last better known as Chad, and calls it "a rare thing to be met with" that all four were celebrated priests of the Lord and two of them bishops. ² Cedd and Chad were brought up at Lindisfarne under Saint Aidan, and Bede says later that Chad was one of Aidan's disciples and taught his people by his own and his brother Cedd's example. ¹²⁴

Neither source gives a year of birth, and nothing is told of his childhood. ¹² What comes down to us begins with his work.

In 653 Peada, son of King Penda and ruler of the Middle Angles, came to King Oswy of Northumbria asking to marry his daughter Elfleda, and was told he could not have her unless he and his people became Christians. ¹² Bede says that once he had heard the preaching he declared he would become a Christian even if he were refused the marriage, and he was baptized by Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne. ² He took with him four priests, chosen, Bede says, "for their erudition and good life", to teach and baptize his people: Cedd, Adda, Betti and Diuma. ² They preached and were willingly heard, and many, nobles and common people alike, were baptized every day. ²

Cedd did not stay long. The Catholic Encyclopedia says he was recalled shortly afterward and sent on the same errand somewhere else. ¹

The East Saxons had received the faith once before and cast it off when they expelled their bishop, Mellitus. ² Their king, Sigebert, was a friend of Oswy and often visited him in Northumbria, and Bede gives at length the argument Oswy pressed on him: that a thing made by human hands, a stock or a stone, the leftovers of which were burned or made into pots or thrown away, could not be a god. ² Sigebert was baptized by Finan and asked Oswy for teachers for his people. ² Oswy sent for Cedd from the Middle Angles and sent him, with another priest, to the East Saxons. ¹²

The two traveled through the whole country and gathered a large church. ² When Cedd went back to Lindisfarne to report to Finan, the bishop, seeing how the work had gone, consecrated him bishop of the East Saxons, calling two other bishops to assist. ² The Roman Martyrology also names Finan as the bishop who ordained him. ³ The Catholic Encyclopedia tells it more briefly and places the consecration in Essex, saying only that "here he was consecrated bishop". ¹

Back in the south with more authority, he built churches in several places and ordained priests and deacons to help him preach and baptize. ² Bede names two places especially, Ithancestir, on the river Pant, and Tilaburg, on the Thames, where he gathered communities of monks and taught them, in Bede's words, "to observe the discipline of regular life, as far as those rude people were then capable". ² The Catholic Encyclopedia gives them as monasteries at Ithancester and Tilbury. ¹ The Liturgy Office of England and Wales says he established his see at Bradwell, in Essex. ⁴ Later chroniclers, Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury, counted him the second Bishop of London; the Catholic Encyclopedia points out that Bede, almost a contemporary, never gives him that title. ¹

Bede tells one hard story from these years. One of Sigebert's earls was living in an unlawful marriage, and Cedd, unable to correct him, excommunicated him and told the faithful not to enter his house or eat at his table. ² The king accepted the earl's invitation anyway. Coming away from the house he met the bishop on the road; both dismounted, and the king fell trembling at Cedd's feet and asked pardon. ² Cedd touched him with the rod he carried and told him that because he had not kept away from that house, he would die in it. ²

He did. Sigebert was murdered by two brothers of his own kin, and when they were asked why, they could only say that they hated him because he was too ready to spare his enemies and to forgive the wrongs done to him when asked. ² Bede reads the death as both: the punishment Cedd had foretold, and a death that came about through the king's obedience to the Gospel and so added to his merit. ²

Cedd also baptized Sigebert's successor, Swidhelm, at Rendlesham in the country of the East Angles, with King Ethelwald of the East Angles as his godfather. ²

While he was bishop in Essex he went north several times to preach in his own country. ² Ethelwald, son of King Oswald and ruler of the Deiri, knew his brother Celin, who was the king's priest, and through him came to know and love the bishop. ² He offered Cedd land for a monastery where he might come to pray and hear the word of God, and where he could be buried. ² Cedd chose a site "among craggy and distant mountains, which looked more like lurking-places for robbers and retreats for wild beasts, than habitations for men". ²

Before building he asked leave to spend the whole of Lent there in prayer, to cleanse the place, Bede says, of its former crimes. ² Every day except Sunday he fasted until evening, and then took only a little bread, one hen's egg and a little milk mixed with water. ² He told them this was the custom of those from whom he had learned the monastic rule: to consecrate a new site to the Lord by prayer and fasting before laying the foundations. ²

With ten days of Lent left, a messenger came to call him to the king. ² So that the work would not be broken off, he asked his brother Cynebil, also a priest, to finish the fast in his place. ² Cynebil did, and built the monastery that Bede calls Lestingau, Lastingham, and established in it the customs of Lindisfarne, where the brothers had been educated. ¹² The Catholic Encyclopedia says Cedd became its first abbot, bishop though he was. ¹

In 664 a synod met at Whitby, in the monastery Bede calls Streaneshaich, where the Abbess Hilda presided, to settle a controversy over the date of Easter, the form of the tonsure and other matters on which the clergy trained by the Irish and those trained in the Roman way differed. ¹² King Oswy and his son both attended. ² Bede places Cedd with Hilda on the side of the Irish, since he had been ordained by them, and says he was "a most careful interpreter for both parties". ²

When the synod decided for the Roman reckoning, Bishop Colman went home to the Irish with those who would not accept it. ² Cedd, Bede says, gave up the practices of the Irish, accepted the Catholic observance of Easter, and returned to his diocese. ² The Catholic Encyclopedia compares him to Saint Cuthbert, who, though Celtic in his upbringing, also adopted the Roman Easter. ¹

Soon after the synod he went to Lastingham. ¹ There was a plague in the country at the time, and he fell sick there and died. ¹² The Liturgy Office gives the day as October 26, 664. ⁴ He was first buried in the open air; later a stone church was built in the monastery in honor of the Mother of God, and his body was laid in it at the right side of the altar. ² He left the monastery to his brother Chad, who became a bishop in his turn. ²

When the monks of his monastery in Essex heard that their father had died in Northumbria, about thirty of them made the journey north, wanting to live near his body or, if God willed, to die and be buried there. ² They were received kindly, and every one of them died of the same plague except one small boy. ² Bede believed he was saved by the prayers of the bishop whose body he had been holding. The boy grew up, learned that he had never been baptized, was baptized, and became a priest who was useful, Bede says, to many in the Church. ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Cedd, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴ The Roman Martyrology remembers him for the work he did, laboring to lay the foundations of the Church among the East Saxons. ³

The feast of Saint Cedd is October 26. ³⁴ The Roman Martyrology enters him on that day at Lastingham, and the national calendar for England keeps him then together with his brother Chad, who died at Lichfield on March 2, 672. ³⁴ October 26 is also the day of Cedd's death. ¹⁴ The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 records an older custom: "His festival was kept on 7 January." ¹

Before he built anything at Lastingham he spent most of a Lent there on bread, an egg and watered milk, because that was how his teachers had taught him to begin. ² When he was called away he did not let the fast lapse; he handed it to his brother to finish. ² The founding of the monastery was treated as prayer first and building second.

His work in Essex was a second attempt. The East Saxons had already turned away from the faith once and driven out their bishop. ² He went anyway, built churches and ordained clergy, and the king he baptized was murdered by his own kin for forgiving his enemies too easily. ² Bede does not soften the story of Cedd's warning to that king, and it is not softened here.

At Whitby he had been formed by one tradition and was asked to serve as the voice between two. ² When the decision went against the custom he had been raised in, he accepted it and went back to his diocese. ¹²

His death drew thirty of his monks from Essex to Yorkshire, and almost all of them died where he lay. ² The story is hard to read, and Bede tells it without explaining it away. One boy lived, and grew up to serve the Church as a priest. ²