Saint John of Beverley

He was born at Harpham, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. ¹³ The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia says that as a young man he was in the care of Archbishop Theodore at Canterbury, who oversaw his education "and is reputed to have given him the name of John." ¹ Butler says he studied in Theodore's school under the abbot Adrian. ³

He then became a monk, and for a time lived in Saint Hilda's monastery at Whitby. ¹³ The encyclopedia says he made his name as a preacher and as an interpreter of Scripture, and taught. ¹

Bede says that at the beginning of King Aldfrith's reign Bishop Eata died, and the church of Hexham passed to "John, a holy man, of whom those that familiarly knew him are wont to tell many miracles." ² The encyclopedia gives the date of his consecration as August 25, 687. ¹

About a mile and a half from Hexham, across the Tyne, there was a house in a wood with a burial ground dedicated to Saint Michael, and John used to stay there with a few companions, especially in Lent. ²³ Bede says that he always had his men find some poor person with a serious illness or in want, to keep with him through those days "by way of alms." ²

One Lent it was a young man from a nearby village who had never spoken a word, and whose head was so covered in scabs that no hair grew on it. ² The bishop had a hut built for him inside the enclosure. ² On the second Sunday he had him put out his tongue, made the sign of the cross on it, and told him to say "yea." ² Then he named the letters, and the young man repeated them, then syllables, then words, then sentences; Bede says he went on talking all that day and the next night. ² John then had the physician treat his head, and with the bishop's blessing the hair grew back. ²³ Offered a place in the bishop's household, the young man chose to go home. ²

Bede's witnesses were men who had served John. Berthun had been his deacon and was abbot of Inderawood, and Herebald had been one of his clergy and was abbot at the mouth of the Tyne. ² Bede calls Berthun "a man of undoubted veracity." ²

Berthun told of a visit to the convent at Wetadun, where the abbess's daughter, Coenberg, lay dying with an arm swollen after she had been bled. ² John scolded the nuns for bleeding her on the fourth day of the moon, which Theodore had taught him was dangerous, then went in, prayed and blessed her; she was sitting up and asking for a drink before dinner was over. ² He told of an earl's wife, sick for forty days, who was cured with the holy water John had blessed to consecrate her husband's church, and who then served the guests at table. ²³ Another earl's servant, so ill that his coffin stood by his bed, rose after John's blessing and joined the meal. ²

Herebald's story was his own. As a young cleric riding with the bishop, he joined the other young men in racing their horses after John had forbidden him to, fell, and cracked his skull on the only stone in the plain. ² John spent the night in prayer, and in the morning called him by name. ² Learning that the priest who had baptized Herebald was unfit for the ministry, he instructed him in the faith, and Herebald recovered and "received the baptism of life." ²

When Wilfrid came back from exile and was given Hexham, John was moved to York on the death of Bishop Bosa, "a man of great sanctity and humility." ²³ The encyclopedia puts the move first in 705, the year of the synod on the river Nidd about Wilfrid that John attended, and then in the next sentence in "the same year (703)." ¹

Little is known of his years at York, the encyclopedia says, beyond that he was diligent in visiting his diocese, considerate toward the poor, and attentive to the students he kept under his own care. ¹ Among them it names Bede, Berthun, Herebald and Wilfrid the Younger, who succeeded him at York. ¹

Bede himself records, at the end of his History, that he was made deacon at nineteen and priest at thirty, "both of them by the ministry of the most reverend Bishop John." ² Butler adds that Bede "gives ample testimony to his sanctity." ³

John bought a place called Inderawood, the wood of the Deiri, and founded a monastery there. ¹² The encyclopedia says he endowed it generously, and that even in his lifetime it became an important church center. ¹ Butler says that it was a monastery for both men and women, after the custom of the time, and that it was put under Berthun as its first abbot. ³

In old age he could no longer govern his diocese. ² He ordained his priest Wilfrid bishop of York and retired to Beverley, where, Bede says, "he ended his days in holy conversation." ² The encyclopedia dates the resignation to 718, Butler to 717. ¹³ He died there on May 7, 721, and Bede says he was buried in Saint Peter's porch in his own monastery. ¹²³ The Roman Martyrology, translated here, remembers him as a bishop who joined pastoral work to personal prayer and, having laid down his office, lived out his life as a monk in the monastery he had founded. ⁴

In 1037 his relics were translated by Aelfric, archbishop of York, and set in a costly shrine. ¹³ The encyclopedia says Benedict IX canonized him that year; Butler records the translation and no canonization. ¹³ Butler adds that a feast of the translation was kept at York on October 25. ³ There was a second translation in 1197. ¹

Butler says that King Athelstan, believing he owed a victory over the Scots to John's prayers, founded a college of canons at Beverley after the Danes destroyed the monastery, and that Henry V credited him with the victory at Agincourt, after which a synod of 1416 ordered his feast kept throughout England. ³ His remains were found again in 1664 and once more in 1736. ¹³

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint John of Beverley, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴

Saint John of Beverley's feast is May 7, the day of his death at Beverley in 721. ¹³ The Roman Martyrology enters him that day. ⁴ Butler records that the synod of 1416 ordered the feast kept throughout England, and that the translation of his relics was also kept at York on October 25. ³

Every Lent he went off to pray, and every Lent he took a sick or poor person with him to look after. ² The story Bede tells of it is of a bishop teaching a young man the alphabet, one letter at a time. ²

The men who told Bede about him had been his deacon and his clerk, and they remembered him at close range: scolding the nuns over a bleeding, refusing a dinner and then going, sitting up all night in prayer for a young man who had disobeyed him. ²

He trained the students around him himself, and one of them became the historian of the English Church. ¹² When he could no longer do the work, he handed it to one of them and went back to being a monk. ²⁴