Saint Wilfrid of York

He was born about 634, the son of a Northumbrian thegn. ⁴⁶ Bede says that at fourteen he chose the monastic life and his father agreed, his mother being dead; the encyclopedia says he was unhappy at home because of a stepmother and was sent to the court of King Oswy. ³⁴ Queen Eanfleda took notice of him and placed him at Lindisfarne. ³⁴

Bede says he "observed that the way to virtue taught by the Scots was not perfect," and resolved to see for himself what was done at Rome. ³ He set out in company with Benedict Biscop. ³⁴ At Lyons the bishop, whom Bede calls Dalfin, offered him his niece in marriage and adoption as his son, and Wilfrid declined. ³ In Rome the archdeacon Boniface taught him the four Gospels and "the true calculation of Easter." ³⁵

He spent three more years at Lyons and took the tonsure there. ³⁴ Then the bishop was put to death, on Queen Baldhild's orders according to Bede, on Ebroin's in 658 according to Butler. ³⁵ Wilfrid went with him to the place of execution, wanting to die with him, and was spared when the executioners learned he was English. ³

Back in Northumbria, Oswy's son Alchfrid gave him the monastery at Ripon, taking it from monks of the Irish tradition who chose to leave rather than adopt the Roman Easter. ¹³⁴ Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, ordained him priest there. ¹³

In 664 the dispute over Easter was brought to a synod at Whitby, in the house of the abbess Hilda. ¹ Agilbert had his disciple Wilfrid speak for the Roman side. ¹ Wilfrid said that the Easter he kept was kept at Rome, in Italy, in Gaul, "in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, and all the world," and set the Picts and Britons against "all the rest of the universe." ¹ He finished with the keys given to Peter, and Oswy decided for Peter, "lest, when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." ¹ Bishop Colman and his monks left Northumbria. ⁴

Wilfrid was chosen bishop in Colman's place and, refusing consecration from northern bishops he regarded as schismatics, went to Gaul and was consecrated at Compiegne. ¹⁴ He stayed abroad some time, "whether by his own fault or not is not quite clear," says the encyclopedia. ⁴ Meanwhile Oswy had Chad, the abbot of Lastingham, consecrated bishop of York. ¹ He came home to find the see filled and went back to Ripon. ⁴

In 669 Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury came north. ⁴ The sources disagree on what followed. Bede says Theodore told Chad he had not been duly consecrated, that Chad offered to resign, and that Theodore completed his ordination himself; elsewhere Bede says Chad retired to Lastingham and Wilfrid became bishop of all the Northumbrians. ²³ The encyclopedia says Chad withdrew at Theodore's instigation; Butler, that Theodore found the election irregular and removed him; the Liturgy Office, that Chad's ordination "was contested by Wilfrid, and he humbly withdrew." ⁴⁵⁶

As bishop he rebuilt the minster at York and founded monasteries, Ripon and Hexham among them. ⁴⁵ Bede says he was the first English bishop to teach the English churches "the Catholic mode of life," and that he brought Eddi, called Stephen, from Kent to teach chant; Eddi later wrote his life. ²⁴ The encyclopedia says that in all of it "he acted with great magnificence, although his own life was always simple and restrained." ⁴

Bede says only that in 678 "a dissension broke out" between Wilfrid and King Egfrid, that Wilfrid was driven out, and that Theodore consecrated bishops in his place. ² The encyclopedia and Butler point to Egfrid's queen, Etheldrida, who left the king for a monastery: by Wilfrid's advice, the encyclopedia says, while Butler says he first tried to change her mind and only then consented. ⁴⁵ Bede says she took the veil from Wilfrid, who told Bede that Egfrid had offered him lands and money to persuade her to live as his wife. ² The encyclopedia says Theodore was "possibly exceeding his powers" in dividing the diocese; Butler says he "was gained by specious pretences." ⁴⁵

Wilfrid appealed to Rome. ³⁴ Contrary winds drove him to Frisia, where he wintered and, Bede says, instructed many thousands, beginning work that Willibrord later finished. ³ Pope Agatho found for him, and Wilfrid signed the faith of Agatho's synod of 125 bishops for the north of Britain and Ireland. ³ Egfrid did not accept the decree. ⁴ Butler says the king called it bought, and that Wilfrid was held nine months in prison; the encyclopedia names the prison as Bamburgh. ⁴⁵

Exiled, he went to Sussex, still pagan, where a shipwreck years earlier had nearly cost him his life. ²⁴ Bede says no rain had fallen there for three years, and that on the day the people were baptized "there fell a soft but plentiful rain." ² They were starving beside a sea they could not fish, so he had eel nets cast; the first catch of three hundred was split three ways, a hundred to the poor, a hundred to the owners of the nets, a hundred kept. ² The king gave him Selsey, where he founded a monastery and baptized everyone on the land, among them 250 slaves, to whom he gave their freedom. ²

After Egfrid died, Butler says, Theodore asked Wilfrid to meet him in London and confessed that he had consented to deprive him "without any fault committed on your part." ⁵ The encyclopedia dates their reconciliation to 686. ⁴ Bede says King Aldfrid restored Wilfrid to his see in the second year of his reign; the encyclopedia says he took Hexham at once and York when it fell vacant. ³⁴ After Cuthbert died, Wilfrid also held Lindisfarne for a year. ²

Five years later, Bede says, he was "again accused by that same king and several bishops" and expelled. ³ The encyclopedia says he refused to accept Theodore's divisions, which Rome had annulled; Butler says Aldfrid wanted a new see at Ripon. ⁴⁵ He went to Mercia, where Bede notes him as bishop of the Midland Angles. ²⁵ In 704 he was in Rome for the third time. ⁴ Pope John's judgment, as Bede gives it, was that his accusers "had in part laid false accusations," and that a man who had "exercised the episcopal function near forty years" should go home with honor. ³

On the way back he fell gravely ill at Meaux. ³ Bede says he woke and told the priest Acca of a vision of the Archangel Michael, who promised him recovery and warned that he would return in four years. ³ Aldfrid refused to receive him and died soon after; a synod by the river Nidd then admitted him to preside over his church. ³ The encyclopedia says that meant Hexham and Ripon but not York, and that he accepted it because the principle of Roman authority had been upheld. ⁴ He died in 709 at his monastery at Oundle and was buried at Ripon. ³⁴

None of the sources consulted names him patron of anything, so this page claims no patronage for him. ⁴⁵⁶ Butler says he is honored "as the apostle" of Friesland, which is a title rather than a patronage. ⁵ The Liturgy Office calls him "a patron of the arts," meaning the churches he built and furnished; Bede's epitaph for him at Ripon lists the gold cross and the "gold and purple vestments" he gave. ³⁶

Saint Wilfrid's feast is October 12. ⁵⁶ The National Calendar for England lists him that day as an optional memorial, under the spelling "St Wilfred." ⁶ Bede gives October 12 as the day he died. ³ Butler disagrees: he dates the death to April 24, 709, and says October 12 is the day Anselm placed his relics at Canterbury, "the day of which translation became his principal festival." ⁵ Vatican News's calendar for October 12 does not list him. ⁷

The sources tell a life spent largely in conflict with other Christians, several of them saints. Chad, Theodore and the bishops consecrated in his place are not villains in Bede, and Bede gives no reason for the break in 678. ¹² The encyclopedia hedges where it is unsure; Butler argues Wilfrid's case throughout. ⁴⁵

What the accounts do agree on is what he did when he lost. Driven toward Rome, he preached in Frisia; shut out of Northumbria, he went to the people of Sussex, who had once nearly killed him, and taught them to fish. ²³⁴ Bede says it was that help which made them readier to hear him preach. ²

At Whitby he was a young priest arguing against the tradition he had been trained in at Lindisfarne. ¹³ His speech was blunt, but Bede also has him say of Columba and the Irish fathers that "it is much more just to believe what is good, than what is evil, of persons whom one does not know." ¹

The epitaph at Ripon says that over the years he was "by many dangers tossed," "at home by discords, and in foreign realms." ³ By the encyclopedia's account, the last settlement he accepted gave him less than he had fought for, and Bede says he lived four years in peace after it. ³⁴