Vita Sancti Wilfrithi
Encyclopedia
The Vita Sancti Wilfrithi or Life of St Wilfrid (spelled "Wilfrid" in the modern era) is an early 8th-century hagiographic text recounting the life of the Northumbria
n bishop
, Wilfrid
. Although a hagiography
, it has few miracles, while its main concerns are with the politics of the Northumbrian church and the history of the monasteries
of Ripon
and Hexham
. It is one of a collection of historical sources from the late 7th- and early 8th-centuries, along with the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti, the works of Bede
and Adomnán's Vita Sancti Columbae, that detail the Christianisation of Great Britain
and make the period the best documented period in English history before the age of Alfred the Great
.
This Ædde was also mentioned by Bede, who says that an Æddi cognomento Stephanus ("Ædde, also known as Stephen") was brought to Northumbria by Wilfrid
and was the first singing-master (cantor) among the Northumbrians. This is not however thought to be good evidence by many modern historians, while many other factors, such as age, make the attribution positively unlikely.
The Vita Wilfrithi can be dated reasonably securely between 709, the year of Wilfrid's death, and c. 720. The latter date, c. 720, is the approximate date of the Vita Sancti Cuthberti, a text which the Vita Wilfrithi quotes, and indeed imitates so often that one historian has used the word "plagiarism". There are some indications that it was written after 716.
and Hexham
. It details his boyhood decision to become a churchman, his quarrels with Theodore of Tarsus
, Archbishop of Canterbury, and various secular figures, his travels back and forth between England
and Rome
, his participation in church synod
s, and eventually his death.
The text devotes over one third of its contents to Wilfrid's "Northumbrian achievements", but Stephen devotes almost no space to Wilfrid's second period in office as Bishop of York (686–691), and little space to his activity in Mercia. The Vita Wilfrithi, in common with many hagiographies written close to the death of their subject, records very few miracles, but like Bede and Eusebius of Caesarea
, incorporates full documents relevant to its story.
contribution, the "poisonous seeds" they planted, to the development of the Northumbrian and English church, and thus discredits Lindisfarne
and the other English monasteries associated with them.
Wilfrid is given full responsibility for the victory of the Roman faction in the Synod of Whitby
, his great triumph over the Gaelic monks. Bede however sidelines Wilfrid, making it unclear to the modern historian which writer is being more accurate; and while Stephen depicts the second half of the 7th century as a "Wilfridian golden age", in the narrative of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
, Wilfrid is but one of many ecclesiastical figures who contribute to the development of the English church. These factors led the historian Walter Goffart
to argue that Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica was actually written because the leaders of the Bernician church sought to counter the version of history being promulgated by the Deiran "Wilfridians" in the Vita Wilfrithi.
to commemorate Oda's acquisition of Wilfrid's relics for Canterbury Cathedral
around 950. The historian Michael Lapidge
has called the Breviloquium "one of the most difficult Latin poems written in pre-conquest England".
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
n bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
, Wilfrid
Wilfrid
Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Gaul, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon...
. Although a hagiography
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
, it has few miracles, while its main concerns are with the politics of the Northumbrian church and the history of the monasteries
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
of Ripon
Ripon
Ripon is a cathedral city, market town and successor parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located at the confluence of two streams of the River Ure in the form of the Laver and Skell. The city is noted for its main feature the Ripon Cathedral which is architecturally...
and Hexham
Hexham
Hexham is a market town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, located south of the River Tyne, and was the administrative centre for the Tynedale district from 1974 to 2009. The three major towns in Tynedale were Hexham, Prudhoe and Haltwhistle, although in terms of population, Prudhoe was...
. It is one of a collection of historical sources from the late 7th- and early 8th-centuries, along with the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti, the works of Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
and Adomnán's Vita Sancti Columbae, that detail the Christianisation of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and make the period the best documented period in English history before the age of Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
.
Date and authorship
In the preface to the Vita Wilfrithi, the author reveals that he is a priest called Stephen. Writers in modern times often style the author "Eddius Stephanus", an attribution that goes back to the 17th century. This attribution is now thought unlikely by many historians. The identification was made because the Vita Wilfrithi recounts that sometime between 666 and 669, Wilfrid brought two singing masters from Kent to Ripon, Ædde and Æona.This Ædde was also mentioned by Bede, who says that an Æddi cognomento Stephanus ("Ædde, also known as Stephen") was brought to Northumbria by Wilfrid
Wilfrid
Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Gaul, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon...
and was the first singing-master (cantor) among the Northumbrians. This is not however thought to be good evidence by many modern historians, while many other factors, such as age, make the attribution positively unlikely.
The Vita Wilfrithi can be dated reasonably securely between 709, the year of Wilfrid's death, and c. 720. The latter date, c. 720, is the approximate date of the Vita Sancti Cuthberti, a text which the Vita Wilfrithi quotes, and indeed imitates so often that one historian has used the word "plagiarism". There are some indications that it was written after 716.
Synopsis
The Vita narrates the life and career of Wilfrid, from his boyhood until his death, with brief digressions into the other affairs of Wilfrid's two main monasteries, RiponRipon
Ripon is a cathedral city, market town and successor parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located at the confluence of two streams of the River Ure in the form of the Laver and Skell. The city is noted for its main feature the Ripon Cathedral which is architecturally...
and Hexham
Hexham
Hexham is a market town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, located south of the River Tyne, and was the administrative centre for the Tynedale district from 1974 to 2009. The three major towns in Tynedale were Hexham, Prudhoe and Haltwhistle, although in terms of population, Prudhoe was...
. It details his boyhood decision to become a churchman, his quarrels with Theodore of Tarsus
Theodore of Tarsus
Theodore was the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury, best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury....
, Archbishop of Canterbury, and various secular figures, his travels back and forth between England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, his participation in church synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
s, and eventually his death.
The text devotes over one third of its contents to Wilfrid's "Northumbrian achievements", but Stephen devotes almost no space to Wilfrid's second period in office as Bishop of York (686–691), and little space to his activity in Mercia. The Vita Wilfrithi, in common with many hagiographies written close to the death of their subject, records very few miracles, but like Bede and Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...
, incorporates full documents relevant to its story.
Problems
According to Fulk et al, the Vita Wilfrithi is tendentious and partisan. The Vita, perhaps mirroring the views of Wilfrid himself, is contemptuous of the GaelicGaels
The Gaels or Goidels are speakers of one of the Goidelic Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Goidelic speech originated in Ireland and subsequently spread to western and northern Scotland and the Isle of Man....
contribution, the "poisonous seeds" they planted, to the development of the Northumbrian and English church, and thus discredits Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the north-east coast of England. It is also known as Holy Island and constitutes a civil parish in Northumberland...
and the other English monasteries associated with them.
Wilfrid is given full responsibility for the victory of the Roman faction in the Synod of Whitby
Synod of Whitby
The Synod of Whitby was a seventh century Northumbriansynod where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome, rather than the customs practised by Iona and its satellite institutions...
, his great triumph over the Gaelic monks. Bede however sidelines Wilfrid, making it unclear to the modern historian which writer is being more accurate; and while Stephen depicts the second half of the 7th century as a "Wilfridian golden age", in the narrative of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.It is considered to be one of the most important original references on...
, Wilfrid is but one of many ecclesiastical figures who contribute to the development of the English church. These factors led the historian Walter Goffart
Walter Goffart
Walter Andre Goffart is a historian of the later Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages who specializes in research on the barbarian kingdoms of those periods. He is a senior research scholar and lecturer at Yale University....
to argue that Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica was actually written because the leaders of the Bernician church sought to counter the version of history being promulgated by the Deiran "Wilfridians" in the Vita Wilfrithi.
Inspirations
The Vita Wilfrithi inspired a 10th-century Latin poem entitled Breviloquium Vitae Wilfridi, written by FrithegodFrithegod
Freithegod, sometimes Frithegode or Fredegaud was a poet and clergyman in the middle 10th-century who served Oda of Canterbury, an Archbishop of Canterbury....
to commemorate Oda's acquisition of Wilfrid's relics for Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
around 950. The historian Michael Lapidge
Michael Lapidge
Michael Lapidge D.Litt. is a Canadian historical linguist, fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy A lecturer in Anglo-Saxon studies at Cambridge from 1974 onwards, Lapidge was Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1991 to 1998...
has called the Breviloquium "one of the most difficult Latin poems written in pre-conquest England".