Wilfrid
Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Francia, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon.
His opponents in Northumbria excommunicated him, but the papacy upheld Wilfrid's side, and he regained possession of Ripon and Hexham, his Northumbrian monasteries.
His followers commissioned Stephen of Ripon to write a Vita Sancti Wilfrithi (or Life of Saint Wilfrid) shortly after his death, and the medieval historian Bede also wrote extensively about him.
[12] Further north still lay the great Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, which after the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685 came to be the strongest power in the northern half of Britain.
[13][14][15] The Irish had always had contacts with the rest of the British Isles, and during the early 6th century they emigrated from the island of Ireland to form the kingdom of Dál Riata, although exactly how much conquest took place is a matter of dispute with historians.
[36] Some historians, including James Fraser, find that a credible view,[28] but others such as Nick Higham are less convinced of Bede's hostility to Wilfrid.
[53] Shortly before 664 Alhfrith gave Wilfrid a monastery he had recently founded at Ripon,[44][52] formed around a group of monks from Melrose Abbey, followers of the Irish monastic customs.
Although Oswiu himself had been brought up in the "Celtic" tradition, political pressures may have influenced his decision to call a council, as well as fears that if dissent over the date of Easter continued in the Northumbrian church it could lead to internal strife.
Political concerns unrelated to the dating problem, such as the decline of Oswiu's preeminence among the other English kingdoms and the challenge to that position by Mercia, were also factors.
[63] Wilfrid attended the synod, or council, of Whitby, as a member of the party favouring the continental practice of dating Easter, along with James the Deacon, Agilbert, and Alhfrith.
[44] The reason for Wilfrid's delay has never been clear, although the historians Eric John and Richard Abels theorise that it was caused by Alhfrith's unsuccessful revolt against Oswiu.
[81] Stephen of Ripon reported that Wilfrid was expelled by "Quartodecimans", or those who supported the celebration of Easter on the 14th day of the Jewish month Nisan, whether or not this was a Sunday.
[21] The historian Marion Gibbs suggests that after this episode Wilfrid visited Kent again, and took part in the diplomacy related to Wigheard's appointment to the see of Canterbury.
Further proof of attempted Northumbrian influence in the Pictish regions is provided by the establishment for the Picts in 681 of a diocese centred on Abercorn, in the old territory of the British kingdom of Gododdin.
He sent to Kent for a singing master to instruct his clergy in the Roman style of church music, which involved a double choir who sang in antiphons and responses.
Æthelthryth donated the land at Hexham where Wilfrid founded a monastery and built a church using some recycled stones from the Roman town of Corbridge.
[102][103] When Wilfrid arrived in York as bishop the cathedral's roof was on the point of collapse; he had it repaired and covered in lead, and had glass set in the windows.
[104] The historian Barbara Yorke says of Wilfrid at this time that he "seems to have continued a campaign against any survival of 'Irish errors' and distrusted any communities that remained in contact with Iona or other Irish religious houses which did not follow the Roman Easter".
[111] He was accompanied on his travels by a retinue of warriors, one of whom, while at York, Wilfrid sent to abduct a young boy who had been promised to the church but whose family had changed their mind.
[117] The bishops chosen for these sees, Eata at Hexham, Eadhæd at Lindsey, and Bosa at York, had all either been supporters of the "Celtic" party at Whitby, or been trained by those who were.
[118] Wilfrid's deposition became tangled up in a dispute over whether or not the Gregorian plan for Britain, with two metropolitan sees, the northern one set at York, would be followed through or abandoned.
[126] Pope Agatho held a synod in October 679, which although it ordered Wilfrid's restoration and the return of the monasteries to his control, also directed that the new dioceses should be retained.
[135] Bede attributes Wilfrid's ability to convert the South Saxons to his teaching them how to fish, and contrasts it with the lack of success of the Irish monk Dicuill.
[21] Something of the reception to Wilfrid's expulsion can be picked up in a Latin letter which has survived only in an incomplete quotation by William of Malmesbury in his Gesta pontificum Anglorum.
In it, Aldhelm asks the clergymen to remember the exiled bishop "who, nourishing, teaching, reproving, raised you in fatherly love" and appealing to lay aristocratic ideals of loyalty, urges them not to abandon their superior.
[168] The 12th-century writer Ailred of Rievaulx, whose family helped restore Hexham, credited Wilfrid as the designer of a church beautifully embellished with paintings and sculpture.
[21] During the 19th century, the feast of Wilfrid was celebrated on the Sunday following Lammas in the town of Ripon with a parade and horse racing, a tradition which continued until at least 1908.
The papacy was trying to prevent the removal of actual body parts from Rome, restricting collectors to things that had come in contact with the bodily remains such as dust and cloth.
[186] These monastic foundations, especially Hexham, contributed to the blending of the Gaelic and Roman strains of Christianity in Northumbria, which inspired a great surge of learning and missionary activity; Bede and Alcuin were among the scholars who emerged from Northumbrian monasteries influenced by Wilfrid.
Ascetic, deemed a saint by some, the founder of several monasteries according to the rule of St Benedict, he established Christianity in Sussex and attempted to do so in Frisia.
