Library › Eddius Stephanus › Life of St Wilfrid

Life of St Wilfrid

Eddius Stephanus, tr. Colgrave, 1927

64. [709]

After these conversations, a bell was rung at the command of our bishop and the whole community at Ripon gathered together. Our holy bishop entered, sat down, and began to speak: “Our most reverend brother Caelin has, for some time, taken the lead in our religious duties and has laboured much in the Lord. He now desires to return to his former manner of life, to go back to the desert places, and to live a life of contemplation, as he once did, serving God alone. And this I will no longer deny him. However I admonish you to keep your rule of life worthily until I return to you, if God wills. But our two abbots Tibba and Eabba are here, sent from Ceolred, King of Mercia, asking me to go to confer with him, and they have persuaded me to consent to this for the sake of the position of our monasteries in his kingdom; for he promises to order his whole life after my instruction. And when I return to you alive, if God so wills, I will bring with me the man whom I have found fit to preside over you. But if in the providence of God it happens otherwise on account of my many infirmities, I bid you receive and make abbot whomsoever these my witnesses who are now sitting near me, namely the abbots Tibba and Eabba, the priests Tatberht and Hathufrith, and the teacher Aluhfrith, shall come and announce to you. And the obedience which you have promised to God and to me and have hitherto performed, you must render to him in accordance with my commands.”

Then they knelt weeping, and with heads bowed to the ground they promised to fulfil all his commands; and as they prayed, prostrating themselves, our holy bishop gave them his blessing, and commended them to God. From that day, as a community, they never saw his face again.