st wilfrid's rc college
South Shields
Wilfrid (634-709) is one of the greatest and also one of the most controversial
English Saints. Born to a wealthy family in Northumberland, Wilfrid was second
generation Christian. He had an interest in the things of God from a young age
and went to study in Lindisfarne, a centre of Celtic Christianity, under St
Aidan. Intent on continuing his education, Wilfrid set out to travel to Rome,
but was beguiled by the high lifestyle of the Archbishop of Lyon and stayed for
quite a while living the high-life. Eventually he arrived in Rome about 654,
when he was about 20. He stayed for a short while, but returned to Lyon where he
continued his education under the patronage of the Archbishop. At the age of
about 27, Wilfrid designed a magnificent new abbey at Ripon in Yorkshire with
fine stonework using skilled men he had brought from France. He directly
influenced the move away from Celtic to the more orderly Roman church practices
and is best known for championing and winning the case for the Roman, as opposed
to the Celtic method of calculating the date of Easter at the famous Synod of
Whitby in 664. He became Bishop of York with a See covering the whole of
Northumbria. During this time, he built magnificent stone churches at Ripon and
Hexham, acquired vast landholdings and established monasteries in Northumbria,
Mercia, Sussex and the Isle of Wight and converted Sussex, the last vestige of
paganism, to Christianity.
