St Wilfrid's Rc College

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.