ON ST. SIGFRID, ABBOT,
IN ENGLAND,
IN THE YEAR DCLXXXIX.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
This Saint's monastery, date, cult from time immemorial, biographer, and Acts.
Sigfrid, abbot, in England (S.)
BY G. C.
The venerable Bede describes the origin of the monastery of Wear or Wearmouth, over which our holy abbot presided after others, In the monastery of Wearmouth in England, in Mabillon, century two of the Benedictine Order, page 1004, where he relates the following concerning St. Benedict Biscop, the first founder of that monastery: At length, turning his foot toward his native nation and the soil in which he was born, he went to Ecgfrid, king of the region beyond the Humber; he recounted all that he had done since as a youth he left his country; he did not conceal with what desire of religion he burned; he disclosed what of ecclesiastical and what of monastic institution he had learned at Rome or round about, how many divine volumes, how many relics of the blessed Apostles or of the martyrs of Christ he had brought; and he found so great a grace of familiarity with the king that at once, having bestowed on him land of seventy families of his own, he ordered him to make a monastery there for the first Shepherd of the Church: which was done, as I have also mentioned in the proem, at the mouth of the river Wear toward the north, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord six hundred and seventy-four, in the second Indiction, and in the fourth year of the reign of king Ecgfrid.
[2] which is distinct from another near it, Mabillon in the same place, page 1002, in the preliminary observations which he prefixed to the same Acts of St. Benedict Biscop, distinguishes this monastery from another near it in these words: The monastery of St. Peter at the mouths of the river Wear (whence it is called Wearmouth) was distant nearly five miles from the convent of St. Paul situated on the river Tyne in the territory of Girwy, commonly Jarrow, from which the monastery of St. Paul was called that of Jarrow. Both Biscop founded, and willed them to be subject to the same abbot and the same institutes. Which was the cause that sometimes in Bede and other authors they were reckoned as it were by the name of one monastery. Bede inhabited the Jarrow one, afterwards destroyed once and again by the Danes. In that former convent our present Saint rendered his happy soul to his Creator.
[3] Hence the more recent Benedictine hagiologists everywhere insert St. Sigfrid in their sacred calendars, this holy abbot died and among others Gabriel Bucelinus on this day thus announces him in his Menology: In England, in the monastery of Wearmouth, the deposition of St. Sigfrid the abbot. Sigfrid, the third abbot of the convent of Wearmouth, which St. Benedict Biscop had built in Northumbria, was a man sufficiently instructed in the knowledge of sacred Letters, but endowed with a wonderful virtue of abstinence. His notable patience in a long disease of the lungs, which he bore with a brave mind, is celebrated. He presided over the convent most holily for three years only, and, full of merits, departed in the year of Christ DCLXVIII. Bucelinus here errs greatly from the true epoch of his death, to which Hugh Menard comes nearer, who in book 2 of the Observations on his Benedictine Martyrology, page 667 and following, thus praises the same holy abbot: He was the third abbot of the convent of Wearmouth, which St. Benedict Biscop had built in Northumbria; who, when he was minded to go to Rome, substituted for himself as abbot of the monastery St. Easterwine. When he died, the brethren elected St. Sigfrid, a man sufficiently imbued with the letters of the Scriptures, adorned with the best character, and endowed with a wonderful virtue of abstinence and also of patience; for he bore a long disease of the lungs with a brave mind. He ruled this monastery three years. He died in the year six hundred and eighty-eight.
[4] Edward Maihew in the Benedictine Trophies on this day assigns the same year of death from Florence of Worcester. in the year of Christ 689, But Mabillon in the Benedictine Annals, book 17, number 72, and book 18, number 1, shows that St. Sigfrid died in the year 689, on the XXII day of August, four months before St. Benedict Biscop, who passed to the realms above in the month of January of the following year, as will appear at the end of this collection. Hence our predecessors on the XII day of January must be corrected, when, being destitute of more accurate records, they fixed the death of that St. Benedict in the year of Christ 703. Now we shall add something concerning the immemorial cult of St. Sigfrid, which on account of the testimonies of more recent writers hitherto related we should not yet admit.
[5] Florence of Worcester, who flourished about the beginning of the twelfth century, whose immemorial cult has these words in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 688: In the same year the venerable abbot Sigefrid, beloved of God, being brought into the refreshment of eternal rest, entered the house of the heavenly kingdom in the holocausts of perpetual praise, on the XI of the Kalends of September. Like things the venerable Bede, his contemporary, relates, who moreover adorns this man with the title of saint, when in the praised Mabillon, century two of the Benedictines, page 1009, he writes thus concerning St. Benedict Biscop and his helpers: For sixteen years (as we have said) he ruled the monastery, the first eight by himself, without the taking on of another abbot; the remaining eight with the venerable and HOLY men Easterwine, Sigfrid, and Ceolfrid, helping him with the name, authority, and office of abbot — the first for four years, the second for three, the third for one. Hence it is evident that St. Sigfrid presided over the convent of Wearmouth for three years only.
[6] Finally, we gather the public and immemorial cult of St. Sigfrid from the ancient translation of his body, from the ancient translation of his bones, which the venerable Bede in the same place, page 1011 and following, expresses in these words: But when Huetberht had returned home, bishop Acca is summoned, and confirms him in the office of abbot with the accustomed blessing; who, among the innumerable rights of the monastery which his shrewd youthful diligence was recovering, did this above all as delightful and pleasing to all: he took up the bones of Easterwine the abbot, which had been placed in the porch of the entrance of the church of the blessed Apostle Peter, and also the bones of Sigfrid the abbot and once his master, which had been laid outside the sacristy toward the south, and, enclosing both in one chest but with a partition between, he placed them inside the church of the blessed father Benedict. And he did this on the birthday of Sigfrid, that is, on the eleventh of the Kalends of September. This elevation of relics, or translation of the sacred bones into a more honorable place, according to the ancient custom of the Church signified public veneration, as learned investigators of antiquity everywhere relate.
[7] and from Mabillon's reasoning Certainly Mabillon in the Benedictine Annals, book 27, number 72, indicates the lawful cult of St. Sigfrid by this reasoning: The venerable Bede calls Sigfrid, like Benedict, Easterwine, and Ceolfrid, HOLY, and places his birthday or deposition on the XI of the Kalends of September, on which day he is honored in the Benedictine calendars. In the genuine Martyrology of Bede, as it is believed to be, which the continuators of Bolland prefixed to the second volume of March, no mention is made of Sigfrid the abbot — nay, not even of Benedict Biscop, whose day of deposition nevertheless is established to have been celebrated with a solemn rite among his own in Bede's own time, from his homily on that same Biscop, whom Bede calls his FATHER OF BLESSED MEMORY, WHOSE VENERABLE DAY OF ASSUMPTION, he says, WE RECALL TODAY WITH DUE SOLEMNITY. Nor indeed is mention made of that same Benedict, much less of Sigfrid and the following abbots, in the metrical Martyrology of the same Bede, which was published in volume ten of the Spicilegium. But it is probable that this happened for this reason, that Bede inscribed in his calendars only the most renowned Saints, and those received almost everywhere, not any particular ones. Mabillon by these words clearly enough intimates that St. Sigfrid had a lawful cult from time immemorial, although he is not placed in Bede's Martyrology with the most celebrated Saints.
[8] and by other arguments we prove. Nay, we seem able to insert today's holy abbot into our Work according to the mind of Pope Urban VIII, who in the very well known Constitution of the year 1625 concerning the cult of the Saints, after various decrees, in §4 warns that by the above he does not wish, nor intend, to prejudice in any way those who are honored either by the common consent of the Church, or by the immemorial course of time (that is, before a hundred years, as the same Pontiff afterwards declared), or by the writings of the Fathers and of holy men, or by the knowledge of a very long time and the toleration of the Apostolic See or of the Ordinary. Since therefore the holy and venerable Bede so many centuries ago named this abbot in his writings a saint, and reported the honorable translation of his bones, we most probably understand the will of the supreme Pontiff concerning the lawful cult of St. Sigfrid from the words which we have just above expressed in larger type. These arguments we judge to be sufficient that St. Sigfrid should have a place in our Work, and therefore we proceed to assign his biographer and Acts.
[9] The holy Bede The venerable Bede, a contemporary and a neighbor of the monastery of Wearmouth, wrote the deeds of this holy abbot in a little work which Edward Maihew first published in scattered portions in the Benedictine Trophies. James Ware, knight, being ignorant of this edition, published another from the presses of Dublin in the year 1664, and Louis Billaine, the Paris printer, reprinted the same two years later. Finally Mabillon inserted the same lucubration of the venerable Bede, divided into two little books, into the Acts of the Saints of the second Benedictine century, where at page 1001 and following he sets forth the Life of St. Benedict Biscop the abbot and of his successors. From this little work of the venerable Bede we shall excerpt the deeds of St. Sigfrid as they occur, and other things not pertaining to him
being omitted, we shall give indication of this omission by some dots.
[10] The few deeds therefore of St. Sigfrid which the venerable Bede left to posterity he praises the virtues of St. Sigfrid, are thus reported in this latest edition of Mabillon: But among the glad things which he brought on his coming (above there is treatment of St. Benedict Biscop, who had returned from the city of Rome into England) he found sad things at home, namely that the venerable priest Easterwine, whom on his departure he had appointed abbot, and along with him no small company of the brethren committed to him, had already departed from the world, a pestilence raging everywhere. But there was also a consolation, because he learned that in the place of Easterwine a man equally most reverend and most gentle from that same monastery, namely Sigfrid the deacon, had presently been substituted by the election of his brethren together with his co-abbot Ceolfrid — a man sufficiently instructed indeed in the knowledge of the Scriptures, adorned with the best character, endowed with a wonderful virtue of abstinence; but, for the keeping of the virtues of the mind, weighed down by no small infirmity of body; nay, for the preserving of innocence of heart, laboring under a harmful and irremediable disease of the lungs.
[11] And not long afterwards Benedict himself also began to be wearied by the onset of disease: and especially his patience for, that the virtue of patience joined to it might also prove so great an earnestness of religion, the divine kindness laid both low upon a bed with a temporal sickness, that after the sickness had been overcome by death it might refresh them with the perpetual quiet of the peace and light on high. For Sigfrid also, as we have said, being chastised by a long trouble of the inward parts, came to his last day. And Benedict, through three years, his languor slowly increasing, was so dissolved by paralysis that he was made altogether as it were dead in every part of the lower limbs, being reserved only in the upper — without whose life a man cannot live — for the office and virtue of patience. They strove in their pain always to render thanks to their Maker, always to give themselves to the praises of God and to brotherly exhortations …
[12] But when each abbot, worn out by long infirmity, saw that he was now near to death, in a long disease, and would not be fit for ruling a monastery (for so great an infirmity of the flesh affected them that the power of Christ might be perfected in them, so that when on a certain day, desiring to see and address one another before they should depart from this world, Sigfrid was carried on a litter to the chamber where Benedict too lay upon his pallet, and when they had been laid in one place by the hands of the attendants, and the head of each was set upon the same pillow — a piteous spectacle — they had not so much strength that they could join their mouths, though placed close together, to kiss one another; but even this they accomplished by brotherly service) — Benedict, having taken wholesome counsel with him and with all the brethren, summoned abbot Ceolfrid, whom he had set over the monastery of St. Paul the Apostle, a man near to him not so much by kinship of flesh as by fellowship of virtues, and set him over both monasteries as father, all the brethren favoring and judging this most useful, thinking it wholesome in every way for the preserving of the peace, unity, and concord of the places if they should have one father and ruler in perpetuity …
[13] and his pious death, Therefore after these things, two months having rolled by, first the venerable abbot Sigfrid, beloved of God, having passed through the fire and water of temporal tribulations, was brought into the refreshment of eternal rest, and entered into the house of the heavenly kingdom, in the holocausts of perpetual praise rendering to the Lord his vows which he had promised with the diligent utterance of clean lips; and then, four other months being added, Benedict, conqueror of vices and excellent performer of virtues, being overcome by infirmity of the flesh, came to his end … In the sixteenth year after he founded the monastery, the confessor rested in the Lord, on the day before the Ides of January, and was buried in the church of the blessed Apostle Peter; so that he from whose relics and altar he was not far distant even in body after death might be he whom, while he lived in the flesh, he had always been wont to love, and by whose opening he was entering the gate of the heavenly kingdom.
[14] whose year we plainly assign. From the year of the founding of this monastery Mabillon in the same place, page 1009, in his notes, concludes that St. Benedict Biscop died in the 690th year of Christ's birth, since he passed to the heavenly ones on the twelfth day of January. Hence it further follows that St. Sigfrid died in the year 689, since the death of this holy abbot occurred on the twenty-second day of August, and the venerable Bede reckons the beginning of the year from the Nativity of Christ, or the XXV of December, after the custom of the ancient English, as the praised Mabillon in the work On Diplomatics, book 2, chapter 23, numbers XI and XIII, demonstrates. Since finally, by the testimony of the contemporary biographer, the death of St. Sigfrid preceded the death of St. Benedict Biscop by four months, it will become evident to anyone who wishes to make the reckoning that between the XXII day of August of the year 689 and the XII of January of the year 690 there passed some days with four months, which Bede computed in a round number. But the other things which St. Bede relates of St. Sigfrid's three years' rule and of the honorable translation of his bones, we have reported above on the occasion of his lawful cult; and we now put an end to this collection.