ON ST. HEDDA, BISHOP
AMONG THE WEST SAXONS IN BRITAIN.
In the year 705.
A Collection on his cult, monastic state, episcopate, deeds, and death
Hedda, Bishop, among the West Saxons in Britain (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
This St. Hedda, Headda, Hedde, or Heddi, Bishop of Dorchester, otherwise Dorcester, among the West Saxons in England, Mabillon adorned with some brief historical elogium in the third century of the Benedictines, part 1, Marked in the more recent Martyrologies and in the Roman, from page 64, inasmuch as the silence of writers has made us ignorant of his deeds in the episcopate through nearly thirty years. From Bede and others we shall gather below some ears of corn, which may supply the place of an encomium. This at the outset we here wonder at, not that he was passed over by Bede, who inserted very few native Saints into his Martyrology, and likewise by Ado and all the other Martyrologists of the ninth century; but that in no manuscript Usuardine codices, some of which we said were augmented in England, is his memory celebrated, as most truly Castellanus noted on his Universal Martyrology, that the cult of St. Hedda is not ancient. I found none who mentioned our Saint older than Greven, thus writing on this day: In England, of Hedda the Bishop: which words Molanus, Canisius, and then the monastic writers Wion, Dorgan, Menard received from him, and with a longer proclamation Bucelin, not to omit Ferrari and the more recent English ones of the years 1608 and 1640. But whatever of these there be, in the modern Roman, from the history of Bede, unless I am mistaken, he has a place, in these words: In England, St. Hedda, Bishop of the West Saxons; for whom Baronius referred us to the praised Bede and Trithemius. Of Bede we shall shortly treat; what Trithemius added is of very little interest to our purpose.
[2] That St. Hedda was a monk or abbot Bede did not express; Mabillon gathers it from William of Malmesbury book 2 On the Pontiffs of England chapter 3: he was a monk, but in what place is not known: but of what monastery? I do not make out, he says; forthwith impugning those who think our Saint the same as he who, among the five monks assumed from the monastery of Streaneshalch to episcopates, in Bede book 4, chapter 23, is numbered second in order, Ætla, or Æcla, or Ecla by name, in that he was ordained to the episcopate of Dorchester. He then shows the diversity of the two, since Ætla or Æda, as appears from the cited place of Bede, was ordained Bishop of Dorchester not by Theodore, like St. Hedda, but by St. Wilfrid, after the death of Theodore. Mabillon finally asks whether St. Hedda was a monk of Glastonbury; but neither does this seem established enough, however much Malmesbury thinks he found a not dissimilar name among the names of other illustrious men and abbots of that place: since in the Monasticon Anglicanum, where the pious and illustrious men of the abbey of Glastonbury are enumerated, St. Hedda is not reckoned. That he presided over some abbey of the West Saxons I will not indeed deny, which is easily given to be gathered from the things which, in favor of the monks of Glastonbury, he obtained even from pagan Kings, as Ussher narrates at length pages 111, 112, and 113. For the rest, Mabillon did not arrange his matters consistently enough, when he thought, number 3, that St. Hedda the abbot subscribed the charter of Leutherius or Eleutherius, granted to the convent of Malmesbury in the year 680, whom a little before he had said was consecrated Bishop by Theodore in the city of London in the year 676. I would less unwillingly admit that with the title of Abbot he subscribed the charter of his predecessor in the year 675. The episcopal see is now to be sought.
[3] concerning the episcopal see This Bede will show us, from whose book 3, chapter 7, we judge these things should be premised. At that time the nation of the West Saxons, who anciently were called Gewisse, in the reign of Cynegils, received the faith of Christ; Byrinus the Bishop preaching the word to them, who had come to Britain by the counsel of Pope Honorius, promising indeed that, in his presence, he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in the innermost parts beyond the regions of the English, where no teacher had preceded. Whence also, by the command of the same Pontiff, through Asterius Bishop of Genoa, he was consecrated to the grade of the episcopate. But coming to Britain, and first entering the nation of the Gewisse, when he found all there most pagan, he judged it more useful to preach the word of God there, rather than, going further, to seek those to whom he should preach. And so, as he evangelized in the aforesaid province, when the King himself, being catechized, was washed with the font of baptism with his people, it happened at that time that the most holy and most victorious Oswald, King of the Northumbrians, was present, and received him coming forth from the laver, and, in a fellowship altogether most beautiful and worthy of God, whose daughter he was to take in marriage, he first received him, dedicated to God by a second generation, to himself
as a son. Both Kings therefore gave to the same Bishop the city which is called Dorcinca, to make there an episcopal see, where, churches being built and dedicated, and many peoples called to the Lord by his labor, he passed to the Lord, and was buried in the same city: and after many years, Hedda holding the episcopate, he was thence translated into the city of Venta, and placed in the church of the blessed Peter and Paul.
[4] Further, for a clearer understanding of the matter, we subjoin what the same Bede reports book 4, chapter 12, thus beginning: a somewhat more certain opinion. The fourth prelate of the West Saxons was Eleutherius; for the first was Birinus, the second Agilbert, the third was Wini. And when Conwalch was dead, in whose reign the same Eleutherius was made Bishop, the subkings took the kingdom of the nation, and held it divided among themselves for about ten years: and while they reigned, he died, having discharged the episcopate; Headdi was consecrated for him by Theodore in the city of London. From the words of Bede recited up to this point, you have the consecration of St. Hedda, and his episcopal see in the city of Dorcinca, otherwise Dorcica, which certainly could not have been that Dorcica or Dorcicestria, whose Bishop we said Ætla or Æda was, which, situated in the province of the Mercians, did not pertain to the West Saxons. And to this I refer the accurate distinction of Mabillon, by which he shows that Dorcica or Dorcicestria, commonly Dorchester, a city of the province of the Mercians, in the county of Oxford on the river Thame, which flows into the Thames, is different from that Dorcicestria, likewise Dorchester, a city of the West Saxons, of which we now inquire. Over this presided St. Hedda, successor of Eleutherius, in that order which we have already described from Bede, so that consequently the see of Dorchester for St. Hedda seems placed beyond controversy: but he being dead, the episcopate of that province was divided into two dioceses; one was given to Daniel, which he rules up to this day, the other to Aldhelm, as Bede narrates at length book 5, chapter 19.
[5] As for the deeds of the Saint, it was said above that most are buried in oblivion. We have already also said, His few deeds are gathered from various sources. Hedda holding the episcopate, that the body of Birinus was translated to Venta, now Winton, commonly Winchester, in which city the Saint placed his chair. Nor would I omit the things which conduce not a little to the praise of St. Hedda, reported in compendium in the Chronological Index of Ussher page 1166, that Kentwine, King of the West Saxons, at the request of Hedda, Bishop of Winchester, granted to the ancient church the isle of Glastonbury, free from all royal service (as the Kings of the Britons before him had long since confirmed), the free right being granted to the brethren there serving God, of choosing and appointing a rector for themselves according to the rule of St. Benedict. It is established moreover from the life of St. Guthlac, published by us on the eleventh of April, that that Saint was consecrated a presbyter by our present-day one, chapter 3, number 32, page 46. The matter, narrated more compendiously by Orderic Vitalis, from the fourth book of his history, we here describe: Once Prelate Headda, with certain clerics and laymen, came to Guthlac, among whom various conversation about the blessed man arose in passing. But the aforesaid Bishop, having ascertained in the Venerable Man the clearness of divine grace, and the affluence of wisdom in setting forth the sacred Scriptures, after he had dedicated the church of the isle of Crowland on the twelfth of the Kalends of September, compelled the same servant of God to receive the wreath of the priesthood, by an inviolable precept of obedience. That these things cannot be understood of any other than our St. Hedda, Mabillon rightly, I think, judged, although that isle of Crowland, in which St. Guthlac dwelt, was far removed from the province of the West Saxons.
[6] Concerning his death and sanctity, the testimony of Bede; The happy death of St. Hedda and his posthumous glory Bede thus embraced in a brief elogium in the cited book 5, chapter 19: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation seven hundred and five, Alfrid, King of the Northumbrians, died, in the twentieth year of his reign not yet completed. Succeeding him in the government, his son Osred, a boy of about eight years, reigned eleven years. At the beginning of this reign the prelate of the West Saxons, Heddi, passed to the heavenly life. For he was a good and just man, and exercised the episcopal life or doctrine, instructed more by an innate love of virtues than by lessons. Finally the most reverend Prelate Plecthelm, of whom in what follows in its place it is to be spoken, who with his successor Aldhelm was still for a long time a deacon or monk, is wont to relate that in the place where he died, on account of the merit of his sanctity, many miracles of healings were wrought, and that the men of that province were wont to take away thence the dust, on account of the sick, and put it into water, and that the taste or sprinkling of this conferred health on many sick, both men and cattle; for which cause, by the frequent taking away of the sacred dust, a not small ditch was made there.
[7] It is the last thing that I remember to have read, that St. Hedda prevailed with so great maturity of judgment, and of others concerning his doctrine, with so great skill in treating and deciding matters, that Ina, King of the West Saxons, confesses that he composed his laws by his counsel; concerning which see Alford at the year 692 number 9. Nor does Malmesbury will that he lacked the praise of eloquence and doctrine, chiefly upon those words of Bede: for he was a good and just man, and exercised the episcopal life or doctrine, instructed more by an innate love of virtues than by lessons; thus observing in Alford at the year 677: Whence I am moved by no small scruple, since I have read his formal epistles, no less unlearnedly composed, and the writings of Aldhelm to him, redolent of the greatest force of eloquence and knowledge. But whatever the knowledge of good letters of our Saint was, which it is a wonder Bede was ignorant of, this seems certain to us, that he excelled chiefly in those virtues which we have already briefly described from the English Polyhistor. There are to be noted in the same place the words of Alford: this man (St. Hedda), he says, not only the ancients, but, what you may wonder at, even modern sectaries admire and proclaim, notable for sanctity and virtues, who profited the Western province by word and example. Whence without doubt it follows that he was whole and everywhere perfect in the orthodox faith. If these things are true, let us confess we wonder at the sectaries, but that by such examples they are not yet converted. What the same Alford mentions concerning the jurisdiction of Leicester, claimed by our Saint for himself, see there at the year 692.