ON ST. ELPHEGE, SURNAMED THE BALD, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER IN ENGLAND,
YEAR 951, MARCH 12.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Elphegus, surnamed the Bald, Bishop of Winchester in England (Saint)
§ I. The Episcopate of St. Elphege: spirit of Prophecy. The monastic habit conferred on St. Dunstan: then the priesthood on him and others.
[1] Birinus, a man of Apostolic zeal, was the first Bishop to preside over the Kingdom of the West Saxons; by whom King Cynegils was instructed in the mysteries of the Christian faith and washed in the font of sacred baptism. He had placed his See at Dorchester (or, as Bede says, Dorcinia), a city situated in the county of Oxford, at the confluence of the Thame and Isis rivers, from whence the most famous Thames flows onward. St. Birinus is venerated on December 3. When Dorchester was then transferred to the kingdom of Mercia, the See of the Western Saxon Bishops was established at Winchester, At Winchester in Hampshire, the most famous city of the British Belgae in the county of Hampshire, called Venta Belgarum by Ptolemy and Antoninus, Caer-Gwent by the Britons, and Winchester by the English. Over this See, says Camden among the Belgae, presided Bishops no less renowned for wealth and honor than for sanctity; St. Elphege becomes Bishop in the year 935. and after many others, in the year 925, the devout monk Elphege, surnamed the Bald, a relative of Blessed Dunstan, received the Bishopric of the Church of Winchester. So Simeon of Durham in his History of the Deeds of the Kings of England, Florence of Worcester, and Roger of Hoveden. But the Westminster chronicler more briefly, at the preceding year, says: Elphege, a man distinguished in religion, succeeded Birstan as Bishop of Winchester. St. Dunstan, his relative, later Archbishop of Canterbury, is venerated on May 19. In his Life, written by Osbern, Precentor of Canterbury, who flourished around the year 1070, the following is read about the induction of St. Dunstan into the monastic state — not yet published in print, to be fully elucidated by us on that day. Osbern therefore writes thus:
[2] [He tries to persuade his kinsman St. Dunstan, still a youth, to embrace monastic life:] Having set out, Dunstan went to his kinsman, Bishop Elphege, who, presiding over the Church of Winchester at that time, adorned his life with virtues. Frequently and earnestly entreated by him to assume the monastic habit — so that he who already had the beginnings of the Angelic life might demonstrate perseverance in the habit — he replied that it was of more excellent grace for one who has grown old in the world and done only what is worthy of a monk, than for one who has given himself to a monastery and can do nothing else thereafter than what has been appointed for him. The one, he said, is of necessity; the other truly of freedom. To this the Bishop responded: For all in common the supreme necessity is this: that whoever would escape the fire of hell must strive to extinguish the fire of concupiscence. But the fire of concupiscence is not much extinguished if its fuel is not withdrawn from the human senses. For as wood is to fire, so are the things that are subject to the senses to concupiscence. But there is no withdrawal of fuel if there is not a renunciation of worldly affairs. From all of which it is concluded that if you wish to extinguish the fire of hell, you must strive to renounce the world. Moreover, the thing most eagerly sought in the world is human freedom; for on this account all other things are unable to be possessed; but if they are possessed, it does not cease to be had. Wherefore, as long as you retain it, you have not given to God what you loved most. Therefore, that you may give what you love most, let it cease to be had.
[3] When therefore the Bishop persisted with these and similar words day after day, one day he was vehemently struck by this doubt of thought — whether virtue or pleasure, a wife or virginity, was most to be sought in life — and he deliberated greatly. While placed in such a dilemma, a most severe fever invaded him and brought him to the point of despair for his life. And so he lay sick without any expectation of recovery, giving those who watched no sign of a living person. Then, unexpectedly growing warm, he said: Having cured him of a dangerous illness, he clothes him in the monastic habit: Here I renounce the laws of pleasure; here I vow myself an everlasting enemy to it. I will make no pact with a wife; virtue alone will have me as its soldier. For it is insane to endure her as mistress of my mind, who neither makes the living sacred nor leaves the dying other than despairing. A virgin the Son of the Virgin has healed me thus far; a virgin the Queen of Virgins, Mary, will have me. Immediately summoning the Bishop to him, he requested that the blessing of the religious life, so long deferred, be given to him. The Bishop, filled with immense joy at both the recovery and conversion of the young man, speedily promoted him with monastic and priestly grace, attaching him to the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the pledge of his parents had dedicated him from the beginning. When the first days of his novitiate were completed, and the Bishop had instructed him against the snares of the devil both by word and strengthened him by his authority, he dismissed him to set out for the place of his birth; and there in the church of the aforesaid Virgin he remained, performing the works that the rule of pious religion required.
[4] So writes Osbern. The somewhat younger Osbert, a monk of Westminster, around the year 1130, narrates these things thus: Dunstan yielded to the anger of malicious men and, about to set out for his kinsman Elphege, Bishop of Winchester, surnamed the Bald, departed from the royal court. And after interposing some things, he continues thus: Setting out thence, he came to the aforesaid Bishop, of the highest sanctity and industry, and spent some time with him. The Bishop was a man of great religion in Christ and of great reputation among all who dwelt in those parts. He therefore exerted himself, with the industry for which he was known, to make Dunstan become a monk. He set before him, among other things, that the life of a monk was the way of perfection, concerning which the Lord said to the one who claimed to have kept all the commandments of the law: One thing you lack. Matt. 19:21 If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and come, follow me. And he added: So, my son, if you wish that what already gives promise of great good in you should attain the summit of perfection, you need to leave all that you possess in the world and follow the footsteps of Christ unencumbered. To these things the young man He accomplishes this: objected certain things that seemed to him reasonable, and was unwilling to immediately submit his mind in assent to what was said; yet the words of the Bishop were not without effect upon him. For concerning the marriage, which he had certainly promised himself he would contract, he was already wavering in doubt whether to make it or not. While he was in this state of doubt, by God's will a strong fever seized him and weakened his body to such an extent that he thought of nothing less than taking a wife. When, with the illness now somewhat abated, he recalled in reflection the Bishop's words and the hardness of his own heart, he sighed heavily and blushed that the small flame of a tertian fever had been more powerful in extinguishing the concupiscence of his flesh than that fire which the Lord came to cast upon the earth, that it might burn vehemently in the hearts of the faithful. Therefore, with the situation reversed, kindling in himself the ardor of divine fire, he fundamentally renounced carnal allurements and vowed, trusting in the help of the Divinity, that he would persevere as a perpetual virgin. Sending, therefore, he had the Bishop come to him, and did penance before him for not having immediately obeyed him when he urged the way of perfection, and for not having received the habit of the monastic religion at his word. Hearing these things, the Bishop rejoiced with great joy and gave immense thanks to God, the giver of all good, for the conversion of the young man. Dunstan was therefore made a monk without delay, and afterward, at the proper time, through the canonical succession of holy Orders, was also advanced to the rank of the priesthood by the same Bishop.
[5] He ordains as Priests SS. Dunstan and Ethelwold, So writes Osbert. But what William of Malmesbury, in book 2 of his History of the Deeds of the English Bishops, reported as worthy of relation among the Bishops of Winchester, we add here. Elphege, he says, ordained to the rank of the Priesthood three monks: Dunstan, Ethelwold, and a certain Ethelstan, who afterward, an apostate from the monastic habit, despising celibacy, poured out his life in the embraces of harlots. When the solemnities were completed, having predicted a Bishopric for them: the Prelate of holy memory addressed those standing nearby: Today before God I have laid hands on three men, of whom two will obtain the grace of the Pontifical Order — one in the city of Worcester, then in Canterbury; the other will one day fill my See by legitimate succession; with Ethelstan, the third, plunging himself into the wallowing-place of pleasures, will meet a wretched end. Here Ethelstan, who was present because of the familiarity of kinship, accosted the priest with an impudent question: Shall I be one of the two who are to be elevated to Episcopal dignity? No, predicting his ruin for him: he said, you will have neither part nor lot in the order I have described; nor will you remain in the garb with which you beguile the eyes of men. How great the dignity of that most holy mind, that he clearly and without pretense brought forth the secrets of heaven! For these words did not fall to the ground, but the outcome of events confirmed them all — that Dunstan and Ethelwold, keeping the narrow way that leads to life, distinguished themselves as notable Bishops in the aforesaid Sees; [He has among his successors SS. Ethelwold and Elphege the Second, later a Martyr.] the third ran along the broad paths of the world. So says Malmesbury, which nearly the same things had been written before him by Wulfstan, a monk of Winchester, in the Life of St. Ethelwold, to be elucidated on August 1. After the death of St. Elphege, Elfsinus succeeded, and when he was promoted (not quite lawfully) to the See of Canterbury, Brithelm, and when he died within two years, St. Ethelwold; whom, when he died in the year 984, another Elphege was substituted, promoted to the See of Canterbury in the year 1006, and finally killed by the Danes in the year 1012, he died as a Martyr on April 19.
[6] Concerning the first St. Elphege, the aforesaid Malmesbury relates further: Elphege, he says, in addition to the accumulation of other virtues, with which he was as laudably as abundantly endowed, was also renowned for prophecy. Of this kind, two examples were the reason for what was said. One we have related; the other is as follows. It was Ash Wednesday, and the Bishop was excluding penitents from the church doors according to custom; he exhorted the rest to devote themselves to fasting and chastity, and even to abstain from marital pleasures: to one who mocked his teaching in those days it was a worthy fruit of penance if those who had committed many unlawful acts would abstain even from lawful ones. While the rest listened to the teaching reverently, one man, emitting a jocular remark, provoked laughter in the others, saying that he could not abstain at once from both feasting and marriage — that he should abstain equally from food and from Venus — he predicts his destruction. nay rather, that he would recall his wife, whom he had removed from his bed for some time, to use the coming night, aggravating his foolishness with a petulant and vulgar word. Then the voice of the Bishop, murmuring, was heard and understood by those standing nearby: You sadden me, wretch, not knowing what the coming day may bring. The harsh prophecy was followed by the approaching death of the rogue. For the next morning he was found lifeless in his bedroom, whether his throat was crushed by the devil being uncertain. So he writes there. Moreover, St. Elphege's exhortation was from the common usage of the Church. For the Priest, even he who blesses marriages, is required by prescription, after the Mass for the bride and groom, to admonish them to keep faith with each other, and to remain chaste during times of prayer and especially during fasts and solemn feasts.
§ II. The name of St. Elphege subscribed to Royal diplomas, his testament, death, and sacred veneration.
[7] King Athelstan, son of Edward the Elder, was reigning when St. Elphege received the Church of Winchester. When he died on October 27, Wednesday, in the year 940, his brother Edmund succeeded to the kingdom, to whom in the first year of his reign St. Elgiua was married. There survive certain diplomas of this King, He subscribes to donations of King Edmund in the year 940, to which among others St. Elphege subscribed. From these, Alford in his Annals of the English Church cites for the said year 940 a donation made to the venerable community of the city of Winchester, which dwells in the monastery dedicated there to God and St. Peter the Apostle. From which words and the complete silence about monks, Alford concludes that the Church of Winchester and the monastery to which the donation was made were still in the hands of canons and the secular clergy, for whom his son Edgar later introduced monks, as is read in the Monasticon Anglicanum, page 33. But to this donation, after the King, the Queen mother and brother Edred, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, St. Elphege subscribes in this form: † I, Elphege, Bishop of the Church of Winchester, have impressed the triumphal trophy of the holy † Cross. and 945. Another donation of the same King, made in the year 945, is one by which he conferred various possessions on a certain priest of his named Athelnod, which afterward became part of the property of the Winchester monastery. To this donation, among others, Elphege the Bishop subscribed with the appended † Cross. When Edmund died on May 27 of the year 946, and of Edred in the year 947, his brother Edred succeeded him. There survives a charter of this King, signed in the year 947, by which he grants various estates to a venerable priest named Edulph, on the condition that after his death they pass partly to the monastery of nuns which
is situated in the city of Winchester, and partly to the one in which his body shall be committed to burial. To this donation St. Elphege subscribed thus: † I, Elphege, Bishop of the Church of Winchester, subscribed and confirmed the vault of the holy † Cross. When afterward the same King was munificent toward his courtiers and ministers, and in the year 949 donated certain lands to one of them 949, named Adelstan, the holy Bishop added his witness to the royal munificence and signed: † I, Elphege, Bishop of Winchester, co-sign. He also, in the year 951, and 951. which was the last year of his life, subscribed to other donations of the same King Edred with the same words with which he had approved by his signature the first donation of Edmund that we related above.
[8] Before his death he wrote the tablets of his last will, which Alford recites from the Annals of the Church of Winchester in this manner: This is the last will of Bishop Elphege. He composes a testament: In the first place, I wish that all the serving men dwelling in the Bishopric should know and acknowledge, and equally be witnesses for the right of the Bishopric and of those who will succeed to the Bishopric hereafter, and for me and my kinsmen, which is this: I at present dispose of my hereditary right in a twofold manner. These lands at Taunton I assign to the Church of the Bishopric, to remain permanently — which were previously given to me by the same Church. And moreover I give those lands at Crundele after my death to Elphege, and after his death let them pass to the right of the Old Minster at Winchester. And to my kinswoman I give those lands at both the Wardias for as long as they shall live. And afterward my sister and my kinsman, each shall have property at Cliere with all other lands which my father held by his own right. Moreover, those lands at Tycheburn I deliver to Wulfric Cusinge to hold for the whole time of his life, and after his death let them pass to the right of the Old Minster at Winchester. And those lands at Kingswood, according to what we have previously bequeathed, let them pass to the right of the Old Minster at Winchester. And to Alfwig I grant those lands at Cyltington after the death of the widow, and to Wulfric of Wikam the lands at Leteleae. And I enjoin you, my dear Elfleth, to be a witness for both my kinsmen, what their lands are; and do not allow anyone to alter this testament in any other way. For if anyone does otherwise, may God destroy him, and may the devil possess both his body and his soul in hell. Thus far the testament of St. Elphege.
[9] His death is recorded thus by the Durham chronicler: In the year 951, St. Elphege, surnamed the Bald, Bishop of Winchester, who honored Blessed Dunstan with the rank of monastic and priestly dignity, He dies in the year 951. made an end of this life; Elfinus succeeded him in the Bishopric. The same things are read in the Worcester and Hoveden chronicles, and everywhere Elphege is called Saint and Dunstan only Blessed. St. Elphege therefore presided over the Church of Winchester for sixteen years, from the year 935 to the year 951. And accordingly we judge it an error in the Evidence of the Church of Christ Canterbury, printed after the Chronicle of William Thorn, where a diploma is cited signed in the year 927, in which Athelstan, monarch of all Britain, grants to the Church of Christ in Canterbury Folkestone, situated in Kent above the sea, and Elphege, Bishop of Winchester, subscribes. But with greater error Odo, Bishop of Sherborne, signs, since no Odo is known to have been among the Bishops of Sherborne. Not in the year 946, The Westminster chronicler also erroneously assigns the death of St. Elphege to the year 946, with the eulogy added as cited above from three more ancient chronologers. Indeed, in the year of grace 947, after the holy Elphege, he says, Bishop of Winchester, Elfinus succeeded. Nor 947, Baronius, citing this Florilegium, at the same year 947 reports both his death and the succession of the other, number 4. In this year, he says, dies Saint Elphege, Bishop of Winchester in England, renowned for sanctity and endowed with the spirit of prophecy, etc. But from the above it is established that St. Elphege lived until the year 951.
[10] The following handwritten Martyrologies assign his feast day to this date, March 12: Feast day March 12 first, the Jumieges Martyrology in Normandy, in these words: The Deposition of St. Elphege, Bishop of Winchester and Confessor. Second, the Utrecht Martyrology, in manuscript Martyrologies. which was formerly in use in the Collegiate Church of St. Mary the Virgin. In this the following is read: On the same day, the deposition of Elphege, Bishop of the Church of Winchester and Confessor, who, adorned with holy virtues, rested in a blessed end and was buried there with fitting honor. Third is a manuscript Roman Martyrology which we found in the most illustrious library of the Duke of Altemps, which agrees entirely with the preceding one, except that it calls him St. Elphege, not Elfeagus. And we judge this eulogy to have been taken from the tablets of the Winchester Martyrology itself, and the title of Confessor to have been added so that he might be distinguished from the second Elphege of this name, Bishop and later Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr — which was not done in the manuscript Florarium of Saints, in which both on this day and on April 19, St. Elphege the Martyr is celebrated; and there is no doubt that on account of this St. Elphege, Bishop and Confessor, on this day mention is made of him, his name being found, perhaps without a eulogy, as it is found on this day in the ancient manuscript Irish Martyrology of Marianus Gorman.
[11] Since, however, the excessive splendor of this day, on which the English venerate St. Gregory the Great as their Apostle, could easily obscure less prominent Saints, others on September 1. especially since manuscript Martyrologies are sought by few, another day has been assigned to the veneration of this Saint by more recent writers. John Wilson led the way in composing an English Martyrology, wishing no day to pass without some Saint of England; wherefore he assigned this Bishop to September 1, which would otherwise have been vacant. Others followed: Ferrarius in his General Catalogue, and several Benedictines — Edward Maihew in the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, Hugh Menard in the Benedictine Martyrology, and Gabriel Bucelin in the Menology of the same Order. They generally establish the year of death as 946 or the following, moved by the authority of the Westminster chronicler or Baronius. Menard adheres to Hoveden, correctly recording the year 951, which Edward Maihew likewise does, adding that it should not be doubted that he was numbered among the Saints by the ancient English Church, even though his name is not found recorded in the ecclesiastical tables of Martyrologies — the contrary of which, namely that his name is inscribed in Martyrologies, we have already shown.
[12] Where he was a monk That Elphege was a devout monk before his Episcopate is reported by the above-cited authors, but in which monastery they are silent. Bucelin, from mere conjecture, decides he was a monk of Winchester. But in the Glastonbury Annals cited by Alford at the year 935, number 7, he is said to have been taken from a monk of Glastonbury. Meanwhile no mention of him is made among the Archbishops and Bishops and Abbots who are enumerated in the Monasticon Anglicanum, page 8, as elected from the convent of Glastonbury to various Sees.