ON ST. CEDD OR CEDDA, BISHOP OF THE EAST SAXONS, IN NORTHUMBRIA,
NOTICE.
Cedd, confessor and bishop, in Northumbria. (S.)
V. D. B.
Why St. Cedda is omitted in this place. Since Florence of Worcester relates under the year 664 that St. Cedda, apostle of the East Saxons in Northumbria, who most would have it was bishop of London, departed from among the living on the 26th of October, it thence came about that Chastelain in the Universal Martyrology celebrated his memory on this day. But in Wilson's English Martyrology, which was printed in the years 1608 and 1640, his feast is marked at the 7th of January; whence it was taken up at the same day into Challoner's English Martyrology and into the calendar of the English Catholic church which Harris Nicolas inserted in his Chronology of History. On the other hand he is wholly absent from Richard Smith's Flowers of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People and from the English Martyrology according to the use of the church of Sarum, which appeared in English from the London presses in the year 1526, except that at the 2nd of March, on which his brother, St. Ceadda, bishop of the Mercians and of the Lindisfarne people, is commemorated, his name comes up in the form Chaddus with the title of saint (Saynt Chadde). Nor is this the only indication that the blessed man was numbered among the heavenly citizens before the sacred rites of the Catholic religion were overthrown in England. For in the Sanctilogium of John of Tynemouth, and thence in Capgrave's Nova Legenda Angliæ, there is read a Life of him, beginning with these words: "For since the day of the death of the most holy Cedd", and ending with these: "Having been promoted, he was useful to many in the church", and another in the Lansdowne manuscript codex with the beginning: "Concerning St. Ced, a man of exceptional sanctity", and with the end: "And of salvation by teaching he might show forth"; as may be seen at the year 664 in the catalogue of materials for the history of England, which with wonderful diligence was published at London in the year 1862 by Thomas Duffus
Hardy. From the History of the Venerable Bede Bolland published his Life in our Acts at the 7th of January, and Henschen, in setting forth the deeds of his brother St. Ceadda at the 2nd of March, made certain few points clearer. His name has therefore been inserted by mistake in the list of the saints of this day, since he ought to have been mentioned only among the Passed Over.