1988/12/01 by Michael Lapidge · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Medieval Literature and History #Archbishop #Honour #Poetry #Ancient history #Art #Pretext #History #Altar #Emperor #Classics #Literature #Archaeology #Law
paper · doi:10.1017/s0263675100004014
openalex publication_date 1988/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In 948 King Eadred of Wessex conducted a military campaign in Northumbria against Eric Blood-Axe. During the course of this campaign the minster church at Ripon – which had been founded by St Wilfrid and which housed his remains – was burnt down. This unfortunate incident was used as the pretext for a notorious furta sacra : the relics of St Wilfrid were seized and were duly conveyed to Archbishop Oda of Canterbury. In order to celebrate the acquisition of these distinguished relics, Oda built a new altar in honour of St Wilfrid and commissioned a member of his Canterbury household, one Frithegod, to compose a poem in honour of St Wilfrid. Frithegod responded by producing the Breuiloquium uitae Wilfridi , a poem of some 1,400 Latin hexameters which is closely based on the early eighth-century prose Vita S. Wilfridi by Stephanus or Stephen of Ripon. Since the poem bears in its closing lines a dedication to Archbishop Oda, it must have been finished before the archbishop's death on 2 June 958; in other words, it was written between 948 and 958.