Holy Hierarch Willibrord of Echternach
Beknownst to my readers, I have a particular devotion to Bede the Venerable, whose historical works were (along with the religious philosophy of Berdyaev) responsible to a significant extent in bringing me into the Orthodox Church. At the same time, I find that the English saints of the Orthodox Church – even the ones most closely connected with Saint Bede – have been woefully neglected on my blog! I do intend to rectify this; I am currently reading the Life and Letters of the learned Saint Ealhwine [Alcuin] of York, a student and follower of Holy Bede. Saint Willibrord, the Northumbrian saint commemorated today who ended up becoming a bishop in Utrecht and a missionary in Fryslân, is one of those treated in Ealhwine’s hagiographical work.
Willibrord was born to an English freeman in Northumbria named Wilgils and his wife, who sadly goes unnamed in Ealhwine’s account. Wilgils and his wife were both deeply observant Christians; indeed, Wilgils undertook after his wife’s death the life of a hermit in a little temple devoted to Saint Andrew the Apostle, ‘dwelling in the headlands between the North Sea and the Humber’, during which he became celebrated as a wonderworker and elder to many common people, who flocked to meet him.
Saint Wilgils’s more famous son, however, was heralded to Saint Wilgils’s worthy wife with a heavenly vision, as Alcuin recounts, during which she swallowed a bright heavenly body like unto the moon, which caused her body to glow with light. Awed and afraid upon waking, she sought out a priest to tell her the meaning of this dream. The holy father told her that the heavenly light she had swallowed was a son she had conceived the night before; and that this son would by the example of his holy life become a bright full moon beckoning many toward the true light of Christ.
When their son was born, his eldern christened him Willibrord (after the old Teutonic custom of giving the son a dithematic name whose first element matches his father’s), and, when he came of age, gave him to Saint Wilfrid at the new monastic cathedral at Ripon to be taught both sæcular letters and learning and the holy disciplines of the monks there; he took so earnestly and so well to his learning in both that Saint Ealhwine likens him to the Holy Prophet Samuel. Though he was slender and slight in shape (though later Alcuin says he was ‘of rniddle height, dignified mien, comely of face, cheerful in spirit, wise in counsel, pleasing in speech, grave in character and energetic in everything he undertook for God’), it was said that Willibrord’s wisdom far outstripped his years, even when he first took the tonsure at Ripon.
He was sent abroad from Ripon, at his own request, to learn from the holy men of Ireland, in particular Bishop Ecgbert and his companion Wichtberht. He spent twelve years with these two holy Irish churchmen, after which the will took him to undertake missionary work ‘in the northern reaches of the world’, by which Ealhwine meant heathen Saxony and Frisia (in both of which lands Ecgbert and Wichtberht had once preached and taught themselves). When he was thirty-three, Willibrord, along with eleven followers, went to the nether-lands to preach the Gospel: some of them were martyred there; others went on to further attainments in the world as monastics.
At the time, Frisia was ruled by Redbad, who was antagonistic to Christianity and anything smacking of Frankish domination. Willibrord thus left Frisia for Francia and was met by King Pippin, who was highly impressed with Willibrord’s preaching and sought to have him anointed as a bishop. Willibrord steadfastly gainsaid it, until the king’s costenings had been joined by those of his companions and by that of his conscience when it became clear that it was the will of God. He went before Pope Saint Sergius, who, being apprised of the Northumbrian monk’s character, welcomed Willibrord with great warmth of brotherly affection, lost no time in anointing him as bishop, and held back nothing from Willibrord by way of blessings, whether chalices for use in the Liturgy or the relics of holy and beloved saints to bear back northward with him. When he returned to Francia, now-Bishop Willibrord was strengthened and heartened by the love bestowed on him by the saintly Pope in Rome, and he undertook his missionary work with heightened zeal and energy.
Bishop Saint Willibrord preached among the Frisians (to little avail) and the Danes, who were then ruled by Ongendtheow, described by Ealhwine as ‘a man more savage than any wild beast and harder than stone’. Willibrord, with Ongendtheow’s assent, chose thirty Danish children to be baptised into the Christian faith and sent to the Frankish court of King Peppin. On the return trip he visited a certain island on the march, held holy by the Frisians and the Danes both, and there baptised three more locals in the name of the Holy Trinity and slaughtered three wild oxen for their fare, setting his face against the heathen laws forbidding the drawing of water or the shedding of blood on the island. King Redbad, roused to wrath at this flouting of his writ, cast lots thrice a day for three days to see which among Willibrord and his followers should be put to death. Only once did the short lot fall to one of Willibrord’s baptised, and that one went to a martyr’s death. This only heightened King Redbad’s fury, and he upbraided the saintly Willibrord for his insult to the old gods; however, Willibrord was unfazed. Instead he answered King Redbad that he should believe in Christ, be baptised in the name of the Trinity, and repent of all his former sins. Though King Redbad was impressed by Willibrord’s fearless witness, he nonetheless would not believe; instead he sent Willibrord back to Pippin and the Franks.
Pippin died shortly afterward, however, and his successor Karl (also called ‘the Hammer’) came to the throne; he made great incursions into the lands of the Frisians, and Saint Willibrord lost no time in preaching the Gospel and baptising the Frisians that had fallen under Frankish sway. (Later, Saint Willibrord would baptise and christen Karl’s son, Pippin the Short.) The bishop preached Christ and also lived according to the way of Christ; he forgave and would not avenge himself upon even those among the heathen and the wealthy landowners who attacked and reviled him, although he was ruthless in his destruction of their idols. (Ealhwine’s hagiography of Saint Willibrord, in good mediæval fashion, recounts the gruesome ends of his attackers, which are attributed to divine justice; but it equally stresses that Saint Willibrord would not allow his followers to lay hands on them.)
Saint Willibrord had, as seems to be fairly common with the Northumbrian saints, a definite soft spot for the poor and the suffering. Much of his wonderworking seems to be related to this. He had his followers dig a trench in a seaside hamlet that was suffering from thirst, and bade the trench give forth fresh water instead of bracken – and the trench became a spring. On another occasion, he met twelve thirsty beggars on the road, and Saint Willibrord bade one of his followers give them his flask. The twelve beggars all drank their fill from the flask, and his followers were amazed afterward to find the flask as full as it had been before – not with water, but with wine! This wine-filling wonder he repeated several times on various occasions, when the folk he met were in want, either at his monastery or in his missionary work.
Saint Willibrord lived to be an old man, and was beloved not only as a wonderworker but as an elder and a spiritual counsel to many, not just to the Frankish nobles. He met his repose peacefully, and was buried at the very Abbey he founded with the backing of King Pippin of Herstal, on the Frankish march at Echternach (now in Luxembourg). Miracles and healings attributed to him continued at the Abbey long after his death, and he was quickly recognised to be among Christ’s holy saints.
Our father among the Saints, Holy Hierarch Willibrord, pray to God for us!
Moved to compassion by the plight of the heathen,
Who languished in noetic darkness, ignorant of the one, true God,
O clement and pious Willibrord,
Thou didst leave behind all things comfortable and familiar, And didst set out for the land of the Frisians,
To convert them, by thy preaching, to the peerless Christian Faith,
With zeal enlightening them in the laver of regeneration.
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