Bishop Saint John of Beverley
Today happens to be the feast day of our great local saint, Holy Father Alexis (Tovt) of Wilkes-Barre, who led so many of the Rusin people back into the Orthodox fold from his adoptive home here in Minneapolis, and later from Pennsylvania as well. Father Alexis was, of course, a great champion of Orthodoxy as is well-remembered. He was also a great champion of the rights of immigrants and the rights of organised labour generally, and thus it is meet and right and fitting to mark his feast day, the remembrance of a great and good and holy man, with joy. Holy Father Alexis shares his feast day, at least for those of us on the new calendar, with a similarly-minded saint from before the Great Schism: Bishop Saint John of Beverley.
Little is known of John’s early life. Supposedly he was born to hathel parents in the village of Harpham in Yorkshire. He was sent for his education to the Abbey of Saint Augustine in Canterbury, where he was placed under the personal care of the great Greek Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Theodore of Tarsus, and tutored by the African Saint Hadrian who was then abbot in Saint Augustine’s. Under the care of these two men, John formed the determination to become a monk, and was tonsured in the Benedictine Order. He thereupon joined the Abbey at Whitby under Holy Mother Hilda. Here he spent his time meekly and in a spirit of service, and thus grew in holiness. Such was John’s reputation that when Bishop Saint Eata of Hexham reposed in the Lord, the monk John was chosen – apparently unwillingly – to succeed Holy Eata in his honour as bishop there.
Over the next eighteen years John proved himself to be a kindly and sweet-tempered archpastor for Hexham, gifted by Christ and by his great love for the people with divinely-inspired insight into their troubles and their thoughts. Yet still, the monastic life that he had sought being his first love, he occasionally – and especially during Lent – retired for quiet prayer and study with a handful of close companions into an isolated hermitage surrounded by open woodland and a dyke. Holy Bede says also that he would take with him a pauper or a homeless man, whom he and his monastic companions would wait upon and serve as though he were Christ, during these retreats.
One such poor person Bede recounts. A mute youth often came to the bishop to receive alms, yet his tongue was silent and he was not able to utter a single word. He was hideous to look upon; his head was afflicted with scabs such that only a few ragged tufts of hair were able to grow on his head. The bishop had this youth brought to his hermitage in the first week of Lent, and set aside a house for him in the enclosure. That Sunday Bishop John brought the mute youngster before him and bade him stick out his tongue, upon which the Bishop made the holy sign of the Cross. Then he asked the youth to say some word to him, like ‘ġéa’. The young man answered him thus at once, his tongue being wondrously loosened.
After that, the Bishop taught him to speak the sounds of each of the letters in the English alphabet: ‘A’, ‘Æ’, ‘B’, ‘C’. To these then the Bishop added tutoring in syllables, then full words. Once the young man had mastered these, the Bishop began teaching him full sentences. The Bishop’s monastic companions said of the youngster afterward that whenever he was seen awake he would be saying something with his tongue; as it were like the man whose legs were healed by Apostles Peter and John who upon gaining the use of his legs could not refrain from walking and leaping up even in the Temple. The bishop was most pleased to hear this.
John then commended the skin disease that afflicted the youth’s head to the care of a sæcular leech, or physician. (It must not be imagined that such mediæval ‘leeches’, even in pre-Norman England, were ignorant or superstitious; their remedies were guided by a rigorous empiricism that in some cases holds up even today.) With the Bishop’s prayers and blessing, the leech tended the youth’s head with various remedies. The youth’s scalp healed and he grew a full head of hair; his skin also cleared to reveal a handsome complexion and demeanour. Bishop John, pleased with the boy and the rapid progress he had made, offered to make him a monk and keep him on as a permanent companion in the bishop’s household, but the youth politely declined and returned to sæcular life.
When Saint Wilfrið returned from the exile imposed upon him by Ealdfriþ King of Northumbria, Bishop John gladly relinquished to him the see of Hexham, and upon the death of his fellow-monk at Whitby the Bishop Saint Bosa was appointed to the bishopric of York in his stead. As Bishop John’s disciple (later Abbot) Beorhthun – who was then present – recounted personally to Saint Bede, not long after he had arrived in his new see, Bishop John stopped by the convent of Watton (then called Wetadun), where the abbess Hereburg besought him at once to visit one of the nuns there, her own daughter, who lay dying. The young nun, named Cœnburg, had been bled incompetently, and the wound had festered and grown inflamed. Her arm had swollen so badly that she could not bend it at the elbow, and two man’s hands could not fit around it. She was bedridden and in great pain. The abbess hoped that Bishop John could cure her by his blessing.
Bishop John asked about the circumstances under which Cœnburg had been bled. Upon learning that it had been done essentially during the girl’s menses when her immunity was weak, he rebuked the abbess harshly in the name of Saint Theodore for having bled her daughter untimely, and asked her rather brusquely what she expected of him if the girl was indeed on death’s door. But the abbess was insistent that Bishop John should give her his blessing. Taking Beorhthun with him, Bishop John went in to where Cœnburg lay, said a blessing over her, and left again. Some time later, a lay-servant came in and bade the bishop come back. Cœnburg lay up in her bed, in good health, able to move her arm some, though it was still swollen. She greeted Beorhthun cheerfully, bade him sit and asked the servant to get him a drink. Once Beorhthun had drunk, he asked the nun what had happened, and she described to him how the pain had begun to ebb from her arm at once Bishop John had blessed her. Still, she thought a full recovery would take some time. After Bishop John and Beorhthun had left the convent, they later heard that Cœnburg had healed entirely and gave thanks to Christ for her delivery.
Beorhthun also recounted to Saint Bede another occasion on which Bishop John had worked a similar wonder; this time for a þegn named Puch who owned land some two miles off from where Bishop John’s abbey and diocæsan seat lay. It’s unclear from Bede’s narrative whether John had already procured his land at Inderawuda – literally ‘In-Deira-wood’ – for his chief monastery, which would later be called by its modern name of Beverley. His wife had been bedridden forty days with an acute illness. Puch had invited Bishop John to his estate for the purpose of blessing a new parish, but the landowner begged the bishop to stay on a little longer afterward and eat meat with him in his house. Bishop John refused at first, insisting that he must return to his abbey, but Puch began begging with even greater earnest, promising to give alms to the poor if the Bishop would come visit his house and eat with him. Hearing this, Beorhthun joined his entreaties to those of the þegn and together they prevailed upon Bishop John.
In all this time John had not been told of the illness of the þegn’s wife. But the bishop took some of the holy water from the parish consecration he had just performed and bade one of the monks take it in to Puch’s wife for her to drink and to wash herself with. The woman having done this, was cured at once and able to rise from her bed. As was befitting a hostess in Old English heathen custom, but also out of gratitude to him who had healed her, Puch’s wife brought a cup out to the bishop and kept it full of drink as long as he stayed at her husband’s table; in this Beorhthun likened the woman also to Saint Peter’s mother-in-law who showed a similar hospitality to Christ after His having healed her.
Beorhthun also recounts to Saint Bede another miracle at which he was not present, but which he had heard of from those who were. Another þegn by the name of Addi likewise bade Bishop John to his estate for a church-blessing – though he likewise had ulterior motives for the invitation. One of his servants was comatose and near death; indeed, Addi had already prepared the servant’s coffin. Tearfully Addi begged the bishop to bless his servant, for this was a man much beloved by his master. Bishop John went to the unmoving sick man, with the coffin lying beside him and all the household around him weeping, lay a cheerful hand on the man and blessed him with the words, ‘Hurry up and get well!’ Later, as the þegn was entertaining the bishop, the servant sent word out to the hall that he was thirsty. Hearing that the servant was sensible and could speak to ask for drink, the þegn at once gave the bishop a cup of wine to bless, which he did, and had this sent to the servant. The servant came out to the hall, in his right senses, in full mastery of his limbs and clad respectably, and he gratefully greeted the bishop and his master. Addi invited him to dine as one of the company, which he did. Addi’s servant apparently lived to a ripe old age in the same state of health that Bishop John had wondrously restored to him.
Another of Bishop John’s miracles was recounted to Saint Bede by the Abbot Herebald, who was then a young priest-monk attached to Bishop John’s retinue. Father Herebald was fond of horses and of riding, and while travelling in the Bishop’s party they came to an open road well-suited to a race. The lay-brothers asked, and got, permission to ride their horses on the stretch of road, but Bishop John expressly forbade Herebald to join them, however much he begged to do so. Feeling singled-out and slighted, and being as yet a youngster prone to rebellion, Herebald took his horse and joined the race in haughty disregard and directly against the order of his master. Despite Bishop John shouting his dismay after him, Herebald rode his horse at a full gallop and tried to jump a small gully. Herebald fell from his horse, struck his head on a stone that lay in the grass on the other side of the gully, and lay senseless – out of his wits and unable to move, as though dead. His head and his hand, which he had thrown up to protect himself, were both broken. Unable to speak, unable to move and vomiting blood, Herebald was borne back to his bed by the lay-brothers. Bishop John spent the whole of that night in solitary vigil and, as dawn came, he went in to Herebald and said a prayer over him. Herebald awoke and found he had gotten back his speech.
‘Do you know who it is speaking to you?’ asked the bishop.
‘My beloved bishop,’ answered Herebald.
‘Can you live?’
‘I can with the help of your prayers, God willing.’
After giving a short blessing, Bishop John again went away to pray. Herebald was thereafter able to sit up and speak with greater ease; and when Bishop John returned he asked of a sudden whether Herebald had been baptised. Herebald answered that he had, and gave the name of the priest who had dipped him in the waters of life. Bishop John then scowled. ‘That priest! I know him. He is a half-wit who does not know how to instruct or to baptise. I had ordered him, on account of his ignorance, to cease performing baptisms.’ Bishop John then instructed Herebald according to the Liturgy for baptism, breathed upon his face, and lay his hand in blessing upon the broken part of his priest-monk’s skull. He then bade a surgeon come in and bind up his head and his hand. After Bishop John had taken Herebald out and baptised him properly, Herebald was healed in full.
As Bishop of Hexham and as Bishop of York, our holy father John spent a total of thirty-three years before he reposed in the Lord and went to his æternal home in Christ’s kingdom on the seventh of May, 721. When he was no longer able to serve as bishop, he blessed Wilfrið (a different one; Wilfrið the Younger) in the honour of the bishopric at York and retired to his monastery and there lived out the rest of his days in prayer and contemplation. He was buried where he lived, at his monastery at Inderawuda – later Beverley Minster.
Bishop John was recognised as a saint almost at once upon his repose, and many wonders were attributed to his grace and intercession with Christ. William of Malmesbury recounts that he was a particular favourite with cattle farmers, who would bring to his shrine stubborn, wild and violent bulls – which would then leave the churchyard tame as lambs. He was also appealed to by English kings on the eve of battle, and victories were attributed to his intercession with Christ: once by Æðelstán King who asked from him, and got, a total victory in his campaign to subjugate the Scots in 934; and once by King Henry V, who asked for Saint John’s intercession at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, which became a particularly celebrated English victory over the French. Saint John was also particularly beloved by Christian writers as diverse as the scholastic Saint Ealhwine and the mystic Julian of Norwich.
Saint Bede’s history is touchingly intimate when it comes to the treatment of the holy man who appointed him as a deacon, and gives us a convincing portrait in words of the man’s personality. Although Bishop John appears a bit reticent and short, even gruff, with those who do not show the proper obedience – after the style of a later Russian starets, one might say – he would not even once withhold his hand from helping even them when they asked it of him. He was indeed a great lover of the poor who took quite earnestly Christ’s entreaty to treat them with the utmost hospitality and solicitude. He was particularly gentle and caring toward women who were sick or suffering. And although he was indeed a wonderworker almost in the classical mode one finds in Russian hagiographies – up to and including his preternatural insights into the thoughts and troubles of others – it is worthy of note that he bore himself humbly. He did not intrude on what he considered the competencies of others in the scientific and medical professions; nor did he consider the miracles and healing he wrought to be a ‘substitute’ for the services of a skilled physician. Holy Father John of Beverley, pray to Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Thou hast been given to the faithful, O most sacred John,
As a beauteous tree of holiness,
Bearing all the virtues like most sacred blooms,
Filling all the land with the fragrance of miracles and the sweet fruit of healings.
Wherefore, O namesake of grace,
Entreat Christ God, that He save us who honour thee!
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