Holy Hierarch Eata, Bishop of Hexham and Lindisfarne

Melrose Abbey

In the Orthodox Church, today we commemorate another holy bishop of Hexham, Eata. He was a close friend and associate of Holy Father Cuðberht of Lindisfarne. Like his friend Saint Cuðberht, he was also a particularly gentle bishop – in studied contrast to Saints Wilfrið and Colmán, his contemporaries on either side of the Synod at Whitby.

Saint Eata was a Northumbrian and, in his youth, a disciple of Saint Aidan, whose steadfast patience and care for others he did his best to emulate and embody in his own life. He studied under Saint Tuda, who was then the monastic Bishop of Lindisfarne and who preferred the Roman computation for the date of Pascha over the Celtic one. He was given the abbacy of Melrose in 651, and soon established his own monastery at Ripon in 658. A dispute with Ealhfrið King of Deira arose three years later, and Ealhfrið stripped Saint Eata of these lands and sent him into exile, during which he returned to Melrose. Saint Bede asserts that Saint Eata’s monks allowed the land to lie fallow before abandoning it. It seems equally likely that they were hounded out for political reasons; after all, the same king would do the same to Eata’s successor in Ripon, Saint Wilfrið, not long after.

Later, when Saint Theodore arrived on British strands and commenced his ecclesiastical reforms, Saint Eata was one of the beneficiaries of his policy of breaking the bishopric of Northumbria into smaller and less powerful diocæses. Theodore rendered to Eata the bishopric of Hexham. After the Synod of Whitby and the repose of Saint Tuda, Eata would become bishop also of Lindisfarne, thus making him the sole episcopal authority in the subkingdom of Bernicia. It was Saint Eata who appointed Cuðberht as abbot of Lindisfarne at this time. At the Synod of Whitby, Saint Eata – along with most of the Lindisfarne monks – preferred the Celtic method of computing Pascha over the Roman method. However, perhaps because of Saint Tuda’s influence, Eata (unlike Colmán) was prevailed upon to accept the Roman date for Pascha.

Saint Eata was prevailed upon by his friend Saint Cuðberht, who had been appointed bishop of Hexham, to switch diocæses in 685. Then Cuðberht became bishop of Lindisfarne and could keep his hermitage on the isle of Farne; and Eata could be nearer his beloved Melrose. Bishop Saint Eata stayed at Hexham for the last year of his life. He fell ill with dysentery and reposed in the Lord on the 26^th of October, 686.

Bishop Eata was very quickly recognised locally as a saint, given his personal meekness and approachability as a spiritual father to many. Holy Father Eata, beloved bishop and abbot, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!