26. SAINT CEOLFRITH, ABBOT OFWEARMOUTH AND JARROW
Our holy Father Ceolfrith (Geoffrey) was born of noble and religious parents in the seventh century. At the age of eighteen he entered a monastery at Gilling where his brother Cynefrith was abbot. When Cynefrith retired to Ireland, their relative Tunberht, later bishop of Hexham, became abbot.
Soon a pestilence visited the area, and the abbot and several of the brethren, including Ceolfrith, were invited by St. Wilfrid to his monastery in Ripon, where, at the age of twenty-seven, Ceolfrith was ordained to the priesthood.
Then Ceolfrith, in search of greater knowledge, set off for Canterbury and then the monastery of St. Botulf at Ikanhoe in East Anglia, where, in addition to his priestly duties, he served as baker and instructed the other brethren in the observance of the rule of St. Benedict.
In 674 he was invited north by St. Benedict Biscop, and together they began to build a monastery dedicated to St. Peter at Wearmouth on land donated by King Egfrith of Northumbria. At one point the jealousy of some brethren forced him to leave and return to his former monastery, but St. Benedict persuaded him to return. And he accompanied Benedict on one of his trips to Rome.
In 682 King Egfrith gave land for the building of a second monastery, dedicated to St. Paul, at Jarrow, and St. Benedict appointed St. Ceolfrith as the first abbot. In 689, on the death of St. Benedict, Ceolfrith was appointed abbot of both monasteries. Under his rule, the number of the brethren rose to 600, the library was doubled and the prosperity of the monastery increased.
According to the Venerable Bede, who was one of his monks in Jarrow, «having shown the most incomparable skill in praying and chanting, in which he daily exercised himself, together with the most wonderful energy in punishing the wicked, and modesty in consoling the weak; having also observed such abstinence in food and drink, and such humility in dress, as are uncommon among rulers; saw himself now old and full of days, and unfit any longer, from his extreme age, to prescribe to his brethren the proper forms of spiritual exercise by his life and doctrine. Having, therefore, deliberated long within himself, he judged it expedient, having first impressed on the brethren the observance of the rules which St. Benedict had given them, and thereby to choose for themselves a more efficient abbot out of their own number, to depart, himself, to Rome...»
Having commissioned the writing of three single-volume Bibles from his scriptoria, he gave one to Wearmouth, one to Jarrow, and took the third with him on his journey in order to give to the pope. This last book, known as the Codex Amiatinus, exists to this day, and is the oldest surviving complete Bible in one volume.
Ceolfrid set off from Rome accompanied by eighty men on June 4, 716, but on September 25 he died in the French city of Langres at the age of seventy-four. The anonymous writer of his life records that «the companions of our father, beloved of God, who returned to us, used to tell us that in the night after his venerable body had been committed to the tomb, while three guards of the same church were keeping the night watch, according to the custom, the fragrance of a wonderful odour filled the whole church; and it was followed by a light, which remained no little time; and finally rose to the roof of the church. They went out quickly, and gazing they saw the same light rapidly rise to the skies, so that all places round about seemed to be illumined by the glow, as if it were daytime; so that it was clearly given them to understand tha ministers of eternal light and perpetual sweetness had been present and had consecrated by their visitation the resting-place of the holy body. Hence a custom spread among the natives of the place that throughout the various horus of daily and nightly prayer, when the canonical rule of psalmody was ended, all the men should bend their knees in supplication at his tomb. And also report spread abroad that other signs and cures were done there, by the Grace of Him Who is wont to aid His saints as they strive in this present life and to crown them victors in the future life. Amen.»
(Sources: The Venerable Bede, Lives of the Holy Abbots; Anonymous, Life of St. Ceolfrith; David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 81–82)