A Frankish scholar in tenth-century England: Frithegod of Canterbury/Fredegaud of Brioude

Abstract

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 notoriousfurta 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 theBreuiloquium uitae Wilfridi, a poem of some 1,400 Latin hexameters which is closely based on the early eighth-century proseVita S. WilfridibyStephanusor 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.

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