Saint Æthelwold (-984)

Together with St Dunstan, Ethelwold (or Æthelwold) ranks as one of the great figures of 10th-century monastic reform. Born in Winchester sometime between 904 and 909, he spent his youth at the court of King Athelstan. He became Prior of Glastonbury and in 955 received from King Ædred the Abbey of Abingdon which he re-established. On 29 November 963 he was ordained Bishop of Winchester by St Dunstan. There he installed monks in the cathedral, and restored the two Winchester foundations of the New Minster and Nunnaminster. He also restored the monasteries at Milton (Dorset) and Chertsey, and made new foundations at Ely, Peterborough and Thorney (East Anglia), in the course of which he made himself unpopular with secular clergy who were turned out of monasteries to make way for genuine monks.

  He was a renowned scholar, compiling the Regularis Concordia and translating the Rule of Benedict into Old English. He used some of the wealth he accumulated to build new churches and was a great patron of ecclesiastical art. He died on 1 August 984 at Beddington in Surrey, and was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester. After a miraculous cure attributed to him some twelve years later, his body was moved from the crypt to the choir and he was recognized as a saint, though never formally canonized.

 

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