St Stephen Harding

  In the latter half of the eleventh century, when Stephen was still a child, his parents presented him to Sherborne Abbey in Dorset as an oblate. He received a monastic education, but, frustrated at the restrictions inherent in monastic life, decided to leave the abbey and see the world, traveling first to Scotland and [...]

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St Wilfrid of Hexham

  Born in Northumbria from a noble family around 633AD, the young Wilfrid entered the court of King Oswiu, where he found an enthusiastic patroness in the person of Queen Eanflæd. Eanflæd arranged for Wildred to study in the monastery of Lindisfarne, where he is supposed to have learned the entire Psalter by heart. Armed [...]

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St Magnus of Orkney

Earl Magnus Erlendsson of Orkney ruled between 1108 and c. 1115, his life-story being well-attested (albeit in documents that come under the heading of Norse sagas rather than biographical histories in the modern sense) in the Shorter and Longer Magnus’ Saga and in the Legend of St Magnus. In order to understand the story of [...]

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Bl Clare Gambacorta

Blessed Clare Gambacorta (born Victoria, and also known, confusingly, as Bl Theodora or Thora of Pisa) was born in 1362 – probably in Venice, where her family (the most important in Pisa) were in political exile. When the young Victoria was aged 7, altered circumstances in the politics of Pisa made it possible for the [...]

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St Paulinus of York

  In 601, Pope St Gregory the Great sent a group of missionaries to England – a second wave, following on from the initial mission led by St Augustine of Canterbury – with a view to converting the Anglo-Saxons. One member of this second wave of missionaries was Paulinus, and Italian monk.  Paulinus and the [...]

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St Godric of Finchale

  Godric was born at Walpole in Norfolk (England) around the year 1065. He was a peddler of some sort – a traveling salesman, indeed – whose wanderings led him to sea for a period of around sixteen years, during which time he became a part-owner of a number of vessels, one of which he [...]

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St Lidwina of Schiedam

  Reading the lives of many woman saints (both mediaeval and modern), one is struck by the way in which suffering is heaped upon suffering – often in the form of distressing physical illness – as the individual becomes progressively conformed with the suffering Christ, giving expression at the root of her being to the [...]

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St Milburga of Wenlock

  Milburga (or Milburgh) was born in the latter half of the seventh century, one of three daughters of Ermenburga, a Kentish princess. The family was devout and completely devoted to Christ, and all three sisters – Milburga, Mildred and Mildgytha – were canonized as saints. It was commonplace in Anglo-Saxon England for royal women [...]

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St Sabas the Goth

  St Sabas (Sava) was a Goth (in the traditional sense of that word) living in in Buzău river valley in the Wallachia region of what is now Rumania. The Arian bishop Wulfilas had preached Christianity among the Goths, and St Sabas was brought up a Christian. In 370 the Gothic King Athanaric (probably under [...]

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St Guthlac of Crowland

  Born of royal blood in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia around 673, Guthlac joined the army of King Ethelred of Mercia aged fifteen – which in practice involved a good deal of burning, raping and pillaging. Aged twenty four, he renounced military life and entered the double monastery (i.e. a monastery with male and [...]

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