Ceolfrid, Saint

CEOLFRID, chōl´frid, SAINT: Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow; b. of noble parents in Northumbria c. 642; d. at Langres, France, while on his way to Rome, Sept. 24, 716. He became a monk at the age of eighteen, and was made prior by Benedict Biscop of his new abbey of St. Peter at Wearmouth, which was begun in 674; accompanied Biscop to Rome in 678; became abbot of his second monastery founded at Jarrow in 681 or 682 (where he had Bede among his pupils), and in 688, abbot of both Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was a good manager and increased and enriched his monasteries, at the same time making them centers of learning and industry. He took special pains to learn the Roman methods of reading and singing the services and influenced the Irish in Scotland to adopt the Roman date for Easter.

Bibliography: Bede, Historia abbatum; also Hist. eccl., iv. 18, v. 21 (where Ceolfrid's letter to Naiton [Nechtan], king of the Picts, on the Easter question, is given), v. 24; also the anonymous Historia abbatum, by a monk of Wearmouth, contemporary with Ceolfrid, in Plummer's Bede, i. 388–404; W. Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 308–309, Oxford, 1897.