Saint of the Day – 24 April – St Egbert (c639-c729) Confessor, Priest, Monk, Reformer, Missionary, Teacher. Born in c639 in Northumbria, England and died on 24 April 729 on the Island of Iona, Scotland of natural causes. After studying at Lindisfarne and Rath Melsigi, (in Ireland) he spent his life travelling around the Monasteries in northern Britain and around the Irish Sea on his mission of Reform. He was instrumental in the establishment of St Wigbert’s mission, in the footsteps of St Boniface, to the Teutonic lands of Holland and Germany. Also known as – Egbert of Iona, Egbert of Northumbria, Egbert of Ripon, Egbert of Rath Migisi, Ecgberht.
The Roman Martyrology reads: “On the Island of Iona in Scotland, Saint Egbert, Priest and Monk, who worked with dedication for the evangelisation of many regions of Europe and, now, advanced in years, reconciled the Monks of Iona, with the use Roman of the Paschal Rectum, celebrating his eternal Easter, immediately after having officiated its Solemnity.”
Egbert was born in Northumbria, England in around 639 of a noble family. After some years of study at the Monastery of Lindisfarne, he travelled to Ireland to study. One of his fellow Friars at this time was St Chad of Mercia. He settled at the Monastery of Rath Melsigi, in modern-day County Carlow.
By 664, most of his Northumbrian brethren, died of the plague and he contracted it too. Egbert vowed that if he recovered, he would live in exile, on perpetual pilgrimage from his homeland of England and would lead a life of penitential prayer and fasting. At this time he was twenty five years old and upon his recovery, he kept his vow until his death at age 90.
According to tradition, Egbert was one of the most renowned ‘pilgrims’ of the early Middle Ages and occupied a prominent position in a political and religious culture which spanned northern Britain and the Irish Sea.
Egbert was Ordained a Priest and began to organise Monks in Ireland to evangelise in Frisia. Many other high-born notables were associated with his work, including Saint Adalbert, Saint Swithbert and Saint Chad. He, however, was dissuaded from accompanying them himself by a vision in which a Monk, who had been the Prior of Melrose Monastery. Egbnert instead dispatched St Wigbert, another Englishman living at Rath Melsigi, to Frisia.
While in Ireland, Egbert was one of those present at the Synod of Birr in 697, when the Lex Innocentium (Law of Innocents) was guaranteed. This is regarded as Europe’s first human rights treaty, for its protection of women and non-combatants, extending the Law of Patrick, which protected Monks, to civilians.
Egbert had influential contacts with the Kings of Northumbria and of the Picts, as well as with Iona, to which he moved in around 716. He persuaded the Monks there to adopt the Roman Easter dating. He died on Iona at the age of ninety, on the first day in which the Easter Feast was observed in the Roman dating in the Monastery, on 24 April 729.
His feast day 24 April, is found in both the Roman and Irish Martyrologies, and in the Metrical Calendar of York. Although he is now honoured as a Confessor, it is probable that St Ecgberht was a Bishop.
Our Saint Egbert ought not to be confused with the later Egbert. the Archbishop of York, or Egbert of Lindisfarne.
AnaStpaul 