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Lives of the Saints
This volume contains "The Voyage of St Brendan", Bede's "Life of Cuthbert", and Eddius's Life of Wilfred. They are all set in the sixth and seventh centuries - a period which witnessed the clash between Roman episcopal orthodoxy and the democratic monasticism that was spreading over Ireland and Northern England. Brendan's whimsical travelogue shows us Celtic monasticism before it was challenged; Bede describes its canalization into missionary activity by Cuthbert at Lindisfarne; and Eddius tells of Wilfred's enforcement of decisions made by the Synod of Whitby. The individual character of each of these three classics of the early church is clearly preserved in J.F. Webb's translation.
-----from the back cover.
-----from the back cover.
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Bede
394 books94 followersborn perhaps 673
Saxon theologian Bede, also Baeda or Beda, known as "the Venerable Bede," wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation , a major work and an important ancient source, in 731 in Latin and introduced the method from the birth of Jesus of dating events.
People referred to Saint Bede, a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and at its companion of Saint Paul in modern Jarrow in the kingdom, for more than a millennium before canonization. Most fame of this well author and scholar gained him the title as "the father.”
In 1899, Leo XIII, pope, made Bede a doctor of the Church, a position of significance; only this native of Great Britain achieved this designation; from Italy, Saint Anselm of Canterbury originated.
Bede, a skilled linguist, moreover translated the Greek of the early Church Fathers, and his contributions made them significantly much more accessible to his fellow Christians. Monastery of Bede accessed a superb library, which included Eusebius and Orosius.
Saxon theologian Bede, also Baeda or Beda, known as "the Venerable Bede," wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation , a major work and an important ancient source, in 731 in Latin and introduced the method from the birth of Jesus of dating events.
People referred to Saint Bede, a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and at its companion of Saint Paul in modern Jarrow in the kingdom, for more than a millennium before canonization. Most fame of this well author and scholar gained him the title as "the father.”
In 1899, Leo XIII, pope, made Bede a doctor of the Church, a position of significance; only this native of Great Britain achieved this designation; from Italy, Saint Anselm of Canterbury originated.
Bede, a skilled linguist, moreover translated the Greek of the early Church Fathers, and his contributions made them significantly much more accessible to his fellow Christians. Monastery of Bede accessed a superb library, which included Eusebius and Orosius.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 24, 2022
This is an anthology of three saints' lives from the early Middle Ages - one Irish ("The Voyage of St. Brendan" by an anonymous writer) and two English (St. Bede's "The Life of St. Cuthbert" and Eddius Stephanus' "Life of St. Wilfrid"). They reflect the spread on monasticism in the British Isles in those early centuries, in the wake of their conversion to Christianity from paganism. Brendan was a monk who followed the Irish monastic penchant for wandering away from a settled life in a monastery, but in his case, he and his companions set sail and spent time on various islands out in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere, mostly unidentified (I've read elsewhere that some have speculated that he reached North America). Cuthbert and Wilfrid started as English monks in the north of England, before England was a united country, who both eventually became abbots and bishops. Both were noted for their personal sanctity and numerous healing miracles are described in these works. Wilfrid was noted for the controversies he had with the local petty kings of his time, and also with his fellow churchmen, which led him to appeal to appeal to Popes in Rome more than once. The Popes sided with him and sometimes it even did him some good back home.
March 16, 2022
Three insular saints — a sixth-century Irish abbot, two seventh-century English clerics — form an interesting contrast in this trio of hagiographies translated from the Latin. By far the bulk of the text deals with the lives of English saints Cuthbert and Wilfrid, both composed in the eighth century CE by named authors, but at the head of this collection is the curious Navigatio which I personally find more interesting and which will be the main focus of this review.
All three narratives — two being true hagiographies or vitae sanctorum, while the navigatio is really a fantasy travelogue — are full of miracles and homilies, designed to encourage belief and strengthen faith but, beneath accounts of devils being cast out, the dead being restored to life, and hermits being sustained for years solely by spring water, one can discern historical facts and chronological events, all attesting to growing religious influence in the early medieval period.
But in addition to all that is the sense of two different cultures, one Celtic and the other Anglo-Saxon, struggling for primacy on these islands on the northwestern fringes of Europe, cultures that were outward-looking while also closely connected with their continental neighbours.
Inspired by Barinthus, the abbot of Drumcullen, who tells of visiting terra repromissionis sanctorum, Brendan determines to seek the same Land Promised to the Saints. With fourteen of his monks from Clonfert he builds a currach or skin boat and sets off from Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland, first visiting Inishmore in the Aran Islands, here called the Island of Delights, home of the community of St Ailbhe.
Thereafter for seven years the pilgrims make round trips, returning continuously around Easter to three associated landfalls — the Island of Sheep, the Paradise of Birds to its west, and Jasconius — the last being a desert island which turns out to be a sea monster or whale attempting like the Worm Ouroboros to bite its own tail. Though impossible to chart with any accuracy the various legs of the journey involve days of both rowing and of sailing, periods of drifting, and indications of direction; there are also descriptions of what must surely be an iceberg, the creation of an island like Iceland’s Surtsey, and the eruption of a volcano such as Katla or Eyjafjallajökull.
But there are also more fantastical episodes, as when spring water proves soporific and fruit or grapes become life-sustaining, when the monks are variously attacked by a monstrous sea beast and by a griffin, and when they encounter and take pity on Judas perched on a rock and tormented by devils. Nor must we forget Jasconius — the name is supposedly derived from iasc, related to Modern Irish uisce, ‘water’ — on whose back the monks camp and celebrate Mass.
After seven years the voyagers finally reach the Promised Land, a massive island bisected by a river and blessed with a fruitful autumnal climate and precious stones. Is this North America, and do we detect references to the Hebrides, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland embedded in the descriptions of the wonders seen by Brendan and his companions? It’s tempting to believe so; what’s very clear though is that Brendan wasn’t conceived as the first Irishman to have visited these new lands: he was preceded by Barinthus, by the steward on the Island of Sheep, by the perpetual choirs singing on the Island of Steadfast Men, by an anchorite Paul on another island, and so on. Later Viking explorers also testified using Irishmen as guides and scouts. And even wise old Brendan frequently comes across as a know-it-all when the monks arrive somewhere new, almost as if he had prior knowledge of their landfalls.
Contrasting with the Navigatio are the vitae of saints Cuthbert and Wilfrid. These contemporaries — both were born in 634 — are associated with northeast England, and especially with the island community of Lindisfarne. They opposed many of the religious practices followed by the insular Celts, in particular the date they celebrated Easter, and though the Synod of Whitby decided such matters in 664 in favour of the Roman rite practised by the English, universal acceptance was slow in coming. Bede’s Life of Cuthbert may be stuffed full of miracles and Eddius’s Life of Wilfrid emphasises the latter’s peregrinations in continental Europe, but both are more earnestly pious than Brendan’s wonder tale and therefore less to my taste. I admit to skimming the life stories of Cuthbert and Wilfrid; as Webb’s introduction makes clear,
I confess that I find this formulaic pattern of the holy hero, despite its intrinsic historiographic and literary interest, less awe-inspiring than someone who mounts an expedition into the unknown with fourteen companions, all purely on the basis of a friend describing rowing through a bank of cloud and moments later disembarking on a newfound land.
Originally published in 1965, J F Webb’s Lives of the Saints was expanded in 1983 with additional hagiographies translated by D H Farmer (who also provided a new introduction) and retitled The Age of Bede. This later publication still includes the 8th-century Voyage of St Brendan, its significance underlined by the fact that three early manuscripts survive from the ninth century, with at least 120 later manuscripts in Latin and numerous others in different languages. It also inspired Columbus’s voyages, authors such as Swift and C S Lewis, and adventurers such as Tim Severin who recreated Brendan’s journey in a skin boat.
All three narratives — two being true hagiographies or vitae sanctorum, while the navigatio is really a fantasy travelogue — are full of miracles and homilies, designed to encourage belief and strengthen faith but, beneath accounts of devils being cast out, the dead being restored to life, and hermits being sustained for years solely by spring water, one can discern historical facts and chronological events, all attesting to growing religious influence in the early medieval period.
But in addition to all that is the sense of two different cultures, one Celtic and the other Anglo-Saxon, struggling for primacy on these islands on the northwestern fringes of Europe, cultures that were outward-looking while also closely connected with their continental neighbours.
Inspired by Barinthus, the abbot of Drumcullen, who tells of visiting terra repromissionis sanctorum, Brendan determines to seek the same Land Promised to the Saints. With fourteen of his monks from Clonfert he builds a currach or skin boat and sets off from Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland, first visiting Inishmore in the Aran Islands, here called the Island of Delights, home of the community of St Ailbhe.
Thereafter for seven years the pilgrims make round trips, returning continuously around Easter to three associated landfalls — the Island of Sheep, the Paradise of Birds to its west, and Jasconius — the last being a desert island which turns out to be a sea monster or whale attempting like the Worm Ouroboros to bite its own tail. Though impossible to chart with any accuracy the various legs of the journey involve days of both rowing and of sailing, periods of drifting, and indications of direction; there are also descriptions of what must surely be an iceberg, the creation of an island like Iceland’s Surtsey, and the eruption of a volcano such as Katla or Eyjafjallajökull.
But there are also more fantastical episodes, as when spring water proves soporific and fruit or grapes become life-sustaining, when the monks are variously attacked by a monstrous sea beast and by a griffin, and when they encounter and take pity on Judas perched on a rock and tormented by devils. Nor must we forget Jasconius — the name is supposedly derived from iasc, related to Modern Irish uisce, ‘water’ — on whose back the monks camp and celebrate Mass.
After seven years the voyagers finally reach the Promised Land, a massive island bisected by a river and blessed with a fruitful autumnal climate and precious stones. Is this North America, and do we detect references to the Hebrides, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland embedded in the descriptions of the wonders seen by Brendan and his companions? It’s tempting to believe so; what’s very clear though is that Brendan wasn’t conceived as the first Irishman to have visited these new lands: he was preceded by Barinthus, by the steward on the Island of Sheep, by the perpetual choirs singing on the Island of Steadfast Men, by an anchorite Paul on another island, and so on. Later Viking explorers also testified using Irishmen as guides and scouts. And even wise old Brendan frequently comes across as a know-it-all when the monks arrive somewhere new, almost as if he had prior knowledge of their landfalls.
Contrasting with the Navigatio are the vitae of saints Cuthbert and Wilfrid. These contemporaries — both were born in 634 — are associated with northeast England, and especially with the island community of Lindisfarne. They opposed many of the religious practices followed by the insular Celts, in particular the date they celebrated Easter, and though the Synod of Whitby decided such matters in 664 in favour of the Roman rite practised by the English, universal acceptance was slow in coming. Bede’s Life of Cuthbert may be stuffed full of miracles and Eddius’s Life of Wilfrid emphasises the latter’s peregrinations in continental Europe, but both are more earnestly pious than Brendan’s wonder tale and therefore less to my taste. I admit to skimming the life stories of Cuthbert and Wilfrid; as Webb’s introduction makes clear,
The narrative of the saint’s life followed a set pattern: his marvellous infancy and vocation, the struggles and trials by which he proved himself a true athlete of Christ, an account of his gifts, miracles, and prophecies, the warning of approaching death, a farewell address to his disciples, and the death and miracles at the tomb.
I confess that I find this formulaic pattern of the holy hero, despite its intrinsic historiographic and literary interest, less awe-inspiring than someone who mounts an expedition into the unknown with fourteen companions, all purely on the basis of a friend describing rowing through a bank of cloud and moments later disembarking on a newfound land.
Originally published in 1965, J F Webb’s Lives of the Saints was expanded in 1983 with additional hagiographies translated by D H Farmer (who also provided a new introduction) and retitled The Age of Bede. This later publication still includes the 8th-century Voyage of St Brendan, its significance underlined by the fact that three early manuscripts survive from the ninth century, with at least 120 later manuscripts in Latin and numerous others in different languages. It also inspired Columbus’s voyages, authors such as Swift and C S Lewis, and adventurers such as Tim Severin who recreated Brendan’s journey in a skin boat.
October 6, 2025
Three hagiographic biographies of early English saints - Bede's narratives of St. Brendan's voyage and life of St. Cuthbert and Eddius' Life of St. Wilfrid. Many of the events that transpire in these tales have biblical inspirations. It was fun having just been to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne this past summer to read about Cuthbert's life and ministry there.
February 14, 2016
An interesting review of the early English Church of the sixth and seventh century. The book covers the lives of St. Brendan, St. Cuthbert, and St. Wilfrid. These tales have a something for everyone. St. Brendan's life is a tale of fantasy and whimsy and is not unlike our Harry Potter series in tone. The story of St. Cuthbert follows the life of a beloved, sincere, self-sacrificing, and entirely ernest Church Father. And finally, the Life of St. Wilfrid highlights some of the domestic and international tensions of the early British Catholic Church.
This is an original source document, so the only interpretation available is in the book's introduction. You will have to read this both before and after reading the text to put the lives of these three Saints into perspective.
This is an original source document, so the only interpretation available is in the book's introduction. You will have to read this both before and after reading the text to put the lives of these three Saints into perspective.
February 20, 2013
Contains (in order) the anonymous "Voyage of St. Brendan", Bede's "Life of Cuthbert", and Eddius' "Life of Wilfrid". The last two are important historical documents for the Anglo-Saxon period while the first is a retelling of a legend. A brief introduction offers the only editorial help to understand these pieces; there are no footnotes, maps, glossaries or other helps.
May 19, 2012
Only three: Brendan, Cuthbert and Wilfrid, but the title ought to read Lives of Exciting Saints. This little volume has Brendan's famous voyage.
October 9, 2025
These three Lives, of Saints Brendan, Cuthbert, and Wilfrid, are a window into the spiritual life of the British Isles in the sixth and seventh centuries AD. While Brendan’s Life is a travelogue of a faithful monk that wouldn’t be out of place in the universe of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table, with the appearance of angelic and demonic creatures and trips to fantastical islands, the Lives of Cuthbert and Wilfrid are more grounded and show how two somewhat common but gifted young boys of their time grew in holiness and lived devoted to God, performing miracles and inspiring others to faith. Overall these stories help shine light on an era that is, in my opinion, quite unfairly called ‘the dark ages’, considering how the church was busy preserving the flame of Rome and building European civilisation, amidst much drama and change across the continent.
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December 15, 2020I read this book in the early 1970s as part of a second year university course on medieval literature and found it somewhat easy going, as historical veracity was never allowed to get in the way of a good story. It includes The Voyage of St. Brendan, Bede's Life of Cuthbert and Eddius's Life of Wilfrid. All of these stories are set in the sixth and seventh centuries and present a vision of an early Christian form of monasticism far from the centralized control of Rome. The book cost me $1.15!
July 15, 2024
The lives of three English saints- one, a fun story of randomly sailing around the Atlantic ocean and seeing all sorts of things that 100% do not exist; two, a story of asceticism and miracles which is certainly partly true; and three, a story of administration and politics that is almost entirely actual history. Lots for fun for everyone in this collection
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July 21, 2024Translated by J.F. Webb
March 16, 2020
Excellent accounts of three pivotal Saints of early Britain
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November 21, 2009None
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews