Saint Botolph
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Botolph, Botulph or Botulf (born 610, died circa 680) was an English abbot and saint. He is the patron saint of the various aspects of farming. His feast day is celebrated either on 17 June or 25 June, and his translation on 1 December.
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Life and works
Little is known about his life, other than doubtful details in a surviving account written four hundred years after his death by the eleventh-century monk Folcard. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records for the year 6531: The Middle Angles, under earldorman Penda, received the true faith. King Anna was killed and Botulf began to build the church at Ikanho. There is no modern town named Icanho (which means 'ox-island' or more strictly, 'ox hill', as in Plymouth Hoe) and the location is disputed; it may be in southern Lincolnshire, where some of the newly Christianized Middle Angles lived, but is most likely to have been by the estuary of the Alde in Suffolk, where a church remains on top of an isolated hill in the parish of Iken; just the place for an early monastery. Template:Getamap2. Bede mentions an abbot named Botolphus in East Anglia, "a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit". Lincolnshire was not in East Anglia but Iken was3.
Botolph was a popular missionary. (To converse with him, a man 'of remarkable life and learning', St. Ceolfrid is said to have journeyed from Wearmouth in County Durham). Botolph is supposed to have been buried at his foundation of Icanho.
His relics were later translated (with those of his brother Adulf) to Thorney, although his head was transferred to Ely and other portions to Westminster Abbey and other houses.
Church dedications
Many churches between Yorkshire and Sussex are dedicated to him, with a concentration in East Anglia, including Colchester, Eynsford, Hadstock, Shepshed and the Lincoln deanery called Christianity. However, probably the best known is The Stump in the Lincolnshire town of Boston (Botolph's town), from which the Massachusetts city of Boston takes its name through the influence of John Cotton.
Secular connections
In the New England city of Boston, St Botolph is the name of a street, a private club and the President's House at Boston College.
Cambridge University's poetry journal in the 1950s was called St. Botolph's Review, for which Ted Hughes wrote.
References
- Attwater, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints London (1965)
- Care Evans, A. The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial London (1986) ISBN 0-7141-0544-9
- Savage, A. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Godalming (1995) ISBN 1-85833-478-0