Alphege
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Saint Alphege (Ælfheah) (954 - April 19 1012), Archbishop of Canterbury, came of a noble family, but in early life gave up everything to devote himself to his faith.
Having assumed the monastic habit in the monastery of Deerhurst, he passed thence to Bath, where he became an anchorite and ultimately abbot, distinguishing himself by his piety and the austerity of his life. In 984 he was appointed through Dunstan's influence to the bishopric of Winchester, and in 1006 he succeeded Aelfric as Archbishop of Canterbury.
At the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1011 Ælfheah was captured and kept in prison for seven months. Refusing to pay a ransom, he was murdered at Greenwich, London on April 19, 1012 (St Alfege's Church reputedly marks the place he died).
An account of his death appears in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
. . . for there was wine brought them from the south. Then took they the bishop . . . on the eve of the Sunday after Easter . . . They overwhelmed him with bones and horns of oxen; and one of them smote him with an axe-iron on the head; so that he sunk downwards with the blow; and his holy blood fell on the earth, whilst his sacred soul was sent to the realm of God.
Some sources record the final blow, with the back of an axe, being dealt by one 'Thrum' as an act of kindness by a Christian convert.
He was buried in St Paul's, whence his body was removed by Canute to Canterbury with all the ceremony of a great act of state in 1023. Alphege was canonised in 1078. An incised paving slab to the north of the present High Altar of Canterbury Cathedral marks the place where the mediaeval shrine is believed to have stood.
Dedications
Dedications include: St. Alphege the Martyr, Canterbury (now used as an urban studies centre), St Alfege's Church, Greenwich, the twin churches of St. Alphege Whitstable and St. Alphege Seasalter (chancel only surviving) and St Alphege in Solihull, the main town of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull.Feast day
Feast Day: April 19th.Accounts
Lives of St. Alphege in prose - which survives - and in verse were written by command of Lanfranc by the Canterbury monk Osborn (d. c. 1090), who says that his account of the solemn translation to Canterbury in 1023 was received from the dean, Godric, one of Alphege's own scholars.External links
References
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