St. Egbert

Saint Ecgberht
Born	639 England
Died	729 Iona
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholicism
Major shrine	Ripon
Feast	24 April

Saint Ecgberht (or Egbert) (died 729) was an Anglo-Saxon monk of Northumbria and Bishop of Lindisfarne.

Ecgberht was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, probably from Northumbria. In 664, as a youth, he traveled to Ireland to study. One of his acquaintances at this time was Chad. He settled at the monastery of Rathelmigisi (Rathmelsigi), identified with Mellifont in County Louth or else in Connaught. His Northumbrian traveling companions, including Æthelhun, died of the plague, and he contracted it as well.

Ecgberht vowed that if he recovered, he would become a "peregrinus" on perpetual pilgrimage from his homeland of Britain and would lead a life of penitential prayer and fasting. He was twenty-five, and when he recovered he kept his vow until his death at age 90. According to Henry Mayr-Harting, Ecgberht was one of the most famous ‘pilgrims’ of the early Middle Ages, and occupied a prominent position in a political and religious culture that spanned northern Britain and the Irish Sea.

He began to organize monks in Ireland to proselytize in Frisia; many other high-born notables were associated with his work: Saint Adalbert, Saint Swithbert, and Saint Chad. Ecgberht arranged the mission of Saint Willibrord, Saint Wigbert and others to the pagans. He, however, was dissuaded from this by a vision related to him by a monk who had been a disciple of Saint Boisil (the Prior of Melrose under Abbot Eata). Ecgberht instead dispatched Wihtberht, another Englishman living at Rath Melsigi, to Frisia.

In 684, he tried to dissuade King Ecgfrith of Northumbria from sending an expedition to Ireland under his general Berht, but he was unsuccessful.

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