Saint Botolph

Infobox Saint
name=Saint Botolph
birth_date=7th century
death_date=680
feast_day=17 June (in England)
25 June (in Scotland)
venerated_in=Roman Catholic Church
Anglican Communion


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patronage= the patron saint of travellers and farming
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Botolph, Botulph or Botulf (d. c. 680) was an English abbot and saint. He is the patron saint of travellers and the various aspects of farming. His feast day is celebrated either on 17 June (in England) or 25 June (in Scotland), and his translation on 1 December.

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 Peada, 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.². The Life of St Ceolfrith, written around the time of Bede by an unknown author mentions an abbot named Botolphus in East Anglia, "a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit". Suffolk is part of East Anglia.³

Botolph is supposed to have been buried at his foundation of Icanho. In 970 King Edgar gave permission for his remains to be transferred to Burgh, near Woodbridge where they remained for some 50 years before being transferred, on the instructions of Cnut, to their own tomb at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds.

His relics were later translated (with those of his brother Adulf) to Thorney Abbey, 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. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints states that 64 ancient English churches were dedicated to Saint Botolph, but later research has suggested the true number may have been as large as 71.

In his guise as a patron saint of travellers, four City of London churches, near gates in the City walls, were dedicated to him - St Botolph Billingsgate (destroyed in the Great Fire and never rebuilt), St Botolph Aldersgate, St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate (where the poet Keats was baptised) and St Botolph's Aldgate. This is attributed to providing places for incoming travellers to give thanks to him for safe arrival and for outgoing travellers to pray to him for a safe journey, and/or to relics of him coming through these four gates when King Edgar moved them from Iken to Westminster Abbey.

Lists

Lists of churches dedicated to him can be found:
* [http://www.st-botolphs.com/botolph/st_b_other.htm St Botolph's] and
* [http://www.angelfire.com/super2/botolph Society of Saint Botolph] .

ecular connections

St. Botolph founded the monastery of Ikanhoe in East Anglia, and the place name was "Botolphston" (from "Botolph's stone" or "Botolph's town"), later shortened to "Boston".

He is remembered in the names of both the market town of Boston in Lincolnshire (100 miles north of London), and Boston in Massachusetts, America.

In the New England city of Boston, St Botolph is the name of a street (St. Botolph Street), a private club [http://www.saintbotolphclub.org/index.html] and the President's House at Boston College.

There is also a St. Botolph Street in London, England, as well as its being the name of several churches dedicated to the saint.

Cambridge University's poetry journal in the 1950s was called "St. Botolph's Review", for which Ted Hughes wrote. It was named for St. Botolph's Church in Cambridge, since one of its co-founders, Lucas Myers, lived on the grounds of its rectory. A second edition of the journal was published in 2006.

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
* Ryan, George E., "Botolph Of Boston", Christopher Publishing House (1971) ISBN 0815802528
* Savage, A., "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles", Godalming (1995) ISBN 1-85833-478-0

External links

* [http://www.st-botolphs.com/botolph/st_botolph_life.htm Life of St Botolph]
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02709a.htm Catholic Encyclopaedia - Life of Botulph]
* [http://ely.anglican.org/about/good_and_great/botulph.html Botulph - East Anglian Saint]
* [http://www.stedmundsbury.anglican.org/~burgh/ff/botolph.jpgIcon of St. Botolph]

Footnotes

* Note 1: But see Penda footnote 1.
* Note 2: See Life of St Botolph external link.
* Note 3: For a summary of the politics of East Anglia in the transition between Paganism and Christianity, see Care Evans, A., Chapters 13 and 14.