St Botolph

[Kristos]

Righteous Father Botolph, Abbot of the Monastery of Ikanhoe
June 17
Reading:
Saint Botolph was born in Britain about the year 610 and in his youth became a
monk in Gaul. The sisters of Ethelmund, King of East Anglia, who were also sent
to Gaul to learn the monastic discipline, met Saint Botolph, and learning of
his intention to return to Britain, bade their brother the King grant him land
on which to found the monastery. Hearing the King's offer, Saint Botolph asked
for land not already in any man's possession, not wishing that his gain should
come through another's loss, and chose a certain desolate place called Ikanhoe.
At his coming, the demons' inhabiting Ikanhoe rose up against him with tumult,
threats, and horrible apparitions, but the Saint drove them away with the sign
of the Cross and his prayer. Through his monastery he established in England
the rule of monastic life that he had learned in Gaul. He worked signs and
wonders, had the gift of prophecy, and "was distinguished for his sweetness of
disposition and affability." In the last years of his life he bore a certain
painful sickness with great patience, giving thanks like Job and continuing to
instruct his spiritual children in the rules of the monastic life. He fell
asleep in peace about the year 680. His relics were later found incorrupt, and
giving off a sweet fragrance. The place where he founded his monastery came to
be called "Botolphston" (from either "Botolph's stone" or "Botolph's town")
which was later contracted to "Boston."

 

[Sphinx777]

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.

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 653: 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. 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.

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.

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 of churches dedicated to him can be found:

* St. Botolph's and
* Society of Saint Botolph.

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, 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.

 

[boswd]

Yeah Boston's Patron Saint!!!!!!!