EDDIUS

'Eddius' ('Æddi') 'Stephanus' was a Kentish choirmaster recruited by bishop Wilfrid (c. 634 - 709) on his return to his see in York in 669, to help in organizing church services in Northumbria and in teaching the Roman method of chant. He was an inmate of the monastery of Ripon in 709, when St. Wilfrid spent his last days there.
Eddius later wrote the ''Vita Wilfridi'', a biography of his patron, at the request of Acca (Wilfrid's successor in the See of Hexham). This is the earliest surviving historical work compiled by an Anglo-Saxon author. He is a strong partisan and very credulous, but the ''Vita Wilfridi'' is nevertheless invaluable for the period it treats. Its date is little after the first decade of the 8th century, and it was used by Bede in compiling his ''Historia''.

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Bibliography

Bibliography

Eddius' ''Life of Wilfrid'' has been edited three times:

★ James Raine, ''Historians of Church of York, London'' (1879 - 1894)

★ Wilhelm Levison, in ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica., Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum'', vol. 6 (1913)

★ Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927).

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