Guthlac of Crowland

Saint Guthlac of Crowland (Old English: Gūðlāc) (673–714) was a Christian saint from Lincolnshire in England. He is particularly venerated in the Fens of eastern England.

Life

Guthlac was the son of Penwalh or Penwald, a noble of the English kingdom of Mercia, and his wife Tette. His sister is also venerated as Saint Pega. As a young man, he fought in the army of Æthelred of Mercia and subsequently became a monk at Repton Monastery in Derbyshire at age twenty-four, under the abbess (Repton was a double monastery). Two years later he sought to live the life of a hermit, and moved out to the island of Croyland, now called Crowland on St Bartholomew's Day, AD 699. His early biographer Felix asserts that Guthlac could understand the strimulentes loquelas ("sibilant speech") of the British-speaking demons who haunted him there, only because Guthlac had spent some time in exile among British-speaking people.

Guthlac built a small oratory and cells in the side of a plundered barrow on the island, and he lived there the rest of his life until his death on 11 April in AD 714. Felix, writing within living memory of Guthlac, described his eremitic life as follows: