288 General Discussion of the Crosses 



one which stood at the head of his grave. ^ Greenwell attributes 

 the work to ' the Italian craftsmen whom St. Wilfrid brought over ^ 



1 Greenwell, p. 58 ; Enlart, in Michel, Hist, de VArt 2. 199 (Enlart makes 

 the mistake of saying that the cross bears the name of Acca) ; Rivoira, Lonib. 

 Arch. 2. 143. 



^ Too much has been made of Wilfrith's importation of foreign workmen 

 into England. He may, indeed, have brought artisans from the Continent, 

 but the evidence that he did so is too late to be of any value. The facts are 

 these (dates from Plummer's edition of Bede's Opera Hist. 2. 316 ff.). Wil- 

 frith was on the Continent twice before he began his building operations at 

 York, Ripon, and Hexham. His first journey was at the age of 19, on which 

 occasion he proceeded to Rome by way of Lyons, in company with Benedict 

 Biscop, who was perhaps half a dozen years his senior ; after remaining at 

 Rome several months, he returned to Lyons, and stayed there three years, 

 reaching England after an absence of five years. On the second occasion 

 he went to France, in order to be consecrated as bishop at Compiegne. This 

 time he was abroad for two years, and after his return spent three years 

 at Ripon, varied by the discharge of episcopal duties in Mercia and Kent. 

 This brings us to 669, and his constructions at Ripon did not begin for at 

 least two years (perhaps considerably longer). The church at Hexham was 

 probably not begun till 674, or eight years after his return from France. 

 Now the only passage in Eddi, the one supreme authority for Wilfrith's 

 life, which contains any direct mention of mechanics, is most naturally 

 referred to 669 ; it is as follows (chap. 14 : Historians of the Church of York 

 1. 22) : ' Ideo autem venerabiliter vivens, omnibus carus, episcopalia officia 

 per plura spatia agens, cum cantoribus vEdde et Eonan, et caementariis, 

 omnisque psene artis institoribus, regionem suam rediens cum regula Sancti 

 Benedicti, instituta ecclesiarum Dei bene meliorabat.' This ^'Edde, or Eddi, 

 was the same that wrote his life, and him Wilfrith took from Kent after the 

 arrival of Archbishop Theodore in 669 (Bede, Hist. Eccl. 4. 2). Accordingly, 

 it must have been in this same year that the builders and artisans accom- 

 panied him on his return to Northumbria {regionem suam rediens). It Avill 

 be remembered that he had then been back three years from his second visit 

 to the Continent ; in the period just before him he was to have sufficient 

 employment for his workmen — first of all, probably, in the repair of the 

 church at York— whereas in the previous three years he had not, so far as 

 we know, any important operations in which to employ them. On the face 

 of it, then, it looks as though he had found his workmen where he found 

 his singers— in Kent, at that time a centre of learning and the arts. More- 

 over, there is no proof that he needed the superior abUities of a foreign archi- 

 tect (the young man, probably one of the masons, who fell from the roof of 

 the Hexham church while it was building (Eddi, chap. 22) was a monk 

 [ex servis Dei) with an English name, Bothelm), for Eddi (chap. 22), whUe 

 he says that the church of St. Andrew at Hexham surpassed any building 

 of which he had ever heard north of the Alps {neque enim ullam dom iwi citra 

 (76) 



