Saint Adulf (also Adolph, Adolf, Athwulf, Æthelwulf or Æðelwulf) (died 680 AD) was an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

saint.

Life

Adulf is said to have been the brother of

Botolph Botolph of Thorney (also called Botolph, Botulph or Botulf; later known as Saint Botolph; died around 680) was an English abbot and saint. He is regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension, of trade and travel, as well as vario ...

, but virtually nothing is known about his life. The story, which originated with a monk of Thorney,

Folcard Folcard or Foulcard (fl. 1066) was a Flemish hagiographer. Life Folcard, a Fleming by birth, was a monk of St. Bertin's in Flanders (now Northern France), and is supposed to have come over to England in the reign of Edward the Confessor. He enter ...

's, account of Botolph's life, that Adulf was at one-time bishop of

Maastricht Maastricht ( , , ; li, Mestreech ; french: Maestricht ; es, Mastrique ) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the ...

, is now generally thought to rest on a confusion of names and to have no substance. However, it does explain the reason today's saint is often honored as a bishop. The monastery at Iken, in

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

, was destroyed in

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

raids. It is said that when by the orders of

Æthelwold of Winchester Æthelwold of Winchester (also Aethelwold and Ethelwold, 904/9 – 984) was Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984 and one of the leaders of the tenth-century monastic reform movement in Anglo-Saxon England. Monastic life had declined to ...

, Botolph's body was disinterred for translation to the new abbey of Thorney, Adulf's body was buried with it, and as it proved impossible to disentangle the bones, the remains of both saints were taken to Thorney, where the relics of Adulf remained."Saint Adulf", Newman Connection
/ref> The feast day of both saints is 17 June.

References and notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adulf Year of birth unknown 680s deaths East Anglian saints 7th-century Christian saints