Alcmund of Hexham (died 7 September 780 or 781) became the 7th bishop of the see of
Hexham
Hexham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Tyne, formed by the confluence of the North Tyne and the South Tyne at Warden nearby, and close to Hadrian's Wall. Hexham was the administra ...
in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land ...
when he was consecrated on 24 April 767;
[Fryde, et al. ''Handbook of British Chronology'' p. 217] the see was centred on the church there founded by
Wilfrid
Wilfrid ( – 709 or 710) was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Francia, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and ...
.
Alcmund died on 7 September 780 or 781
[ and was buried beside Acca outside the church. Virtually nothing is now known of his life, but he was apparently deeply venerated as one of the Hexham saints.
]
Relics
By the early 11th century, after the Danes had ravaged this part of the country, it seems that his tomb had been entirely forgotten. Symeon of Durham
__NOTOC__
Symeon (or Simeon) of Durham (died after 1129) was an English chronicler and a monk of Durham Priory.
Biography
Symeon entered the Benedictine monastery at Jarrow as a youth. It moved to Durham in 1074, and he was professed in 1085 or ...
writes that Alcmund appeared in a vision to Dregmo, a man of Hexham, urging him to tell Alfred son of Westou, sacrist
A sacristan is an officer charged with care of the sacristy, the church, and their contents.
In ancient times, many duties of the sacrist were performed by the doorkeepers ( ostiarii), and later by the treasurers and mansionarii. The Decreta ...
of Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
* Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
, to have his body translated
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
(removed and re-buried as a relic). Alfred did so, but stole one of the bones to take back with him to Durham; the shrine however could not be moved by any strength of man until the bone was replaced.[Thurston, Herbert. "St. Alcmund." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 18 May 2013]
/ref>
In 1154, the church, having been ruined again, was again restored, and the bones of the Hexham saints, including Alcmund, were gathered into a single shrine
A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon, or similar figure of respect, wherein they ...
. The Scot
The Scots ( sco, Scots Fowk; gd, Albannaich) are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic-speaking peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded t ...
s however pillaged and finally destroyed both church and shrine in a border raid in 1296.[
]
Notes
Citations
References
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alcmund of Hexham
780s deaths
Northumbrian saints
Bishops of Hexham
8th-century English bishops
8th-century Christian saints
Year of birth unknown