Who was St Birinus and why is he called the Apostle to the West Saxons?
An icon of the baptism of King Cynegils by St Birinus. (Photo: St Birinus Catholic Church)3 December is the day to remember St Birinus, known as the Apostle to the West Saxons. This is his story …
Origins
Birinus was born about 600 in the Lombard region of Italy. He started as a monk at the Benedictine monastery on Caelian Hill in Rome, where he was ordained. This was the same monastery which produced St Gregory the Great and St Augustine of Canterbury. Birinus then served as a bishop in the city of Genoa, Italy.
Sent to Britain
He was then commissioned by Pope Honorius I as a missionary apostolate to take the Gospel to the most inland pagan parts of England. He set off in AD 634 with a group of monks, and they planned to cross the English Channel to Kent, where the Christian faith was already established. However, gales in the Channel hurled the ship to Hampshire where they landed in 635. He stepped ashore at the port of Hamwic, the ancient Saxon port which became Southampton.
From there he headed northwards inland to the Thames Valley, preaching from place to place. The story is told by the Venerable Bede, that Birinus found the West Saxons to be confirmed pagans, worshipping Woden and Thor, and so he decided to stay and chose these people as his mission field. He learnt the Anglo-Saxon language and earned people’s trust.
Gewisse
He was in the kingdom of the Gewisse (a forerunner of Wessex), who were a West Saxon tribe living in the Thames Valley in what is now Oxfordshire, western Berkshire, northern Wiltshire, Somerset, and south Gloucestershire. It was ruled by the pagan King Cynegils. Birinus attracted great crowds. Tales speak of him healing the blind and the deaf. His gentle fervour melted the suspicions of the chieftains and the common folk alike.
King Cynegils
Birinus requested an audience with King Cynegils, who granted him one at Churn Knob, a Neolithic mound on the side of Churn Hill near Blewbury in the Vale of the White Horse. It was there that Birinus's preaching pierced the royal heart. King Cynegils sought baptism, but only if a Christian ally could stand as sponsor. King Oswald of Northumbria (who later chaired the Synod of Whitby with St Hilda) arrived to sponsor the baptism which took place in the River Thames at Dorchester-on-Thames in 635, with Oswald as godfather. Oswald then married Cyneburga, who was Cynegils’s daughter.
Dorchester-on-Thames
Cynegils gave Birinus land at Dorchester-on-Thames, thirteen miles southeast of Oxford, where he built a church and abbey, and this became the base for mission operations. Over time the royal family and tribe converted to Christianity. Birinus became the first Bishop of Dorchester in 634, and Dorchester (not to be confused with Dorchester in Dorset) became the seat of the new Diocese of Wessex, which was considered the third most important centre for Christian mission in England after Canterbury and York. From Dorchester, he trained and ordained clergy. The monks took the faith in all directions around Wessex and across the River Thames into neighbouring areas, and multitudes were converted. New Christians were baptised in ponds and rivers, and church buildings were constructed in towns and villages. Wessex began to change culturally.
Death
Birinus died at Dorchester on December 3 in or about AD 650, and was buried at Dorchester-on-Thames, which became a pilgrimage site. Birinus’s relics were said to have been later moved to the Old Minister in Winchester, and Winchester then became a pilgrimage place for St Birinus for centuries. However, centuries later in 1224 the canons of Dorchester Abbey claimed that St Birinus’ body was still in their possession, so they built a marble shrine to house his relics. As a result, he had two shrines, one at Dorchester-on-Thames and one at Winchester. Both of these shrines were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, but the one at Dorchester was reconstructed from surviving fragments in 1964.
Diocese of Dorchester
Birinus was succeeded as bishop of Dorchester by Agilbert. Later in about 660 the seat of the bishop of Wessex moved to Winchester, the capital of Wessex. In 1070 the Normans redrew the diocesan boundaries of England, and the heartland of the Diocese of Dorchester came under the Diocese of Lincoln which stretched from the Thames to the Humber. In the 1830s the Diocese of Oxford was organised with Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. Since 1939 there has been a Bishop of Dorchester again as a suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Oxford.
Remembrance
Birinus is sometimes known as the “Apostle to the West Saxons”, and the patron saint of missionaries. Thanks to St Birinus, Wessex was converted to Christianity and later produced great Christian leaders like Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor. He was never formally canonised but his memory has been venerated since early centuries.
There are a few Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches dedicated to St Birinus in England, and there are churches which claim to have been founded by him in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. He appears in stained glass windows in many churches in these three counties which claim his spiritual heritage.
There is a 10-mile pilgrimage route from Churn Knob to Dorchester Abbey, which people walk once a year on the first Sunday in July. His saint’s day is on the anniversary of his death on December 3.
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