Image 1 of 1: Saint Cedd, devotional portrait
Saints and feasts
St. Cedd
Bishop of the East Saxons
St. Cedd is remembered as a practical missionary bishop from the hard early English Church. He preached, founded, traveled, fasted, and kept building where the faith was still young and fragile.
The reading
ⓘ Butler source
Butler's Lives of the Saints, Volume IV (October-November-December), October 26, St Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, Christian Classics 1990, pp. 205-206.
Cedd belongs to the generation that truly planted Christianity in early England. Formed at Lindisfarne and sent where the faith was still new and uncertain, he moved among the Middle Angles and then into Essex, building churches, ordaining clergy, founding monastic centers, and helping carry the first conversion of the East Saxons. The life is attractive because it stays close to the ground.
Bradwell, Tilbury, Lastingham, Whitby, travel, fasting, preaching, and the plain labor of foundations give it its shape. Cedd is not remembered for dramatic private legend, but for doing the hard missionary work by which a fragile church became real.
Historical note
This life is closely tied to Bede and keeps the focus on missionary work, foundations, and the early English Church rather than later legend.
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Act of Faith
Cedd's mission invites us to pray for a firm and living faith.
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