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St. Werenfrid of Elst

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Saints and feasts

St. Werenfrid of Elst

Priest and Confessor

Werenfrid was an English monk who assisted Willibrord’s mission in the Netherlands. Butler remembers his preaching in the Betuwe and his burial at Elst.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Local observance: August 14 in Holland
Butler prints the notice under November 7 but expressly gives August 14 for the local observance.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 7, “St Werenfrid, Priest and Confessor,” pp. 191-192.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 7, “St Werenfrid, Priest and Confessor,” pp. 191-192.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 7, “St Werenfrid, Priest and Confessor,” pp. 191-192.

Werenfrid was an English monk who joined the mission associated with St. Willibrord. Butler notes a difference among the historians: some thought he travelled with Willibrord, while others placed his arrival later. Both accounts connect him with the same work of preaching the Gospel.

His ministry took him into the Betuwe, the region between the rivers of the Netherlands. The notice gives particular attention to Elst, where he was buried. His tomb became a place of pilgrimage, with cures reported in the devotional tradition.

Balderic, bishop of Utrecht, later established a collegiate church in his honour at Elst. Butler prints this notice among the readings for November 7 but expressly gives August 14 as Werenfrid’s observance in Holland. This reading preserves that distinction between its place in the book and the local commemoration.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 sources. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

November 7 is the placement of the notice in Butler. The source explicitly identifies August 14 as the observance in Holland; the reading date is not presented as a universal feast.

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