Eddius

Eddius (Æddi), a Kentish choirmaster, summoned by Wilfrid (c. 634-709), bishop of York, to help in organizing church services in Northumbria.

He wrote the Life of his patron, and this biography of St Wilfrid is the earliest extant historical work compiled by an Anglo-Saxon author. He is a strong partisan and very credulous, but the Vita Wilfridi is nevertheless invaluable for the period it treats. Its date is little after the first decade of the 8th century, and it was used by Bede in compiling his Historia.

See Eddius, Viti Wilfridi (Raine, Historians of Church of York, London, 1879—1894), 14; Bede, Hist. Eccl. (Plummer, Oxford, 1896).

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.