MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — John of Beverley

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St. John of Beverley
c. 640 AD, Harpham, East Riding of Yorkshire — May 7, 721 AD, Beverley Minster, Yorkshire
Bishop of Hexham and York; teacher of Bede
Beverley Minster (Church of St. John of Beverley), East Riding of Yorkshire — his foundation; one of the largest parish churches in England, United Kingdom
Feast
May 7 (death) and October 25 (translation, 1037 AD)
Canonized
Canonized 1037 AD by Pope Benedict IX — among the earliest formal papal canonizations of an English saint
Life

John was born around 640 at Harpham in the East Riding of Yorkshire, of noble Northumbrian Anglian family. He studied at Canterbury under Theodore of Tarsus, then became a monk of Whitby under St. Hilda.

He was consecrated Bishop of Hexham in 687, succeeding St. Eata, and translated to the see of York in 705 on the death of Bosa. As Bishop of Hexham and York he ordained the young Bede priest around 703 (Bede being then about thirty years old) and remained one of his foundational teachers — Bede preserves in his Ecclesiastical History (5.2–5.6) the most affectionate and personal portraits of any bishop he knew.

Around 717 he founded the monastery at Inderawood ('among the beavers'), the modern Beverley, in the forest of the East Riding — withdrawing there in 718 to spend his last years in monastic retreat, having resigned York to his disciple Wilfrid the Younger.

He died at Beverley on May 7, 721. Beverley became one of the principal pilgrim shrines of medieval England — drawing royal patronage from Athelstan (who attributed his 937 victory at Brunanburh to St. John's intercession), Edward the Confessor, the Norman kings, and especially Henry V, who attributed his victory at Agincourt (October 25, 1415 — Beverley's translation feast) to the saint's intercession and established his feast in the English calendar.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • The healing of the dumb boy at Hexham

    Bede's Ecclesiastical History (5.2) records — from John's contemporary Berthun, who witnessed it — that during a Lenten retreat at Hexham, John summoned a young man who had been dumb from birth, made the sign of the Cross on his tongue, and commanded him to speak the alphabet, then syllables, then whole words. The young man, whose head was also scabrous and ulcerated, was healed of both afflictions over the course of the Lent. It is one of the most circumstantial recorded miracles in Bede.

  • The Battle of Agincourt — October 25, 1415

    The feast of the translation of St. John of Beverley (October 25, 1037) falls on the date of the Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415). Henry V publicly attributed his unexpected victory to the saint's intercession (also crediting St. Crispin) and ordered the feast of the translation kept throughout England as a foundational royal-Catholic devotion — the feast continued in the English calendar until the Reformation.

Relics
  • Body
    Shrine of St. John of Beverley
    Beverley Minster, East Riding of Yorkshire — the medieval shrine destroyed in the 1541 dissolution-era despoliation; his relics reburied in 1664 beneath the nave (still in situ)

    His shrine at Beverley Minster was one of the principal pilgrim destinations of medieval northern England — drawing royal pilgrimage from Athelstan through the Tudors. The shrine was destroyed under Henry VIII; the saint's relics, however, were reburied beneath the nave of the surviving minster in 1664, and remain there today (the slab in the nave marks the spot).

Iconography
  • John of Beverley healing the dumb boy

    The late-7th-century Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Hexham in episcopal vestments at the Hexham hermitage tracing the sign of the Cross on the tongue of the young dumb boy of Berthun's account — the iconography of foundational Anglo-Saxon Catholic episcopal-healing tradition.

Patronages
Diocese of York (Catholic and Anglican)Town of BeverleyThe deaf and the mute (his foundational healing of the dumb boy of Hexham)Catholic Anglo-Saxon university and educational tradition (as teacher of Bede)
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