MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — Wulfric of Haselbury

All Saints
St. Wulfric of Haselbury
c. 1080 AD, Compton Martin, Somerset (Anglo-Saxon family) — February 20, 1154 AD, Haselbury Plucknett, Somerset
English anchorite; 12th-century English mystic-recluse
Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haselbury Plucknett, Somerset, England — his anchorite cell attached to the parish church; the anchorite cell-window survives in the church wall, United Kingdom
Feast
February 20
Canonized
Pre-congregation; venerated as a principal English anchorite-saint of the 12th century (the Vita Sancti Wulfrici by Abbot John of Ford preserves the principal biographical record)
Life

Wulfric (Old English Wulfric, 'wolf-power') was born around 1080 to an Anglo-Saxon family in Compton Martin, Somerset. In his early career he was a secular priest at Compton Martin and Deverill — a moderately worldly figure interested in hunting, falconry, and the worldly pursuits of his parish patrons.

Around 1125 — after a profound conversion experience — Wulfric undertook the hermit-anchorite life. He established himself in a small cell attached to the outer wall of the parish church of St. Michael at Haselbury Plucknett in Somerset — undertaking the distinctive medieval Catholic vocation of the anchorite (Latin anachoreta, Old English ancre, distinguished from the hermit by the perpetual enclosure within a fixed cell, walled-up and provided only with a small window for the reception of food and the viewing of the adjacent church-altar for the daily Catholic Eucharist).

For 29 years (1125–1154) Wulfric lived in his Haselbury anchorite cell — wearing an iron-mail shirt under his habit (one of the characteristic extreme English ascetic practices of the period), fasting and praying, serving as spiritual counsellor to the stream of visitors who came to his cell-window from across southwestern England.

Among his famous visitors were King Stephen of England (reigned 1135–1154, the anarchy-king of the mid-12th-century English civil war) and the future King Henry II — both undertaking the pilgrimage to consult the reputed prophet-saint of Haselbury during the political crisis of the Anarchy.

Wulfric died at his anchorite cell on February 20, 1154 — just before the succession of Henry II that he had prophesied. His Vita Sancti Wulfrici, composed shortly after his death by Abbot John of Ford (the Cistercian abbot of Ford Abbey in Somerset), preserves the principal biographical record and is one of the principal English 12th-century anchorite-hagiographical texts.

The anchorite cell-window at the church of St. Michael in Haselbury Plucknett survives — preserved in the outer wall of the parish church — as a principal English medieval anchorite-cell archaeological survival.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • The 29-year Haselbury anchoritic ministry

    Wulfric's 29-year (1125–1154) Haselbury anchoritic ministry — maintaining the distinctive medieval Catholic anchorite vocation in his walled-in cell attached to the parish church of St. Michael — is one of the principal documented examples of the distinctive English medieval anchorite-tradition. The tradition would extend through the medieval English Catholic-spiritual culture (St. Christina of Markyate c. 1155, the addressee of St. Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum c. 1162, Julian of Norwich c. 1416, Margery Kempe c. 1438) and produced the distinctive English mystical-recluse Catholic-spiritual tradition.

  • The political prophecies

    Wulfric's famous political prophecies — most his prediction to King Stephen of England that Stephen would die without a surviving male heir and that the throne would pass to the young Henry II (the future founder of the Plantagenet dynasty) — were fulfilled by the 1153 Treaty of Wallingford and the 1154 succession of Henry II. The fulfilled prophecies established Wulfric's reputation as a prophet-saint of the 12th-century English anarchy crisis.

Relics
  • Body
    Tomb of St. Wulfric of Haselbury
    Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haselbury Plucknett, Somerset, England — the anchorite cell-window survives in the outer wall of the church; the medieval shrine destroyed in the Reformation

    His tomb at the church of St. Michael in Haselbury Plucknett was destroyed in the 16th-century Reformation dissolution; the anchorite cell-window survives in the outer wall of the parish church (now Anglican) as a principal English medieval anchorite-cell archaeological survival.

Iconography
  • Wulfric in his Haselbury anchorite cell

    The early-12th-century English anchorite in Benedictine habit in his walled-in cell at the outer wall of the parish church of St. Michael at Haselbury Plucknett, the small cell-window opening to the adjacent church-altar for the daily Catholic Eucharist, the iron-mail shirt visible beneath his habit, the royal visitors King Stephen and the young Henry II approaching the cell-window — the iconography of English Catholic medieval anchorite-tradition.

Patronages
Catholic English anchorites and recluses (with English anchorite-tradition of Sts. Christina of Markyate, Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum addressee, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe)Catholic Somerset and the southwestern English Catholic traditionCatholic priestly converts to the hermit-anchorite life
All SaintsBack to Home