ST. BOLTOPH (JUNE 17TH)
Edited Bp Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) St. Botolph is one of the earliest and most famous of East Anglian missionaries, becoming the patron saint of all travelers in the English Patrimony. St. Botolph was of noble Saxon lineage, living in the 7th century, and was sent to be educated in a Benedictine Abbey in Frankish lands. After a long sojourn amongst the Germanic Tribes, St. Botolph eventually came back to East Anglia to evangelize his own people. The local king, Ana, gave him land on which to build a monastery, where he established a center of monasticism and missionary work for East Anglians in AD 654. This place was called Icanhoh, the present “Boston” (meaning “Botolph’s Town”) in Lincolnshire, East Midlands. Icanhoh was a marshland, and St. Botolph was said to have expelled the demons that lived in the swamps, which had preyed upon innocent travelers as they passed through the hinterlands. Stained Glass of St. Boltoph, from St. Boltoph’s Angl...
