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SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFIN, MARTYRS - 24 JULY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JULY

Saints celebrated on the 24th of July

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFIN, MARTYRS  

They were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the king of Mercia, second brother and successor of Peada. Having been privately baptised by St Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, they were both slain whilst they were at their prayers by their father’s order, who, out of political views, at that time favoured idolatry, though he afterwards did remarkable penance for this crime. 

THEY WERE BOTH SLAIN

His father Penda had persecuted the Christians; but his elder brother Peada had begun to establish the faith in his dominions. Florence of Worcester says, Wulfere was only baptised a little before his death, in 675, consequently after this murder; but Bede testifies that he was godfather to Edelwalch, king of the West-Saxons, almost twenty years before. 

But either he relapsed, (at least so far as to be for some time favourable to idolatry,) or this murder was contrived, by some Pagan courtiers, without his privity, as Bradshaw relates it. 

SHE CAUSED THEIR BODIES TO BE BURIED

The queen Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, caused their bodies to be buried at Stone, which place took its name from a great heap of stones which was raised over their tomb, according to the Saxon custom. 

THE CHURCH

She afterwards employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs who were patrons of the town, and of a priory of regular canons there.

The procurator of this house, in a journey to Rome, prevailed on the pope to enrol these two royal martyrs among the saints, and left the head of St Wulfhad, which he had carried with him, in the church of St Laurence at Viterbo. 

THEY ABOLISHED IDOLS ALL OVER MERCIA

After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred abolished idols over all Mercia. See the acts of these royal martyrs in the History of Peterborough abbey, and Leland’s Itinerary and Collection, and also Cuper the Bollandist.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 The 12th century seal matrix of Stone Priory, which bears the image of the Virgin and Child, made from copper, which, oddly enough, was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast in Surrey a couple of years ago; image c/o BBC)

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