St. Botolph

St. Botolph was born in East Anglia in the 7th century into a noble Saxon family. He and his brother were educated at a local monastery and then sent to France for further study. There, the brothers became Benedictines.

Botolph’s brother stayed abroad, but Botolph returned to England, where he was permitted to build a monastery in Suffolk around 654. The Icanho monastery was on an island surrounded by tidal marshland, but the monks and hermits drawn to the location turned it into a productive center. Botolph was said to have expelled the swamps of their “devils” – in fact, he probably had the marshes drained for farmland, eliminating the “marsh gas” with its night glow.

On top of being abbot of the monastery, Botolph also served as a missionary in East Anglia, Kent and Sussex

Botolph died around 680. Originally buried at Icanho, his remains were moved in the tenth century after the monastery itself was destroyed in a Danish invasion in 870. Transferred several more times, his relics, along with those of his brother’s, were eventually brought to Thorney Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Cambridgeshire (though his head wound up in Ely and other body parts in Westminster).

St. Botolph is a patron of boundaries, travel, and farming. The four churches of London close to the city gates were named for him. His feast day in England is June 17.