CEOLFRID, St. — Abbot of the two English monasteries of St. Peter at Wearmouth and St. Paul at Jarrow, in Northumberland; b. in that region in 642 of a family of high Anglo-Saxon nobility. At the age of 18 he entered the monastery of Gilling (Yorkshire), whence he passed to Ripon at the invitation of Wilfrid, who, after ten years of study, ordained him priest. At Ripon, though discharging the humble office of baker, he was elected master of the novices. In 674, when St. Benedict Biscop (q.v.) requested him for the foundation of Wearmouth, he served as prior during the abbot’s absence. In 678 he accompanied St. Benedict to Rome, from which they returned with a great quantity of codices, and, with the assent of Pope Agatho, also brought back Abbot John (q.v.), enriching the monastery with relics of St. Peter. In 682 St. Benedict entrusted him with the foundation of Jarrow, and upon the former’s death (690) Ceolfrid succeeded him as abbot of the two twin monasteries, over which, as Bede says, he presided “sollerti regimine praefuit” (PL 94, 725) for more than 25 years.
A septuagenarian and grieving that he could no longer fulfill his duties to the community, he resolved to end his days in Rome. In the summer of 1716, after a three-month journey with a large retinue, he reached Langres, where he fell ill and died on 25 September of that year. Buried there “in monasterio Geminorum,” his relics were later translated to Jarrow and, in the time of the Danish raids, to Glastonbury (cf. William of Malmesbury, De Reg., I, 3).
He zealously labored to bring the Irish and the Scots into conformity with the Roman Church’s discipline regarding the celebration of Easter and the tonsure (cf. Bede, Hist. ecc. Gentis Angl., V, 21: PL 95, 271-280).
With particular satisfaction, Bede reveals that Ceolfrid had three copies of the entire Bible transcribed (“tres pandectes”) according to the version of St. Jerome brought back from Rome (678); two of these he placed in the churches of the double monastery, while the third he took with him as a gift to the Confession of St. Peter (PL 94, 725).
This third copy, executed at Jarrow (or Wearmouth) between the 7th and 8th centuries under the direction of Bede himself, is the celebrated Codex Amiatinus, one of the most precious and ancient manuscripts of the Vulgate. It almost certainly derives from the library of Cassiodorus. Ceolfrid having died en route, his wish was fulfilled by his disciples. The codex, which on its first leaf, of purple-stained parchment, bears the dedicatory epigram with the name of “Coelfridus abbas,” later passed to the Lombard monastery of the Saviour on Mount Amiata (whence its name). Following the conventual suppressions of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under Pietro Leopoldo (1785), the Amiatine Bible is now preserved in the Laurentian Library in Florence.
The identification of the Amiatine codex with Ceolfrid’s exemplar is due to G. B. De Rossi, who succeeded in restoring the damaged dedicatory epigram by removing the alterations made by Abbot Peter, who had substituted his own name for that of Ceolfrid. Highly esteemed for its text, the codex was temporarily brought to Rome in 1586 for the use of the correctors of the Vulgate.