DUNSTANO, SANTO

DUNSTAN, Saint. – Born c. 925 (according to Toke [The Bosworth Psalter, ed. Gasquet-Bishop, London 1908, pp. 131-43] in 910), died 19 May 988. He was educated in the monastery of Glastonbury and at the court of Æthelstan (924-40), of whom he was a kinsman. He was removed from court because his love of study made him suspect of sorcery. He took refuge with his kinsman St ELPHEGE, bishop of Winchester; then he returned as a monk to the monastery of Glastonbury, of which EDMUND (940-46), who succeeded Æthelstan, made him abbot (c. 945). There he trained a host of bishops and abbots. He was counsellor to EDRED (946-55) in ecclesiastical and even political affairs, but fell into disfavour with EDWY (955-58), to whom he had reproached his evil ways, and was exiled to Flanders, to Mont Blandin near Ghent. After two years he was recalled by EDGAR the Peaceful (958-75), who made him bishop of Worcester (957), then of London (959), and finally archbishop of Canterbury (960). He went to Rome and obtained the pallium from John XII.
He devoted himself with great energy and success to the reform of the people’s morals, to the restoration of the ecclesiastical spirit among monks and clergy, to the building of churches and monasteries and to the reconstruction of those destroyed by the Danes. For 28 years he was the guiding spirit of the English Church. The Tractatus de lapide philosophorum (Cassel 1649) and the Regularis concordia Angliae (ed. Dugdale, in Monasticon Anglicanum, I, London 1817, pp. XXVII-XLV) do not belong to him, though they were once attributed to him.