Alphege, or Elphege, (written as Aelfheath in Anglo-Saxon times but pronounced as it is today) was reputedly born in 954 of a noble family in the village of Weston, now a parish in the west of Bath, Somerset. While still young he renounced the world and entered the monastery at Deerhurst, near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, apparently against the wishes of his widowed mother. The ancient church at Deerhurst still contains features from that time and a mediaeval stained glass window depicting the saint. Alphege served as monk, and later as Abbot, at Deerhurst, but he found the life there too lax for his taste. After 8 years, seeking a life of greater seclusion and austerity, he moved back to Weston in 980 and set up a small cell on the slopes of Lansdown Hill above the village. Ordnance Survey maps mark a spot there as St Alphege’s Well.

Alphege was not to find the peace and solitude he desired, however. People of all ranks crowded to hear his words of wise and holy counsel, and Dunstan, the great reforming Archbishop of Canterbury, persuaded him to become Abbot of the nearby monastery at Bath. Although he continued to live in seclusion, he enlarged the monastery so that the brethren might share in the “common life of the dormitory and the refectory”.

Bishop of Winchester

In 984 the bishopric of Winchester became vacant and Dunstan called upon Alphege to become the new Bishop of Winchester. There he became renowned for his care of the poor and for the austerity of his life. Many of the city’s churches were rebuilt. He is recorded as giving the Minster at Winchester a mighty organ, with 400 pipes, 40 keys and 26 pairs of bellows. It required two men to play it and 70 men to work it. It was said to make a noise like thunder which could be heard miles away.

The country was being subjected to an increasing number of raids by marauding Danes. Because of the disunity of his subjects, the king, Ethelred (Aelthelred - the Unready), sought to pay off the Danes with bribes (a practice which even Alfred the Great had found expedient in earlier years). In 994 Olaf Tryggyeson of Norway came raiding along the South Coast and settled for the winter at Southampton. King Ethelred sent Alphege and Ethelward the ealdorman to visit Olaf and persuade him to call upon the king, then staying at Andover. After leaving English hostages on some of his ships, Olaf accompanied Alphege to Andover where, already a baptised Christian, he was confirmed by Alphege, the king acting as his sponsor. Receiving a gift of £16,000, he made a solemn undertaking that he would not trouble England again. Soon afterwards Olaf became King of Norway.

Archbishop of Canterbury

After 22 years at Winchester Alphege was appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, becoming Primate of All England in 1005. He travelled to Rome where Pope John XVIII bestowed upon him his pallium, the narrow-banded vestment denoting the authority delegated to him by the Holy See. At Canterbury Alphege furthered the cult of St Dunstan (who had died in 988) and introduced new practices into the liturgy. He brought St Swithin’s head from Winchester as a relic.

The Danes continued their attacks against England over the years. Between 1009 and 1011 they ravaged more than 15 counties. In the last weeks of September 1011 they raided Kent with a huge army, one of their leaders being Thorkell the Tall. After a short siege, Canterbury was betrayed to them by Alfmar, the Abbott of St Augustine’s, whose life had once been saved by Alphege. The city was plundered, the cathedral burned, and Archbishop Alphege seized and taken to the Danish base at Greenwich. Many of the citizens were taken as slaves. The country was running short of money and it took until April 1012 to raise the £48,000 they demanded to leave. They insisted on a further ransom of £3000 for Alphege, however, but he refused to allow this, insisting that his people were suffering great hardships already.

Martyrdom

On the eve of the Sunday after Easter, angry at his defiance and fuelled with alcohol, the men holding him captive attacked Alphege with ox-bones. Their leader, Thorkell, tried to call them off by offering all that he had except his ship, but it is never easy to control a drunken mob and the incident got out of hand. It is said that the dying Alphege was put out of his pain by a blow from an axe wielded by a sympathetic Dane named Thrum, a recent convert to Christianity who had been baptised by Alphege. A Viking commander who had lost control of his men was not likely to feel secure thereafter, and when the Danish army left England shortly afterwards, Thorkell came over to the English side with 45 ships.

Burial and the Return to Canterbury

Alphege lay where he had fallen at Greenwich for several days on the site where the current parish church of St Alphege now stands, the Danes refusing him burial. Tradition has it that a dead stick which had been covered with his blood grew green again and started to blossom, so the Danes transported him to London where the Bishops of London and Dorchester buried him in St Paul’s Cathedral. Alphege lay at St Paul’s for eleven years and pilgrims flocked to visit him. It was reputed that many miracles were obtained by Alphege for those who asked for his intercession. In 1017 the Danish King Canute (Cnut), who had taken the English throne, married Emma, the widow of King Ethelred. Emma persuaded Canute to make amends for the cruelty inflicted by the countrymen of his Danish father, so in 1023 he took Alphege’s body back to Canterbury with great ceremony. There it was laid in a tomb by the high altar and the King’s golden crown hung above it.

In 1078 Alphege was canonised by Pope Gregory VII. The Archbishop of Canterbury at that time was Lanfranc, who considered that many of the English saints were not worthy of veneration, their worth not having been adequately proven. Initially he doubted that Alphege deserved the title "martyr," as he had not ostensibly died in defense of the Christian faith. Saint Anselm, who was later to succeed Lanfranc, disputed this, saying, "Alphege was a martyr for justice, as John the Baptist was a martyr for truth". Eventually the revised calendar of saints which Lanfranc imposed on his monks at Canterbury listed but two, Augustine and Alphege, the only pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon Archbishop. Years later, Saint Thomas Becket is said to have commended his life into Alphege’s care just before he was murdered in the cathedral. Today, St Alphege's life is celebrated each year on 19th April.

The Story of St Alphege in Stone

It is appropriate that a church in Bath should be dedicated to Saint Alphege. When Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was designing the new Catholic church of Our Lady & St Alphege in the late 1920s he commissioned the sculptor William Drinkwater Gough to carve scenes from the life of the saint into the capitals of the pillars on the south side of the nave, 20 carvings in all, as follows:

Alphege as a monk, Deerhurst, Alphege as a Hermit, Alphege the Prior, Abbot at Bath, Bath Abbey Arms, Bishop of Winchester, Arms of Winchester, Alphege confirms the Norwegian King Olaf, Archbishop of Canterbury, Arms of Canterbury, Citizens of Canterbury sold as Slaves by the Danes, Alphege is captured by the Danes, Alphege refuses to pay a ransome, Alphege is brutally murdered, Removal of the body of Alphege after burial at St Paul's, Alphege is buried at Canterbury, Alphege receives the Crown of Martyrdom, St Anselm 1093, Arms of Downside, and on a pilaster, St Alphege before the towers of Canterbury Cathedral. Some of the carvings are illustrated on the right.