Suggest an Edit — Felix of Burgundy

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Biography

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Felix of Burgundy, also known as Felix of Dunwich, was a seventh-century missionary bishop and the first bishop of the East Angles. He was a native of Burgundy in Gaul, in the region that now forms part of eastern France. Neither the year nor the exact place of his birth is recorded in any surviving source. Nearly all that can be said of him with confidence comes from the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed by the Northumbrian monk Bede in 731, together with later medieval notices of his relics and cult. According to Bede, Felix was already a priest when he came into contact with Sigeberht, an East Anglian prince living in exile in Gaul, who had been baptized among the Franks. When Sigeberht returned to East Anglia to take the throne, around 630, he wished to convert his kingdom to Christianity and obtained Felix to preach the faith to his people.

Felix was consecrated bishop by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, and sent into East Anglia. He established his see at a place Bede names Dommoc. Later English tradition identified Dommoc with Dunwich on the Suffolk coast, although some modern scholars have argued for Walton Castle near Felixstowe or another coastal site, and the identification remains uncertain. From this centre Felix evangelized the kingdom. Bede writes that he delivered the East Angles from long-standing unbelief and iniquity and brought them to the faith and works of Christ. King Sigeberht, a devout convert, supported the work and eventually resigned his crown to enter a monastery. Felix also founded a school for boys and, at the king's request, obtained masters from Kent so that East Anglia might have teachers of letters after the manner Sigeberht had observed in Gaul.

Felix held the bishopric for seventeen years. He died on 8 March in 647 or 648 and was buried at Dommoc. He was succeeded by Thomas, described as a man of the Gyrwas. In later centuries his relics were translated from Dommoc to a monastery at Soham in Cambridgeshire. During the early eleventh century, in the face of Danish attacks, they were removed again to Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire, where they were enshrined and where his cult was thereafter chiefly maintained.

A local cult of Saint Felix developed in East Anglia. The Suffolk town of Felixstowe takes its name from him, and several medieval parish churches in Norfolk and Suffolk were dedicated in his honour. His feast is observed on 8 March, the traditional date of his death. He is remembered as the apostle of the East Angles, the bishop who first established an enduring Christian organization in that kingdom. Beyond Bede's concise narrative, details of his early life, the internal geography of his diocese, and the later fortunes of his see before the Viking period remain obscure.

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