Richard the Pilgrim

Richard the Pilgrim is the name given in later medieval tradition to an otherwise unnamed Anglo-Saxon nobleman of the early eighth century who died at Lucca while travelling toward Rome and who was the father of the missionary saints Willibald, Winibald, and Walburga. Almost everything that can be said of him with any confidence derives from a single near-contemporary narrative, the Hodoeporicon of Saint Willibald, written toward the end of the eighth century by Hugeburc (also called Hygeburg), a nun of Heidenheim and a kinswoman of the family. Hugeburc describes Willibald’s father as a man of rank in the kingdom of the West Saxons who, after his son’s recovery from a childhood illness, agreed to leave home and seek the shrines of the apostles. She does not give the father’s name, nor does she call him a king. The personal name Richard, and the royal title that so often accompanies it in later calendars and legendaries, are first attested centuries afterward. There is no place for a King Richard in the recorded succession of Wessex, and modern historians regard the regal style as a hagiographical promotion of a gesith or local magnate rather than as evidence that he reigned as king.

The same eighth-century account makes clear that he was married and the father of at least three children who themselves became prominent in the Anglo-Saxon missions on the Continent. Willibald, the best documented of the siblings, was born in Wessex around the turn of the eighth century; Winibald (Wunibald) was his brother; Walburga (Walpurga) their sister. A later and less reliable strand of legend names the mother Wuna or Wunna and sometimes presents her as a sister of Saint Boniface, thereby knitting the family into the wider kinship network of the West Saxon missionary effort. That genealogical link cannot be confirmed from early sources. What Hugeburc does record is that when the father and the two sons set out, the mother and daughter remained in England. Walburga subsequently crossed to Francia and became abbess of the double monastery at Heidenheim, which Winibald had founded and which she ruled after his death. Willibald, after years in Rome, the Holy Land, and Monte Cassino, was consecrated bishop of Eichstätt. The father’s decision to go on pilgrimage thus stands at the head of one of the most influential family groups in the eighth-century German mission.

The journey itself began after Easter in a year that scholars generally place about 720. The party crossed from England to the Continent, remained for a time in Francia, and then took the road toward Rome along the route later known as the Via Francigena. At Lucca, then a city of the Lombard kingdom in Tuscany, the father fell ill and died. He was buried in the church of San Frediano, dedicated to the sixth-century bishop Fridianus. His sons continued to Rome. From that point the historical record of the father ceases, except insofar as his tomb became a centre of local devotion. Lucca preserved his memory as that of a holy pilgrim and, in time, of an English king who had died on the way to the apostles. A sculpted monument and relics in San Frediano sustained the cult through the Middle Ages. Liturgical commemoration settled on 7 February. The Roman Martyrology eventually entered him under that date, using the royal designation of the developed legend. He was never canonized by the formal papal process of later centuries; his recognition is of the older, pre-congregational type, rooted in local veneration and martyrological listing.

Beyond these outlines, the details of his birth, landholding, and public career remain unknown. No charter issued by him survives, and Bede, who was writing in the same generation, does not mention him. His historical importance is therefore largely contextual and familial. He represents the stratum of West Saxon aristocracy that, in the early eighth century, supplied both pilgrims to Rome and personnel for the Bonifatian mission. In Italy he was remembered as a model of the penitential traveller who died far from home. In Germany and in later English legend he was remembered as the royal father of three saints. Careful reconstruction has to hold those two images apart: the unnamed West Saxon magnate who died at Lucca around 720, and the Saint Richard, king of the English, of medieval service-books.

Veneration of Richard remained strongest in Lucca, where pilgrims on the road to Rome could visit his tomb in San Frediano, and in those German churches that honoured his children, especially at Eichstätt and Heidenheim. He is not associated with a large set of specialized patronages of trades, places, or illnesses in the manner of some better-documented medieval saints. His feast on 7 February continues to appear in local calendars and in older editions of the Roman Martyrology. Because the early evidence is so limited, responsible accounts continue to emphasize what is unknown: the year and place of his birth, the precise nature of his authority in Wessex, the name of his wife as given in contemporary witness, and even the name he himself used. The figure who can be described with confidence is an early eighth-century West Saxon father and pilgrim who died at Lucca and whose children helped to shape the church in Bavaria and Franconia.