Waltheof of Melrose

Waltheof of Melrose, also known as Waldef or Waldeve, was a twelfth-century English nobleman who became a Cistercian monk and the second abbot of Melrose Abbey. He was a son of Simon I de Senlis (Saint Liz), Earl of Northampton, and Maud of Huntingdon, daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, and of Judith of Lens, a niece of William the Conqueror. After Simon's death Maud married King David I of Scotland, so that Waltheof became the king's stepson and spent part of his youth at the Scottish court. He was educated for high ecclesiastical office rather than for a purely secular career, but he chose the religious life instead of remaining a courtier or a secular prelate.

He first entered the Augustinian priory of Nostell in Yorkshire and later became prior of Kirkham Priory, another house of Augustinian canons in Yorkshire. As prior he was associated with strict observance and personal humility, and later tradition held that he declined or withdrew from several opportunities for episcopal promotion. Drawn to a more austere monastic rule, he left Kirkham and became a Cistercian monk at Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, the mother house of Melrose and a principal centre of the Cistercian expansion in northern England.

In 1148 the community of Melrose Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1136 by King David I in the Scottish Borders, elected Waltheof as abbot. He remained abbot until his death, combining care of the monastery with a reputation for austerity, charity, and the miraculous or prophetic gifts later recorded in his Life. He stayed in close relation with Aelred of Rievaulx and with the Scottish royal house, yet he resisted pressure to leave the cloister for the bishopric of St Andrews and died in office at Melrose.

Waltheof died at Melrose on 3 August 1159 and was buried in the abbey's chapter house. Veneration at the tomb began soon afterward. In 1171 the grave was opened and the body was reported incorrupt, which strengthened a local cult. Around the beginning of the thirteenth century Jocelin of Furness composed a Latin Life based on Melrose tradition. Approaches were made to Rome for papal canonization, but no formal canonization was ever granted, and his cult remained essentially local and Cistercian, with a feast on 3 August.