Wulfric of Haselbury

Wulfric of Haselbury was a twelfth-century English priest and enclosed hermit, remembered in the west of England as a prophet and wonder-worker during the reigns of Henry I and Stephen. He was born at Compton Martin in Somerset, in the late eleventh century; no reliable source records an exact year of birth. Of comparatively modest origins, he was ordained to the priesthood and for a time served as a parish priest, according to the principal medieval account at Deverill near Warminster. In that earlier phase of his life he was described as given to worldly amusements, notably hunting with hawks and hounds, before a conversion led him to abandon that manner of living and seek solitude and penance.

Around the mid-1120s he settled at Haselbury Plucknett in south Somerset, where William fitz Walter, the local lord, caused him to be enclosed in an anchorite’s cell built against the north side of the parish church of St Michael. From that cell, which had a window opening into the church so that he could hear Mass and receive the sacrament, and another giving onto the outside world for conversation with visitors, he did not emerge. He adopted severe bodily austerities: he wore a hair shirt and a heavy coat of chain mail next to the skin, fasted rigorously, kept long vigils, and recited the entire Psalter daily. He also copied and bound books, including liturgical texts for his own use. A servant, often named as Osbern, attended to his material needs through the cell window.

Wulfric’s reputation for holiness, healing, and second sight spread widely. Crowds came seeking cures, counsel, and the reading of consciences; he was credited with blessing bread and water for the sick and with foretelling deaths and political events. King Stephen was among those who consulted him. He maintained sometimes tense relations with the nearby Cluniac priory of Montacute, whose monks took an interest in the celebrated hermit, while Cistercians from Forde Abbey later claimed a spiritual affinity with him. The principal narrative of his life, the Vita Wulfrici, was composed in the 1180s by John, abbot of Forde, on the basis of testimony from people who had known the hermit, including his attendant.

Wulfric died in his cell on 20 February 1154 and was buried there. After his death the monks of Montacute attempted to secure his body as a relic, but the people of Haselbury retained it. He was never the subject of a formal papal canonization; his cult remained essentially local to Somerset, and he has been commemorated on 20 February. Surviving knowledge of him depends overwhelmingly on John’s Life and on scattered notices in other twelfth-century English sources.