CHAPTER 5: How he reaches the See of St Peter in safety
CHAPTER 5
How he reaches the See of St Peter in safety
WILFRID and his companions arrived with joy and thanksgiving after a good journey at their long-desired destination – the See of Peter, apostle and Prince of Apostles. Just as that most excellent Doctor of the Gentiles, St Paul, made his way to Jerusalem ‘lest by any means I should run or had run in vain’, so this most humble light of our race, stirred up by God ‘to hear from the ends of the earth the widsom’ of this world’s rulers, came to Rome.1 In the oratory dedicated to St Andrew he humbly knelt before the altar over which the four gospels are placed, and adjured the apostle, by the name of the God for whom he had suffered, to obtain for him keenness of mind to learn and teach the nations the message of the Gospel. His prayer was granted, as many will testify. He passed many months in daily visits to the shrines of the saints, at one of which he found a teacher, sent by God and the apostle to be his faithful friend, Boniface the archdeacon, one of the wisest of counsellors. Boniface made him word-perfect in the four gospels, taught him the rule about Easter, of which the British and Irish schismatics were ignorant, and many other rules of Church law, teaching him as diligently as though he were his own son. Later he presented him to the pope, giving a very clear account of the whole purpose of this youthful servant of God’s journey. The pope placed his blessed hand on Wilfrid’s head, prayed over him, and blessed him. Then he set off in the peace of Christ, armed with the holy relics he had collected in Rome, and so returned safely to his father the Archbishop of Lyons.