CHAPTER 9: Bishop Agilberht ordains him priest [c. 663]
CHAPTER 9
Bishop Agilberht ordains him priest [c. 663]
IN those days Agilberht, a bishop of foreign birth, visited Oswiu and Alhfrith.1 The latter pointed out Wilfrid to him, as someone who had come to him from the Apostolic See, and retailed the good reports he had heard from those who knew him – namely that he was humble, peaceable, given to prayer and fasting, kind, temperate, discreet, compassionate, full of the power and grace of God, modest, prudent, no wine-bibber, pure and open of speech, willing to learn and a good teacher.
“Therefore I beg you to raise him to the ranks of the priesthood and he and I shall be inseparable friends.’
To which Agilberht gave this prophetic reply: ‘Such a man ought to be a bishop.’
He complied with the king’s request by ordaining Wilfrid a priest at Ripon. Just as David was chosen by God as a boy, anointed by Samuel, and after many trials proved worthy to receive the gift of prophecy, so the holy priest Wilfrid, after many blessings from the saints of God, received gifts without number from God Himself, the guardian of his days of poverty.