Boston and Saint Botulf

Saint Botulf (or Botolph or Botwulf) († 680) was of Anglo-Saxon origin. His highborn parents sent him and his brother Adulf to study on the continent, where both became priests. While Adulf chose to stay, Botulf returned home to England, where Anglian King Ehelmund grated him land for a monastery.

The place Botulf was given--a remote, marshy spot--was "just the sort of God-forsacken devil-possessed spot he was in search of," reports his biographer. He countered the disturbances of evil spirits, conquering the land for Christ through fasting and prayer. In 654, construction of the monastery of Ikanhoe began, and soon young men came to join him.

Botulf's reuputation for spiritual leadership spread well beyond Ikanhoe. It is written that Saint Ceolfrid, Saint Bede's master at Wearmouth Abbey, "once journeyed to the East Angles that he might see the foundation of Abbot Botulf, whose fame had proclaimed him far and wide as a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit." Afterward, Ceolfrid returned to Wearmouth, "so well grounded that no one could be found better versed than he, either in ecclesiastical or in monastic traditions."

Eventually, Botulf's monastery was destroyed by invading Danes. It is thought to have been at the site of present-day Iken in Suffulk, or Boston ("Botulf's stone") in Lincolnshire.

Magnificat, ed. Sebastian White, December 2020, Vol. 22, No. 10, p. 33.