Edmund

Edmund, St. Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Abingdon in the end of the 12th century. Whilst still a child he devoted himself to the service of the Virgin, and all his life long practised with unaffected devotion the austerities of the ascetic spirit in which his mother had early trained him. His time was spent between Oxford and Paris, at first as a student, and afterwards as a teacher. He also acquired fame as a preacher, and was commissioned by the pope to preach the sixth crusade throughout England, about the year 1227. Six years later, at the instance of Pope Gregory IX., he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and received consecration on 2d April 1234. He attached himself closely to the national party, whose spokesman he became in their remonstrances with the king (Henry III.), even threatening him with excommunication if he did not dismiss his foreign favourites and exclude foreigners from positions of trust in the realm. But he was by no means a prelate of the bold, aggressive type; on the contrary, his gentleness and kindness of disposition, together with his self-denying generosity and personal purity, would seem to have put him out of joint with his age and time. At any rate, Henry III. adroitly managed to nullify Edmund's power and authority by a resident papal legate; and against their combined influence the saintly archbishop was unable to stand. Accordingly he retired, in 1240, to Pontigny Abbey, in France, where Stephen Langton and Thomas Becket before had found refuge. He died in the same year, on 16th November, at Soisy. See Life by Wallace (1893).