His book gives little general information, as the writer was intent upon his devotions, but throws some light upon law and custom in the eastern lands in which he travelled. Its value is owing to the extreme scarcity of pilgrim notices during the eighth century. It is published by Mabillon in the ‘Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Benedicti’ (iv. 365 seq.), but the most accessible edition is that of Tobler in the ‘Descriptiones Terræ Sanctæ’ (pp. 1–55). Other lives based upon this have been written, but have added to it nothing of importance (Hardy, Descriptive Catal. i. pt. ii. pp. 490–1). The chief of these—the ‘Vita sive potius Itinerarium Sancti Willibaldi auctore Anonymo’—is also published by Tobler (loc. cit. pp. 56–76). Willibald is said to have written the well-known life of St. Boniface published by Jaffé in the ‘Monumenta Moguntina’ in ‘Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum’ (Descript. Catal. loc. cit. p. 478; but see Biogr. Brit. Lit. i. 344–5).
[Authorities quoted in the text.]
WILLIBRORD or WILBRORD, Saint (657?–738?), archbishop of Utrecht and apostle of Frisia, born about 657, was a Northumbrian (Flor. Wig. in Mon. Hist. Brit. i. 539 B), the son of Wilgils, who, after Willibrord's birth, retired from the world to a cell at the mouth of the Humber (Alcuin, Vit. Will. vol. i. chap. i.), where he lived the anchorite's life. His day was later observed as a feast day in Willibrord's own monastery of Echternach (ib. chap. xxxi.). Dedicated by his mother and father to a religious life, Willibrord, as soon as he was weaned, was given to the monks of Ripon, where he came under the influence of St. Wilfrid [q. v.] (ib. chap. iii.; Eddius, Vita Wilfridi in Historians of Church of York, vol. i.) In his twentieth year, the fame of the schools and scholars of Ireland drew him thither, and he spent the next twelve years (677–90) at the monastery of Rathmelsigi with St. Egbert [q. v.], who in 690 sent Willibrord, after he had been ordained priest, to preach the gospel to the Frisians.
Landing at the mouth of the Rhine, Willibrord went thence to Trajectum (Utrecht), but, finding the pagan king Rathbod and his Frisians hostile, he boldly went direct to Pippin of Herstal, ‘duke of the Franks,’ who had just (687) established his power over the Franks by the battle of Testry (ib.; Alcuin, Vit. Will. i. chap. v.). Pippin welcomed Willibrord, and thus identified himself and his house with the conversion of those parts of the German settlements which were still heathen. The alliance between Pippin and Willibrord was the salvation of the new movement. Rathbod being expelled, multitudes of the people of ‘Hither Frisia’ received the faith (ib.; Mon. Hist. Brit. i. 538 D). Willibrord went probably in 692 to Rome to obtain the consent of Pope Sergius to the mission, and in the hope of receiving certain holy relics of the apostles and martyrs to place in the churches he wished to build in Friesland (Bede, Hist. Eccl. vol. v. chap. xi.; Alcuin, Vit. Will. vol. i. chaps. vi. vii.). He obtained both, and on his return overthrew pagan idols, planted churches, placing in them the relics he had brought from Rome, and, though amid great difficulties, won the trust of the Frisians. He made a bold onset in Heligoland upon the pagan shrine of the god Fosite, who was a son of Balder, and, inviting the vengeance of the god by his infringement of the laws guarding the sacred fountain there, he won a remarkable supremacy over the minds of the pagan Frisians (Alcuin, vol. i. chaps. x. xi.). He destroyed the great idol of Walcheren, at the peril of his own life (ib. vol. i. chap. xiv.). In 714 Pippin and Plectrudis his wife gave Willibrord the monastery of Suestra (Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxix. 547); here occurred one of a series of miracles which won for the saint among the people the reputation of supernatural power (Alcuin, chaps. xv. xvi.)
Extending his labours beyond the Frankish lands, Willibrord went to Rathbod, but failed to convert him (ib. chap. ix.), and finally, recognising that as hopeless, went on ‘ad ferocissimos Danorum populos,’ and their king ‘Ongendus, homo omni fera crudelior’ (possibly the Ongentheow of Beowulf), who was as firmly pagan as Rathbod. But Willibrord took thirty Danish boys back with him, and baptised them, hoping to train them up as Christians, and to send them when men on a mission to their own land (ib. chap. ix.). Gradually Willibrord was able to organise his great ‘parochia.’ The faithful, in their gratitude to him, offered their patrimonies, which were devoted to religious foundations (ib. chap. xii.; for the charters of the most famous of these grants see Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxix. 535–53).
In 695 or 695 Willibrord went to Rome a second time, in order that, at Pippin's request, he might be consecrated archbishop of the Frisians by Sergius. He was consecrated in the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere on St. Cecilia's day (22 Nov.), and on consecration received the name of Clement, a name which however, never came into general use (Bede, Hist. Eccl. v. 11; Bede, ‘Chron. sive de VI Ætatt. Sæculi’ in Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 99 C; Chron. Flor.
