Saint Godric

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Saint Godric of Finchale (or Saint Goderic) (c. 1065 – May 21, 1170) was an English hermit and popular medieval saint, although he was never formally canonized. He was born in Walpole in Norfolk and died in Finchale in County Durham, England. Saint Godric's life was recorded by a contemporary of his: a monk named Reginald of Durham. Several other hagiographies are also extant. According to these accounts, Godric, who began from humble beginnings as the son of Ailward and Edwenna, "both of slender rank and wealth, but abundant in righteousness and virtue", was a pedlar, then a sailor and entrepreneur, and may have been the captain and owner of the ship that conveyed Baldwin I of Jerusalem to Jaffa in 1102. After years at sea, Godric reportedly went to the island of Lindisfarne and there encountered Saint Cuthbert; this will not have been a physical encounter as Cuthbert had long been dead and was by then interred under Durham Cathedral. This encounter changed his life, and he devoted himself to Christianity and service to God thereafter. After many pilgrimages around the Mediterranean, Godric returned to England and lived with a hermit named Aelric for two years. Upon Aelric's death, Godric made one last pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and then returned home where he convinced Ranulf Flambard, the Bishop of Durham, to grant him a place to live as a hermit at Finchale, by the River Wear. He had previously served as doorkeeper, the lowest of the minor orders, at the hospital church o

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