Guthlac of Crowland
saint of the Christian faith and British hermit
Feast: 11 April (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Guthlac, of noble birth among the Middle Angles, spent eight or nine years as a warrior, then was filled with remorse and entered the monastery of Repton. Wishing to imitate the Desert Fathers, he withdrew to the lonely fen island of Crowland.
There he spent fifteen years in rigorous penance, eating only coarse bread and water after sundown, and suffered many assaults of the devil. He died joyfully on 11 April 714, on the day he had foretold; many miracles followed at his tomb.
The miracles
There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.
Why that counted as sanctity
A warrior who became a hermit of the fens.
Connected on this site
- Pega Saint Brother or sister
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - St. Guthlac
- Wikidata Q1382565 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Guthlac of Crowland (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.