Ælfheah of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury and saint (c.953-1012)
Feast: 19 April (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Alphege left his widowed mother and his inheritance for the monastery of Deerhurst, lived as an anchorite at Bath and became its abbot, then Bishop of Winchester in 984 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1006.
When the Danes sacked Canterbury in 1011 they took him prisoner. On 19 April 1012 at Greenwich, drunk and enraged that no ransom had been paid, they pelted him with bones and stones and killed him with an axe.
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
An archbishop who died a martyr at the hands of the Danes.
Connected on this site
- Thomas Becket Saint“Thomas Becket, a later archbishop of Canterbury, is said to have prayed to Ælfheah just before his murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.” — Wikipedia
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - St. Elphege
- Wikidata Q1262465 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Ælfheah of Canterbury (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.