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Saint Eata of Hexham (also known as Eata of Lindisfarne), who died on 26 October 686, was an early Northumbrian abbot and bishop formed under Saint Aidan. The first native of Northumbria to hold the see of Lindisfarne, he guided Melrose and Lindisfarne, accepted the Roman discipline after the Synod of Whitby, and ended his life as Bishop of Hexham. Bede remembered him as a gentle and greatly revered man whose pastoral steadiness served the Church through plague, disorder, and change.
Saint Eata was one of the first Anglo-Saxon boys trained at Lindisfarne under Saint Aidan after the Irish missionary's arrival in Northumbria around 635. Formed in the Celtic monastic tradition of prayer, asceticism, and mission, he was chosen among twelve monks from Lindisfarne to found the daughter house at Melrose. In 651 he was elected abbot of Melrose, where he received and formed the young Cuthbert.
Around 658 he left Melrose to establish a monastery at Ripon in Yorkshire, taking Cuthbert with him as guest-master. In 661 King Alhfrith of Deira expelled Eata from Ripon in favor of Wilfrid; Eata and his companions returned to Melrose rather than abandon the customs they had received. At the Synod of Whitby in 663–664, when King Oswiu decided that Northumbria would follow the Roman reckoning of Easter and the Roman tonsure, Eata acquiesced in the judgment of the universal Church. Unlike Colmán of Lindisfarne, he remained and was soon appointed abbot of Lindisfarne. He called Cuthbert from Melrose to serve as prior and teacher there.
In 678 Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury divided the vast Northumbrian diocese. Eata was made bishop of Bernicia, with authority over the sees of Hexham and Lindisfarne. After three years the diocese was further divided: Trumbert received Hexham while Eata retained Lindisfarne. When Trumbert died and Cuthbert was elected to Hexham in 684–685, Cuthbert preferred the island hermitage and the community of Lindisfarne. Eata and Cuthbert therefore exchanged sees. For the last year of his life Eata served again as Bishop of Hexham.
He died of dysentery at Hexham on 26 October 686 and was buried at the Benedictine abbey there; later a chapel rose over his grave and his body was translated into the church. Like many early English saints, he was canonized by the repute of holiness among the faithful he had helped to form. Bede described him as a man of great gravity and gentleness, an administrator who applied his gifts amid plague, civil unrest, and major ecclesiastical change. Churches and local memory, including St Eata's Church at Atcham in Shropshire, still honor his name.
May Saint Eata obtain for us a share in his gentle fidelity, and let us practice today the virtue of peaceful obedience that keeps the Church one.
Fuentes: Wikidata Wikipedia Causes of Saints También listado Wikidata
Calendario Romano General · Liturgical Calendar API
