Life
Very little is known about his life. The author of the Vita Sancti Wilfrithi identifies himself as “Stephen, a priest”. Bede mentions that Wilfrid brought a singing master from Kent, Ædde Stephanus, to Ripon in 669 to teach chant, and he has traditionally been thought to be the same person as the “Stephen” mentioned. However, there is no more solid evidence that the two names describe the same person. If the two were in fact the same, Stephen would have been at least twenty years old when he came north, placing him in his sixties or older at Wilfrid’s death in 709.
Regardless of whether or not Stephen the priest was Wilfrid’s singing master from Kent, he appears to have been a follower of Wilfrid and was able to consult individuals who had known Wilfrid closely as sources for the Life of Wilfrid. He wrote for the monks in Ripon, many of whom had known Wilfrid.
Read more about this topic: Stephen Of Ripon
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing a Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.”
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“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
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“O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)