If there was ever a model for the fictional Cadfæl in the books of Ellis Peters, it could easily have been Godric of Finchale.
Godric was born to a Christian Anglo-Saxon family of the middling sort in Norfolk, the eldest of three children. Given that background, his parents may have expected him to carry on working the family farm. But Godric was far too adventurous for that. He became a travelling salesman/pedlar with a good eye for a bargain and a knack of parting his customers from their money. His biographer, Reginald of Durham, wrote, “aspiring to the merchant's trade, he began to follow the chapman’s way of life, first learning how to gain in small bargains and things of insignificant price; and thence, while yet a youth, his mind advanced little by little to buy and sell and gain from things of greater expense.”
One thing led to another and soon Godric was able to buy a half share in a ship and a quarter share in another. He was coming up in the world. He traded between the north east of England, Flanders and Denmark eventually becoming captain of his ship and travelling much further afield. There are hints in the stories about him that he may not have been averse to a little piracy and that his lifestyle was a long way off being Christian. There was a well known pirate called Guderic cruising the eastern Mediterranean at that time who may have been our Godric. Guderic gave King Baldwin I a lift in his ship on his way to be crowned King of Jerusalem during the First Crusade.
Godric turns up next sailing off Lindisfarne where he met the monks. There the reputation and spirit of Saint Cuthbert made a great impression on him and changed his life. He did not give up his seafaring career immediately but went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage was a way of imitating Jesus who wandered and ‘had nowhere to lay his head’. He also went as a pilgrim to Compostella in Spain, to Saint Gilles in Provence and to Rome. It was during this period that he gave up wearing shoes or sandals and began to go barefoot to punish himself for the excesses of his previous behaviour and the crimes he had been involved in. Reginald his biographer wrote very kindly, “I have often seen him, even in his old age, weeping for this unknowing transgression.”
Godric evidently felt the need to do more. The wild rover went home to his parents and talked about his change of character and purpose. His mother asked if she could accompany him on his next pilgrimage to Rome. “They came therefore to London,” says Reginald, “and they had scarcely departed from thence when his mother took off her shoes, going thus barefooted to Rome and back to London. Godric, humbly serving his parent, was wont to bear her on his shoulders....” Back home again, “he went forth to no certain abode, but whithersoever the Lord should deign to lead him; for above all things he coveted the life of a hermit.” He fetched up in Carlisle where the hermit Aelric taught him how to live and survive in solitude. When Aelric died, Godric made one more pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then settled down at Finchale on land granted by Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham.[1]
Godric began a quiet life of prayer and penance and, like so many hermits before him, he gained a reputation for wisdom and piety. Many people asked for his advice. Some came to see him in person. Others, like Thomas à Becket and Pope Alexander III, who was bothered by the election of antipopes and corruption in the Church, sent letters.
Godric is recognised as a saint because of his repentance and his holy life. His simple and austere life as a hermit was in stark contrast to the lives of the rich and famous and showed the world an alternative to corruption, cheating, lying and self interest. He is an example of it never being too late to change.
Author: C B Whittle