The Life of Wilfrid offers us a graphic portrait of one of the most forceful characters in the history of the English Church: a man courageous and energetic yet at the same time litigious, ostentatious and overbearing, his life punctuated by restless travels and the most violent quarrels. Of noble birth, Wilfrid (c.634 709) gained his first experience of monastic life as a boy at Lindisfarne. Thereafter we find him at various times, crossing Gaul, staying in Lyons, visiting Rome, back in England at York, Ripon or Hexham, preaching to heathens in Sussex or Frisia, quarrelling with kings and...