St. Boisil Abbot of Melrose

By Sister Theovouli 

  • The feast day of St. Boisil is celebrated on the 23rd January 
  • St. Boisil is well known for shaping St. Cuthbert’s spiritual development, guiding him through his early monastic life and inspiring the deep faith and leadership that defined his later ministry. 

A founding figure at Old Melrose Abbey

St. Boisil¹ and St. Eata were among St. Aidan’s first pupils at Lindisfarne, both of whom were tonsured by him. St. Aidan founded Old Melrose² Abbey in Scotland, situated in a grassy clearing surrounded by forest, nestled in a curve of the River Tweed. The abbey followed the Iona Rule, just like Lindisfarne³. 

When St. Aidan established the Abbey, he appointed St. Eata abbot, with St. Boisil serving as his prior. St. Boisil was chosen as prior for his exemplary virtue, integrity and industriousness: as a teacher of monks, he combined a gift for expounding Scripture with prophetic insight. 

Several of the of the monks of Melrose were blessed to go out preaching in the surrounding area: the faith of the people at that time was still fragile, and it was common for the new Christians to mix pagan practices in with their new faith. St. Boisil’s mission to spread the faith was considerably aided by his gifts as a healer who, like many monks, had a pharmacopeia of local herbal remedies and made use of two local springs. Recent analysis has found that both springs contain iron salts⁴. 

St. Boisil was an outstanding scholar, who set the Trinity at the heart of his teaching – something drawn from the Irish Ionian tradition. He himself prayed constantly to the Trinity, and used a simple version of the Jesus prayer, frequently exclaiming: “How good a Jesus we have!”. He taught his monks never to cease “giving thanks to God for the gift of their religious vocation; …(to) always watch over themselves against self-love and all attachment to their own will and private judgement, which was the greatest enemy to their spiritual life; …(to) converse assiduously with God by interior prayer, and labor continually to attain to the most perfect purity of heart, this being the true and short road to the perfection of Christian virtue⁵. 


St. Boisil’s guidance of St. Cuthbert at Melrose Abbey 

St. Boisil’s reputation for sanctity was the deciding factor in motivating the young St. Cuthbert to apply to Melrose. St. Boisil was standing near the gates when St. Cuthbert rode up and requested to be admitted as an alumni. At that time, he was about 24 years old, a well-educated, handsome, and athletic young man⁶. 

Recognising St. Cuthbert’s divine calling, St. Boisil, whose gifts of prophecy were well known, exclaimed ‘Behold, the servant of God’. As master of the alumni, St. Boisil was responsible for St. Cuthbert’s education, but St. Eata also appointed him as St. Cuthbert’s spiritual father – the aman cara, soul friend – who was responsible for his personal spiritual guidance.


St. Boisil’s appointment as abbot 

St. Cuthbert was tonsured in 651AD⁷ and spent an additional eight years at Melrose, receiving guidance from St. Boisil. In 659 AD, St. Boisil was appointed abbot in preparation for St. Eata’s transfer to lead a new monastery at Ripon⁸, taking St. Cuthbert with him as guest master. 

The Ripon monastery was founded by Alhfrith of Deira, the son of Oswiu, and was populated by monks from Lindisfarne and Melrose. However, the Council of Whitby in 664AD was to change everything. Alhfrith was a childhood friend of Wilfrid who had swung the Council not only to align the date of Easter with the rest of the church but was an enthusiastic Romaniser. Consequently, the king ejected the Columban monks from Ripon to make way for Wilfrid’s new Latin monks, and St. Eata returned temporarily to Melrose.


St. Boisil’s final days 

The church in the north was plunged into chaos, further exacerbated by the yellow plague, which was preceded by a total solar eclipse, sweeping across the country⁹. 

When St. Eata and St. Cuthbert returned to Melrose, they discovered that St. Boisil had been struck down by the plague. The abbot accepted it with a certain equanimity, having prophesied three years earlier that the plague would come, and that St. Eata and St. Cuthbert would survive, while he himself would die. 

When St. Cuthbert had sufficiently recovered¹⁰, St. Boisil sent for him. Knowing that he would die seven days later, he divided the Gospel of St. John into seven parts and asked St. Cuthbert to read him a section each day. During these last conversations, St. Boisil told his disciple much of the events of his future life, and that he would one day be made bishop. At the end of the seven days, the abbot “became ill and died in extraordinary jubilation of soul, out of his earnest desire to be with Christ,” on the 7th of July. 

St. Cuthbert cherished this book, which contained only the Gospel of St. John¹¹, throughout his life. When he died, the book was placed under his head¹². It was later removed, likely during the desecration of the shrine, from St. Cuthbert’s coffin and was in the possession of Thomas Allen of Oxford before the year 1622¹³. For several years, it was held by the Jesuits of Stonyhurst before being brought by the British Museum in 2012¹⁴. 

St. Boisil was buried in the church of Old Melrose, but his bones were later moved as relics to Durham Cathedral by Eadmund, bishop of Durham, in 1030¹⁵, and placed near those of his disciple, St. Cuthbert. His 8th-century shrine was transferred from Old Melrose to Jedburgh, where substantial fragments, carved in the Hiberno-Saxon style, are still preserved.


The intervention of St. Boisil after death 

At Melrose, St. Cuthbert took on the role of abbot, while St. Eata, the former abbot of Melrose, managed various responsibilities as both bishop and abbot amidst the turmoil that followed the Synod of Whitby ¹⁶. When St. Eata became abbot of Lindisfarne – the senior monastery – he commandeered St. Cuthbert to be his prior. In 684AD, St. Cuthbert, who had been happily living as a hermit, was elected as a bishop. He was reluctant to accept the election and left the hermitage in tears. The King, the bishop, a number of other prelates and the monks, all knelt before him, imploring him to accept the charge, but he still held out – until someone reminded him that Abbot Boisil, who had “prophetically foretold all things that were to befall him, had also predicted that he should be a bishop”¹⁷. 

St. Boisil did not stop intervening after his repose. In 690AD, he appeared after Matins to a monk he knew at Ráith Melsigi in southern Ireland, with a message for one of his fellow monks, Ecgberht¹⁸. Ecgberht was a Northumbrian nobleman, who was getting together a mission to Frisia (supported by – among others – Adalbert, Swithbert, and Chad). St. Boisil’s message was that he should go to the Columban monasteries “on Iona and in the Orkneys, and to instruct them in the right manner of celebrating Easter”. Ecgberht initially disregarded the message, but a few nights later, St. Boisil appeared again to the monk, reproaching him for not delivering the warning with enough urgency. He instructed him to return. When the monk relayed the vision once more, Ecgberht urged him to keep it a secret and promptly departed for the continent. When they had embarked a storm forced the ship to turn round so that they had to return. The disgruntled Ecgberht sent Wihtberht, another Englishman living at Rath Melsigi, in his stead. He followed this up by arranging the missions of Wigbert, Willibrord, and others.

¹ It is also proposed he was Irish: his name, Basil, and deep Trinitarian theology would bear this out. 

² This is Old Mailros, (Celtic, mul, bare+ rhos, promontery.), now the site of the Old Melrose estate. The ruins of the later Cistercian abbey are an hour’s walk away, to the west. The Lammermuir hills are 20 miles or so north. Old Mailros was at this time in Saxon territory and was fired in a raid by Kenneth, King of the Scots, in 839. It was restored before 875, when it was one of the resting places of the body of St. Cuthbert, when the monks of Lindisfarne were fleeing the Danes. It was from Melrose that Cuthbert’s coffin floated downriver to Tilmouth. The Abbey was still going, albeit much reduced, when the monks of Wincalcombe in Gloucester were given it, to live a reclusive and ascetic life, in 1073. However, the bishop of Durham thought they could be better employed restoring Wearmouth-Jarrow, so they were moved on in 1075. A pilgrim chapel, dedicated to St. Cuthbert, remained on the site till 15c. but by 1743 no traces remined except local names such as Chapel Knoll, Holy Well and Monk’s Ford. 

³ St. Aidan’s foundations followed the Rule from Iona, written by St. Columba. The monks wore a white tunica under a camilla – a hooded garment of undyed wool, and sandals. They followed a largely piscitarian diet, as Orthodox monastics still do.It was a common form of ascesis to recite the psalter, while standing entirely immersed in water. A spiritual father was chosen by the abbot for each novice (an aman cara, soul friend), who was responsible any special spiritual guidance. Faults against community were confessed before all the brethren in chapter, the penance being given by the abbot. The Celtic tonsure was a frontal shave, given from ear to ear at profession. It was the same as the old druidic tonsure. 

⁴ Needs provenance. 

⁵ The source for this is quoted as Bede from Sigfrid, a monk from Jarrow who had trained under Boisil. However I cannot yet find the direct quote which is probably deeply hidden in Bede’s life of Cuthbert, or somewhere similar. 

 ⁶ Fair of face so probably fair haired as well. Other accounts say he looked like an angel. 

⁷ Symeon of Durham, Bede tells us he received the tonsure from the hands of Boisil, which implies the Abbot was away at the time. 

⁸ AD 661. Bede records that Alhfrith, sub-king (under his father Oswiu) of the Southern Northumbrian kingdom of Deira, gave land at Ripon to Eata of Hexham to build a monastery and the abbot transferred some of his monks there. Bede & Eddius both record that king Alhfrith subsequently replaced Eata by Wilfrid by Alhfrith, who replaced the timber church with a stone built church. 

⁹ The eclipse was 1st. May 664 (Irish Annals of Tigernach). According to NASA, the path of the eclipse started in the Pacific, crossed the Gulf of Mexico, swept along the eastern coast of North America crossed the British Isles and continued on into Central Europe. The Irish sources claimed that there was also an earthquake in Britain and that the plague reached Ireland first at Mag Nitha, among the Fothairt in Leinster. It is likely delegates to the Council from the continent were among the carriers of the plague. It affected Ireland and southern England badly, less so in the north of Scotland. According to Adomnan, the abbot of Iona at that time the north was saved by the prayers of St. Columba, and he himself walked among plague victims unharmed. 

¹⁰ A possible groin bubo also grew on Cuthbert’s thigh. Pierce A. Grace (2018). “From blefed to scamach: pestilence in early medieval Ireland” “No sooner was Cuthbert’s illness known to his brethren than the whole community passed the entire night in praying for his recovery. When told … Cuthbert exclaimed, “Why am I lying here? It is not possible that God should refuse your prayers ! ” and demanding his staff and his shoes, he at once rose from his bed and speedily recovered his health, though his illness left behind effects which clung to him till his dying day” Bede, Life of Cuthbert 

¹¹ It is an early 8th-century pocket gospel book, written in Latin. Its finely decorated leather binding is the earliest known Western bookbinding to survive, and both the 94 vellum folios and the binding are in outstanding condition for a book of this age. With a page size of only 138 by 92 millimetres (5.4 in × 3.6 in). 

¹² Durham or Stonyhurst records ‘repertum sub capite Sancti Cuthberti. 

¹³ It afterwards came into the hands of Henry Lee, Earl of Lichfield, who gave it to the Rev. Thomas Phillips, the author of the life of Cardinal Pole. By him it was presented to the English Jesuit College at Liege in 1764, whence it was transferred in 1794 to Stonyhurst ODS records (p. 44-5). 

¹⁴ British Library Add MS 89000 

¹⁵ Stonyhurst ODS He sent the priest, Albert Westow, to get them. 

¹⁶ At Lindisfarne, the abbot-bishop, Colman, who had spoken on behalf of the defeated Celtic Church at the Synod, resigned his see. and with about 30 of the English monks of Lindisfarne, returned to Iona. Before Colman left, he negotiated two concessions from King Oswiu – that Tuda would succeed him as bishop of Lindisfarne and Eata would become bishop of Hexham. Tuda died of the yellow plague within two months of his appointment, so Eata, after being briefly bishop of Hexham, was transferred to Lindisfarne, as abbot. He commandeered Cuthbert, the abbot of Melrose, to be his prior. In 678, England had a new Archbishop of Canterbury – Theodore of Tarsus, installed by Pope Vitalian, to sort out the mess. Eata was put in overall charge of Northumbria temporarily, then returned to Lindisfarne in 681. after which the see of Hexham was assigned to Trumbert, and Lindisfarne to Eata. After the death of Trumbert in 684, Cuthbert was elected Bishop of Hexham, but was reluctant to leave his hermitage on Inner Farne. Following his consecration at York on Easter 685, Cuthbert went to see Eata, wen he was staying at Melrose. Eata and Cuthbert exchanged sees shortly thereafter, and for the last year of his life Eata occupied Hexham.Eata died of dysentery at Hexham in 686, and was buried in the abbey at Hexham. 

¹⁷ He was elected at the Synod of Twford, which Archbishop Theodore presided, in the presence of King Egfrid. Bishop Trumwine led the delegation to Lindisfarne. 

¹⁸ Clonmelsh, Co. Carlow. I cannot work out why he is called Ecgberht of Ripon, although he did become bishop of Lindisfarne. 

Primary Sources:  

  • The British Synaxarion – a project of TMES 
  • Ecclesiastical History Bk. 4 ch.27 Bede 

Secondary Sources: 

  • St. Boisil, Thurston, Herbert (1907) 
  • Life of St. Cuthbert, E. Consitt, London 1904. 
Our Local Saints
Copyright © 2025