The life of St Cedd of Essex
He set his episcopal seat inside the walls of an abandoned Roman coastal fort, raising there a plain stone church for his new flock.
Later a neighboring ruler pressed land on him in the north country for the founding of a monastery, and Cedd, insisting first on a season of fasting and prayer to sanctify the ground, eventually agreed and became its first superior. He carried both roles for the rest of his life, shepherding his southern diocese while still answering for the northern house he had founded, journeying constantly between the two. Disease overtook the region in 664 and claimed him at his monastery; a brother who had come to his side did not long survive him either, and the community passed into the hands of the youngest of the four brothers. Nearly everything remembered of Cedd traces back to the writing of Bede, composed within a lifetime of these events, and his body was laid to rest inside the small stone church his monks later built in Mary's honor.
