(ABOUT A.D. 756.)
[Anglican and Scottish Martyrologies. Authorities:--Aberdeen Breviary,
Hector Boece, Hist. Scot. lib. ix. Matthew of Westminster under date
941; Turgot of Durham, &c.]
S. Balther is supposed to be identical with S. Baldred, commemorated
the same day in the Scottish Martyrologies.
S. Baldred is said to have lived a solitary life on the Bass-rock. At
the entrance of the Firth of Forth was a dangerous rock just above
the level of low tide which proved a cause of continual shipwreck.
Baldred, says the lection in the Aberdeen Breviary, compassionating
the sailors, went to the rock, and standing on it, it swam away under
him "like a boat," and he conducted it to a place where it could do no
mischief, and there he rooted it again.
He died at Aldham (Alderstone), and his body was claimed by the
neighbouring parishes of Tyningham and Preston. A contest arose between
the three parishes, and the story is told, which occurs also in that
of S. Tyllo, that in the morning there were three precisely similar
bodies, so that each parish was able to possess S. Baldred.
In 951, Anlaf the Dane burnt the church and monastery of Tyningham,
and immediately after was struck with sudden sickness, and died. The
body of S. Balther was rediscovered by revelation, by a priest, Elfrid,
two centuries later, whose mission seems to have been the recovery of
lost relics, for he found also those of SS. Bilfred, Acca, Alkmund
the bishop, king Oswin, and the abbesses Ebba and Ethelgitha, being
directed to them all by visions. The bones of S. Balther and S. Bilfred
were put together with the body of S. Cuthbert in his shrine at Durham.
But they were removed from the shrine again in 1104, the head of S.
Oswald being alone left with S. Cuthbert, and were put in the shrine of
the Venerable Bede.
S. Bilfred was a goldsmith, who is said to have chased a book of the
Gospels with gems in gold, which was long preserved at Durham, and is
now in the Cottonian library in the British Museum. On the cover is "✠
Eadfrid, Oetilwald, Billfrith, Aldred hoc Evangelium Deo et Cuthberto
uonstruxerunt et ornaverunt;" above this in Saxon characters, and in
a Northumbrian dialect, "And Billfrith, the anchorite, he fabricated
the curious works that are on the outside, and it adorned with gold
and with gems, also with silver overgilded, a priceless treasure."
Billfrith is supposed to be a local form of Bilfred.