(A.D. 654.)
[Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Salisbury Breviary, and more modern
Anglican Martyrologies. Also Molanus and Greven, in their addition to
Usuardus. Authorities:--Bede and Malmesbury.]
S. Felix was a native of Burgundy, where he made the acquaintance of
Sigebert, prince of the East Angles, who had been banished by Redwald.
This prince was instructed in the Christian faith, and was baptized
by Felix, at that time a priest. Some time after this, upon the death
of his half-brother, king Espenwald, the son of Redwald, who had been
killed at the instigation of the cruel Penda, king of Mercia, Sigebert
was called to England to succeed to the kingdom, and he made it his
care to introduce Christianity among the East Angles, who occupied
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. For this purpose he invited S.
Felix to his court, and he, without demur, quitted country, friends,
and home, to preach the faith to an uncivilized pagan people. But first
he visited Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, and from him he received
his mission to the East Angles, and, as some say, his episcopal
consecration. King Sigebert appointed Dunwich, on the Suffolk coast, as
the head-quarters of his mission. Felix went about, preaching, founding
churches and schools, and, through his exertions, the Christian faith
took deep root in the land. Some attribute to him the foundation of the
first school at Cambridge.
S. Felix lived till after the year 650, and having discharged the duty
of a most zealous pastor of souls for the space of seventeen years,
he departed to the Lord, and was buried in his church of Dunwich, from
which place his body was afterwards translated to Soham, near Ely, and
thence to the abbey of Ramsey.