Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/63

THE CHURCH OF ST. ODO bay of the Saxon Church to the north and south, by removing the existing outside walls of the portici and extending the area to the required distance. This would afford more space for the exhibition of relics which had evidently been accumulating during the rule of the preceding twenty-one Archbishops.

Sir Wm. St. John Hope was of opinion that this new transept was as long as the one built upon its site by Lanfranc, rather more than a hundred years afterwards; which was 127 feet long and 31½ feet wide, practically the length and width of the present western transepts of the Cathedral.

Edmer tells the story of how St. Odo visited the deserted and ruined church of Ripon, which had been founded by St. Wilfrid; and where the saint had been buried in 709, over two hundred years earlier. Odo reverently removed his bones and dust (leaving, however, some portion of the remains so that the place Wilfrid had loved above all others should not be wholly deprived of them), and brought the rest to Canterbury, where they were deposited in the altar consecrated to the honour of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This, it will be remembered, was the altar set in the chord of the eastern apse upon the platform forming the Sanctuary; but later on in his account Edmer corrects this and says that the relics of St. Wilfrid were placed behind the Great (High) Altar which was built against the eastern wall of the apse, which he described as having been built of rough stones and cement, and having the altar of Christ set before it.

At Christ Church, the Festival of St. Wilfrid was kept on October 12, as a Black Letter Day. He is mentioned in the Christ Church Kalendar in the Monastic Register K, ff. 19 and 20 and in the Canterbury Martyrology, and also in Hollingbourne's Psalter in Lambeth Palace, written by John Hollingbourne, a monk of Christ Church in the thirteenth century. He was for a time Bishop of York (not Archbishop) and afterwards of Hexham. He is mentioned by name in the thirteenth-century Collect used at Christ Church entitled De Reliquiis (see page 57) and the sacrist paid for extra music (pro sonitu), or music and bellringing, on his Day, the sum of iijd. 33