Lyfing
Archbishop of Canterbury
Consecration	1013
Enthroned	unknown
Ended	12 June 1020
Predecessor	Alphege
Successor	Aethelnoth
Birth name	Aelfstan
Died	12 June 1020
Buried	Canterbury Cathedral

Lyfing (died 12 June 1020) was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Wells and Archbishop of Canterbury.

Life

Lyfing was born "Aelfstan" and took his ecclesiastical name from leof-carus (= "darling").

He was abbot of Chertsey Abbey from about 989.¹² He became Bishop of Wells in 998 or 999,³ and in 1013 King Ethelred the Unready appointed him to the see of Canterbury.⁴ Lyfing was taken captive by Vikings and held prisoner for a time, but he was released in time to attend the Witenagemot in 1014, and he started repairs of the damage the Vikings had done to Canterbury Cathedral.

Lyfing was unable to go to Rome for his pallium during King Ethelred's reign, for every bishop that was consecrated during the remainder of the king's reign was consecrated by Archbishop Wulfstan of York.⁵ By 1018, however, he was named as archbishop, having returned to England from Rome with letters from Pope Benedict VIII.⁶ As Archbishop of Canterbury, Lyfing crowned two English kings: Ethelred's son Edmund Ironside in 1016 and Canute the Great in 1017.¹ He seems to have gone to Rome on behalf of Canute at least once.⁷

He died on 12 June 1020.⁴ He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral, near the altar of St. Martin.¹ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called him "a sagacious man, both before God and before the world".⁸

Notes

References

• {cite book |author=Barlow, Frank |authorlink=Frank Barlow (historian) |title=The English Church 1000-1066: A History of the Later Anglo-Saxon Church |publisher=Longman |location=New York |year=1979 |isbn=0-582-49049-9 |edition=Second Edition |pages=p. 66}}
• Brooks, Nicholas (1984). The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066. London: Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-7185-0041-5. 
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology, Third Edition, revised, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 
• Knowles, David; London, Vera C. M.; Brooke, Christopher (2001). The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales, 940-1216, Second Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80452-3. 
• Mason, Emma "Lyfing (d. 1020)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press, 2004 Online Edition accessed 7 November 2007
• O'Brien, Harriet Queen Emma and the Vikings: A History of Power, Love and Greed in Eleventh-Century England New York:Bloomsbury ISBN 1-58234-596-1
• Williams, Ann Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King London: Hambledon and London 2003 ISBN1-85285-382-4

External links

• Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England: Lyfing