Alphage or Elphegus

Alphage or Elphegus archbishop of Canterbury, distinguished for humility and piety. Being infected with the views of the age, he took the habit in the monastery of the Benedictines, and afterward shut himself up in a cell at Bath. Here he remained until, the see of Winchester being vacated by the death of Ethelwold, Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, called him to the vacant bishopric. In 1005 he was elevated to the see of Canterbury. After he had governed this metropolitan see some years, the Danes made an irruption into the city, burned the cathedral, and having put to death upward of seven thousand of the inhabitants, seized the archbishop, whom they kept in bonds seven months, and then murdered; this was on the 19th April, 1012. Godwin remarks that the murderers did not escape the penalty of their sacrilegious act; scarcely one in the whole Danish army having escaped. — Collier, Eccl. Hist. 1, 487-493.