Hædde of Winchester

Saint Hædde (Hedde) of Winchester was a monk and bishop of Winchester. He died about 7 July 705, although the Anglo-⁠Saxon Chronicle gives the year 703. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church, where his name is in the Synaxis of the Saints of Britain and Ireland, in the form Hedda. His commemoration is on 7 July.

He is believed to have been born at Headingley, near Leeds (according to one source, not later than 650, perhaps much earlier), and became a monk of Whitby Abbey. He was consecrated bishop by Theodore of Tarsus in 676 and was the first West Saxon bishop to reside at Winchester instead of Dorchester-⁠on-⁠Thames. His episcopate spanned the reigns of four kings of the West Saxons, among them Centwine, Caedwalla and Ine. He was bishop for more than a quarter of a century.

His contemporaries regarded him as a wise and virtuous bishop. When King Ine of Wessex drew up his laws, Hædde was among his counsellors, and he is mentioned in the law code of Ine as having contributed to them. After his death he was glorified among the saints, and his large diocese was divided in two, part of the area forming the diocese of Sherborne. Nevertheless, no wide popular cult of Saint Hædde developed in Britain, though respect for him remained.