Saint Beorhthelm of Stafford

Beorhthelm (also Bertelin, Bertoline, Bertram and Bettelin) was an Anglo-Saxon saint about whom the only evidence is legendary. He is said to have had a hermitage on the island of Bethnei, which later became the town of Stafford. Later he went to a more hilly area, possibly near Ilam, where he died. Beorhthelm of Stafford is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Catholic Church, with a feast day on 10 August. Beorhthelm's name appears in a very wide range of spellings, partly reflecting scribal error, partly folk-etymological identification with other names prominent in Christian tradition, such as Bartholomew.: 65–66  Jane Crawford concluded that his name was either Bertelm or Bertelin.: 66  More recently, John Blair has preferred the former option, using the standardised Old English spelling Beorhthelm. Nonetheless, some scholars stick with the spelling Bertellin this is used in the Life of this saint. An early-eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon litany mentions a confessor as 'Sancte Byrhthelm', while a list of saints' resting-places put together by Hugh Candidus in Peterborough Abbey in the twelfth century and thought to have drawn on earlier sources places 'sanctus Berthelmus martyr' in 'Stefford'.: 10  Several churches were dedicated to him in the Middle Ages, and Alan Thacker has argued that these dedications date back to the tenth century, though the evidence is only circumstantial.: 10–11  The earliest account of Beorhtelm's life is a Vita Bertellini, found in the Nova Legenda Angliae printed in 1516 by Wynkyn de Worde, but scholars agree that this is based on a lost manuscript and that the text as we have it originated around the twelfth century.: 14–17  Bertram is said to have lived some time in the eighth century. The son of a Mercian king, he was a friend and pupil of Saint Guthlac. After Guthlac's death around 715, Beorthelm established a hermitage on the peninsula named Betheney.