55. SAINT FELIX, BISHOP OF DUNWICH
Our holy Father Felix was born and educated in Burgundy, France. He came to St. Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, and offered his services in the building up of the English Church. In 630, when King Sigebert returned from exile in France to rule the East Angles in the place of his apostate father Redwald, St. Honorius consecrated Felix to the episcopate and sent him to evangelize the people of East Anglia.
Making Dunwich the centre of his see, St. Felix established a school on the French model with teachers from Canterbury. He baptized King Anna of the East Angles and the whole of his holy family. He founded churches at Reedham, Loddon, Babingley and Shernborne, and a monastery at Soham; and the modern port of Felixstowe marks the place where, according to tradition, he made his first landing in East Anglia. He is also associated with the first church built at Ely. After a very fruitful life as a missionary bishop, St. Felix died on March 8, 647 and was buried at Soham, from where his relics were translated to Ramsey Abbey.
St. Felix is commemorated on March 8.
Holy Father Felix, pray to God for us!
(Sources: The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, II, 15, III, 1820; Liber Eliensis, 6; Fr. Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, English Orthodox Trust, 1995, chapter 80; David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, pp. 147–48)