19 April 1012 A.D. 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury—Aphege, LeFranc and Anselm
19 April 1012 A.D. 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury—Aphege, LeFranc and Anselm Editor. “Anselm and Aphege.” 19 Apr 2015. Clerk of Oxford. http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2015/04/anselm-and-alphege.html . Accessed 19 Apr 2015. Anselm and Alphege Alphege in a 12th-century Canterbury manuscript ( BL Cotton MS Nero C VII, f.46v ) Today is the feast of St Alphege (Ælfheah), one of the chief saints of Anglo-Saxon Canterbury. Taken prisoner during the Viking siege of Canterbury in 1011, he was held hostage for seven months before being killed by his captors at Greenwich, apparently because he would not (or could not) pay a ransom for his freedom. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the army, drunk on 'wine from the south', took the archbishop to their husting and pelted him with bones and ox-heads, until one of them killed him with an axe-blow to the head. He was buried at St Paul's in London, but his body was returned to Canterb...