Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Felix (d.647?)
FELIX, Saint (d. 647?), bishop of Dunwich, was born and ordained in Burgundy, whence he came to England inspired by a desire for missionary work. He sought Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, and told him his desire, whereon Honorius sent him to East Anglia, having previously consecrated him to be bishop of that people. Christianity was not yet firmly established in East Anglia, where King Redwald had received the faith in obedience to the wish of the king of Kent, but had afterwards relapsed into paganism. His successor, Eorpwald, was converted, but was assassinated soon afterwards, and there was a pagan reaction, in which his brother Sigebert fled into Gaul, whence he returned and was called to the kingdom in 631. It was to help the pious efforts of Sigebert that Felix was sent, probably soon after the king's accession. Bæda (Hist. Eccles. ii. 15) tells us that Felix presided over his see for seventeen years, so that we may assign his episcopate to 631–47. In obedience to the wishes of King Sigebert he fixed his seat at Dunwich. Much of the old town has now been swept away by the inroads of the sea, but it was then the chief seaport on the East-Anglian coast, and the most central place for communications inland. Felix showed himself an excellent missionary, and under him and Sigebert the conversion of the East-Angles rapidly prospered. Sigebert had seen enough of the civilisation of Gaul to sympathise with the desire of Felix to care for education, and a school was founded and supplied with teachers from Kent. Local tradition fixes the site of this school at Saham-Toney in Norfolk; but in a later time the mention of an East-Anglian school was seized upon as an argument to prove the superior antiquity of the university of Cambridge to that of Oxford. Concerning the rest of the activity of Felix we do not know much. He was helped by the coming of an Irish monk Fursey, who introduced monastic life, of which Sigebert was so smitten that he resigned his crown to enter a monastery. Under his successor Egric East Anglia was invaded by the heathen Penda; but in spite of this disaster the progress of Christianity in East Anglia was zealously furthered by the next king, Anna, and Felix ended his days in peace.
Felix was counted as an English saint, and his festival was fixed on 8 March. Tradition connects Felix with the monastery of Ely, which was founded by King Anna's daughter, Etheldreda, but not till 673. According to the ‘Liber Eliensis,’ Felix founded a monastery at Soham, near Ely, and thither his remains were translated a few years after his death; thence, during the time of the Danish invasions, they were transferred to Ramsey. Churches were dedicated to him, and his name remains in Felixstowe in Suffolk and Feliskirk in Yorkshire.
[Bædæ Hist. Eccles. ii. 15, iii. 18, 20; Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. ii. 74, iv. 181; Acta Sanctorum for March 8. Cf. notices by Dr. Stubbs in the Dict. Christian Biog., and by Jessopp, Diocesan Hist. of Norwich.]