Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Suidbert
SUIDBERT (d. 713), apostle of the Frisians, was one of the twelve missionaries sent by St. Egbert to work in Northern Europe. He went to Frisia in 690, and was so successful that he was chosen bishop and sent to England for consecration, which he received at the hands of St. Wilfrid on 29 June 693. His see as regionary bishop of Frisia was at Dorostadium, now Wijkbij-Duurstede, on the Rhine. He preached among the Bructeri in Westphalia; but when they were subdued by the Saxons he repaired to Pepin of Heristal, and from him and his wife Plectrudis he received the island ‘In litore,’ or Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldorf. Here he built a monastery, and died in 713. In the old Stiftskirche his relics are shown in a shrine of the thirteenth century. He appears to have kept up a taste for classical learning, for a fine copy of Livy, probably of the fifth century, now in the Vienna Royal Library, was in his possession.
[The life of him attributed to Marchelmus, or Marcellinus (Surius, Acta Sanctorum, ii. 3, ed. Venice, 1581), is a spurious production of a much later time. See Diekampf's Hist. Jahrbuch, ii. 272, and Haddan and Stubbs's Councils, iii. 225. Early in the tenth century St. Radbod, bishop of Utrecht, preached a sermon on Suidbert, which is extant. Acta SS. Bolland. 1 March, p. 67; Bæda, Hist. Eccles. ed. Plummer (where the various spellings of the name are given); Paleogr. Soc. plate 183 (from the Vienna Livy); Alcuin's De Sanctis Ebor. v. 1073; Bouquet, ii. 641; Dict. Chr. Biogr. and authorities quoted.]