Biography
Adulf
About Adulf
Adulf is remembered in medieval tradition alongside Botolph. The Catholic Church in Norway lists his commemoration on 17 June and preserves the familiar designation “of Utrecht,” while acknowledging that the bishopric attributed to him is doubtful. Little about his individual life can be established securely.
Folcard’s Life of Botolph portrays the two as brothers of Saxon origin who crossed the sea for religious education. In that account they sought instruction in monasteries, adopted monastic life and were tonsured. Adulf is presented as the older brother, later chosen as a bishop. The narrative praises his care for the poor and needy. These details are statements of a much later religious biography, not contemporary records of Adulf’s career.
The distance between the narrative and the period it describes matters. F. S. Stevenson noted that Folcard wrote about four centuries after Botolph’s lifetime. He questioned the association of Adulf with a known bishopric, observing that no such bishop was known in the lists for Utrecht, Maastricht or Arras. He explored the possibility of confusion among names and traditions connected with the saints. His proposed explanations are historical hypotheses, and do not identify a securely documented bishop whose life can be substituted for Adulf’s.
A related medieval account of the removal of relics to Thorney describes Adulf as buried with Botolph. It tells how the bearers could not move Botolph’s remains until they also took Adulf’s, and says that Adulf’s remains were kept at Thorney. The episode belongs to the tradition of the saints’ relics. It preserves a remembered association between them, but does not independently establish their kinship or the events of Adulf’s earlier life.
The Norwegian church account likewise places his memory within the tradition of Botolph and Thorney. It gives competing approximate death years, around 680 or 660. These estimates should not be treated as an exact chronology. His commemoration on 17 June is clearer in that account than the date and circumstances of his death.
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