Wig. in Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 539 B). Alcuin (chap. vii.) makes Willibrord go to Rome only once, but in this he is probably wrong. He also says his consecration took place in St. Peter's (ib.), but this also seems to be a slip. Bede, who places Willibrord's second journey to Rome in 696, probably postdates it by a year (cf. Monumenta Alcuiniana, p. 46 n.) Remaining in Rome only fourteen days, Willibrord on his return received from Pippin a seat for his cathedral at Wiltaburg, a small village a mile from Utrecht. Later, in 722, Charles Martel, confirming his father Pippin's action, made a formal grant to Willibrord of Utrecht and lands round the monastery (Bouquet, iv. 699; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxix. 551, 552). In Utrecht Willibrord built a church of St. Saviour's (cf. Boniface to Pope Stephen III, Ep. 90, apud Migne, lxxxix. 787–9; Mon. Mog. pp. 259, 260). He built many churches and some monasteries throughout his widespread diocese (Bede, Hist. Eccl. vol. v. chap. xi.; Alcuin, Vit. Will. chap. xi.) Of the latter the most famous foundation was that of Echternach on the Sauer in Luxemburg, near Trier, which he and the abbess Irmina founded. It was richly endowed by Pippin and his queen Plectrudis in 706, and later by Charles Martel in 717 (ib. chap. xxii; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxix. 539–50). He consecrated several bishops for Frisia. When St. Wilfrid [q. v.] made his second journey to Rome with Acca [q. v.] as his companion, they visited Willibrord, and Wilfrid was able to see the completion by Willibrord of the work of which he himself had partly laid the foundations (ib. iii. 13, v. 19; Eddius in Historians of Church of York, p. 37). In 716, during the war between Rathbod and the Franks, Christianity in Frisia endured a time of persecution. St. Boniface in that year went to Frisia, hoping to help Willibrord and to win Rathbod's consent to his preaching. But the latter was refused. On 15 May 719 Boniface was appointed Willibrord's coadjutor, his special work being to convert those of the German tribes who were still pagan. On Rathbod's death Willibrord was joined by Boniface, and they worked together in Frisia for three years; but when Willibrord urged that at his death Boniface should succeed to his archbishopric and charge, Boniface's humility refused such honour, and he went on into Hesse (Migne, lxxxix. 615, 616; Boniface, Ep. 90, in Migne, lxxxix. 787, 788).
Willibrord baptised Pippin the Short, grandson of Pippin of Herstal who had first welcomed him, and he foretold that he should overthrow the shadow of Merovingian rule and become king of the Franks (Alcuin, vol. i. chap. xxiii.) In extreme old age he retired to the monastery of Echternach, where he died and was buried, aged 81, in 738 or 739. Boniface's statement of his having preached for ‘fifty years’ (Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxix. 535) is approximate only. Alcuin (chap. xxiv.) gives 6 Nov. as the day of his death, but Theofrid gives 7 Nov., and the latter is the day kept in his honour in the Roman calendar. His remains were translated in 1031 to a new and more sumptuous church built at Echternach in his honour (Alcuin, Vit. Will. chaps. xxiv. xxv.; Pertz, xv. 1307, xxiii. 27, 34). The fame of miracles wrought at his tomb and by his relics became general (Alcuin, Vit. Will. chap. xxvi.; Pertz, xv. 967, 970, 971, 1271, &c.) Willibrord's work suffered a reaction less than fifty years after his death, when Widikind overthrew Christianity in Frisia (Pertz, ii. 410). The cause of Willibrord's success proved also the cause of his failure; his mission had depended largely for its support upon the help of the ruler of the state; once that support was withdrawn or overwhelmed, the work of the mission was not sufficiently independent to endure in its entirety. Willibrord had been not so much a missionary as the right hand of Pippin and of Charles Martel in their efforts to civilise the lower German tribes. Though indefatigable in the work of his diocese, the establishment of his bishopric at Utrecht, on the borders of the empire, and especially his frequent retirement to Echternach in the very heart of the Frankish region, emphasise this fact. It was in the wake of Frankish armies that his main work in Frisia was done.
According to a will printed in Migne's ‘Patrologia Latina’ (lxxxix. 554–6), wherein is contained a long and detailed account of all Willibrord's possessions, mainly gifts from Peppin and Plectrudis and Charles Martel, Willibrord left all he possessed to the abbey of Echternach, where he wished his body to rest. The famous ‘dancing procession,’ still held at Echternach on Whit-Tuesday, for which pilgrims assemble, from Belgium, Germany, and France, sometimes to the number of ten thousand, is said to owe its origin to a pilgrimage made in the eighth century to the relics of Willibrord.
[The chief authority for Willibrord's life is Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, bk. iii. chap. xiii. bk. v. chaps. x. xi. xix. The earliest life was written by an Irish monk, ‘rustico stilo,’ but his name and work have perished. The latter, however, was the basis of the two lives of Willibrord by Alcuin, one in prose for use in the church of Echternach, the other in verse for the teaching
