Wilfrid was born in Northunbria and educated in the monastery at Lindisfarne. He spent some years in Lyons and Rome and came back as an intransigent supporter of Roman church customs as against the Celtic ways of northern England. He upheld the Roman position on the tonsure and the date of Easter, for example.
At the Synod of Whitby in AD 664, he was chiefly responsible for the victory of the Roman party and was made bishop of York and Ripon. Eddius' Vita Wilfridi, an account of the turbulent life of Saint Wilfrid, records, among much else, the noble, richly decorated church, soon elevated to cathedral status, which Wilfrid erected at Hexham in AD 675-80. The crypt remains virtually intact today. According to Eddius, the church was the finest such building north of the Alps.
After AD 678, Wilfrid was frequently at odds with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Northumbria, and spent long years in active exile. Towards the end of his life, however, under King Aldfrith, he was presiding over the see of Hexham from his monastery of Ripon. Wilfrid was an outstanding figure of his time, able and courageous, firm and resolute in his convictions.