Eddius (Æddi) was a Kentish choirmaster recruited by bishop Wilfrid (c. 634 - 709) of York, to help in organizing church services in Northumbria.

Eddius later wrote the Vita Wilfridi, a biography of his patron, which is the earliest surviving historical work compiled by an Anglo-Saxon author. He is a strong partisan and very credulous, but the Vita Wilfridi is nevertheless invaluable for the period it treats. Its date is little after the first decade of the 8th century, and it was used by Bede in compiling his Historia.

Bibliography

Eddius' Life of Wilfrid has been edited three times: Raine, Historians of Church of York, London (1879 - 1894); W. Levison, in Mon. Germ. Hist., Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, vol. 6 (1913); and B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927).

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.