St. Willibald of Eichstätt

St. Willibald of Eichstätt (c. 700 – c. 787) was an Anglo-Saxon of Wessex, a kinsman of St. Boniface and brother of Sts. Winnebald and Walburga, in a remarkable family of saints. As a young monk he set out on an extraordinary pilgrimage, traveling through Italy to the Holy Land in the 720s and visiting Jerusalem, Nazareth, and many holy places — a journey he later recounted to a nun who wrote it down as the Hodoeporicon, making him the first known Englishman to make pilgrimage to the Holy Land and leaving one of the earliest such travel accounts.

After years at the great abbey of Monte Cassino, he was sent north to assist St. Boniface in the evangelization of the Germanic peoples. Consecrated bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria around 741, he governed that see for some four decades, founding the double monastery of Heidenheim and laboring to establish the Church among the Bavarians. He died at a great age and was canonized in 1088.