Wilfrid. Lived in the 600s and early 700s. Based in Britain. Priest. Bishop. Enmeshed with kings, rival priests, and bishops.

Now, let’s see if we can follow the machinations.

1. King #1, Oswi, and his Prince #1 son, Alcfrid, REALLY like our Wilfrid. A lot. At least to begin with. They want to see him promoted. So they pressure…
2. Bishop #1, named Agilbert, to ordain Wilfrid as a priest. Agilbert tells King #1 and Prince #1 how wise they are! how discerning they are! and how happy he would be to ordain Wilfrid as a priest! Why, in fact, Bishop #1 tells King #1 and Prince #1 that their chosen man would certainly make a darned fine bishop! It doesn’t matter that Wildrid hasn’t even served one day as a priest–he’s just that good.
3. Bishop #1 ordains Wilfrid as a priest and King #1 and Prince #1 are quite happy with Bishop #1.
4. Bishop #1 slips out of the area entirely…and wisely.
5. King #1, Oswi, makes his son, Alcfrid a King, too! Why not?! So now we have King #2, Alcfrid.
6. King #2, Alcfrid, wants to see his friend Wilfrid (our saint) finally made a priest.
7. But King #2 can’t find himself a bishop to make Wilfrid a bishop (which is supposedly required), so he sends Wilfrid to France, because King #2 has a bishop-friend in France who owes him a favor.
8. Wilfrid goes to France to become a bishop.
9. While Wilfrid is away from Britain, King #1, Oswi (father of King #2 Alcfrid) decides that HE wants to be the one to decide who’s to be bishop, and not his upstart son! So King #1 simply declares that Chad shall be the new bishop, rather than Wilfrid. It’s not that King #1 doesn’t like Wilfrid, but he doesn’t like his son choosing who’s to be the bishop.
10. So Chad is in as Bishop.
11. Wilfrid returns to Britain, consecrated in France to be a bishop, only to find out that his promised see has been filled by Chad (thanks to Wilfrid’s initial benefactor, King #1, Oswi).
12. Wilfrid is smart. He decides not to dispute the “election” of Chad as bishop (even though there was no bishop involved to ordain Chad as a bishop). Wilfrid applauds Chad and then leaves the area for several years. He lives in a monastery, as an ordained bishop without a see. But he has not publicly alienated any king and his life is not in jeopardy.
13. Meanwhile, Canterbury fills its see with an Archbishop. This more-powerful-than-a-king cleric declares that King #1 Oswi’s elevation of Chad to bishop was “irregular” and removes Chad.
14. This of course does not make Oswi happy, and Wilfrid really really doesn’t want to be part of that unhappiness. He specifically requests that the Archbishop not put him in to replace Chad.
15. So the Archbishop of Canterbury instead gives our Wilfrid the see of York.

Wilfrid goes on, then, to have a remarkable career as the Bishop of York, so much so that he eventually becomes a saint.

But–note the twists and turns, the politics and the power plays, the lack of consideration of the spiritual or pastoral qualities of any of the bishops or bishop-wannabes, and how labyrinthine this all is. Thanks to Butler, we actually get to peek behind the scenes more than usual.

Wilfrid was smart to accept the situation when Chad was made bishop. He was smart to leave the area for a while. He was smart to refuse to go in as bishop to that area when Chad’s elevation was set aside.

In short, Wilfrid survived. He understood that King #1 can like you one day and not like you the next, simply because King #2 likes you too much. He understood that if King #1 makes someone a bishop in his kingdom, then it will not be useful to do anything but be gracious and appear happy for the King’s choice. He also understood that, in the words of Aesop, “slow and steady wins the race.”

None of this was about goodness, justice, righteousness, truth. This may well be the inevitable consequence when Christianity becomes dominant as a religion and its leading practitioners intertwine themselves so closely with heads of state.