FRITHEGODE or FRIDEGODE (fl. 950), hagiographer, a monk of Canterbury, of great learning in the Scriptures, is said to have been the tutor of Oswald, afterwards archbishop of York. At the request of Archbishop Oda he wrote a metrical ‘Life of Wilfrith.’ This ‘Life’ is simply a version in hexameters of the Life by Hæddi; it is written in an obscure and turgid style, many words not being Latin at all. Oda wrote a preface to it in prose, and Frithegode's work has therefore sometimes been attributed to him. The poem has been printed by Mabillon, ‘Acta SS. O. S. B.,’ iii. i. 150, from an incomplete manuscript at Corbie, and completed by him in v. 679, from manuscript Cotton. Claud. A. 1; also in Migne's ‘Patrologia,’ cxxxiii. 979, and in ‘Historians of York’ (Rolls Ser.), i. 105; the preface is printed by itself in the ‘Patrologia,’ cxxxiii. 946, and in Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra,’ ii. 50.
[Eadmer, Vita S. Oswaldi, Hist. of York, ii. 5 (Rolls Ser.); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 20 (Rolls Ser.); Raine's Pref. to Hist. of York, i.; Hardy's Cat. i. 399; Wright's Biog. Lit. i. 433.]