(Danihel), Bishop of the West
Saxons, and ruler of the See of Winchester from 705 to 744; died
in 745. The prominent position which he held among the English
clergy of his time can best be appreciated from the fact that he
was the intimate friend of St. Aldhelm at Sherborne, of the
Venerable Bede at Jarrow and of St. Boniface in Germany. Daniel
was consecrated to succeed Bishop Hedda of Wessex whose vast
diocese was then broken up;. Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and
Berkshire became the see of Sherborne under St. Aldhelm, while
Daniel retained only Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex, and of these
Sussex soon after was constituted a separate diocese. Daniel like
Aldhelm (q.v.) had been educated under the Irish scholar Maildubh
at Malmesbury and it was to Malmesbury that he retired in his old
age when loss of sight compelled him to resign the bishopric.
There, no doubt, he had also learnt the scholarship for which he
was famous among his contemporaries and which made Bede turn to
him as the man best able to supply information regarding the
church history of the south and west of Britain. Daniel, however,
is best remembered for his intimate connection with St. Boniface.
It was from Daniel that the latter received commendatory letters
when he started for Rome, and to Daniel he continually turned for
counsel during his missionary labours in Germany. Two letters of
the Bishop of Winchester to Boniface are preserved (see Haddan and
Stubbs, "Councils", III, 304 and 343) and give an
admirable impression of his piety and good sense. In the second of
these epistles, which was written after his loss of sight, Daniel
takes a touching farewell of his correspondent: "Farewell,
farewell, thou hundredfold dearest one." Daniel had made a
pilgrimage to Rome in 721 and in 731 assisted at the consecration
of Archbishop Tatwine. He seems never to have been honoured as a
saint. A vision recorded in "Monumenta Moguntina", No.
112, perhaps implies that he was considered to be lacking in
energy; none the less it would follow from William of Malmesbury's
reference (Gest. Pont., I, 357) to a certain stream in which
Daniel used to stand the whole night long to cool his passions,
that he was a man of remarkable austerity.
HERBERT THURSTON
