Egbert is an 8th-century English monk of Lindisfarne. He was anxious to go on the mission to Germany. His destiny, however, was less heroic but quite important. Settling on Iona, he succeeded in persuading the monks to adopt the roman usage over the celebration of Easter – a task which took thirteen years of gentle persuasion.
Ecgberht was an Anglo-Saxon of a noble family, probably from Northumbria. After some years of study in the monastery of Lindisfarne, he traveled to Ireland to study. One of his acquaintances at this time was Chad of Mercia. He settled at the monastery of Rath Melsigi, in modern-day county Carlow. In 664, most of his Northumbrian traveling companions, including Æthelhun, died of the plague, and he contracted it as well.
Ecgberht vowed that if he recovered, he would become a “peregrinus” on perpetual pilgrimage from his homeland of Britain and would lead a life of penitential prayer and fasting. He was twenty-five, and when he recovered he kept his vow until his death at age 90. According to Henry Mayr-Harting, Ecgberht was one of the most famous ‘pilgrims’ of the early Middle Ages, and occupied a prominent position in a political and religious culture that spanned northern Britain and the Irish Sea. Ecgberht was ordained a priest and began to organize monks in Ireland to proselytize in Frisia; many other high-born notables were associated with his work: Saint Adalbert, Saint Swithbert, and Saint Chad. He, however, was dissuaded from accompanying them himself by a vision-related to him by a monk who had been a disciple of Saint Boisil (the Prior of Melrose under Abbot Eata). Ecgberht instead dispatched Wihtberht, another Englishman living at Rath Melsigi, to Frisia. Ecgberht then arranged the mission of Saint Wigbert, Saint Willibrord, and others.
While in Ireland, Ecgberht was one of those present at the Synod of Birr in 697, when the Cáin Adomnáin was guaranteed.
Ecgberht had influential contacts with the kings of Northumbria and of the Picts, as well as with Iona, to which he moved around 716. He attempted to persuade the monks there to adopt the Roman Easter dating. He died on Iona at the age of ninety, on the first day that the Easter feast was observed in this manner in the monastery, on 24 April 729.