1

Christian Queens

This chapter lays the foundation for understanding the lives of early English queens in the context of the most dominant cultural influence of the early Middle Ages: Christianity. It starts by exploring the depiction of Mary as Queen of Heaven in the Old English poem, The Advent Lyrics, which serves as a metaphor to understand how the sources relate to the biographical information available about the queens in this book. Many of the queens whose names survive from this era do so in explicitly Christian sources, where they feature as saints and advocates for the religion, in many cases helping to spread the faith in the conversionary era of the mid- to late seventh century. Many of these queens were saints, and belonged to an extended network of sanctity and royalty. St Seaxburh, queen of Eorcenberht of Kent (r. 640–64), and St Æthelthryth, twice queen and divorced from Ecgfrith of Northumbria (r. 670–85) were sisters. St Domne Eafe was a niece to Seaxburh on her father’s side, married to Merewalh of the Magonsætan in the seventh century. St Osgyth, married to Sighere of Essex (r. 664–?80), appears to have been descended from the Mercian royal line, making her a niece to Domne Eafe via the maternal line. St Cuthburh was queen to Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685–704/5), Ecgfrith’s half-brother and heir. Other queens were not remembered as saints, but their piety and generosity to the Church was memorialised in various ways in the historical record. Eafe was a Christian queen baptised in the kingdom of her birth, among the Hwicce, but whose marriage to Æthelwealh of Sussex (d. 695) was only partially successful in converting her husband and his kingdom. In contrast, Frithugyth of Wessex, who may have been related to the family of Osgyth’s father, Frithuwald, was memorialised for taking among the most pious choices in going on pilgrimage to Rome in 737. The details of these lives are largely Christian in nature, but so too are the sources in which this information is documented.

Queen of Heaven: Mary in The Advent Lyrics

The most prominent aspect that emerges in the documentary sources for the lives of the queens of England 650–850 is that of their Christianity. The lives of these women are contained within sources that are overwhelmingly Christian in nature: the text-based and Latinate nature of Christianity aided the documentation of the era, yet at the same time, the tendency of early hagiographical material to adopt and adapt previous material at times obscures the authentic biographical information in their narratives.

The Christian nature of the sources aptly reflects the culture in which early English queens led their lives. Christianity was pervasive, and shaped the practice of queenship across early medieval Europe. There were a variety of Christian models of queen to emulate, either as a living queen, or for a writer seeking to portray a queen in words – whether for praise or for censure. There were numerous biblical queens, such as Esther, Jezebel and the Queen of Sheba, whom Stacy Klein has examined the reception of in early England in her Ruling Women; but of all the biblical queens, Mary, as Queen of Heaven, occupied pride of place in the depictions of women.¹ Yet, although there was a range of biblical queens to emulate, many queens sought rather to imitate other Christian saints – both male and female. Perhaps the most highly lauded female saint to emerge from this era, virgin queen, abbess and saint, Æthelthryth, led her life of asceticism, piety and virginity in the pursuit of sanctity rather than earthly fame. Other, historical queens could have also served as models of how to be a queen, Christian, and possibly also a saint, both for the women leading these mediatory lives, and for the writers who documented them. The Life of Eormenhild, discussed in Chapter 2, draws heavily on parallels from another saintly queen: her own mother, Seaxburh.

An inherent tension between the office of queen and the heavily Christian nature of the sources underpins much of the discussion of these queens. On the one hand, the conversion to Christianity in England started with the rulers and aristocracy, and, along with allied fellow kings serving as sponsors for fellow converting monarchs, marriages across borders were a key mode of evangelisation across the island, as seen with Peada of Mercia and his queen, Ealhflæd, in Chapter 3. As such, queens carried out important work, spreading the good word and helping to promote the organisation and structure of the Church in its nascent phases. On the other hand, queens had always occupied an important role in the court as advisor to the king, offering her perspective and using her position and material resources to curry favour and foster alliances. Unfortunately, bishops and queens often found themselves as rivals for the king’s ear, a tension best observed in The Life of Wilfrid, where the rivalry between Wilfrid and Ecgfrith of Northumbria’s new queen, Eormenburg, erupted across the whole island. Thus, queens were always both inherently allies and rivals, both advocating for and competing with the hierarchy of the Church.

The position of the queen in early English culture is well-represented in the depiction of Mary as the Queen of Heaven in The Advent Lyrics. The poem, and Mary’s position within it, shares many affinities with many of the subjects of this chapter. The poem, now the first work in the collection of poetry in the great Old English poetic miscellany dated variously to the late tenth or early eleventh century known as the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501), has been known by many names: Christ I, Advent, or The Advent Lyrics.² Like the poem, it is sometimes difficult to know how to refer to individual queens, as their names do not have standardised orthographies, or sources disagree on the name of the queen, or there is simply an absence regarding the status of any queen at all, including a name – a complication illustrated in the discussion of Leofrun in Chapter 3. The poem is in something of a fragmentary state: Mary Clayton notes frankly how ‘the beginning of the poem is missing; the first folio of the manuscript has been damaged by slash marks, is worn and stained and has holes, making it very difficult to read in parts.’³ The record from which to retrieve the biographical details of these queens’ lives is also fragmentary, damaged and partial, making it necessary for us to extrapolate thoughtfully using the information around to inform and shape our conjectures, as with the queens of Wihtred of Kent explored in Chapter 4.

Just as direct access to the entirety of the poem is now impossible, direct access to the lives and experiences of these queens is impossible. We may be able to approximate what may have been there, but it is fundamentally beyond recovery. We must mediate through the representations of these women, like Æthelthryth and Eadburh, through the lenses of their authors’ views. Also like the poem, we can often identify possible material the creators of these sources drew on – whether earlier hagiographies, chronicles, or typological models. But it can be difficult – or simply impossible – where earlier sources have not been identified or, even worse, lost, to work out what might be ‘original’ or particular to a specific queen.

Finally, the opening of the poem as it survives begins in much the same way as every queen is defined: in relation to a king. The remainder of opening line now reads: ‘cyninge’. The line is, by itself, a hint of what is to come: the rest of the antiphon appears to correlate with the Great ‘O’ Antiphon which is the work’s probable source: ‘O king of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone who makes both one: come and save man, whom you fashioned from clay.’⁴

The poem, as it now survives, opens with a king. The queens of this period hold that office solely by their relationship with a king, whether as wife, or, less frequently, mother. Thus, it is a fitting metaphor that The Advent Lyrics, too, begins with a king. Yet the poem is clearly not solely about kings. The form cyninge, which Clayton translates as ‘the king’ is the masculine singular strong dative form of the noun – some action is being performed by some other subject, to some other direct object, to which the king stands as an indirect object.⁵ The kings serve as objects in this study, too: because they are the most direct means of identifying many of these queens, and tend to have more identifiable information available, much discussion will relate to the kings of these queens.

The presentation of Mary in The Advent Lyrics builds up through the progression of the poem, to the moment when her royal identity becomes more explicit:

Eala þu mære middan-geardes,

seo clænest cwen ofer eorþan

þara þe gewurde to widan feore,

hu þec mid ryhte ealle reord-berend

hatað and secge ðhæleð geond foldan

bliþe mode þæt þu bryd sie

þæs selestan swegles Bryttan.

Swylce þu hyhstan on heofonum eac,

Cristes þegnas, cweþað ond singað

þæt þu sie hlæfdige halgum meahtum

wuldor-weorudes ond world-cundra

hada under heofonum ond helwara. (The Advent Lyrics, ll. 275–86)

[O you glory of the world, purest queen of those who have ever existed on earth, how rightly all speech-bearing people throughout the world, with joyful minds name you and say that you are the bride of heaven’s most generous Lord! Likewise the highest in heaven, Christ’s attendants, also declare and sing that you, with your holy virtues, are the lady of the heavenly host and of the earthly orders under the heavens and of the inhabitants of hell.]⁶

Drawing on Latinate sources, she is first identified as a fæmne geong / mægð manes leas / þe him to meder gecease, ‘The virgin was young, a girl without sin, whom he chose as his mother’ (ll. 35b–36). Virginity was valued as a spiritual concept, although queens, who were often also mothers, did not necessarily privilege biological virginity over the obligations of their office. The virgin and queen, Æthelthryth of Ely, was celebrated as one of the most popular saints in early England, whereas her sister, Seaxburh, queen of Eorcenberht of Kent, has a less illustrious reputation. It is also possible that the cultural value of virginity is overstated in the sources, as Bede’s main models for female saints tended to be virgin martyrs. Other titles afforded Mary in The Advent Lyrics building up to her identity of queen praise her exceptional, noble virginity (fæmne freolicast, l. 72) among all the other women on earth. Like an early English queen, Mary is exceptional for being chosen by the king for her special role.

The explicit identification of Mary as queen occurs about halfway through the extant text. The antiphon opens with the typical eala and repeats a title which, at first, appears to continue the strain of the previous antiphon and describe Christ – Eala þu mæra middan-geardes, ‘O you glory of the world’, but for the ending on mæra, would appear to refer primarily to Christ himself and not his mother, Mary. Yet the second line announces her instead, opening with the feminine demonstrative, seo, and, further rearticulating the essentiality of her innocence and purity, clænest. The Lyricist again expands on the exceptionality of Mary’s virtues, this time with the superlative added to a geographical marker of her office, cwen ofer eorþan, ‘queen over the earth’.

It is at this point that Mary’s identity as queen of heaven and earth emerges explicitly. The noun cwen can simply mean woman, or a noble woman; yet we are justified in reading it here as ‘queen’ for several reasons. Firstly, as the etymological ancestor of the modern-day term ‘queen’, it contains within it the kernel of what is later recognised as queenship semantically. And, as has been built up throughout the poem, the presentation of Christ as a prince in the preceding lines, as well as the reference to Mary’s own royal ancestry (in lines 87b–103), brings us to this articulation of her status as queen definitively. The poem represents a significant departure from the source material, a Latin antiphon: ‘O lady of the world, born from a royal seed, Christ has now come forth from your womb, like a bridegroom from his chamber: he who rules the stars lies in a manger.’⁷

The poet has rejected a more literal translation to draw out Mary’s high esteem. Rather than hlæfdige, a more traditional translation of Domina (‘lady’), the translation picks up on the idea behind regio ex semina orta, in Latin a reference to Christ (a royal seed), and reapplies the royalty to Mary: she has been transformed into a queen of the world. The Lyrics then extrapolate Mary’s influence, naming her þæt þu bryd sie / þæs selestan swegles Bryttan (‘the bride of heaven’s most generous Lord!’). Then, as if to consolidate further Mary’s elevated status among the holy hosts in heaven, the poem declares her to be

Swylce þa hyhstan on heofonum eac,

Cristes þegnas, cweþað ond singað

þæt þu sie hlæfdige halgum meahtum

wuldor-weorudes ond world-cundra

hada under heofenum ond helwara. (The Advent Lyrics, ll. 282 – 86)

[Likewise, the highest in heaven, Christ’s attendants, also declare that you, with your holy virtues, are the lady of the heavenly host and of the early orders under the heavens and of the inhabitants of hell.]

Again, the superlative, hyhstan, ‘the highest’, outlines how those praising Mary are the highest and most exceptional, and in turn elevates Mary: if the highest of the high praise her, she must be even more exceptional, even higher; she is of heroic merit equal to the soldiers of Christ, his apostles. The tripartite reference of Mary’s ladyship over three groups of dwellers (the inhabitants of heaven, of earth, and of hell) repeats and reinforces both Mary’s exceptionalism and her might. Here the poet deploys the traditional term hlæfdige, lady, before exploring the peoples over whom she reigns. They represent a sum totality of all knowable and perceivable worlds, making her effectively the queen of everything. She is unique – ana ealra monna – ‘alone among all of mankind’; Nan swylc ne cwen ænig oþer ofer ealle men, ‘no other like her has ever come’.

Although Mary is presented as unique and exceptional among all women throughout the Lyrics, she is also presented as a queen as a means of approximating her high status to an earthly audience. It also outlines some of the key characteristics of how its audience understood queenship. From the earliest parts of the conversion, Mary served as a model of queenship. Theresa Earenfight has observed how contemporary Frankish queens took the Virgin Mary as a model; as well as this, Jo Ann McNamara has noted that chaste virgin queens in early medieval society offered a cultural counterpoint to the masculine, war-like identity of the king.⁸ As presented in The Advent Lyrics, Mary encapsulates the key characteristics of a Christian queen consort: her exceptional identity, her potential for maternity, her close relationship with both current and potentially future kings, her own independent ability to access power, and, finally, as a model of faith and practitioner of religion. Some of these are more explicit in the depiction of Mary here, which is understandable given the devotional nature of the text and the organisation of the manuscript in which it (mostly) survives. Others are merely hinted at in the kinds of power available to a queen, such as her own activities as a powerful membr of society, capable of acting and reacting in various ways, socially, economically, culturally, or martially. A queen in this period occupied a position between many disparate elements using her identity and position, mediating between the demands of idealised representations like the Virgin Mary and the practicalities of court life in England; between chastity and maternity; between her natal family, often foreign, and that of her husband; between religion and state; and all of these with varying degrees of success.

Even when it is possible to speak of the conventions of queenship in a generalised way, it is important to remember that each woman found herself in a unique situation, in terms of her own background, the political and social situation into which she married, and her own lived experience: what unites the queens here was their socially and culturally unique relationship with the king. As with all the sources from which the history and biographies of queens are drawn, much is left to the imagination, and it could be tempting to overstate the powers and responsibilities entrusted to these royal women. In charters recording donations to the Church, as coniunx mea (‘my wife’) or regina mea (‘my queen’), a queen partook of the powers and economic resources of her husband, the king. Yet even in diverse sources such as letters, charters and saints’ lives, queens are also seen to act independently as patrons and administrators, and could even be seen to act in the place of the king in his absence. This supplemented and complemented her social power. As wife of the king, a queen occupied the highest secular social position available to a woman. In this position, she served as a nexus between her people, frequently presented as a mediating feminine presence to temper the authority of her husband with mercy, but also with other peoples, especially with her natal family, which could, by marriage, extend into several kingdoms. As a patron, she combined these roles to distribute wealth and cultivate favour, whether to ecclesiastical houses, as with most surviving charters signed by queens, or to secular lords whose loyalty and support might underpin the reign of her husband. Finally, certain queens, although not necessarily all, certainly also exercised their own military power to complement or supplement the achievements of their royal husbands.

Like the Virgin Mary in The Advent Lyrics, the queen was, first and foremost, an exceptional woman. She combined her own aristocratic background with her proximity to both the reigning king and potential future reigning kings in her children, potential heirs. But, in an increasingly Christian culture, queens also exercised their duties increasingly in religious parameters. This could involve religious patronage and evangelisation, spreading Christianity to new domains as queens married into new families and kingdoms, as well as later entering monastic life, as many dowager queens did. As such, many of the materials in which queens’ lives are documented are not historical works, but rather hagiographical sources, which conceive of these queens first and foremost as ideal Christians, and then queens. Nevertheless, these remain among some of the most detailed narratives for understanding queens.

Queens as Saints

One of the predominant factors of understanding both the lives of early English queens and using hagiography as a source is the essential interdependence between sanctity and royalty in this period. Wiesje Nijenjuis’ work on female saints in England to 1066 identifies a possible 86 saints, 48 of whom have sources from within the period, and 38 of whom are documented only in later sources, and goes on to explore some of the key patterns which underlie these holy figures.⁹ Of the 17 female saints whose lives fall in the period 650–850, all come from a high aristocratic or royal background, born either directly into royalty or related to it within a few generations. Fifteen were abbesses. Seven were queens – and all of those queens were also abbesses. All of these women were, at some point in their lives, in monastic life – whether as nuns or as abbesses.

These women were part of what Jane Tibbets Schulenburg has identified as a ‘Golden Age’ of female sanctity across Europe.¹⁰ The most popular female saints of the Middle Ages throughout Europe unsurprisingly also lived in an era in which the foundation of female monastic houses was most in vogue, roughly 650–750. This can be linked to the role of women in spreading and promoting Christianity, whether as evangelising brides to foreign kingdoms, or as foundresses of monastic houses.

As saints, their lives, backgrounds, relationships, devotions and miracles tended to be recorded in hagiography. At its most essential, hagiography is the story of a holy person, but even this simple encapsulation reduces one of its key purposes, which is to promote the individual as a saint – that is, to make the subject seem like a saint, and therefore be considered to be a saint. In Bede’s view, as Virginia Blanton identifies, hagiography is intended to ‘edify and to glorify that which is true history’.¹¹ In addition, it has a clear didactic function, to inspire others to imitate the life and characteristics of that given saint. Even The Advent Lyrics can be considered hagiographical writing, edifying and glorifying true history, and inspiring those who read it to imitate the humility, piety and purity of Mary, the Queen of Heaven. While queens did not always aspire to imitate Mary, the Queen of Heaven, as queens, they did often turn to other saints to inspire their practice – whether of queenship, maternity, or Christianity, and probably of all three as a whole.

For the purposes of writing about the lives of these early queens, hagiography is an essential, if complicated source. Hagiographies were never intended to be used as biographies. In her chapter examining sainthood as an attribute of queenship, Jo Ann McNamara asserts that ‘I take the position that the hagiography I have used as source material is reasonably reliable testimony to actual behaviour. Of course, this is not always so.’¹² In this statement, the qualifier must account for the principal difficulties of a biographer in working with hagiography as the predominant primary source material.

Firstly, these works must be considered in context. Even the matter of temporal context is not a simple matter. There is the date of the saint’s life – the years in which she lived, the political and cultural events occurring which shaped her life and the choices made in it – and the date of composition of the vitae themselves. As Virginia Blanton and Jane Tibbets Schulenburg have noted, the lives of saints reflect almost more about the individual and community writing them than about their nominal subjects; as such, Schulenburg advocates comparing various recensions and versions of the vitae to uncover the consistencies and therefore likely ‘ “real” contemporary behaviour’ of the saint.¹³ In addition, they must be considered alongside contemporaneous examples and works, including continental female saints’ lives, which help elucidate the trends which underpinned these saints and their lives. Finally, the conventions of the genre must be considered. The lives of early English queen saints drew on the paradigms available to them: as female saints, the most copious and influential sources were the lives of female martyrs, which queen saints both appear to have imitated in their behaviours and in the writing of their own vitae.

Hagiographical works were available from a very early period in England. The earliest study of hagiography in England is noted as occurring under the archbishopric of Theodore of Tarsus (668–90): texts connected with this era include the Passio S. Anastasii, Supicius Severus’ Life of St Martin, the translation of Evagrius’ Life of St Antony, and the curious life of the cross-dressing virago, St Eugenia.¹⁴ The next early account for a range of early female saints’ hagiographies is Aldhelm’s prose De Virginitate, which included a significant range of female saints – perhaps unsurprising, given its dedication to the Abbess Hildelith of Barking: the Virgin Mary, Cecelia, Agatha, Lucia, Justina, Eugenia, Scholastica, Christina, Dorothea, Constantina, Chionia, Irene, Agape, Rufina, Secunda, Anatolia and Victoria. The majority of these are virgin martyrs: the Virgin Mary (who is exceptional by definition), Scholastica and Constantina (daughter of Constantine the Great) are the only non-martyrs in this list.

The virgin martyr narrative was a powerful model for early hagiographers and Christians alike. The majority of the earliest female saints’ lives known in early England conformed to its pattern, and it played a significant role in how holy women, and especially royal holy women, came to be perceived. The archetypal story can be summarised thus: a girl from a good, but pagan, background encounters Christianity as part of her upbringing and, usually against the wishes of her parents, converts. There may be some early signs of sanctity: a miracle or an expressed wish to remain chaste. When faced with the prospect of marriage to a pagan suitor, she revolts, either by running away, or by attempting to trick or convert her would-be husband. The ploy may or may not work initially, but eventually she is exposed to hostile state authorities, and offered the opportunity to repent and return to Roman society. Without fail, she renounces this option, often attempting to convert her captors in the process, and is subject to torments, tortures and degradation of the foulest (and usually sexual) sort before being brutally executed – most frequently (and perhaps symbolically) with a sword.

The stories of many of the English princess saints of this era conform to many, though not all, of the conventions of these early virgin martyr narratives. Saints such as Frithuswith (better recognised perhaps as Frideswide of Oxford), Mildburh and Eanswith all share the good Christian upbringing, early dedication to religious life and chastity, and rejection of a suitor which feature in the Roman exempla. However, the less explicitly hostile background of contemporary and increasingly Christian England meant that the secular authorities used capital punishment less frequently than did their Diocletian forebears, and is therefore mostly lacking in their hagiographies. Of additional consideration is the elevated secular position of these women as well. As daughters of kings, these women more reinforced than inverted social norms. However, queens mostly could not imitate the absolute dedication to virginity in the same ways as the virgin martyrs due to their conjugal relationship with kings. Hagiographers had to find other means of exemplifying their sanctity, or using their material to imitate more closely those parts of the lives that were available. To that end, hagiographers, from the community at Whitby who authored the earliest life of Gregory the Great to later twelfth-century authors, shaped their material so as to conform with these norms.

It is also worth considering that hagiographies could at times be more fiction than fact. The cult of St Osgyth, who may have become an amalgamation of several saints with similar names from different centuries, may be an example of this. Other details may have been added by later audiences to suit their contemporary tastes. Oral traditions which were later consulted could also feature in later hagiographies. Hagiography as a written text can document – or omit – key details regarding the lives, identities and experiences of its saints.

In considering these texts, the significance these queens had as saints for their communities comes to the fore. We begin to understand their reputations, and perhaps the lives which inspired them. Miracles which deviate from the generic and from clear imitations of other known sources, as well as from the conventions of when the text is produced, may be indications of the lived experience and memories of the woman memorialised in the text.

Queens and Saints: Five Seventh-century Queens

In the seventh century, queenship was often a feature of feminine sanctity. Nearly all the early English female saints shared aristocratic, if not royal, descent, and almost all queens too were at least aristocratic in their background before marrying a king, or a king-to-be. The majority of these saintly queens, however, transcended the vanity of their temporal positions (queens) by a combination of good works which manifested their faith. Some queens helped to promote Christianity and education, and facilitated the expansion of ecclesiastical infrastructure by endowing or founding minsters; most also channelled the unique relationships and access to power they had possessed as queens when they adopted a new office, that of abbess. The role of abbess required similar skills to that of a queen. She needed to procure and protect holdings, by relying on the king to uphold charters or make donations. She also needed to foster connections with the aristocracy, to secure donations or attract family members for vocations. An abbess was charged with governing the foundation beneath her, and the skills of a queen, who, in the absence of the king, seems to have been expected to fulfil his role, whether holding hostages, destroying rebellious fortifications, or holding negotiations, were excellent preparation. Like queens, abbesses, such as Hild of Whitby, were often sought for advice. The role of the abbess can be seen, then, as very similar to temporal queenship: she merely served the interests of another king, the King of Heaven.

There was, however, an uneasy tension in the promotion of these queens to sanctity, a detail captured in many of their lives. The earliest female saints, and the models and exemplars for early hagiographical texts about women, tended to be largely about virgin martyrs. But the early English queens tended not to be virgins; neither were they martyrs. The majority originated from the most influential sections of society, as they were related to the most powerful men in the kingdoms, and they used their power and connections to advance their interests, whether in favour of their husbands’ rules, their families’, or their churches.

Domne Eafe, Seaxburh, Cuthburh and Osgyth were all seventh-century queens and abbesses who used their connections in both temporal and ecclesiastical office. Unlike the virgin martyrs, whose vitae served as unwieldy exempla for the authors writing their hagiographies, they led prominent lives in the spotlight, marrying, often raising children, and making Christianity an increasingly essential part of early English culture. Their faith and actions to promote Christianity, both as queens and abbesses, illustrate the family connections which empowered these women; the ways in which they were memorialised in the vitae promoting them as saints reflects the afterlives of these queens, often privileging hagiographic motifs over what might be authentic contemporary information. Seaxburh’s elevation to sanctity as the successor abbess to her sister Æthelthryth, at Ely, showcases the capabilities of a queen in raising her offspring, but also promoting familial interests, a skill most clearly showcased in the translation of her sister’s body in 695. Domne Eafe, queen of Merewalh of the Magonsætan, a sub-kingdom of Mercia, is notable for the ways in which she promoted the sanctity of her family, using family connections to advance the interests of her relations, but also for her own personal cunning in turning an adverse situation into clear personal and familial gain. Unearthing the story of Osgyth, queen of Sighere of Essex (r. 663/4–c. 688) offers a clearer view of the role of queens as mediators, as well as the complications arising from different sources, and how complex the afterlives of queens were. Finally, the career of Cuthburh, a West Saxon princess married to Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685–704/5), offers a view of the learning and piety associated with such queens, but also the dangers of later vitae whose audiences had purposes other than biography. They each show different sides of holy queenship: fostering connections between royal families, enriching and developing ecclesiastical infrastructure, and promoting the sanctity of their royal line, a legitimising feature which may have aided the stability of their familial claim to the throne. They lead up to the most notable of all queen saints, the exceptional Æthelthryth: twice queen, virgin, incorrupt, and foundress of one of the most influential monastic houses in early England, Ely. Some of the themes observed with these earlier queens also continue to apply to Æthelthryth: using the skills of a secular queen to promote the interests of a newly founded monastic house, and the variability and mutability of her reputation, adapted and adopted by generations to suit their own needs and fit their own contemporary views of what constituted sanctity.

Figure 1.1The Kentish Royal Family, c. 560–710.

Sister Saint: Seaxburh

Seaxburh, queen of Eorcenberht of Kent (r. 640–64), was one of a trio of saintly sisters born to Anna of East Anglia (d. 654) and his wife Sæwara. The eldest of her sisters, Seaxburh’s marriage, like those of her sister Æthelthryth (to Tondberht of the Gyrwe and then Ecgfrith of Northumbria), was most likely politically motivated to shore up alliances for all of Anna’s offspring. Like the series of alliances formed by the marriage of Eormenhild, Eormenburg and Domne Eafe (Seaxburh’s nieces by her husband’s brother Eormenred), they created a network of mutual help and sanctity which stretched across much of early England, and served to promote familial interests in several kingdoms. Seaxburh’s skills as a queen served her well, not only as a mother educating her children and fostering a sense of sanctity in them, but also in her later career as an abbess, where her organisation, sense of pageantry and understanding of authority transformed and elevated her sister’s cult.

The challenge of understanding Seaxburh’s personal lived experience, and the nature of her career as queen, is the character of the documentation. The overtly Christian nature of queens who were also saints often means that there is more, detailed documentation surrounding them than for other queens whose careers did not hold the same interest for ecclesiastical authors. These hagiographic vitae (‘lives’), meant to illustrate the sanctity of the women and inspire awe, reverence and imitation, were never intended for biography in the modern sense, outlining a subject’s character and experiences. However, by comparing different versions of material with each other, as well as considering the intentions of their authors and contexts in which they were written, some details of Seaxburh’s character emerge. In particular, the resourcefulness and political wariness of Seaxburh in the hagiographical accounts portray her as a crafty and well-informed leader who was able to transform and elevate her sister’s reputation, and thereby the reputation for saintliness in her entire family. The familial legacy was a powerful one, and continued through two more generations, fostered by Seaxburh, who emerges as an incredibly savvy and competent manager of people, and who must be largely credited with securing the success and popularity of her sister’s cult.

The most immediate comparison for Seaxburh is her more famous sister Æthelthryth. Where Æthelthryth’s life was ideal and exceptional, as discussed below, that of her sister Seaxburh better illustrates the practical realities and complications of being born into a royal family. Seaxburh, the eldest daughter of Anna and Sæwara, was married to Eorcenberht of Kent before Æthelthryth married either of her royal spouses. But where there are many lives of Æthelthryth, and Bede’s narrative relies on eyewitness accounts, Seaxburh’s life and the sources for it are very different.

Bede’s History is the earliest known source for Seaxburh’s life. He mentions Seaxburh in two guises: as biological mother of saints, and as spiritual mother in her role as abbess. Bede identifies her first as the mother of Eorcengota, a virgin princess saint who foretold her own death at Faremoutiers. Seaxburh is not mentioned again until she becomes relevant in the course of relating the story of her more famous and holier sister Æthelthryth: after Æthelthryth’s death, Seaxburh becomes abbess of Ely, and Bede pans forward 16 years to Seaxburh’s translation of Æthelthryth’s corpse, complete with new and miraculous stone coffin recovered from Cambridge (HE, IV.19). Her only other appearance is as a relation to establish the connection between a thane and a king who pays his ransom in the course of relating a miracle (HE, IV.22) – and here, again, she is almost immaterial, a placeholder to connect Æthelthyrth to her nephew, Hlothhere, king of Kent. Like many women in the record, Seaxburh herself is absent. This is typical of Bede’s treatment of female sanctity. As Stephanie Hollis has found, Bede – or his sources – obscure and diminish the roles of female religious and female sanctity of those who did not conform to his ideal of female sanctity: that of the Roman virgin martyr.¹⁵ In his account, Seaxburh is a mere appendage for the greater glory of other virgin martyrs: her daughter, Eorcengota, and Æthelthryth, the ‘virgin wonderful’ of his age (HE, IV.20).

The remaining details of Seaxburh’s life must be cobbled together from other sources. She appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, again, in an ancillary fashion as the wife of Eorcenberht, whose ascension and dedicated Christian kingship is praised in the annal for 640. The next source, chronologically, which deals with Seaxburh is the series of documents known as the Kentish Royal Legend. Seaxburh here serves in a significant role, linking Kent, East Anglia, and, by her daughter Eormenhild’s marriage to Wulfhere, also to Mercia, who mothered another famous virgin princess saint, Werburh. It notes that Seaxburh was interred at Ely, along with her sister, and later, her daughter. In each of these accounts, Seaxburh’s role and identity are marginal details, never the subject of any major discussion. It is not until after the Conquest that Seaxburh becomes the sole subject of any source, and these are solely hagiographical in nature.

As ancient foundations sought to find and provide authoritative accounts of patron saints to protect their privileges and holdings against new foundations or secular lords, a great flourishing of hagiography under the Anglo-Normans resurrected the life of Seaxburh in more detail. The major works which detail more of her life are the hodgepodge collection of history, document, miracle and hagiography of the Liber Eliensis, a twelfth-century work which elaborates on one of Ely’s main – but not premier – saints, and the Life of the Blessed Queen Seaxburh (Vita Beate Sexburge Regine). The Liber Eliensis maintains Ely as its central focus, so its account of Seaxburh is grounded not in the woman, queen, abbess, or saint herself, but rather in her role at the abbey. It draws on material in the Life of St Seaxburh, a life which its editor, Prof. Rosalind Love, speculates may be attributable to the same author as sections of the Liber Eliensis, rather than to the itinerant and famous Anglo-Norman hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin.¹⁶

The information in the Life of St Seaxburh itself clearly draws on a number of sources, including Bede and what look to be sections of the family of texts known as the Kentish Royal Legend. But only some of what it has to say can be said to be biographical, that is, about Seaxburh’s life and lived experiences, rather than hagiographical, about her saintliness. Even then, it is difficult to ascertain how authentic these details are: their authors may have had access to now lost sources and borrowed material, but equally may have adapted and adopted details from still extant works to suit their needs.

The proem to the Life of St Seaxburh explicitly mentions the existence and use of other sources relating to Seaxburh. It mentions that already, ‘Some of her deeds may be found in the ancient writings of the English, others we have learnt from the account of trustworthy men, and they shall be set out in simple style to the praise and glory of God, and for our edifications’ (VitaSex, Proem).

As Love discusses, the ‘ancient writings of the English’ in the proem could refer to some version of the Kentish Royal Legend, although it could also be dismissed as a hagiographic trope: many lives of saints appeal to earlier traditions.¹⁷ The trope appears in Bede’s works, where he discusses using libelli, or little booklet forms of short works, from other centres as sources, such as a libellus which recorded the signs and miracles witnessed at the monastery at Barking, as well as in his closing chapters, where he notes the history is ‘[g]‌leaned from either ancient documents or from tradition or from my own knowledge’ (HE, V.24). There are certainly traditions in English writings, whether prose or poetic, which record details about early English saints, and so these vernacular traditions must be given the same credence and scrutiny as Latinate works. As Alaric Hall has proposed, ‘when Latin hagiography claims to draw on firsthand accounts, this is usually accepted unless there is evidence of mendacity.’¹⁸ In the case of Seaxburh, we do not know the language of the sources the writer was drawing from, but the details must be given due diligence.

The proem’s statement raises the question of whether there could have been an earlier Life of Seaxburh which he made use of – whether in Old English or in Latin. Should the author’s hagiographic trope be taken as any more than stock phrasing? Hollis’s discussion of Bede’s account of Hild of Whitby is useful for purposes of comparison in ascertaining how probably an earlier, now lost, life may be. Bede’s preferred model of female sanctity was the Roman virgin martyr: his preference for Roman tradition and what may be a lack of precedent for the literary foregrounding of women in Insular literature before him, as well as a potential lack of sources, may all contribute to his overreliance on this one model of female saints’ life. That is not to say, however, that he did not have other models of female sanctity or perhaps even written female saints’ lives. The life of Hild, abbess of Whitby, as told in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (IV.23) regularly downplays her role as a lay advisor, teacher and religious leader, and instead presents her as a model of piety and orthodox abbacy. Yet it seems likely that there may have been another, now lost, life of Hild: the first Life of Gregory produced at Whitby some twenty years after her death implies a hagiographical tradition, and the reputation of the luminaries which Whitby produced, including the poet Cædmon, would generally make an earlier life seem plausible and even probable. This also raises the possibility that there could have been a now lost life of Seaxburh.

Acknowledging a possibility in itself does not require a high burden of proof. But there are more details in the account which suggest a little more than a mere plausibility. The Life of St Seaxburh, as its editor points out, contains an

oddity [which] is the more striking of the fact that the author of the [Vita S. Sexburge] devotes a considerable amount of space to Seaxburh’s married life, her retirement to Milton, and then her foundation of Minster-in-Sheppey. It is therefore to be wondered whether this anonymous author had access to some version of the [Kentish Royal Legend], possibly one which took the form represented by the second of the Lambeth fragments.¹⁹

There are a series of circumstances which make the existence of earlier material increasingly plausible. This includes acknowledging that there were many double and female monastic foundations capable of producing hagiography; that several later sources appear to draw on earlier, now lost, lives; how details included in Seaxburh’s life, written in the twelfth century at Ely, largely relate to her time elsewhere, a trend not paralleled in other Ely female saints’ lives; and the existence of a series of texts, the Kentish Royal Legend, which elaborate on the connections of the Kentish Royal family and its numerous saints, of which Seaxburh is part through marriage. Individually, none of these circumstances could support any more than supposition of an earlier source; however, taken together as a whole, they suggest a set of circumstances in which the most likely explanation for the information in the Life of St Seaxburh is an earlier, and now lost, written life of the queen, abbess and saint.

Whilst having access to earlier sources would strengthen the likelihood that the account in the Life of St Seaxburh could contain kernels of biographical information, it is fundamentally impossible to objectively determine its veracity. The information in this work itself must be evaluated for any possibility of capturing Seaxburh’s lived experience and personality. Whilst much of the work is hagiographical, that is, presenting the saintliness of the woman, in accordance with the author’s stated aims, an episode he recounts from her career as a queen that highlights her nascent sanctity also begins to present some of her own character and therefore possibly presents, inadvertently, her biography. He writes that ‘Meanwhile the blessed queen, intent on easing the hardships of diverse persons, established the palace as a refuge for the needy, and she had all those who were worn down and ailing with weakness and hunger gathered in from the streets and taken care of’ (c. 4).

Could this be an instance of Seaxburh’s sanctity manifesting itself? Her husband, Eorcenberht of Kent, was remembered in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and by Bede as being the first Christian king in England to also ban and destroy pagan idols and temples (HE, III.8). Given Seaxburh’s reputation for sanctity and good works as queen that are elsewhere in the Life, this seems plausible, until the incident is compared with other potential hagiographic models. Venantius Fortunatus’ Life of Radegund harnesses a similar strategy of presenting a queen acting as a Martha figure who commits works of mercy and piety from within her secular position until she can attain the seclusion of monasticism: Radegund is credited with turning her royal bedchamber into a chapel; Love also identifies a parallel in another source, Jerome’s Epistle lxxvii on Fabiola, who sold her belongings to found a hospital for the poor.²⁰ Thus, whilst the episode fits with the reputation of Seaxburh as a pious queen of Kent, the episode as a whole bears too much semblance to two other hagiographic precedents. Without any external confirmation from another source, this must be dismissed as hagiographic rather than biographic.

There are, however, other suggestions that while this episode is too similar to other, prior saints’ lives, that it is not out of character with other aspects of Seaxburh’s Christian queenship. As recounted in Chapter 5 of the vita, Seaxburh is presented as a Christian queen in all of her power and majesty. The Life of St Seaxburh ascribes to her inspiring Eorcenberht’s church- and monastery-building programme, encouraging the observance of feast days, and abandoning pagan temples and deities. It also praises her administrative efficacy and humility:

She so much believed herself to be either equal or inferior to the gentle and the humble, that she thunderously issued the avenging sentence of imperial majesty terrifying to the proud under judgement. And certainly with the utmost care and diligence possible everything was seen to and prepared so that the administration of the whole realm had in her both sufficient protection, and, as reason dictated, was accommodating to those of all ages.

(VitaSex c. 5)

Love identifies no parallels or sources for this passage, and, based on the character of the content and the information which emerges about Seaxburh, there is a case to be made for this passage being based on genuine information about her. Following Eorcenberht’s death, there are suggestions that Seaxburh, like royal widows in Francia, served as regent for her son before he achieved his majority, and then retired from public life. Eorcenberht’s mother Ymme (or Emma) appears to have been Frankish, and the names of several of his children appear similar to Frankish names.²¹ Alternatively, she may have stayed on in an advisory capacity, in a similar way to how Cynethryth of Mercia did as a dowager queen for her son, Ecgfrith, after the death of Offa in 796. The details available in the material associated with Seaxburh suggest that like her own mother, she first entered an established foundation: she entered the foundation at Milton Regis, where her own daughter, Eorcengota, was already a member. She took the veil from archbishop Theodore of Canterbury himself, and, after sufficient time and training, went on to found her own house at Minster-in-Sheppey. These simple facts depict a queen with significant administrative prowess. The Vita later records that Seaxburh purchased sufficient estates in perpetuity to support her new foundation (c. 11), which she later had confirmed in charters obtained from papal legates (c. 12). Some of this information differs from that in the Kentish Royal Legend, but these details which suggest her character are corroborated in earlier sources that were not intended to glorify Seaxburh at all. The earliest surviving records of Seaxburh are embedded in Bede’s narrative of Æthelthryth and her sanctity. In it, Bede never asserts any claim to Seaxburh being a saint. She does not fit his narrative for female sanctity, although he does not conceal her close familial relations with several other saints, including her sister and daughter. In this respect, Bede can be considered an objective observer, unlikely to amplify or embellish Seaxburh’s reputation. Where his account accords with other traditions, then it is likely to yield some core of biographical truth regarding this woman’s life and experiences.

From the earliest accounts of Seaxburh’s abbacy at Ely in Bede’s History, the signs of a masterful administrator at work are evident. This is all the more important to consider because this information is not intended to glorify Seaxburh or present her as a candidate for sanctity: the information there is to confirm the sanctity of Æthelthryth, not to flatter Seaxburh. The information he includes regarding Seaxburh, then, is not likely to have the same heavy bias as other female saints in his historical narrative.

Bede’s narrative is concerned with presenting Æthelthryth as the premier female saint of early England, steeped in the tradition of the virgin martyrs but imbued with traditional feminine roles for early English women in preserving the sanctity of the royal family.²² It is easy to pass over Seaxburh’s role in generating, staging, promoting and documenting her sister’s cult in his narrative. Bede’s account of the translation of Æthelthryth 16 years following her death reveals the whole event was managed with painstaking detail: a new coffin was sought and found; authoritative witnesses such as bishop Wilfrid and Cynefrith, a physician, were called into attendance to authenticate the experience; a tent was erected over the exhumation (possibly in case of finding corruption, and to preserve the privacy of the corpse); the whole congregation of the foundation was in attendance and singing; and new clothes and wrappings were prepared for the whole affair (IV. 19). As Virginia Blanton observes, the presence of these male, authorising witnesses and their textual bodies, and their accounts of Æthelthryth’s incorruption usurp the role of the physical body.²³ Seaxburh’s role in the whole spectacle is minimal: and yet it is she, behind the scenes, who is organising all of the necessary components to confer the wonder and mystery of her sister’s sanctity. In this, her organisational skills occupy the forefront.

A queen, especially in this era, wielded considerable social power through her network of familial connections, and through her position as a major advisor to the king. A queen’s major role in the early medieval period was as the main figure in the royal household. The later office of butler had not yet fully developed, thus early queens must be seen as capable administrators. The itinerant nature of courts in this era also indicates that the queen was running, in essence, a court on wheels. This may have involved using tents, or wooden structures designed to last about the span of a generation, to house the essential servants and members of the royal family’s retinue. It is in this context that the importance of the queen’s own social and political power becomes apparent. Her function as a peacekeeper could take the form of appeasing and maintaining positive relationships with a king’s nobles. She was by no means alone: rewards from the king, especially increasingly ‘bookland’, or land given to nobles with a charter to confirm the gift, either in perpetuity or in the terms stipulated in the grant, were also important as ways to curry favour with nobles. Either by using her influence to persuade the king, whether to donate to a particular monastic foundation or to confirm a gift to a loyal thane, or by giving her own gifts to cultivate loyalty, the queen commanded key social and political power, a vital role in keeping the balance in kingdoms, especially in periods in which co-rule and fraternal succession were still more common than father-to-son succession.

Abbesses, like queens, needed similar skills. They needed to procure and protect holdings, whether by relying on the king to uphold charters or make donations. Thus, whilst praising Seaxburh’s administrative capabilities as a queen and an abbess conforms with what is known of the role and expectations of these high-status women, it also seems, in this case, probably rooted in some kernel of truth. Two sources with two very different aims hinge important details on Seaxburh’s organisational metier. These skills were not celebrated highly in her hagiography – they are incidental to the hagiographer’s stated aims of ‘set[ting] out to record her deeds … so that the Church of God may reverence for ever this example of great sanctity’ (VitaSex, Proem). In so doing, the hagiographer adopts and adapts information from other exemplary material, including the Life of Amelberga, some of Jerome’s epistles, and even Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin of Tours.²⁴ These do have the cumulative effect of conventionalising Seaxburh’s rather unorthodox approach to sanctity for a woman: rather than the preferred model of the era, the virgin martyr, she was a married queen and mother of several children before later renouncing her worldly status and entering – and then founding – a monastic house. Yet in looking between these saintly accounts of Seaxburh and her even more saintly sister, Æthelthryth, a subtle hint of her character and lived experience also shines from beyond the grave.

A Shrewd Negotiator: Domne Eafe

Domne Eafe was born into the Kentish royal family around the mid-seventh century. Her grandfather Eadbald was a son of Æthelberht, the first English king to convert to Christianity. Her father Eormenred, brother of Eorcenberht, was likely one of several subkings of Kent, and married to a woman named Oslafa in legendary material. Domne Eafe was one of five offspring of the relationship. Her sisters were also famous queens: her sister Eormenburg was the second wife of Ecgfrith of Northumbria (r. 670–85); Eormengyth was the wife of Centwine of Wessex (r. 676–85). Her brothers Æthelberht and Æthelred were martyred by a cousin, acts which spurred the donation of the lands to form Minster-in-Thanet, the subject of which forms much of the material about Domne Eafe. Married to Merewalh, subking of the Magonsætan in the late seventh and early eighth century, Domne Eafe was known as the mother of several royal saints: Merefin, Mildrith, Mildgyth and Mildburg. Mildrith, a virgin saint and abbess at Minster-in-Thanet, which Domne Eafe had founded, was memorialised in the Kentish Royal Legend, as well as in later works. Merewalh is thought to have died sometime between 670 and 685; after that time, it would appear that Domne Eafe returned to Kent as an abbess. She appears prominently in the foundation story of Minster-in-Thanet, in conjunction with the story of the murder of her brothers Æthelberht and Æthelred.

The way in which historical works represent her name presents some complications. Early on in the record, her name is confused with that of her sister Eormenburg, the second wife of Ecgfrith of Northumbria. As a result, sources often confuse or even conflate the two. Domne Eafe, probably a title of respect deriving from ‘domina’ and a shortened form of her name ‘Eabe’ or something with a similar ditheme, is used to denote the woman who was queen of Merewalh of the Magonsætan.

Domne Eafe’s contributions as queen were crucial not only for settling a potential family feud, but also for promoting Christianity in both Mercia and Kent. This is most apparent in her dealings resolving the murder of her brothers, and these actions form the basis for her reputation and afterlife. The story is part of the core of the texts known in the Kentish Royal Legend, as well as the Halgan, but only certain elements found their way into Bede’s works. Ecgberht, son of Seaxburh and Eorcenberht of Kent, and thereby Domne Eafe’s cousin, took the throne of Kent from his father around 664; it is not known precisely when Eormenred, Domne Eafe’s father and probably a subking of Kent, passed, but the death of Eorcenberht in 664 brought Ecgberht to the throne. At that time, the legends say that Ecgberht took in his cousins Æthelberht and Æthelred, implying some sort of fostering situation, either from the death of their own father, or in order to strengthen bonds between the two branches of the royal family. However, with the aid of a devious advisor, Thunor, the young, Christian princes were cruelly and treacherously murdered. To avoid a feud or the need for revenge, contemporary laws and cultural practice prescribed a payment of wergild, or money in compensation for the death of a person. In a similar situation, Oswiu of Northumbria provided land for a monastery to expiate the murder of his kinsman, Oswine; as Bede describes, at the foundation at Gilling in this case ‘prayer was continually to be said for the eternal welfare of both … for the one who planned the murder and for his victim’ (HE, III.14).

The legend asserts that in order to put right the wrong of murdering his kinsmen, Ecgberht summoned the murdered princelings’ sister:

& he þa & hi geræddon mid ðæs ærcebisceopes fultume Deusdedit þæt man heora swustor on mercna lande þe hio to forgifen wæs gefeccean het to ðam þæt hio hyre broðra wergild gecure on swylcum þingum swylce hyre & hire nyhstan freondum selost licode.

[And they then advised him, with the help of Archbishop Deusdedit [of Canterbury] that they should fetch their sister, who had been given to marriage in Mercia, that she should choose the wergild for her brothers, or what ever thing she and their nearest relations liked best.]²⁵

Her continued presence in Mercia (mercna lond) suggests that her brothers were murdered whilst her husband was yet reigning, since she had not returned to Kent. The legend can seem at times more folklore than historical foundation story: in most early versions of the tale, Domne Eafe chooses land as the wergild, and the boundaries of the land, she insists, be no less than the amount her hind could run in a day. As Hollis has suggested, this folkloric element in which a protagonist exploits a seemingly reasonable promise to gain, also helps to explain certain of the place-name features of the monastery’s lands.²⁶ The hind has become part of Domne Eafe’s iconography, as well as that of her daughter St Mildrith. Alternatively, the hind could be connected to a folkloric element, perhaps of a local tradition that pre-dated the arrival of Christianity. Deer are noted in several Irish tales, and appear in many guises to help humans, for example, licking saints’ tombs, loaning their antlers to hold books for saints, furnishing a bier and bearing a saint’s corpse to church for burial, and carrying men or pulling wagons. Stephanie Hollis has also theorised that the hind could also be traced to the traditional Germanic practice of taking animal auguries. On the other hand, the stag has been seen as perhaps a royal symbol – the Sutton Hoo sceptre has a stag embellishment, and Heorot, the famous hall in Beowulf, means ‘hart’.²⁷ If so, the stag could be interpreted as a symbol of trustworthy, sacral and traditional royal power triumphing against the devious designs of the upstart and disloyal royal advisor, Thunor, who murdered the queen’s innocent, Christian brothers. The deer may also be dismissed outright: some of the versions of the tale omit the deer or restrict the scope of their account. Such an examination inevitably raises more questions than answers, but draws us closer to understanding the range of traditions which surround the actual woman.

The deer is also an easy distraction from the main consideration: the lived experiences, or biography, of Domne Eafe. If we seek consistency across different versions of her story as a means of identifying something close to a biographical reality, however, one fixed illustration becomes apparent: Domne Eafe was a cunning woman determined to exploit the tragedy of her brothers’ assassination into material good for her family and for the Church. Where Oswiu of Northumbria provided land at Gilling to establish a monastery as wergild for the murder of his kinsman Oswine, Domne Eafe pressed for the greatest possible amount of land. In some versions, she uses a tame hind to trick the wicked secular authorities into giving her more than they could possibly conceive; in others, the exchange of land, very much in her favour, is merely a fact recounted without additional detail, as in Bede’s account (HE, II.14). The Domne Eafe who emerges from a consolidated account of these tales is wise to the tricks of her kinsmen and those who would exploit their power at the expense of those they were sworn to protect. On another level, Hollis has read Domne Eafe’s wisdom and trickery as a triumph of Christianity over the pagan.²⁸ It is possible, however, that both are true. In a rather unusual outcome, looking at the various hagiographical writings that touch upon Domne Eafe, at least something like a character sketch emerges. Her offspring may be slightly difficult to number definitively, but a sense of her personality has, perhaps inadvertently, survived. Where many queens had their reputations for sanctity embellished with further domestic prowess, modesty, or a desire for virginity, what shines through in the stories of Domne Eafe is her calculated efforts to exploit a bad situation to her benefit. Queens often had to deal with difficult situations, including incidents in which different familial branches’ interests may have clashed. Domne Eafe’s afterlife in the textual record upholds her status as a particularly successful negotiator, who worked within the interests of both Church and state, family and kingdom, to transform a tragedy into a lasting symbol and source of power: the foundation at Minster-in-Thanet.

Learning and Layers of Identity: Cuthburh

Another woman whose career as queen and abbess elevated her to sanctity was the West Saxon princess, Cuthburh, queen of Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685–704/5). Like most female saints of this era, she came from an aristocratic background and was the sister of king Ine of Wessex. Due to the complex situation of regional sub-kings in Wessex, it seems most likely that Cuthburh married Aldfrith after the accession of her brother, Ine, who appears to have played a key role in reuniting and consolidating the rule of Wessex during his reign. As the king of an increasingly united Wessex, Ine may have been a good choice of ally for Aldfrith, himself an unlikely king: Aldfrith, the son of an Irish princess, Fín, and Oswiu of Northumbria, had succeeded to the throne in 685, following the death in battle of his brother, Ecgfrith, who had no heir. Ecgfrith’s marital alliances had been with the royal families of East Anglia (Æthelthyrth) and Kent (Eormenburg); in such circumstances, a bride from a different kingdom offered an additional source of possible support. Cuthburh was the elder of Ine’s two sisters; the younger, Cwenburg, was associated with the foundation at Wimborne, and was regarded as a virgin saint. Cuthburh, as one of two sisters of Ine, made an appropriate match for Aldfrith, a status reflected in the record of her name in the Northumbrian Liber Vitae: hers is the last of the gilded names in the list of Reginarum et Abatissarum, a reflection of her high status, perhaps both as Northumbrian queen and as abbess later at Wimborne.²⁹

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle indicates that Cuthburh separated amicably from Aldfrith before founding Wimborne. There is little contemporary information about her as queen, but tantalising hints suggest that her relationship with her husband, known for being a particularly well-educated and pious king, offered further development and connections for Cuthburh as well. Aldfrith’s son and heir Osred was known to be the adopted son of the cleric St Wilfrid; as David Rollason points out, Osred ‘was the son of Aldfrith whose only known wife was Cuthburh, sister of Ine, king of the West Saxons’.³⁰ However, Osred does not appear to have been Aldfrith’s only son: William of Malmesbury records that Osred was ultimately ‘taken off by the hostility of his relations’, these, being presumably Osred’s immediate successors Cenred and Osric; Christopher Grocock and Ian Wood suggest Osred was a half-brother of Osric.³¹ This raises the possibility that Aldfrith had at least one other partner, although not necessarily a queen; perhaps, like his own father, Oswiu, Aldfrith may have had an older, illegitimate son by another woman.

More of the reputation and character of Cuthburh arises in the texts which present her as an abbess and perhaps a saint, and recolour her afterlife in very different ways. One set of information presents her as the esteemed founder and patroness of a monastic foundation known for its learning, a reputation enhanced by Cuthburh’s associations in Northumbria; another possible reference records her in a vision of hell, burning for her carnal sins; a third (and much later) reasserts Cuthburh’s piety and presents her as a virgin despite her marriage to Aldfrith.

The presentation of St Cuthburh as a virgin, almost a second Æthelthryth of Ely, is difficult to reconcile with earlier information about her reign as queen. Later, fuller lives, including one from the twelfth century and another from fourteenth century, Michael Lapidge dismisses as ‘unreliable’, and their first editor, J.M.J. Fletcher, denounced as of ‘no value from an historical point of view’.³² However, as John Blair has noted, not all late lives are valueless: some of them may use folk or fairy-tale motifs passed through oral traditions or preserve local traditions, especially when the later, Latin lives mention English source material.³³ A late date alone cannot rule out the information in a hagiography from potentially being a source of biography, although in this case the work owes more to trends of sanctity contemporaneous to its author, rather than its subject.

The later lives of Cuthburh, as edited by Fletcher, consist of a dialogue between the queen and would-be nun, and her husband Aldfrith, who is presented as rather reasonable and pious, a depiction which accords well with his reputation as a learned man who commissioned a number of great literary and ecclesiastical works, although his territorial control shrank compared to that of his brother Ecgfrith. On the other hand, the detail that Cuthburh was a virgin – felix et beata virgo, ‘fortunate and blessed virgin’ – directly contradicts the information known from the seventh century, and the more common assumption that Cuthburh was chaste, rather than virginal.³⁴ The assumption that Osred may have been her son certainly conflicts with this notion, and the general pattern that most retired queens were not virgins – the exception being Æthelthryth of Ely. The statement may rather be a confusion with her sister, Cwenburg, who is recounted as a virgin saint. Lina Eckenstein notes a long-standing tendency to confuse the two sisters, and so in this instance transposition of Cwenburg’s attributes onto Cuthburh is plausible.³⁵ Furthermore, the later medieval text in which this detail is contained has pronounced parallels with a similar dialogue between Edward the Confessor and his queen Eadgyth, possibly dating to a similar period. Whilst it would be premature to dismiss either as the source text for the other, the similarity in material should generate caution in considering such an incongruous detail as authentic tradition.

With Cuthburh’s association with seats of learning and her later office as abbess we stand on firmer ground. Wimborne, the house she founded as a dowager back in her home kingdom of Wessex, had an extensive reputation for learning, including manuscript production, poetry, letter-writing and more. In the eighth century, the Wimborne nun Leofgyth corresponded with the English missionary, Boniface, with fluency in both prose and verse, reflecting the high quality of education available to nuns there within a few generations of the foundation. There are also tantalising suggestions that Cuthburh may have spent time after entering monastic life at another foundation, Barking. Aldhelm’s dedication in the De Virginitate names Hildelith, the abbess of Barking, as well as several other women, including an Osburg ‘related (to me) by family bonds of kinship’, and another woman named Cuthburh.³⁶ Like Cuthburh the queen, many of the women at Barking would have been either widows or divorced aristocrats.³⁷ Regardless of their marital status, the nuns at Barking were part of an educated, literate community – something also developed at Cuthburh’s monastic foundation at Wimborne. The capability, learning and autonomy of the foundation under Cuthburh is further confirmed in a charter of Aldhelm as bishop of Sherborne in 705, allowing the community there the freedom to elect their own abbot or abbess. He commends the nuns’ ‘very proper devotion’ and their wish to choose their own leader, and identifies that the community ‘is in the charge of Cuthburh, the sister of our venerable king’.³⁸

The reputation of Cuthburh as a capable abbess and former queen, and therefore a saint, however, is not without complications. An eighth-century vision of hell, a popular contemporary genre, explicitly names Cuthburh as one of two queens plunged into a hell-pit, burning for carnal sins.³⁹ Known as the vision of the monk of Much Wenlock, the vision also purports to see Æthelbald, an unmarried eighth-century king of Mercia known for his abuse of nuns, and his unbaptised children, burning. Diane Watt posits that the Cuthburh of the vision is the same as the queen, and postulates that she ‘must have made powerful enemies who set out to destroy their reputations and the reputations of the houses with which they were associated through the dissemination of such visions’.⁴⁰

The provenance of the information problematises the discredit against Cuthburh even further. Boniface, whose account is the only one to survive, indicates that he consulted Abbess Hildelith of Barking – where Cuthburh may have served a novitiate as she started her career as a nun – but also personally spoke to the monk who had the vision. Furthermore, Boniface’s letter is addressed to an ‘Eadburg’, whom Watt identifies was more likely the abbess at Wimborne than Minster-in-Thanet. The letter contains, therefore, a rather damning appraisal of the woman who founded the very minster receiving the second-hand account of the vision. It is difficult to precisely outline any biases in effect in the vision: the monk who saw the vision was based at Much Wenlock, a double-house founded by a branch of the Mercian royal family, and whose most notable early abbess, Mildburg, was part of the great extended family connected with the holy individuals in the Kentish Royal Legend. The other queen named, Wiala, is otherwise unknown. Given the location of Much Wenlock in the west, could Wiala be a British queen, or could the name be a hypocorism (a nickname or pet name) of something with a prototheme starting with W? It is impossible to know precisely, but the vision offers a stark warning of the dangers of looking at only one source, especially when biases may be at play. The reputation of a queen is heavily coloured by the ways in which sources attribute her character – and the biases which inform those portraits.

Although the Cuthburh of the vision may have been known for committing horrible sins, the remaining sources present the queen of Aldfrith as a pious woman, well-connected through her family ties to the royal house of Wessex and her marriage into the Northumbrian royal dynasty. She is particularly associated with learning, both through her husband and the learning and later repute of the house at Wimborne which she founded. She may have been the mother of Aldfrith’s heir Osred, but almost certainly was not a second virgin-queen-saint of Northumbria, unlike Æthelthryth of Ely.

Between the Lines: Osgyth

The life of Osgyth, queen of Sighere of Essex (r. 663/4–c. 688) is particularly difficult to reconstruct, partially because of confusion in the hagiographical sources, partially because of missing or omitted information in Bede’s History, and partially because there is the distinct possibility that there are, in fact, two saints of the seventh century by the same name.⁴¹ Despite some questions over whether there are one or two St Osgyths, their marital status, and their resting places, Osgyth is best understood as a reluctant queen, whose piety was likely critical to the establishment of further Christian infrastructure in Essex.

Part of the difficulty in documenting the life of the queen Osgyth is the date of the hagiographic materials we have to work from. Her life is principally addressed in later, fragmentary sources. She was born as the daughter of ‘Fredeswald’ of Surrey (probably Frithuwald, r. c. 666– c. 674) and his wife Wilburh, herself probably was descended from the Mercian royal family. Traditions hold that she was raised by her aunt, St Eadgyth, at Aylesbury; another legend asserts that whilst visiting a second aunt, St Eadburh, at Adderbury, she drowned in the Cherwell but was revived by her aunts’ prayers.⁴² The traditions also assert that she wished to enter monastic life, but was instead betrothed to Sighere of Essex. Several versions relate that Osgyth was able to prevail upon Sighere and that the marriage was never consummated – he had been distracted by the opportunity to hunt a deer and whilst he was away, Osgyth took the veil and formally became a nun. Sighere is known to have a son, Offa, who went with Coenred, king of the Mercians, to enter monastic life in Rome in 709. Eventually, Osgyth was given the monastery of Chich in Essex. She was later thought to be buried at either Aylesbury or at Chich; the sources conflict in this regard.

Reading between the lines of what is said and what is omitted offers a little more information about Osgyth and her situation. By comparing the information in her hagiographies, which note she was raised as a princess devoted to virginity from a young age, with an external source outlining the geopolitical context in which her marriage took place, we can understand how she came to be married as a queen – and was likely the mother of Offa of Essex. Frithuwald was a minor king or subregulus under the Mercian hegemony, and based on her name, Osgyth’s mother Wilburh may have been a sibling of Wulfhere of Mercia.

Bede’s History does not make any mention of Osgyth, but it does explain the state of the Church in Essex, which, after a plague in 665, had renounced its new Christian faith and returned to pagan worship. As a result, Wulfhere sent the bishop of Mercia to reconvert the king and his people (HE, III.30), an act with deep political overtones. Osgyth’s match with Sighere of Essex reads like a peaceweaving marriage, one designed to bring two, often clashing, families together in an attempt to mediate and merge the two in the person of the queen and her potential offspring (on which, see more in Chapter 3).⁴³ It is only by reading between these two sets of texts – Bede’s History, and later, confused hagiographic sources – that this impression emerges. Bede has a noted tendency to downplay successful matches in which queens contributed to the conversion of a king; the absence of Osgyth from his work may be a result of this bias, or a lack of sources from the region.

Osgyth’s authentically pious character suits the details both of the later lives and that of her offspring. The history of Essex in the seventh century is plagued by the scarcity of written sources, but recognising the connection between the Mercian and East Saxon royal houses offers further light, not only on the life of one queen, but also the relationships between dynasties and kingdoms. It is in this respect that Offa’s abdication to accompany Coenred, king of the Mercians, to Rome becomes possibly more logical. Bede informs us that in 709, Coenred of Mercia abdicated the throne, and together with Offa of Essex, went on a pilgrimage to enter monastic life in Rome, from which neither returned (HE, V.19). Barbara Yorke has suggested that the departure of Coenred may have been politically motivated in order to allow Ceolred, the son of Coenred’s predecessor Æthelred, to succeed to the Mercian throne.⁴⁴ The connection may have been more than one of friendship: if Offa’s mother Osgyth had descended from royal Mercian heritage, the two may have been cousins. Finally, the piety of the young East Saxon prince (or sub-king) may have been fostered by his mother. Bede notes how ‘Offa was a youth so lovable and handsome that the whole race longed for him to have and to hold the sceptre of the kingdom’ and that he was inspired by ‘devotion’ in renouncing his secular position (HE, V.19). Queens as mothers often encouraged their offspring and educated them in religion and morals, a trend which is expounded further in Chapter 2. Osgyth, who by all accounts became an abbess after her secular career as queen, whether Offa’s mother or not, may have encouraged the young East Saxon ætheling to pursue heavenly treasures alongside the abdicated Mercian king.

It is difficult to say much with any certainty regarding Osgyth, queen of Sighere of Essex. Born of royal Mercian lineage to the ruler of Surrey, her marriage appears to have been a political attempt to foster relations between her agnatic royal family (particularly on her mother’s side) and a rebellious sub-kingdom. It seems likely that she separated amicably from her husband before taking the veil and serving as an abbess, although it is less certain whether she was the mother of Offa of Essex. Above all, her piety is the one prominent aspect of her character apparent in all the sources which deal with her.

Like many of the better-documented queens of early English, Christianity played a key role in the culture and lived experiences of these women. These seventh-century queens occupied the medial position which so characterises the experiences of early English women: as queens, they were part of two different families, their birth and marital families; as saints as well as queens, their reputations are characterised by explicitly Christian themes in texts designed to promote and authenticate their sanctity. They were all abbesses, and most were foundresses of promising monastic foundations: Minster-in-Sheppey, Minster-in-Thanet, Wimborne and possibly Chich. As queens and later as abbesses, they were essential agents in the evangelisation of these kingdoms, and in establishing the organisation and hierarchies of the Church. In turn, the Church hierarchy helped to promote the sanctity of these women and their families, launching a long-standing legacy of holiness and helping to legitimise the rule of their families.

In the case of each of these women, there was also an uncomfortable tension between their secular roles and the idealised offices they occupied later as abbesses. The most influential model of feminine sanctity in early England was that of the Roman virgin martyr; the office of queenship in which all of these women found themselves was essentially conflicted to the status of virginity and the worldly renunciation which it entailed. This tension makes many of the details in the hagiographic written accounts of these women’s lives difficult to interpret. On one hand, many have children, or their husbands have heirs recorded; on the other hand, many of the written accounts of their saintly lives assert their piety – and sometimes, their virginity. It is impossible to reconcile these inherent contradictions with any degree of certainty, but being aware of the biases in the sources, and the complications of succession to the throne in early England offers a helpful framework to ground the discussion.

Such tension does not exist for perhaps the most exceptional queen and saint, Æthelthryth of Ely. She was married first to the minor king Tondberht of the Gyrwe (d. 654) and then to Ecgfrith of Northumbria (r. 670–85), perhaps the most powerful among his contemporary early English kings. Held to be an incorrupt virgin, she spurned the marriage bed in favour of the veil of monasticism, turning away the highest secular honours in favour of poverty and service. Her life was well documented both by near contemporaries (especially Bede and in the Life of Wilfrid), as well as by successive generations who turned to her for protection and patronage. In this, the work of Virginia Blanton in Signs of Devotion: the Cult of St Æthelthryth in Medieval England 695–1615 is essential: her methodology in recognising the needs of the communities writing and consuming hagiographies helps to identify the defining needs and motivations behind these texts, and offer glimpses of the life of the woman at the core of these hagiographical writings.

An Exceptional Saint: Æthelthryth of Ely

Æthelthryth of Ely was one of the most popular saints in England before 1066, elevated by churchmen such as Bede and Æthelwold, and the monks of Ely later against encroaching Norman overlords. Within the first generation after her death, Bede celebrated Æthelthryth’s bodily devotion, both in terms of how her body was found to be incorrupt at its translation 16 years after her death and, more tacitly, in terms of her perpetual (if unlikely) virginity; by the Benedictine Reforms, Æthelwold adopted her as an exemplar of an individual who had traded high secular status for the chaste, contemplative life of the cloister, a theme amplified in Ælfric’s Life.

Consistent details retained throughout the versions, and verified in other, less overtly hagiographical sources, form a nexus from which to assess the lived life of this twice-queen and virgin saint: the essential details in Bede’s narrative in his Ecclesiastical History; in the annalistic, West-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and in Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid, the life of her advisor St Wilfrid. Diane Watt and Virginia Blanton have hypothesised that there may have been earlier, now lost, textual versions of Æthelthryth’s Life produced at Ely.⁴⁵ She was born to King Anna of East Anglia, married twice (once to a princeps of the Gyrwe, and secondly to Ecgfrith of Northumbria) but retired from secular life as a queen in 673 to establish a monastery. In 679, the Chronicle records her death, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History details the translation of her incorrupt body to a more ornate tomb at Ely in 695.

Bede’s account affords more details. She was born c. 636 to Anna and his wife Sæwara, who was possibly from Essex. Æthelthryth’s first marriage to Tondberht must have taken place before 654, and he died in 655. Her second marriage, around 660, to Ecgfrith of Northumbria was feasibly a political match: he was only a teenager, recently returned to Northumbria after being held hostage by Queen Cynewise of Mercia in 655. In 664 he was made king of Deira by his father Oswiu, and in 670 became king of Northumbria. According to Bede, Æthelthryth did not seek the marriage herself, and up until around the time of his elevation to king of Northumbria (in the Life of Wilfrid), Ecgfrith did not seem overly desirous of the conjugal bed himself. Becoming king of all Northumbria may have somewhat changed his attitude. In his account of her life, Bede adapts and adopts previous types and models of female sanctity, particularly the maternal aspects of Helena, the mother of Constantine, and Agatha, the dedicated virgin martyr who inspired many other virtuous young women.⁴⁶ For a few years, Ecgfrith prevailed upon Wilfrid to help persuade Æthelthryth to the marriage bed, offering Wilfrid riches if he were successful. He was not. In 671, Æthelthryth separated from her husband and entered a monastery at Coldingham, then under the abbess Æbbe, daughter of king Æthelfrith of Bernicia (c. 693–716); Æthelthryth founded the monastery at Ely using land from her dowry as a double house (for both monks and nuns) in 672 or 673, and died on 23 June 679. Her body was found incorrupt when her sister Seaxburh presided over its translation in 695, which Bede details using eyewitness accounts in his History. In his account of her life, Bede adapts and adopts previous types and models of female sanctity.

Æthelthryth was among the most popular English saints of the early medieval era, and her legacy for sanctity and piety endured. Later authors tended to emphasise the facets of her sanctity which best suited their contemporary audiences. As Blanton has observed, to establish her purity and other details, Bede relies on male authorities: her father; the bishop Wilfrid; her husband, the king Ecgfrith, and the doctor Cynefrith, who verified Æthelthryth’s incorruption at her translation. The depiction of Æthelthryth in the work of tenth-century Benedictine Reformers, in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold and Ælfric’s translation of her life, reduce her to a more generic depiction of chastity: as Blanton discusses, the image of Æthelthryth is a generically pure saint, sexualised by the drapery and acanthus to emphasise her femininity, but necessarily labelled Imago Sce Æthelðryþe abbatisa ac perpetua virgin; Ælfric’s life largely omits major details, such as her role in founding Ely (rather than merely being an abbess there) and shifts the focus of her life on to her exemplar of chastity in marriage, a theme he elaborates in a closing anecdote about an unnamed thane who successfully lived in a chaste marriage with his wife – at his insistence.

There is always the possibility that later sources had access to traditions and tales which did not embed themselves into other, earlier narratives. It is well documented that Bede omits details and narratives which did not accord with his idea of orthodoxy. In the abundance of other hagiographical texts which memorialise Æthelthryth as a saint, details regarding her life as queen and other anecdotes feature which do not derive from Bede. One such text is the Liber Eliensis, a strange mixture of history, hagiography, deeds and other accounts; altogether, it is a hodgepodge historical textbook written by the monks of Ely in the twelfth century. Connected with the chief cult centre of Æthelthryth, it has the potential to have documented local traditions and memories associated with the saint unavailable to authors further afield, such as Bede, Stephen of Ripon, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler(s), or Ælfric. The text includes some sections that are completely copied from earlier, now lost, documents, and so, despite its nearly five-century removal from the saint’s own lifetime, it cannot be completely discounted as a source for biography. In addition to the details of Æthelthryth’s life as it is known from earlier sources, however, its account must be considered against a number of contexts: the context of which textual sources it may have drawn on, the political context in which the text was written, and the social context of how women were socialised and expected to behave in the time was written. Some biographical details may be based in the lived experience of these women; others, such as Æthelthryth’s reputed skill at embroidery, may have more of a mythologising function.

In its account of the skills and life of Æthelthryth, the Liber Eliensis recounts that she was an accomplished embroiderer:

In addition, being skilled in handiwork, she made with her own hands, so it is reported, by the technique of gold-embroidery, an outstanding and famous piece of work, namely a stole and maniple of matching materials, of gold and precious stones, and she sent this work to be offered to [Cuthbert] as a blessing in recognition of a deep-seated affection. These are kept at the church of Durham, as a sign of the pious devotion of both him and her, and they are [still] shown to people on request, as a great honour, and quite frequently some of our number have seen them. In terms of righteousness and piety it was fitting that she, in an act of self-abasing devotion such as this, should pledge a gift to him, beloved virgin to beloved virgin, so that subsequently he might use it standing in the presence of our Lord and King, [and] would with the greatest ease be able to display a reminder of her amidst the holiest of holy ceremonies of the mass and placate the Lord of Majesty with pious supplication on her behalf. We do not find any mention of this in Bede, but we have thought it essential for us to write it in view of all the people who have borne witness to it up to now.

(Liber Eliensis, I.9)

The author of this section knows his sources – and what they do not say – well, in addition to the importance of authority. It appeals to collective memory and general consensus, as well as Durham traditions, for its addition to Æthelthryth’s character. However, located within this attribution is also the crux of the issue. The absence of any sort of similar material in more historically proximate sources casts doubt on the tradition that the saint was the creator and donor of these vestments to Cuthbert. Bede’s account notes how she used to wear necklaces (the sin for which she bore a tumour on her neck), and that, as a nun, she wore only woollen cloth and not linen, and fasted regularly. The Life of Wilfrid notes her financial generosity as queen– she donated land at Hexham for Wilfrid to found a monastic house in 672– but nothing regarding cloth or the other sorts of elaborate gilded pieces that Wilfrid was known to wear himself.⁴⁷ Queens were idealised for their generosity, and weaving and binding was largely a gendered task, and an appropriate activity for noblewomen.

The combination of popular memory as well as Durham provenance is an authority to be taken seriously, but so too must be the time period in which the text is composed. Fairweather suggests that the Liber Eliensis was composed in the twelfth century, probably by 1177. This is around half a millennium after the death of Æthelthryth, which makes the tradition a little more difficult to credit. In addition, this attribution must be considered in conjunction with contemporary trends – both in the lifetime of the saint, and the period of composition of the text.

Among Æthelthryth’s rough contemporaries, there are numerous suggestions that aristocratic women were skilled with gold. In the eighth century, Boniface’s letter to the nuns at Minster-in-Thanet reveals that the women there were known for their illuminations using gold.⁴⁸ The nuns at Chelles, one of the foundations popular with English aristocrats, such as Sæthryth, Æthelthryth’s half-sister, were also known for their gold work. However, as Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg and Suzanne Wemple have observed, the reforms brought about by Charlemagne in eighth and ninth centuries and during the Benedictine Reforms of the tenth century dramatically altered the ideal of feminine sanctity into a ‘glorified role or cult of domesticity’.⁴⁹ One of the key roles now attributed as a sign of feminine sanctity was work weaving, dyeing, embroidering and the like. Helgaud’s eleventh-century life of King Robert mentions that his mother, Queen Adelaide, donated golden-embroidered chasubles, copes, and other richly embroidered works to various churches.⁵⁰ So whilst working in gold could have been considered a possible contemporary trait of Æthelthryth, weaving was not a common feature of seventh-century feminine sanctity, but it was by the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There are some additional chronological issues with the authority of the attribution to Durham. Cuthbert’s community did not arrive in Durham until 995, after fleeing Lindisfarne in 875 and wandering for seven years, building a church at Chester-le-Street, and then fleeing again. Whilst the monks were able to bring certain treasures with them, like the St John’s Gospels, which were found in Cuthbert’s tomb, and the Lindisfarne Gospels, the survival of Æthelthryth’s donation may seem less certain, especially if they were being frequently shown to visitors. Cloth is one of the most fragile of materials to preserve, although there are thought to be some possible surviving examples, such as the purported chemise of Balthild, a fellow queen saint of the seventh century on the Continent. However, given the fragility of the material claim and the major turn in depictions of feminine sanctity to the cult of the domestic, as well as the chronology of Cuthbert’s community, the authenticity of the Ely monk’s claim becomes difficult to regard as based on Æthelthryth’s lived experience. It is entirely possible that the shrine had acquired at some point some beautifully worked vestments, and attached the name of Æthelthryth to them as creator and donor, as it fitted the fashion of the time.

While it is probable that the author of the Liber Eliensis believed Æthelthryth to be well known for her embroidery, it seems on balance a conflation of habits and reputations over the five centuries between her death and the penning of this text. It is, of course, slightly disappointing to not be able to laud more of Æthelthryth’s remarkable skills, but to attribute these to her seems more of a saintly topos than a verifiable biographical detail. While this does not lead us to know more about the woman or her lived experience, about her life or how she lived it, considering the various authorities and contexts for the information attributed to her gives us a clearer image of what we can – and cannot – say about Æthelthryth. This in turn helps to inform us more about the image of queens, both in the seventh and eighth centuries, but also the trends impacting their biographies and hagiographies in the hands of later authors. Methodologically, it also illustrates the dangers of taking any source at face value without considering the factors which may impact upon the information it contains and the way that the source treats it.

The case of Æthelthryth is a salient reminder of how complex unearthing anything like biography can be from the range of sources available for early medieval English queens. Nothing can be taken at face value, but, when weighed carefully against the various competing trends and fashions, some information can be held up as more or less likely. The key is to consider all of the angles: the sources used by the texts’ authors, the models available to the women as well as to their hagiographers, the contemporary socio-political and cultural trends, and the needs and desires of the communities responsible for creating the texts. This approach can be applied, however, to other queens as well, to yield better-informed approximations of biography – of an account of the characters of these women and their lived experiences – than merely one source alone. The enduring popularity of some of the seventh-century queen saints made them frequent features in hagiographical texts spanning the millennium between their lives and the dissolution of the monasteries, over which tastes and needs of the communities consuming these texts changed. In their hagiographies, their sanctity is held up as a shining light and example of holy, Christian behaviour; when considered carefully, these works can also inform better impressions of these women’s lives, and lead to biography.

Other Christian Queens

Not all queens became saints. Yet the information about the majority of queens that survives, even in the faintest of traces, is overwhelmingly Christian in nature. Like Mary in the Advent Lyrics, the queen was intimately connected with the king, and her proximity to the king and role as an advisor to him were key features of her exceptionality. Yet the generosity of Mary, as mother to Christ, and intercessor throughout the ages on behalf of humanity also features in the generosity, humility and mercy attributed to early medieval queens.

In the cases of Eafe, queen of Æthelwealh of Sussex (d. c. 685) and Frithugyth, queen of Æthelheard of Wessex (r. 726–40), neither were revered as saints – or, if they were, there is not surviving evidence of their cults. As such, the information for these queens takes rather different forms. Charters and historical works still preserve the overwhelmingly Christian character of their queenships.

The reputations of these queens still follow very much in the model of the Christian queen: they are known for their piety, and in many cases, for their beneficence. Eafe appears to have been instrumental in establishing the early Church network in the kingdom of the Hwicce, and Frithugyth a notable patron to early West Saxon foundations. Yet, unlike Cuthburh, for example, they were not hallowed to sainthood. This may be in part connected to their dynastic backgrounds and positions within the emerging network of Christianity in these lands. What remains clear is their Christian character as queens.

Eafe of Sussex

Eafe was born and baptised in the kingdom of the Hwicce, another Mercian sub-kingdom, to Eanfrith, who was either a co-ruler or the brother of the ruler, Eanhere, in the mid-seventh century. As Patrick Sims-Williams points out, ‘the marriage alliance between the kingdoms of Sussex and Hwicce was an appropriate one, for both were assessed at 7,000 hides in the Tribal Hidage, and both kingdoms must have been under threat from the West Saxons.’⁵¹ Eafe herself occupies a minor position in the early (and scanty) history of the South Saxons, as recounted in the Life of Wilfrid, and further elaborated on by Bede in his History. Like other queens marginalised by Bede, Eafe appears to have failed as a conversionary queen, which may account for the marginality of her role in the History (IV.13). It is also entirely possible that Bede’s own sources on Sussex may have been somewhat limited, which may have additionally contributed to the ambiguity surrounding the kingdom, its kings and its queens. Although information about her background and character is somewhat sparse, what is apparent is that her behaviour in the office of queen, and her own character were heavily Christian.

Eafe is most prominent in the story of the conversion of the South Saxons. The story appears in the Life of Wilfrid, as the famous bishop encounters Æthelwealh, but the account omits any mention of his wife and queen, Eafe. This is consistent with how the text deals with royal women who were not overtly antagonistic; as discussed above, queens and bishops were often in competition for the role of chief advisor to the king. In the Wilfrid-centred, hagiographical account, Wilfrid first gains the friendship of Æthelwealh, who is swayed by the wayward bishop’s stories of suffering. Following this, and sure of his friendship, Wilfrid ‘began, first of all, to proclaim the word of God to the king and queen, and to describe the blessedness and greatness of His Kingdom, gently persuading them, giving them, as it were, milk without guile’ (c. XLI).

Bede offers a different account of the conversion, one which interestingly accords Eafe a slightly more prominent role in the South Saxon court. The details are again sparing, but more evident than those in the account about Wilfrid. It is possible that Bede had a distant connection with the Hwicce to provide him more information, particularly about Eafe. Bede’s account of the South Saxon conversion seems incontrovertible. It introduces Wilfrid’s presence in Sussex, as well as the political context of Æthelwealh’s baptism into the Christian faith under the auspices of Wulfhere, from whom he acquired two major territories as a gift in return. However, the conversion appears to have stalled there. This is noteworthy because in Bede’s account, the failure to convert the South Saxons in any meaningful way is not blamed on the king, but rather, implicitly, on the queen. Bede records how: ‘The queen, whose name was Eafe, had been baptised in her own country, the kingdom of the Hwicce. She was the daughter of Eanfrith, Eanhere’s brother, both of whom were Christians, as were their people. Apart from her, all the South Saxons were ignorant of the divine name and of the faith’ (HE, IV.13).

Bede implicitly charges Eafe with the ignorance of the South Saxon people. Like other failed queen converters in the Ecclesiastical History, such as Bertha of Kent or Æthelburh of Northumbria, Eafe and her presumably reluctantly converted husband Æthelwealh had not acted decisively to evangelise their people. Domne Eafe, who seems to have been a principal actor in promoting the ecclesiastical foundations and conversion among the Mercians, poses as an interesting counterexample to Eafe in this respect. Her work in establishing a family monastic house at Minster-in-Thanet, as well as in promoting the work of her husband in donating land to new ecclesiastical and monastic foundations, stands in stark contrast to the work of Eafe during the early days of her marriage to Æthelwealh in Sussex. It is noteworthy, however, that Bede is entirely silent on the matter of Merewalh, his death and offspring. There are several possible reasons for this, including his general lack of sources from the region, a pronounced anti-Mercian bias which pervades his work, and finally, in the case of Domne Eafe, a possibility that he excludes knowledge of her and her holy offspring because of its contradiction against his ideals of a queen’s role.

However, the South Saxons’ reluctance to convert to Christianity may in fact represent a political resistance to the increasing Mercian influence in the kingdom, which, by the early 770s had largely been amalgamated into the greater Mercian kingdom under Offa. First of all, the kings of the Hwicce often had Mercian kings confirming their charters, suggesting a junior position. Susan Kelly suggests that Æthelwealh married Eafe before his baptism, and that the marriage was intended to bolster the South Saxon alliance to Mercia.⁵² Regardless of the unrecoverable reasons for the continued paganism of Sussex, Bede gives us more material about Eafe than we have for many other queens. Her baptism in the kingdom of the Hwicce, under the rule of her father and uncle Eanfrith and Eanhere, stands as fact. She was clearly baptised and probably raised as a Christian, unlike her South Saxon husband. There were no known children of Æthelwealh and Eafe. Though she stands out as a less than successful conversionary queen, the clearest fact of Eafe’s identity as documented by Bede was her Christian faith.

Like many other queens, Eafe followed up her time as queen consort by becoming an abbess. In 695, Cædwalla, later king of Wessex, invaded and killed Æthelwealh. Just as the majority of widowed queens of the seventh and eighth centuries, Eafe appears to have returned to her natal kingdom and retired into monastic life as an abbess.

There is a record of another Eafe among the Hwicce in the mid-eighth century. It is not entirely certain that this Eafe, who witnesses two charters as abbess of Gloucester, a religious house associated with the Hwiccean royal family, is the same individual as the queen of Æthelwealh. However, the dates and the relationships of this Eafe as detailed in the documentary record do make it a strong probability that the two are the same individual. One charter, now a fourteenth-century copy, outlines that Æthelbald, king of Mercia, relinquished certain requirements traditionally owed the king as recompense for the murder of one of Eafe’s kinsmen, Æthelmund, son of Oswald. The chronology between the Eafe as queen and the Eafe as abbess is somewhat tight, as Sims-Williams points out, but not irreconcilable.⁵³ In another charter, Æthelbald grants the same abbess Eafe part of a building and two salt-furnaces in Droitwich.⁵⁴ As an abbess, then, Eafe continued to promote Christianity by securing valuable donations and rights for her community.

Although details are sparse for Eafe, the Christian queen of Æthelwealh of Sussex, the picture which emerges fits a pattern seen with many other early English queens. Her marriage was contracted as part of a series of political arrangements designed to strengthen alliances. Like other Christian queens in the Ecclesiastical History, Bede judges Eafe’s contribution as a queen harshly for failing to evangelise and convert the populace. Following the death of her husband, she returned to her native lands to enter monastic life. As an abbess, she drew upon the same family connections which had empowered her as an individual queen and used those as leverage to secure patronage, promote peace, placate feuds and advance the interests of her foundation and faith.

Frithugyth of Wessex

Frithugyth’s career as a queen offers yet another counterpoint to the varieties of Christian queenship in early England. Queen to Æthelheard of Wessex (r. 726–40), her reputation as shaped by the surviving documentary sources paints a clear picture of her piety and patronage as queen to the Church. Like Eafe, she was not venerated as a saint, a trend which carries on with many of the other West Saxon queens, whose careers are discussed mostly in Chapter 4. However, unlike many of her fellow West Saxon queens, there seems to be a clear record of her character as queen, and it is decidedly pious and Christian in nature.

Frithugyth is also important as a definitive early example of a West Saxon queen. Later, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, West Saxon kings and their courts cast aside the title of queen for the title ‘wife of the king’, a reaction against the rule of Beorhtric (r. 786–802) and his tyrannical queen Eadburh, whose heavy-handed and exalted model of queenship derived from her upbringing at the court of her father and mother, Offa and Cynethryth, in rival Mercia. The tendency of West Saxon kings to not recognise a king’s wife as queen in the ninth century has led to the mistaken impression that many kings, both of Wessex and other early English kingdoms, did not have queens. Frithugyth is a well-documented example that the rejection of the office of queen was, in fact, decidedly not the case, and was rather an exception to the rule.

The ancestries of both Frithugyth and her husband Æthelheard are not well-recorded as no genealogy survives incorporating him, and there is little record of her beyond five charters and an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Similarities between elements in her name and a pattern observed with an eighth-century family active in the greater Mercian area – including Frithuwald, a sub-king active in the greater Surrey area; Frithuric, a known princeps who witnesses in Mercian charters, and possibly the princess-saint Frithuswith (better known as Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford) – suggest that Frithugyth may have come from Surrey.

Frithugyth’s reputation is better documented than her ancestry, and, again, even in a queenship largely characterised by Christian faith, she stands out as particularly pious and committed. The prominence of her position and faith may be a by-product of her own power as queen; Heather Edwards sums up that Frithugyth ‘appears to have enjoyed a position of some power and importance during Æthelheard’s reign’.⁵⁵ She witnesses in all of the charters surviving from her husband’s reign, and even appears to make donations in her own name. A twelfth-century copy of a charter of Æthelheard to Saints Peter and Paul in Winchester appears to be a donation to supplement an earlier gift made by Frithugyth independently.⁵⁶ A later, possibly spurious, eleventh-century charter copies not only the bounds, but also the earlier charter’s insistence that the earlier gift was made by Æthelheard ‘at the request of’ Frithugyth.⁵⁷ Other charters, although considered dubious in authenticity, invoke her reputation as a means of connecting to a respectable and authentic tradition of her character. Two later questionable charters to Saints Peter and Paul, Winchester, reference a previous gift by Frithugyth, then reconfirmed by Æthelwulf and later also by Eadred.⁵⁸ Citing her name and the tradition of her donations to the foundation serves to authenticate the longevity of the donation, but only because the character and reputation of Frithugyth herself are consistent with such a donation. The diplomatic sources are few, but give a forceful impression of her personal, pious character, as well as her own power.

Frithugyth also acted on her faith herself, taking a pilgrimage to Rome in 737. The entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads:

An. .dccxxxvii. Her Forþhere biscop 7 Freðgeoð cwen ferdon to Rome. 7 Ceolwulf cyning feng to Petres scære, 7 sealde his rice Eadberhte his fæderan sunu, se ricsade .xxi. wintra. 7 Æthewold biscop 7 Acca forðferdon, 7 Cynwulf man gehalgode to biscop. 7 þa ilcan gære Æthebald cyning hergode Norðhymbra land.

[In this year, bishop Forthhere and queen Frithugyth went to Rome. And king Ceolwulf took to Peter’s monastery, and gave his throne to Eadberht, the son of his father, who reigned 21 years. And Bishop Æthelwold and Acca died, and men consecrated Cynewulf to be bishop. And in the same year, king Æthelbald ravaged the land of Northumbria.]⁵⁹

The record of Frithugyth’s voyage to Rome, accompanied by Forthhere, further cements her reputation for piety. Forthhere, the bishop of Sherborne (the main see of Wessex at this time), and Frithugyth appear to have been close allies: he also witnesses and is referenced in several of the charters in which she appears.

The pilgrimage is also a notable feature in terms of Frithugth’s character as queen. Several bishops and some kings appear to have made pilgrimages, including kings who abdicated to retire to Rome, like Coenred of Mercia with Offa of Essex in 709, and Æthelheard’s predecessor Ine, in 726. The tradition recorded by William of Malmesbury in his Deeds of the English Kings appears to suggest that Ine’s queen, Æthelburh, encouraged and accompanied him in his withdrawal to Rome (Gesta Regum, I.36–7). A pilgrimage undertaken by an independent queen is more of a rarity. Frithugyth’s husband Æthelheard continued to reign in Wessex until his death in 740. It is uncertain whether Frithugyth and bishop Forthhere returned after their pilgrimage to Rome: there are no later records of either.

For aristocratic women, going on pilgrimage to Rome was a significant, but also possibly fashionable, undertaking. Correspondence between Boniface and several nuns in early England discuss the possibility of nuns embarking on pilgrimages, especially to Rome. In correspondence with Heahburg from between 732 and 750, roughly contemporary with Frithugyth’s pilgrimage to Rome, Boniface advises on whether or not women should undertake pilgrimages. Whilst he was not against pilgrimage itself, in another letter to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, in 747, he advises to ‘forbid matrons and veiled women to make these frequent journeys back and forth to Rome. A great part of them perish and few keep their virtue. There are very few towns in Lombardy or Frankland or Gaul where there is not a courtesan or harlot of English stock. It is a scandal and disgrace to your whole church.’⁶⁰

Whilst a degree of hyperbole may be detected in Boniface’s response, it speaks to pilgrimage, or even mere journeys, to Rome as not uncommon, whether for married, secular women, like Frithugyth, or women in monastic life. Few active queens in this time period, however, are documented as undertaking such journeys, whether as reigning queens or later as abbesses.

In the difficulties assessing her tenure as queen, Frithugyth shares many of the same factors impacting other West Saxon queens of the seventh and early eighth centuries, which are explored in more detail in Chapter 4. Frithugyth may have shared her ancestry with a particularly prominent family from Surrey, who were connected with the foundation of several major minsters and probably produced at least one princess saint, Frideswide (Frithuswith). We do not know if Frithugyth and Æthelheard had any children. His successor Cuthred is thought to have been a male relative, perhaps even a son, but there are no known offspring of Frithugyth’s marriage. Her character and reputation as a generous, pious woman, on the other hand, shine through in the documentary record. Frithugyth’s charity and commitment to her faith are abundantly apparent, even among other early English queens.

Conclusion

A queen was an exceptional woman; she was exceptional because of her relationships to the most powerful man in her life: her husband, the king. She was a powerful woman, largely due to the connections she had with her male relations – her sons, father and brothers – but also due to the interconnected relationships forged by marriages of sisters. Christianity played an essential role in the way in which these individuals practised their offices as queens. For some, religion was a key medium in which to exercise their power and look for inspiration, imitating the saints and channelling their efforts to promote the faith. Many queens used their positions to advance the privileges for favoured monastic foundations, including sometimes securing minsters for children who had been raised and educated in the Church, especially daughters, such as Werburh, daughter of Eormenhild and Wulfhere of Mercia, or Eorcengota, daughter of Seaxburh and Eorcenberht of Kent.

There are latent hints of the material resources which queens had at their disposal when considering their roles as Christian queens. The records of queenly donations, whether of land, coin or precious objects, reflect the financial resources to which queens had access. Although the Liber Eliensis’s record of Æthelthryth of Ely’s donation of fine embroidered vestments she had made herself to Cuthbert seem like a later invention, in other donations from queens we see the kinds of access and control they had to material wealth.

The reputations they left behind, in charters, histories and hagiographies, often celebrate the Christian values they manifested as queens. Ecclesiastical and hagiographic sources account for much of the information about early queens, and these sources often reflect the interests of their audiences more than the lives and experiences of the women as they knew their own offices. Yet at the same time, the values which these sources celebrated were essential cultural values expected of queens: their generosity, to the Church and to members of the aristocracy; their piety; their leadership; their ability to bring people together, and their maternity, which forms the focus of the next chapter. Many of the queens in the next chapter could have equally featured in this chapter, sainted as they were: Balthild, queen of Clovis II of Neustria (r. 639–57) was considered a saint, as was Eormenhild, daughter of Seaxburh of Kent and mother of St Werburh. Each queen mediated across boundaries, not just between kingdoms and families, but between ideal and real, aspiring to the highest virtues of Christianity but placed in the highest secular position a woman could hold, one which often necessitated conjugality at the expense of virginity.

Notes

1. For a more detailed view of the position of Mary, see Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); on Jezebel and Esther in early England, see Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006).
2. Mary Clayton, Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints, trans. Mary Clayton, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 27 (London: Harvard University Press, 2013), ix. All citations and translations come from this edition unless otherwise indicated.
3. Ibid., 365.
4. Ibid.
5. The Bosworth-Toller Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon notes one instance of the form cyninge being used to refer to a queen in Blickling Homily 1, on the Annunciation of Mary, where it asserts: Forðon we sceolan eall ure lif on eaþmodnesse healdan, æfter þære bysne þære halgan Godes cyningan … (‘Therefore we must lead our whole life in meekness after the example of the holy queen of God …’), in The Blickling Homilies with a Translation and Index of Words together with The Blickling Glosses, ed. and trans R. Morris, Early English Text Society, Original Series, numbers 58, 63 and 73, reprinted as one edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 11. However, the correspondence of the following verse to identified source material invalidates such an interpretation in this instance. See Joseph Bosworth and Thomas Northcote Toller, eds, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary: based on the manuscript collections of the late Joseph Bosworth: supplement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921).
6. Clayton, Old English Poems, 20–21.
7. Ibid., 368.
8. Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe, Queenship and Power. (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 55; Pauline Stafford, ‘Powerful Women in the Early Middle Ages: Queens and Abbesses’, in The Medieval World, eds Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001), 398–415 at 402–6; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983), at 99–114; Joann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500–1100”, Feminist Studies 1 (1976), 126–41.
9. Wiesje Nijenhuis, ‘In a Class of Their Own, Anglo-Saxon Female Saints’, Mediaevistik 14 (2001): 125–48.
10. Jane T. Schulenburg, ‘Female Sanctity: Public and Private Roles, 500–1100’, in Women and Power in the Middle Ages (London: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 102–25.
11. Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Aethelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 25; for more on hagiography, see Jane T. Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 53–7.
12. Jo Ann McNamara, ‘Imitatio Helenae: Sainthood as an Attribute of Queenship’, in Saints: Studies in Hagiography, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 141 (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 51–80.
13. Blanton, Signs of Devotion; Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex, 51–2.
14. Michael Lapidge and Rosalind C. Love, ‘The Latin Hagiography of England and Wales (600–1550)’, in Hagiographies: Histoire Internationale de La Littérature Hagiographique Latine et Vernaculaire, En Occident, Des Origines à 1500, vol. III, 15 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 203–325.
15. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 243–52.
16. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. Rosalind C. Love, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
17. Ibid., cv–cvi.
18. Alaric Hall, ‘Constructing Anglo-Saxon Sanctity: Tradition, Innovation and Saint Guthlac’, in Images of Sanctity: Essays in Honour of Gary Dickson, ed. by D. Higgs Strickland, Visualising the Middle Ages, 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 207–35 at 209.
19. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Hagiography of the Female Saints, cv.
20. Ibid., ciii, cx, cxiii.
21. Susan E. Kelly, ‘Eorcenberht (d. 664)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23 September 2004).
22. Barbara Yorke, ‘The Burial of Kings in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, eds Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Brian W. Schneider, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 13 (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 237–58 at 251.
23. Blanton, Signs of Devotion, 48–50.
24. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Hagiography of the Female Saints, cii–cvi.
25. Oswald Cockayne, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, vol. 3, 3 vols, The Rolls Series (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1868), 428–9.
26. Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, Anglo-Saxon England 27 (1998): 41–64, at 51–2.
27. S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, revised and enlarged (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955); Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, 51; Barbara Yorke, ‘Becoming Royal: Creating and Sustaining Royal Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms c.575–900’, in Negotiating Power in the Early Middle Ages (Northern/Early Medieval Interdisciplinary Conference, Canterbury, 2019)
28. Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, 52.
29. David Dumville, ‘ “The Northumbrian Liber Vitae”: London, British Library, MS. Cotton Domitian A.Vii, Folios 15–24 & 25–45, the Original Text’, in Anglo-Saxon Essays, 2001–2007, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Culture (Aberdeen: The Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 2007).
30. ‘…Osred, the son of King Aldfrith, and he became the adopted son of our holy bishop.’ The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. & trans. by Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), 128–9; David Rollason, ‘Osred I’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
31. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, trans. R.M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), i.53 at 81-2; Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow: Bede’s Homily i. 13 on Benedict Biscop, Bede’s History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, the Anonymous Life of Ceolfrith, Bede’s Letter to Ecgbert, Bishop of York, eds Christopher Grocock and Ian N. Wood, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xli.
32. Michael Lapidge, ‘Cuthburg’, eds Michael Lapidge et al., The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2014), 605; J.M.J. Fletcher, ‘The Marriage of St Cuthburga, Who Was Afterwards Foundress of the Monastery at Wimborne’, Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, 34 (1913), 167–85, at 168.
33. John Blair, ‘A Saint for Every Minster? Local Cults in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, eds Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 455–94, 481–3.
34. Fletcher, ‘The Marriage of St Cuthburga’, 178.
35. Lina Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), 116.
36. Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren, Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979).
37. Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), 80–82; Diane Watt, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100, Studies in Early Medieval History (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 47–53; Clare Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 150–64.
38. Rudolf Ehwald, ed., Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919).
39. Boniface, Die Briefe Des Heiligen Bonifatius Und Lullus, ed. Michael Tangl, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolae Selectae 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916); Boniface, The Letters of Saint Boniface, trans. Ephraim Emerton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).
40. Watt, Women, Writing and Religion.
41. John Blair, ‘Osgyth [St Osgyth, Osyth, Osith]’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23 September 2004).
42. Denis Bethell, ‘The Lives of St Osyth of Essex and Osyth of Aylesbury’, Analecta Bollandiana 88, no. 1 (1970): 75–127.
43. For a more in-depth discussion of Osgyth’s marriage to Sighere as a peaceweaving union, see Stefany Wragg, ‘An “Authorized Fiction”: Towards a Biography of Anonymous 756’, Royal Studies Journal 8.2 (2021).
44. Barbara Yorke, ‘The Kingdom of the East Saxons’, Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985): 1–36 at 34–5.
45. Watt, Women, Writing and Religion, 25; Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Aethelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615, 49.
46. Blanton, Signs of Devotion, 53.
47. On Æthelthryth’s donation to Wilfrid, see Colgrave, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, c. XXII, 44–7; on Wilfrid’s penchant for luxury items and clothing, see c. XXIV, 48–9.
48. George La Piana, ed., The Letters of Saint Boniface, trans. Ephraim Emerton, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 31 (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1940), 64–5; Michael Tangl, ed., Die Briefe Des Heiligen Bonifatius Und Lullus, 2nd edn, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolae Selectae 1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1955), 114.
49. Jane T. Schulenburg, ‘Female Sanctity: Public and Private Roles, 500–1100’, in Women and Power in the Middle Ages (London: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 102–25, 117.
50. Ibid., 118.
51. Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 34.
52. S.E. Kelly, ‘Kings of the South Saxons’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2019, 3–5.
53. Peter Sawyer et al., eds, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Revised and digitised (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968), https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/about.html, S 1782; Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 123–4.
54. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S1824.
55. Heather Edwards, ‘Æthelheard (d. 740)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ref:odnb/52313, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/52313.
56. Sawyer et al., Anglo-Saxon Charters, S254; see discussion for further details.
57. Ibid., S443.
58. Ibid., S310 and S521.
59. G.P. Cubbin, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Vol. 6 MS D, vol. 6 (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 12. Translation mine.
60. Tangl, Die Briefe Des Heiligen Bonifatius Und Lullus, number 78, 169; Charles H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany: Being the Lives of SS. Willibrord, Boniface, Sturm, Leoba, and Lebuin, Together with the Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald and a Selection from the Correspondence of St. Boniface (London: Sheen and Ward, 1954), 133; Hollis offers further discussion in Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, 143–50.