ON S. WITHBURGA, VIRGIN, AT DERHAM AND ELY IN ENGLAND, IN THE YEAR 743
PrefaceWithburga, Virgin in England (Saint)
[1] In the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy there flourished in the seventh century of Christ, Anna, King of the East Angles, happier even by this title alone, that he fathered four daughters inscribed in the sacred calendars and honored with ecclesiastical cult: of these, their birthdays are observed for S. Etheldreda on June 23, S. Ethelburga on July 7, and S. Sexburga on July 6, and the one we now treat, Birthday March 17 S. Withburga on March 17: whom the Acts below have as departing from this life on this day. In the ancient Martyrology of the Collegiate Church of S. Mary of Utrecht, compiled more than five hundred years ago, the following is read for the said day: On that day the deposition of S. Withburga the Virgin. At Nivelles, Gertrude the Virgin. We have seen in the Norman monastery of Jumieges a very ancient Missal according to the use of the English Churches, given by Robert, from Abbot of that place, Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury, around the year one thousand and fifty: in whose prefixed Calendar the Office of S. Withburga the Virgin and of Bishop Patrick is prescribed. The name also of S. Withburga is found there in the Litanies among the other Virgins, and her patronage is invoked. In the additions to Usuard printed at Cologne in 1515, and in the German Martyrology of Canisius, the following is found: Likewise in England, of the holy Virgin Withburga. Which same things Ferrarius transcribed from Canisius. In the manuscript Florarium the Translation is added, and for February 19 the following is read: In England, of Withburga the Virgin, as if that were the day of her birthday: of which elsewhere we have found no trace.
[2] Another day is sacred to her veneration, July 8, for which Molanus has in the Additions to Usuard: In England, of S. Withburga the Virgin. Not July 8: The above-cited Molanus, Wion thus amplifies in the monastic Martyrology: In England, of S. Withburga the Virgin, daughter of Wulfher, King of the Mercians, and a nun
of Ely, illustrious in holiness and miracles. The error of Wion is transcribed by Dorganius and Ferrarius. But the daughter of King Wulfher was not S. Withburga but Wereburga, who first embraced the monastic life in the Ely monastery: whose Life we illustrated on February 3. Wereburga had as mother S. Ermenilda: whose Life we gave on February 13, and as grandmother S. Sexburga, sister of S. Withburga, who was therefore her great-aunt. The error of Wion was seen and corrected by Edward Mayhew in the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Benedictine Order, whom Menard follows
East Derham is in the middle of the province of Norfolk and the hundred of Witforden: another is West Dereham in the hundred of Clackhovvse. The Malmesbury writer, book 4 of the Deeds of the English Pontiffs, in the Bishops of Ely, calls it an ignoble country place, in which she herself had spent many years celibate and abstaining from food. Unless these words are to be understood of Holcham. Camden, treating of the village of Dereham, adds that S. Withburga, because she was most remote from luxury and levity and was a most holy Virgin, was enrolled among the Saints by our ancestors.
Capgrave adds: Her sole hope after Christ.
The same: a bridge.
The Malmesbury writer: A domesticated doe, accustomed to the hand, ministered to her daily drink from its udders: which when someone had attacked and killed with a spear or javelin, the local lord, seized not long after by disease, wasted away. But Capgrave agrees with the Acts.
We said above that this year is also read as 798 in the Worcester, Chester, and Capgrave sources.
Capgrave interposes: That convent of virgins was at last, by an incursion of the Danes, with the community of Virgins scattered, reduced to a parish church. There were very many incursions of the Danes, in one of which in the year 870 the Ely church was burned by the Pagans, according to its manuscript Chronicle.
HISTORY OF THE FIRST TRANSLATION
were suitable; the lower stone on which the excellent Virgin rested was broken. Then a very great fissure appeared in the tomb: The tomb is broken: but I believe this was done not by any carelessness, but so that the power of the Lord might show the merits of the holy Virgin, and solidify the fracture in the vessel with a new miracle... For the most resplendent Withburga, to the most exact measure of the old sarcophagus, which had long since been broken, the said Richard, Rector of the hall of Ely, had prepared a new one, so that the incorrupt Virgin, placed in a new one, might have an incorrupt lodging.
the threats of the judge might be delayed. He therefore, immediately boiling over entirely with anger, ordered the holy man to be stripped and stretched on the rack. Where, when the torturers had compressed him most firmly with two boards and had plowed his entire body with iron combs, they suspended him headfirst: and then, with no small fire lit beneath him, they thus at last made him a holocaust pleasing to God.
As is in the Acts of S. Stephen, This Paul, however, who suffered in Cyprus, not in Constantinople, was the one about whom the Menologion and the Menaea treat (and therefore
Cardinal Baronius reports at volume XXXVII: yet again on folio 105 of the Basel edition Scardeonius asserts that Julian lived while the Republic of Padua still flourished, long before the destruction of the city: that is indeed what he had noted above.
[6] Wion's testimony about the cult of individual saints, Arnold Wion, when he had reported at August 2 the Canonization of all the Saints who rest in the monastery of S. Justina (in which, however, only three had been treated), notes the following: We have placed this present Canonization of these Saints here because among them there were three of the monastic Order (namely Benedictine, about which