CONCERNING S. HILDELITHA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS OF BARKING IN ENGLAND, WITH A COMMEMORATION OF THE NUNS AFTERWARDS KILLED BY THE DANES.
AROUND THE YEAR 720.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Hildelitha, Virgin and Abbess, at Barking in England (S.)
Nuns killed by the Danes, at Barking in England
BHL Number: 3942
§ I S. Hildelitha, Teacher of S. Ethelburga, Abbess of the monastery, dear to S. Aldhelm.
[1] In the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, the city of London with its Middlesex was under the Kings of the East Saxons, and had as its fourth Bishop S. Erconwald, concerning whom Bede in book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, chapter 6, writes these things, which must here necessarily be indicated: This man, before he was made Bishop, had built two famous monasteries, one for himself, the other for his sister Ethelburga. Both of which he had excellently established with regular discipline: for himself indeed in the region of Surrey, by the river Thames, in the place which is called Ceortesei, that is, the island of Ceort. But for his sister, in the province of the East Saxons, In the Barking monastery, in the place which is called Barking: in which she herself might be the mother and nurse of women devoted to God. She, having received the government of the monastery, showed herself in all things worthy of her brother the Bishop, both by living rightly herself and by governing her subjects in a regular and pious manner: as even heavenly miracles bore witness. So it is there. S. Erconwald is venerated on April 30, and S. Ethelburga on October 11, in whose manuscript Life these are read: When the monastery at Barking was built, and S. Ethelburga had determined to take the monastic habit, S. Erkenwold summoned from across the sea a Virgin learned in regular discipline, She instructs the Abbess S. Ethelburga, Hildelitha by name, to whom he entrusted his sister Ethelburga to be trained in manners: who, in a short time surpassing all the Sisters in holiness and manners, with many Sisters gathered, was made their Abbess and Mother. So it is there. Barking or Bercingum is in the County of Essex near the river Thames, not far from London, in which, until the most unhappy times of Henry VIII, King of England, a most celebrated monastery flourished, whose first Abbess was the said S. Ethelburga, to whom succeeded she who is here called her teacher, S. Hildelitha, concerning whom we now inquire, from what region she seems to have been born.
[2] Bede, book 3, chapter 8, speaking of these times: Not yet, he says, when many monasteries were built in the land of the English, many from Britain were accustomed to go to the monasteries of the Franks or of Gaul for the sake of monastic life, summoned from Gaul for this purpose: and also to send their daughters to be educated there and united to the heavenly Spouse, especially to the monastery of Brie and to Chelles and to the monastery of Andelys. So says Bede on the occasion of S. Earcongota, daughter of Ercombert, King of Kent, who lived in the Faremoutier monastery, built in the place called Brie: as has been said more fully in her Life on February 23. But the monastery of Chelles was founded by S. Bathildis, Queen of the Franks, and she entered it around the year 670. We gave her Acts on January 26. It seems that S. Hildelitha, having gone to Gaul on a similar occasion, and now recalled by S. Erkenwold, lived in the Barking monastery under S. Ethelburga the Abbess; whose meanwhile she was also the teacher of the other nuns: whose virtues, and the happy death of many, Bede narrates in the said book 4, chapters 7, 8, and 9, and ends with the most blessed departure of S. Ethelburga, then in chapter 10 relates the following.
[3] After Ethelburga, the successor in the office of Abbess was a servant devoted to God, named Hildilid, she becomes Abbess, who for many years, that is, to extreme old age, most vigorously presided over the same monastery, both in the observance of regular discipline and in the provision of those things that pertain to common use. When it pleased her, on account of the narrowness of the place in which the monastery was built, that the bones of the servants of Christ, both men and women, who had been buried there, should be taken up and all transferred to the church of the blessed Mother of God, and honored in one place; how often there appeared a brightness of heavenly light, how great a fragrance of wonderful odor, and what other signs were shown, whoever reads will find in that very book from which we have excerpted these things. So says Bede, and from him Capgrave in the Life of S. Hildelitha, Virgin and Abbess, in the New Legend of the Saints of England, printed at London in the year 1516, whose beginning is:
[4] The monastery of Barking is known to be a shrine of many Saints. For very often over this place heaven seems to be opened by a certain special regard, and the brightness which souls possess in heaven adorned with every kind of virtue, seems to pour itself out in some measure upon the bodies to be glorified. To the great glory, therefore, of the blessed Mother Hildelitha does it pertain that she alone among so many heavenly ones is received as a most precious gem, she alone among her stars is shown forth as the most brilliant, she alone after Blessed Ethelburga is solemnized with the title of sanctity. Some things are interspersed, as we shall say below, and then these are added: She was so full of divine charity that she was the teacher and model of all virtues, in vigils, abstinences, kindness, clemency, and the sum of other virtues: so she provided for both the souls and bodies of those in need, that she walked before God and men without complaint. But the rest of the life or merits of Blessed Hildelitha are hidden from our times, in which we believe that testimonies of miracles were not lacking, although sanctity is to be proven more by faith, which works through love, than by miracles. Yet we believe that all her sacred deeds are described in heaven, so much the more brilliant there, the more obscure here: whose life, hidden with Christ, will at length appear more brightly with him in glory. So says Capgrave: with whom we lament that the book from which Bede had excerpted what he related has perished.
[5] How long S. Hildelitha lived, or how many years she presided as Abbess over the monastery of Barking, is not sufficiently established. S. Ethelburga is said in her manuscript Life and in Capgrave to have died around the year of the Lord 676. when she was made Abbess. Perhaps these things are taken from Florence of Worcester, who treats of the episcopate of S. Erconwald at the year 675, and the two monasteries made by him, and his two successors in the episcopate; and then adds: Furthermore, Hildelitha succeeded Ethelburga, the sister of S. Erconwald, to whom S. Aldhelm wrote his book on Virginity. After Hildelitha there was Wulfhild, Abbess in the time of King Edgar: two hundred and fifty years having elapsed, but added on account of the sanctity of her life. She is venerated by some on May 30, by others on December 9. Concerning those three, Malmesbury asserts several things in book 2 of his Deeds of the English Bishops. The monastery of the sister of S. Erkenwold, he says, is called Barking, situated on the side of London at eight miles' distance. There she, called Ethelburga, had as her close companions in holiness and piety, Hildelid as her immediate successor, to whom there exists a book on the praise of Virgins composed by the most blessed Aldhelm; and Wulfhild, almost a modern, who preceded by a few years the times of King Edgar, and who compensates for the antiquity of the others by the grace of her holiness, and I would almost say anticipates it. So it is there.
[6] S. Aldhelm dedicates to her and her nuns his book on Virginity But S. Aldhelm thus dedicated the Prologue of his book on Virginity to them: To the most reverend Virgins of Christ, and to those to be venerated with every affection of devoted kinship, and to be celebrated not only for the renown of bodily chastity, which belongs to many, but also to be glorified for the grace of spiritual purity, which belongs to few: to Hildelitha, Mistress of regular discipline and monastic life, and likewise to Justina and Cuthburga, and also to Osburg, my kinswoman: to Alfgida and Scholastica, bound by the ties of kinship, to Hidburga and Berngida, Eulalia and Thecla, who in the reputation of holiness harmoniously adorn the Church; Aldhelm, a slothful Christian and a suppliant servant of the Cross and the Church, wishes an enviable salvation of perpetual prosperity. Concerning Cuthburga and some others we shall treat below, where we give the beginning of the Prologue to those nuns: which is of this kind: Already long ago, setting out for a Pontifical Council, accompanied by fraternal bands of companions,
receiving the writings of your Holiness brought to my mediocrity quite willingly, with palms raised to heaven, I took care to render immense thanks to Christ, rejoicing for your well-being. By which pen not only the Ecclesiastical covenants of promised vows, but also the honeyed studies of the divine Scriptures were revealed in a most sagacious series of discourses. And as I recited the individual texts of the Epistles, with an illustrious encomium, examining them with the swift glances of my eyes, and contemplating with a certain natural curiosity of hidden things (as is said to be innate in me), and greatly admiring the most abundant eloquence of words and the virginal urbanity of expression: Behold, I said, with ineffable rejoicing does that Ruler of celestial Olympus and Governor of heaven exult, when he sees Catholic handmaids of Christ, indeed adoptive daughters of regenerating grace, begotten from the fertile womb of ecclesiastical conception by the seed of the spiritual word, educated through maternal solicitude in divine doctrines, and exercised as sagacious gymnosophists under a most skilled trainer in the gymnastic disciplines and gymnastic arts in the gymnasium: who industriously obtain the crown of the laborious contest and the triumph of the Olympic struggle by the most difficult efforts of their own exercise. And a little later: All these things which we have described as being exercised among gymnosophists in the disciplines of secular schools, in the industry of your discipleship are conducted not by the manners of the outer man, but by the gestures of the inner man, etc. Near the end of the work, or chapter 30, he commends himself to their prayers. Pray, he says, recruits of Christ, he seeks their prayers. that the rare recompense for the present little work may be the frequent reciprocal offering of your prayers, and that the support of your intercession may be the buttress of my labor and sweat... so that in the holy assembly, when the venerable company of the monastic order shall have concordantly offered melodious burnt offerings of prayers on bended knees to the Creator of all things, it may deign to remember my contemptible person, according to what your devout vows have promised... May the nourishing Trinity, one substance of the Deity, and threefold subsistence of Persons, governing the monarchy of the whole world, deign to watch over your Blessedness, praying for us, continually from the high summit of heaven. Farewell, O flowers of the Church, Sisters, nurslings of the monastery, pearls of Christ the Scholar, gems of Paradise, and participants of the heavenly fatherland. Amen. These things S. Aldhelm, a most learned and most holy man, first Abbot of Malmesbury, afterwards around the year 705 made Bishop of Sherborne, dedicated to S. Hildelitha and her nuns with great evidence of her sanctity and regular life.
§ II The instruction of S. Cuthburga. Acquaintance with S. Boniface. Sacred veneration. Commemoration of the slain nuns.
[7] Among the nuns named above was Cuthburga, concerning whom Malmesbury relates the following in book 1 of the Deeds of the English Kings, chapter 2. She receives among her own S. Cuthburga, King Ina had sisters Cuthburga and Quenburga. Cuthburga, given in marriage to Alcfrid, King of the Northumbrians, but not long after separated from the marriage, first at Barking under the Abbess Hildelida, then herself the Mistress of the rule, led a life pleasing to God at Wimborne. It is now an insignificant village, but at that time notable, in which a frequent choir of Virgins, having castrated earthly desires, sighed after heavenly loves. To the zeal of holy celibacy was added the reading of the books of Aldhelm on Virginity, dedicated indeed to the name of the Barking community, but of value to all who aspired to the same profession. Alcfrid, above mentioned, was the illegitimate son of King Oswy, a boy at the time of his death, having left the marriage with King Alcfrid, and succeeded King Egfrid, his brother, as a young man, perhaps eighteen or twenty years old, plainly different from Alcfrid, the firstborn of King Oswy, whom we said died before his father on March 6 in the Life of SS. Kineburga and Kineswitha, §3. To the younger Alcfrid, therefore, S. Cuthburga was given in marriage, and bore him an heir to the kingdom and successor, Osred, born around the year 697, so that when Alcfrid his father died in the year 705, he would have completed eight years of age. The Anglo-Saxon Chronologist, an ancient author, published with Bede at Cambridge, around the year 700, asserts that Cuthburga was separated from Alcfrid while he was still living, out of zeal for the monastic life, which we judge to have happened around the year 700: and then she lived for one or two years at Barking under S. Hildelitha the Abbess, when S. Aldhelm dedicated his book on Virginity to them.
[8] Meanwhile the Wimborne monastery was built by her brother King Ina: in which the same S. Aldhelm, having been made Bishop, wrote in the year 706 an epistle concerning the liberty of their own election, then Abbess of the Wimborne monastery before the year 705. granted to all congregations constituted under his governance; which from a manuscript Register of the Malmesbury Abbey was published by Alford in the Annals of the English Church at the said year 705, number 18, in which this subscription is read: To this due petition of my monks, especially the servants of God, I most willingly consented: and in the monastery which is near the river called Wenburnia, over which the sister of our venerable King, Cuthburga, presides, with the desirable consent of the most famous King Ina, and with the devout assent of the most reverend brother and Co-bishop Daniel of the presented promise, I confirmed the most fitting petition of the servants of the Lord with the sign of the holy Cross. So it is there. But who would not wonder that Alford afterward, citing no authority for himself, says that this same Cuthburga was married to Osred, the son of King Alcfrid, whom at the death of his father in the year 706 Bede and all others write was a boy of eight years? not married in the year 713 to King Osred. But he was driven to that conclusion while he considered the Alcfrid who was the firstborn of Oswy and this illegitimate Alcfrid to be one and the same, more plausibly born after the death of the former. Alford has these things at the year 713, number 11. We gave the Life of King S. Ina on February 6, and in §I we treated of S. Cuthburga and her Wimborne monastery, as also on February 2 in the Life of S. Hadeloga, who was also called Thecla by some, which we there corrected; and from the Life of S. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, written by Othlon, we showed that religious women had been summoned by him from England to Germany, who are there named Chunihilt, the aunt of S. Lullus, and her daughter Berathgit, Chunidrut and Thecla, Lioba and Walpurgis, sister of Willibald and Wunibald. Whether from these, Berathgit and Thecla are those whom S. Aldhelm mentions in his dedication as having lived under S. Hildelitha with S. Cuthburga, may be doubted, since from the Life of S. Lioba which we shall give on September 28, it is clear that some came from the Wimborne monastery, to the establishment of which they could have departed with S. Cuthburga from the Barking monastery. S. Thecla is venerated on October 15.
[9] This conjecture is supported by the acquaintance which S. Boniface formed with S. Hildelitha, as is gathered from his epistle 21 in Serarius, written to the Abbess Eadburga, she narrates to S. Boniface the vision of one raised from death in whose beginning he writes thus: You asked me, dearest Sister, to intimate and transmit in writing the marvelous visions of that man who recently died and came back to life in the monastery of the Abbess Milburga, which were shown to him, as I learned from the report of the venerable Abbess Hildelitha. And having narrated that vision at length, he thus concludes the epistle: But these things, which at your diligent request I have written, he set forth in common hearing with three religious and very venerable Brothers: who are known to be faithful witnesses corroborating me in this writing. So it is there. Eadburga, surnamed Buggan, is believed to have been Abbess in Kent, and to have died on the sixth day before the Kalends of January in the year 759, and inscribed in various Martyrologies for July 18. Several epistles of S. Boniface to her survive. But the vision discussed in the cited epistle was among other things about the damnation of Ceolred, the most libidinous King of the Mercians, who died in the year 716, the eighth of his reign: at which year Baronius and Alford place that epistle in their respective Annals. around the year 716, or following years. In which same year Serarius observes that S. Boniface returned from his first pilgrimage to Frisia to his homeland and his monastery, when he could have visited S. Hildelitha, and learned from her the history of this vision, at least before his departure from England, which the same Serarius records happened in the year 718.
[10] We said above from Bede that S. Hildelitha reached extreme old age, so that she seems to have attained perhaps ninety years or more than eighty. died around the year 720: If she were born around the year 630, she could have been thirty-four years of age when she was summoned from Gaul by S. Erkenwold to instruct his sister S. Ethelburga in monastic matters, to whom she afterward succeeded on her death, and thus she would be said to have lived to the year 720, having reached extreme old age as a nonagenarian. Alford places her death at the centennial year 700, because Trithemius, Wion, and others said she flourished or lived around that year. But at whatever time she departed from this life to the immortal, this is chiefly to be observed, that, just as in her most holy life she provided and instilled examples of virtues for others, so after death she merited worship and veneration. Moreover, in the Life in Capgrave, these are read: But the blessed Hildelitha is presented as most glorious among the glorious. held in veneration: For this holy Virgin was not only celebrated with worthy veneration by Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Alphege, but also her sanctity was proclaimed by many ancient saints. And if on account of the fault of our negligence, or on account of the reward of her faith, the miracles or the evidence of writings have failed us, those who knew her by her resounding virtues without doubt, who before the burning of the sacred volumes throughout the entire island by the Danes, exalted her in the lamp of all, and decreed her day to be most holy. Then one miracle is added, which is narrated in the same words in the Life of S. Ethelburga, and is of this kind: Three blind women, coming together at the same time to the patronage of the three holy Virgins, illustrious for miracles. were individually illuminated by individual saints. One indeed by S. Ethelburga, another by S. Hildelitha, the third by S. Wulfhild, above called Wulfhid and Wulfheid: where we treated of them from Malmesbury, who praises their intercession with God. For nothing, he says, does the suppliant ask in vain, provided he does not lack faith. By whose prayers, I truly confess, that place was never entirely destroyed, and now even in the time of the Normans, like most others, has been raised to the highest in the number of its nuns and the beauty of its buildings. The above-mentioned Bishops Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Alphege were eminent champions of the monastic life and restorers of monasteries: S. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, is venerated on May 19, S. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, on August 1, and he who ordained these as Priests, S. Alphege, likewise of Winchester, on March 12, unless he is Alphege II, from Bishop of Winchester made Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, who had previously been Abbot of Bath, and is venerated on April 19.
[11] The day on which S. Hildelitha departed this life is indicated above from Capgrave as having been decreed most holy by sanction, Inscribed in the Martyrologies of more recent writers on December 22, but what day that was is not added. Trithemius treats of her in book 3 on the Illustrious Men of S. Benedict, chapter 121, with no day indicated either.
day. Hence Arnold Wion reported in his Appendix to the Monastic Martyrology that the birthday is unknown, and has this eulogy: S. Hildelidis, Abbess of Barking in England, after S. Ethelburga shone with innumerable virtues and miracles. She lived in the year 700. Using this occasion, Wilson chose a day convenient for himself and empty of any other English Saint, namely December 22, on which he inscribed her in his English Martyrology. Ferrarius in the General Catalogue soon followed, as did Edward in the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of S. Benedict, of the more ancient ones, March 24. Menard also and Bucelin. But over all these prevails the authority of the English Martyrology, which Richard Withford, a monk of the Order of S. Bridget, a man of outstanding piety and learning, wrote in the monastery of Sion, not far from London and the Barking monastery, printed in English at London in the year 1526: in which for this March 24 the following is read: In England, in the monastery of Barking, the feast of S. Hildelitha, Virgin and next Abbess after S. Ethelburga, who was a woman, as Bede writes, endowed with singular virtues and illustrious for many miracles. So says Withford, concerning whose Martyrology and other pious works that were composed, Pitsaeus may be consulted on the Illustrious Writers of England. The words of Withford are confirmed in an ancient parchment codex, which under the name of the Martyrology of Usuard exists at Rome in the most illustrious library of the Duke of Altemps, in which on this same day is inscribed the sacred memory of S. Hildelitha, Abbess in the monastery of Barking. She is also reported there on March 23 and is called Hilda, and in another manuscript Calendar of the Order of S. Benedict, Edihildis, Virgin and Abbess in England, is reported on this day.
[12] There is added, both in the Acts in Capgrave and in the Martyrology of Withford, a crown of Virgins, Commemoration of the nuns slain by the Danes. afterwards killed there in hatred of the faith and religion. And those Acts relate: But to pass over the merits of posterity, at the time when Blessed Edmund suffered martyrdom for Christ, the whole congregation of holy Virgins with their Mother was consecrated in this holy church by the Pagans. O how memorable the piety, where that Mother of the divine family, as the lead of the burning monastery poured down, raising both hands to heaven and comforting all with tears, said: Endure, most beloved daughters, this transitory fire, by which we hasten to the everlasting prize. Already heaven is opened for us: already the palm of martyrdom and eternal glory is purchased by a momentary pain. For these virginal Martyrs together with the above-mentioned Virgins, like a starry people, are commemorated in one commemoration without a specific night vigil by name. So it is there. The memory of all the Sisters, together with the Abbess killed by fire by the same Danes who had slain S. Edmund the King, is also attached to S. Hildelitha in Withford. Ingulf, Abbot of Croyland, having narrated the slaughter of King S. Edmund, adds: Thus having obtained and occupied all of East Anglia, they remained there throughout the whole winter. But "they remained for a whole two years" is read in the Peterborough Chronicle, around the year 870. part of which is inserted in the English Monasticon, page 70. In Wilson's English Martyrology it is added that the monastery of Barking was then burned by the Danes. S. Edmund the King was killed on November 20 of the year 870.