The Anglo-Saxon Nuns (part 3 of 6)

thirty years' reign by ten years of life in a monastery. We

treat only at this moment of the daughters and granddaughters of the sanguinary victor who had cut off so many Christian kings among the neighboring nations.

An obstinate tradition found in the ancient English chronicles asserts that two of his daughters, Kyneburga and Kyneswitha, both gave up the thought of marriage to consecrate themselves to God. The eldest, who was married to the intimate friend of her brother Peada, the eldest son of King Oswy of Northumbria, the friend and first protector of Wilfrid,8J) is said to have left him with his consent to end her life in the cloister. The youngest, sought in marriage by mina viatorum... cunctos in commune praecipitante fide." — Guill. jVL^ljiesb., De Gest. Reg., lib. ii. c. 13.

'** See genealogical table, Appendix VIII., p. 755.

" See pp. 225-514.

''^ " Ita parens perpetuo in Deum rebellis sauctissimos coelo fructus effudit." — Thomas db Elmham, p. 189.

" See p. 294. so See p. 293.

Offa, King of the East Saxons, used her connection with him only to persuade the young prince to embrace monastic hfe as she herself wished to do.^^ A more profound study, however, of the period has made the authenticity of this legend doubtful.^2 But it has proved that the two daughters of the bloody Penda contributed, with their brothers, to the establishment of the great Abbey of Medehampstede or Peterborough; that their names appear in the lists of the national assembly which sanctioned this foundation, and that they spent their retired and virginal lives in some retreat near the new sanctuary. After their death, they were buried at Peterborough; their relics, happily found after the burning of the monastery and the massacre of all the monks by the Danes, were carried back there on its restoration, and continued to be venerated there down to the twelfth century.

A third daughter of the terrible Penda, Eadburga, was

also a nun, and became abbess at Dormuncester, according to the English martyrology. Her son Merwald, who did not reign, like his brothers, and never attained a higher rank than that of suhregulus or ealdorman, married her who was afterwards Abbess of Minster, a union from which sprang the three holy sisters Milburga, Mildred, and Milgytha, whom we have just spoken of Another son, Wulphere, who succeeded Penda on the throne of Mercia, had a saint for his wife, and of this marriage proceeded another holy saint, Wereburga, who was the fourth of the granddaughters of Penda whom grateful England placed upon her altars.

The wife of Wulphere, the son and successor of Penda, was Ermenilda, daughter of the King of Kent, and granddaughter, by her mother, of Anna, the King of East Anglia, who perished upon the battle-field defending his country and religion against the attacks of Penda.^^ This religion, henceforward triumphant, reconciled and united the posterity of

the murderer and that of the victim. We thus Theufflngs

come, through the essentially Christian and mo- ofEast"^*^ nastic dynasty of the Ascings of Kent to that of Anglia. the Uffings of East Anglia, which was equally remarkable

*' GuiLL. Malmesb., Ricard. Cirencester, Alford, Harpsfeld, Capgrave, &c. Pagi accepts this tradition: Crit. in Baronium, ad aim. G80.

^"^ Act. SS. Bolland., vol. i. March, p. 441. It is not known by what authority the author of the continuation of Uugdale makes Kyneburga the first abbess of the great monastery at Gloucester, the church of which, now a cathedral, is one of the most curious buildings in England. — Stevens, i. 266.

«=> See above, p. 282. for the crowd of saints which it produced. King Anna, who married the sister of Hilda, the celebrated Abbess of Whitby, had a natural daughter, who was a nun in France, along with the daughter, by a former marriage, of her father's wife; both, as has been already said, were Abbesses of Paremoutier,^^ and both are reckoned among the saints.

By his union with the sister of Hilda, King Anna dau^^hters had three daughters and a son. The son became in Anna" who ^lis tum the father of three daughters, two of whom

battii-flew

"^^'ere in succession Abbesses of the Monastery of Hackness, in Northumbria, founded by their grandaunt St. Hilda, and the last, Eadburga, was that Abbess of Repton whom we have already encountered as the friend of the illustrious and generous hermit Guthlac.^^

The three daughters of Anna— Etheldreda, Sexburga, and Withburga— are all counted among the saints. Let us speak, in the first place, of the latter, though she was the youngest of the three. She was sent to the country to be nursed, and remained there until she heard, while still quite young, the news of her father's death on the battle-field. She resolved immediately to seek a refuge for the rest other life in cloistral virginity. She chose for her asylum a modest remnant of her father's lands at Dereham in Norfolk, and there built a little monastery. But she was so poor that she, her companions, and the masons who built her future dwelling, had to live on dry bread alone. One day, after she had prayed long to the blessed Virgin, she saw two does come out of the neighboring forest to drink at a stream whose pure current watererl the secluded spot. Their udders were heavy with milk, and they permitted themselves to be milked by the virginal hands of Withburga's companions, returning every day to the same place, and thus furnishing a sufficient supply for the nourishment of the little community and its workmen.86 This lasted until the ranger of the royal domain,

^8* See above, p. 663, and the genealogical table, Appendix IX., p. 756. *" See above, p. 588.

®® " Juxta mare cum sua nutrice in quodam vico paterni juris. Ad sanctimonialem confugit professionem, ubi in umbra alarum Dei sperans suaviter requievit.... In humilem locum paterni juris devenit.... Mittit ad fontem quo silva grato irrigatur fluvio.... Duk assiliunt cervffi.... Has mulgcbant manus virgine».... Praepositus ipsius villiB... adductis canibus nitebatur insontes feras captare." — Bolland., vol. ii. March, p. 606.

There still exists at East Dereham, a small parish in Norfolk, a well bearing the name of St. Withburga. It is fed by a spring rising in the very place where the saint's body was laid before its translation to Ely. — Notes and Queries, third series, vol. iii. p. 247. a savage and wicked man, who regarded with an evil eye the rising house of God, undertook to hunt down the two helpful animals. He pursued them with his dogs across the country, but, in attempting to leap a high hedge, with that bold impetuosity which still characterizes English horsemen, his horse was impaled on a post, and the hunter broke his neck.^''

Withburga ended her life in this poor and humble solitude; but the fragrance of her gentle virtues spread far and wide. The fame of her holiness went through all the surrounding country. The worship given to her by the people of Norfolk was maintained with the pertinacity common to the Anglo- Saxon race, and went so far that, two centuries after her death, they armed themselves to defend her relics from the monks of Ely, who came, by the king's command, to unite them to those of her sisters at Ely.

To Ely, also, the monastic metropolis of East Anglia, and queen of English abbeys, we must ffs^inti°of transport ourselves to contemplate three generations of princesses issued from the blood of the Ufifings aad Ascings, and crowned by the nimbus of saints. There were, in the first place, the two Queens of Mercia and Kent, Etheldreda, whom our readers already know,s8 g^J^(J j^qj. elder sister, Sexburga. This accomplished princess had married one of the Kings of Kent, the one who, after Ethelbert, had showed himself most zealous for the extension of the Gospel. It was she especially who moved him to destroy the last idols which still remained in his kingdom. After twenty-four years of conjugal life she became a widow, and was regent for four years of the kingdom of her son. As soon as he was old enough to reign, she abdicated, not only the crown, but secular life, took the veil from the hands of Archbishop Theodore, and founded a monastery in the Isle of Sheppey, situated at the mouth of the Thames, and separated from the mainland by that arm of the sea in which Augustin, on Christmas-day 579, baptized at once ten thousand Saxons. This monastery took and kept the name o^ Minster, like that which was founded at the same time by her niece Domneva

" The monastic chronicler describes tlie accident with all the spirit of a steeplechaser: "Equusiii obstantem sepem urgentibus calcaribus incurrit, secusque acuta sude transSxus ilia, duni resiliendo tergiversaretur, sessor Buperbus supino capite excutitur, fractaque cervice exanimatur."

"* See above, in the life of Wilfrid, p. 36C. in the neighboring Isle of Thanet. The church is still visible not far from the great roads of Sheerness, which has become one of the principal stations of the British navy. She there ruled a community of seventy-seven nuns, until she learned that her sister Etheldreda, having fled from the king her husband, according to the advice of Wilfrid, had taken refuge in the marshes of their native country, and had there formed a new asylum for souls resolute to serve God in solitude and virginity. Sexburga then resolved to return to her own country and become a simple nun under the crosier of her sister. '' Farewell, my daughters," she said to her companions who were gathered round her. " I leave you Jesus for your protector. His holy angels for companions, and one of my daughters for your superior. ... I go to East Anglia where I was born, in order to have my glorious sister Etheldreda for my mistress, and to take part immediately in her labors here below, that I may share her recompense above."

Abbess at ^'^^ ^^^ received with enthusiasm at Ely: the entire community came out to welcome her: and the two sister-queens wept with joy when they met. They lived together afterwards in the most sweet and tender union, rivalling each other in zeal for the service of God and the salvation of souls, Sexburga compelling herself g^g always to take lessons of humility and fervor from

her sister. When Etheldreda died, Sexburga replaced her as abbess, and ruled the great East Anglian monastery for twenty years before she too found Ijqj. j.gg^ near the toml3 which she had erected to her sister.^^

Besides her two sons, who reigned over Kent in succession, Sexburga had two daughters, one of whom, Earcongotha, lived and died, as has been already seen, in a French monastery; the other, Ermenilda, married to the son and Qumfof"' successor of Penda, became, along with the illustri- Abbe's's'of o^is exile Wilfrid, the principal instrument of the hermother ^^^^ Conversion of Mercia, the greatest kingdom of the Heptarchy. Like her mother, she used all the ⁸⁹ ('Vobis, O fili;E, Jesum derelinquo tutorera, sanctosque angelos paranymphos.... Ego gloriosae sororis mex magisterio informanda.... Regina reginam excepit, soror sororem cum tripudio introducit, fundunt ubertim prae gaudio lacrymas, et ex vera caritate inter eas lajtitia gerniinatur. Coelesti namque dulcedine delectataB alterna invicem consolatione proficiunt. Venit dives ilia de praelatione ad subjectionem.... Federatae invicem beataa Borores ia unitate fidei." — Historia Eliensis, 1. i. c. 18, 35. influence which the love of her husband gave her to extirpate the last vestiges of idolatry in the country which had been the centre and last bulwark of Anglo-Saxon heathenism.^*^ The example of her virtues was the most effectual of sermons; and it was, above all, by her incomparable sweetness, her pity for all misfortune, her unwearied kindness, that she touched the hearts of her subjects most.^^ Like her mother, too, it was her desire to offer herself entirely to God, to whom she had finally led back her people: as soon as she became a widow, she took the veil like her mother, and under her mother— for it was to Ely that she went to live in humility and chastit}', under a doubly maternal rule. The mother and daughter contended which should give the finest examples of humility and charity /^^ ^t, last, and still following in her mother's steps, Ermenilda, on the death of Sexburga, became abbess, and was thus the third princess of the blood of the Uffings who ruled the flourishing community of Ely. The local chronicle affirms that it was not her birth but her virtues, and even her love of holy poverty, which made her preferred to all others by the unanimous suffrages of her numerous companions.^'^ She showed herself worthy of their choice: she was less a superior than a mother. After a life full of holiness and justice, her soul went to receive its eternal reward in heaven, and her body was buried beside those of her mother and aunt in the church of the great abbey which had thus the singular privilege of having for its three first abbesses a Queen of Northumbria, a Queen of Kent, and a Queen of Mercia.

But this celebrated community was to be in addi- weroburga, tion the spiritual home of a fourth abbess and saint, Elmenfidaf in whom the blood of Penda and of Anna,^* the victor *°"''*'^ ^^^- ^ "Nee quievit invicta, rlonec idola ct ritus dremoniacos extirparet.... Rex... Sanctis uxoris desideriis, petitionibus ac nionitis ultro se iiiclinans." — JoANN. Bkompton, ap. BoLLAND., vol. ii. February, p. G87. See above, p. 631.

*' " Ad omnem pietatem, compassionem ct omnium necessitudinuin subventionem materna viscera ante omnia induebat. Eadera in omnibus benignitas, in Christo caritas erat." Ibid., p. G91.

^- " Contendebant alterutra pietate mater et filia, quae humilior, quaj possit esse subjectior: mater sibi praeferebat ejus, quam genuerat, virginitatera; virgo matris auctoritatem: utrinque et vincere et vinci gaudebant." — GoT- SELiNL's, Vita S. Werehurga:, ap. Bolland., vol. i. February, p. ;»88.

®^ " Voto unanimi et consensu totius congrcgationis... successit: quae totius dominationis ambitione neglecta ... ad Christi paupertatcm, quara optaverat, pauper ipsa devenit. ... A cunctis digne suscepta, totius mater congrcgationis effecta est. Transivit autem plena sanctitate et justitia ad regna coelestia."

^* See genealogical tables, Appendix VII., VIII., and IX., pp. 754, 755, 756. bessofEiy ^^'^^ *^® Vanquished, was blended. This was Wereof thesame burga, the only daughter of Ermenilda, who had not stock. followed, but preceded, her mother in the cloister.

These crowned Christians had learned in their palaces to despise wealth, luxury, and worldly pomp. They considered themselves prisoners of vanity .^^ Notwithstanding her beauty, which, like that of Etheldreda, is boasted by the annalists, Wereburga repulsed all her suitors. A monastery seemed to her the most noble of palaces. Following this impulse she went to her grandaunt Etheldreda at Ely, with the consent of her father, who himself took her there in state, accompanied by his royal suite. When her grandmother. Queen Sexburga, and her mother, Queen Ermenilda, followed her, three generations of princesses of the blood of Hengist and Odin were thus seen together, the grandmother, mother, and daughter, wearing the same monastic dress, and bound by the same rule for the service of God and man. Wereburga lived long as a bumble and simple nun, fulfilling in her turn all the offices in the monastery, until the time when, after the death of her motlier, she was called to take the place of abbess.

Her uncle Ethelred, who, after a reign of thirty years, was to end his days in the cloister, was so struck with the prudence and capacity that were apparent, combined with holiness, in the character of Wereburga, that he intrusted her with a sort of supremacy, or rather a general right of inspection over the various nunneries in his kingdom.^^ It was in exercise of this office that, before entering on the government of El}^, she had been at the head of the communities of Weedon,Trentham,and Hanbury in turn, leaving everywhere a fragrance of virtue and kindness, and recollections of her constant solicitude for the benefit of all, which made her memory dear to the people, and of which as usual legendary lore has taken possession. Of all the incidents that adorn her biography we will quote one only, which explains better ⁹⁵ u Viluerant divitiffi tam niatri quam filiae: palatium habebant pro monasterio: aurum, geniniEe, vestes auro textae, et quicquid fert pompatica mundi jactantia onerosa sibi niagis erant quam gloriosa: et si forte his uti ad tempus regia compelleret dignitas, dolebant se potius vanitatis subjectas tanquam captivas." — Act. SS. Bolland., Fcbr., vol. i. p. 387.

^^ " Cum form© pulchritudo insigniter responderet, generositati suae, coepit speciosa facie cum speciosissima mente ad eum... contendere.... Procos et amatores regificos angelica pudicitia repulit.... Virginalis B. Wereburgaj pudicitia, mox ut valuit, hsec vincula exuit.... Tradidit ei monasteriorum sanctimonalium quae in suo regno pollebant principatum." — Bolland., vol. i. February, pp. 387, 388.

THE ANGLO-SAXON NUNS. G8o

than any other the popularity of her memory. It happened one day that a shepherd on the monastic lands of Weedon, a man distinguished by his holy life, was treated by the steward with that savage brutaUty which the modern English too often borrow from their Anglo-Saxon ancestors. At this sight the niece of the sovereign of Mercia, the granddaughter of the terrible Penda, threw herself at the feet of the cruel steward. "For the love of God," she said, ''spare this innocent man; he is more pleasing in the eyes of God, who from the heights of heaven regards all our actions, than either you or I." The wretch paid no attention to her, and she began to pray, continuing until the steward, paralyzed and distorted by miraculous strength, had in his turn to appeal to the intervention of the saint that he might be restored to his natural condition.^''

At the death of Wereburga the population in the neighborhood of the monastery where she died and where she was to be buried, fought for the possession of her body, an event which began to be customary at the death of our holy nuns. Two centuries later, in order to save her dear remains from the Danes, the Ealdorman of Mercia had them carried to Chester, a city already celebrated in the times of the Britons and Romans, and where a great abbey, with a church which is now admired among the fine cathedrals of England, rose over her tomb.

To complete this list of Anglo-Saxon princesses whose cloistral education and vocation have been revealed to us by the worship of which they were the object, it now remains to say a few words of the nuns who proceeded from the race which a century later was to absorb all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, and form the political unity of England. This race of Cerdic, the founder of the kingdom of Wessex, has already given us an essentially monastic figure in the person of the legislator King Ina,''^ who, in the midst of a prosperous and glorious reign, gave up his crown and went to Rome to become a monk. It was his wife Ethelburga, as may be remembered, who, by a scene cleverly arranged, prepared him to leave bis kingdom, his

^^ " Amentarius, vir pia3 convcrsationis ct quantum licuit sub humana serv-itute sanctaj vita;.... Nunc villicus dominaj cum forte laniaret crucntissimo verberc... proruit ad pedes indignos lanistae.... Parce, proDei amore, quare cxcarnificas hominem innocentem.... Conthmo dura cervix et torva facies in terga illi reflectitur." — Ibid., p. 389.

^* See above, p. 51)2, and the genealogical table, Appendix X., p. 757. YOL. II. 58

686 THE ANGLO-SAXON NUNS.

country, and the world. She alone never left him; she accompanied him in his voluntary exile, and at his death returned to become a nun at Barking, in England.

St. Cuth- Beside the wife of Ina, and, like her, of the blood of Cerdic,^^ the two sisters of the king, Coenburga '^'^ and Cuthburga, take their place in monastic annals, both devoted to religious life, and reckoned among the English saints. The latter is much the most celebrated of the two. She was married young to the learned and peaceful Aldfrid, King of Northumbria, whose important influence on the life of Wilfrid has been already seen, and was, like her sister-inlaw Etheldreda, struck upon the throne by the thunderbolt of divine love, and in the lifetime of her husband desired to give up conjugal life and her royal state to consecrate herself to the service of God in the cloister. Less tender or less violent than his brother Egfrid, King Aldfrid consented to the separation,^''^ and Cuthburga took the veil in 7oo-<o5. ^j^^ Monastery of Barking, on the Thames, in the kingdom of East Anglia. This house, which had been founded some time before by a holy bishop of London for his sister, in whom he had recognized a soul destined to govern those who gave themselves to God,^'^^ was already celebrated, not only for the fervor of its nuns, but by the zeal they displayed for the study of the Holy Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, and even the classic tongues. The sister of Lia remained there only a few years. Her brother desired her to become the superior of a great foun-

datiou belonging to their race and country. He

established her at Winbourne, in a very fertile country ,1*^^

®' " Regii generis femina de Cerdici prosapia regis oriunda." — Gdill. Malmesb.

'"** Placed by the Bollandists (vol. iv. Sept., die 12) among the prcetermtssi, because her adoration does not appear to them certain, though she is named in a crowd of martyrologies. Cf. Pagi, Crit. in Annal. Baronii, ad ann. 705.

lui a ^nte finera vitffi suae connubio carnalis copulse ambo pro Dei araore renunciavere." — Flokent. Wigornensis. Cf. Bolland., vol. vi. August, p. 696.

¹⁰³ K jn quo jpsa Deo devotarum mater ac nutrix posset existere feminarum, qua; euscepto monasterii regimine, condignam se in omnibus episcopo fratre, et ipsa recte vivendo et subjectis regulariter et pie consulendo prsebuit." — Bede, iv. 6. This bishop was called Earconwald, and his sister Edilberga or Ethelburga. She must not be confounded with the widow of King Ina, who afterwards was a nun, and even abbess at Barking. The bishop himself became a monk at Chertsey, another monastery also founded by him on the banks of the Thames.

'"^ "Quod Latine interpretatur vinifons dici potest, quia propter nimiam

THE ANGLO-SAXON NTNS. 687

near the royal residence of the kings of Wessex, and not far from the sea which washes the shores of the district now called Dorsetshire. The Queen of Northumbria, when she became abbess of the new community, carried with her the spirit and habits of her first monastic dwelling-place, and Winbourne soon became still more celebrated than Barking for the great development of its literary studies.

But before we discuss briefly the singular birth of ecclesiastical and classical literature among the ' Anglo-Saxon nuns, and before we leave the country of Wessex, which gave to the English their first monarch, Egbert, and to the Teutonic world its spite of the most illustrious apostle, Boniface, a place must be reserved for the touching and popular story of Frideswida, foundress and patron of Oxford— that j^°{J|l^^rad^g is to say, of one of the most celebrated literary and intellectual centres of the universe. She was the daughter of one of the great chiefs of the country, to whom the legend gives the title of king, or at least of subregulus, and was, like all the heroines of Anglo-Saxon legend, sought in marriage by another king or chief called Algar, more powerful than her father, whose alliance she obstinately refused in order to consecrate herself to religious life. The prince, carried away by his passion, resolved to seize on her by force. To escape from his pursuit she threw herself, like Bega, into a boat, not to cross the sea, like the Irish princess, but to put the Thames between herself and her lover. After proceeding for ten miles on the river, she landed on the borders of a forest, where she hid herself in a sort of hut covered with ivy, but intended in the first place for the swine which, then as later, went to eat the acorns in the woods, and were one of the principal riches of the Anglo- Saxon proprietors.^o"^ It was not a secure refuge for her. Algar, growing more and more in earnest, tracked her everywhere, with the intention of sacrificing her to the brutality of his companions as well as to his own. But at the moment when,exhausted with weariness, she was about to fall into his hands, she bethought herself of the great saints who, from the earliest days of the Church, had defended and saved their virginity at the price of their life. She invoked Catherine,

claritatcm et saporom oximium quo caeteris terrae illius aquis pi"{estare videbatur, hoc nomon acccpit." — Rodolpui, Vita S. Liobce, ap. Acta SS. 0. 3. B., sajc. iii. p. 2.

'"• See the first chapter of Ivanhoe. the most illustrious martyr of the Eastern Church, and Cecilia, the sweet and heroic Roman whose name, inserted in the canon of the mass, was already familiar to all the new Christians. Her prayer was granted. God struck the savage Anglo-Saxon with sudden blindness, which put an end to his furious pursuit.

From this incident sprang a wild but obstinate tradition, according to which the kings of England for several centuries carefully avoided living or even passing by Oxford, for fear of losing their eyesight.i'^^ Frideswida, thus miraculously saved, obtained by her prayers the restoration of sight to her persecutor; then, with her father's consent, and after some years passed in solitude, she founded near Oxford, at the spot of her deliverance, a monastery where a crowd of Saxon virgins ranged themselves under her authority, and yg. where she ended her life, dying in the same year

as the Venerable Bede, and consoled during her last sufferings by the apparition of the two virgin martyrs, St. Catherine and St. Cecilia, to whom she had once so successfully appealed.

The tomb of Frideswida, the chapel she erected in the depth of the wood where she had hidden herself, the fountain which sprang at her prayer, attracted up to the thirteenth century a crowd of pilgrims, who were led thither by the fame of the miraculous cures there performed. But of all the miracles collected after her death, none is so touching as that which, told during her lifetime, contributed above everything else to increase the fame of sanctity with which she Shekisse ^^^^ soou surroundod. It happened one day that an a young uufortunato young man, struck with leprosy, met her ^®^"' on the road: from the moment that he perceived her he cried, " I conjure you, virgin Frideswida, by the Almighty God, to kiss me in the name of Jesus Christ, His only Son." The maiden, overcoming the horror felt by all of this fearful disease, approached him, and after having made the sign of the cross, she touched his lips with a sisterly kiss.

105 a jjj (Jerelicto porcorum mapali hsedera obducto delituit.... Nee latibulum latere potuit amantem, nee cordis desidia obfuit, quin persequeretur fugitantem.... lUe vi agere intendit.... Lenonum ludibrio poUuenda.... Puella jam de fuga desperans simulque pro lassitudine nusquam progredi potens.... Hine innatus est horror regibus Angliae, ut nee unus profecto successorura ejus Oxenfordiara prajsuniatur intrare." — Leland, CoU ledanea, ap. Dugdale, vol. i. p. 173. Cf. Bolland., vol. viii. Oct., pp. 533-568. Henry III. was the first English king who disregarded this prejudice, and the misfortunes of his reign have been attributed to this presumption.

Soon after the scales of his leprosy fell off, and his body became fresh and wholesome like that of a little child.^*^*^

The church in which the body of Frideswida rests, and the monastery which she had founded, were the objects of public veneration and the gifts of many kings during the middle ages. It would occupy too much of our space to tell how this monastery passed into the hands of regular canons, and became one of the cradles of the celebrated University of Oxford. Unquestionably the first school which is proved to have existed on this spot, destined to so much literary fame, was attached to the sanctuary of our Anglo-Saxon princess.i*^^ Oxford and Westminster,^*^^ the two greatest names in the intellectual and social history of England, thus both date from the monastic origin in which is rooted everything which was dear and sacred to old England.

The monastery of St. Frideswida, transformed into a college by Cardinal Wolsey, is still, under the name of Christ- Chwcli, the most considerable college in the University of Oxford. Her church, rebuilt in the twelfth century, is the cathedral of that city.^*^^ Her body, according to the common opinion, still rests there, and her shrine is shown; but it must be added that, under Elizabeth, and after the final triumph of Anglican reform, a commissioner of the Queen, who has himself related the fact in an official report, believed himself entitled to place beside the relics of Frideswida the body of a disveiled nun married to an apostate priest called Pietro Vermigli, who had been called to Oxford as a reformer and professor of the new doctrine. The commissioner mixed the bones of the saint and those of the concubine in such a manner that it was impossible to distinguish the one from the other, and placed them in a stone coffin, on which he engraved the words, now happily effaced, Hie requiescit religio cum su2:)erstitione}'^^

*"^ " Ecce inter turbam... adest juvenis immanissima lepra et postulls toto deforatus {sic) corpore.... Adjuro te, virgo Frideswida, per Deum oranipotentem, ut des mihi osculum. ... At ilia caritatis igne succensa illico accessit.... Ore virginis os leprosi tangitur, et... statioi caro ejus sicut caro parvuli efficitur." — Bolland., vol. viii. Oct., p. 5G5.

'"^ OzANAM, Notes Inedites sur I'Angleterre.

'"8 See above, p. 193.

"" The choir, with its superimposed arches, is specially admirable, as well as the tomb of Guitmond, first prior of the restored monastery in 1549, that of Sir Henry de Bath, Chief-Justice of England in 1251, and the graceful chapter-house of the thirteenth century. At Christ-Church resides the celebrated Dr. Pusey, canon of the cathedral.

"" See the learned and copious article of P. Bossue on St. Frideswida, ap. Bolland., vol. viii. Oct., p. 553-556.

58*

III.

It may be a matter of surprise that there is nothing in the legend of St. Frideswida, nor in the recollections of the early days of her foundation, to connect them with the incontestable traditions which prove the intellectual and literary development of the great nunneries in England, of which something has already been said. We return to the subject, were it only in passing, reserving to ourselves the power of going back upon it when it becomes time to discuss the colonies of learned nuns who, issuing from their insular beehives, lent effectual aid to St. Boniface and the other Anglo-Saxon missionaries of Germany.

It is proved by numerous and undoubted witnesses that literary studies were cultivated during the seventh and eighth centuries in the female monasteries with no less care and perseverance than in the communities of men, and even perhaps with more enthusiasm. Was this, as has been supposed, a consequence of the new spirit which Archbishop Theodore had brought from Greece and Italy, and with which he had inspired all the monastic Church of England? or was it rather a tradition of Frankish Gaul, where the first Anglo-Saxon nuns had been educated, and where the example of Radegund and her companions shows us to what a degree classical habits and recollections found an echo in cloisters inhabited by women alone? ^^^

At all events it is apparent that the Anglo-Saxon nuns interpreted the obligation to work which was imposed on them by their rule, to occupy the time which remained after the performance of their liturgical duties, as applying specially to study. They did not neglect the occupations proper to their sex, as is apparent by the example of the priestly vestments embroidered for Cuthbert by the abbess-queen Etheldreda. They even improved the art of embroidery in gold and silver stuffs, ornamented with pearls and jewels, for the use of the clergy and the church, so much, that the term *' English work " {opus Anglicum) was long consecrated to this kind of labor. But the work of the hand was far from satisfying them. They left the distaff and the needle, not only to copy manuscripts and ornament them with miniatures, according to the taste of their time, but above all to read and

"' See above, vol. i. p. 488.

study the holy books, the Fathers of the Church, and even classic authors. All, or almost all, knew Latin. Convent corresponded with convent in that language. Some of them became acquainted with Greek. Some were enthusiastic for poetry and grammar, and all that was then adorned with the name of science. Others devoted themselves more readily to the study of the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the New Testament, taking for guides the commentaries of the ancient doctors, and seeking out historical, allegorical, or mystic interpretations for the most obscure texts.^^^ It has been made apparent by what was said in respect to the cowherd Ceadmon, transformed into a poet and translator of Holy Scripture, to what extent the study of the Bible had been cultivated at Whitby under the reign of the great Abbess Hilda."^

Each community of women was thus at once a school and workshop, and no monastic foundation is to be met with which was not, for nuns as well as for monks, a house of education, in the first place for the adults, who formed its first nucleus, and afterwards for the young people who crowded around them."* Thus were trained the cultivated nuns who quoted Virgil in writing to St. Boniface, and too often added Latin verses, of their own fashion, to their prose; "-^ who copied for him the works he had need of, now the Epistles of St. Peter in gilded letters, now the Prophets writ large to suit weak sight; ^^^ who consoled and nourished him in his exile by the abundance and beauty of the books they sent him; and among whom he found those illustrious fellowworkers, whom one of his biographers declares to have been deeply versed in all liberal studies,"" and who lent so stout a hand in the conversion of the Germans.

But the example most frequently quoted is that of Barking, where we have seen the wife and sister leVuai life of Ina, the Queen of Northumbria and the Queen un^eT*""" of Wessex, take tlje veil in succession, the one ylijg^fj.1 dur;ng the lifetime, the other after the death of her

"'' Mabillon, Annul. Bened., vol. ii. p. 143; Lingard, Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 193; and especially Karl Zkll, who, in a recent work, Lioba und die frommen AngelsO.chsigchen Frauen (Fribourg, 18G0), has most conscientiously treated of all that regards the studies and the whole life of the Anglo- Saxon nuns.

"^ See above, p. 204.

"•* The following is said of St. Cuthbert's foundation at Carlisle (see above, p. 402): " Ubi sanctinionaliuni congregatione stabilita ... in profectum divina; servitutis scholas instituit." — Simeon Dunelmensis, i. 9.

"^ S. BoNiFACn ET Lulu Epistola:, No. 13, 23, 148, 149; ed. Jaffe. "« Ibid., No. 13, 32, 55.

"' Otulo, De Vita et Virtutibus S. Bonifacii, p. 490. husband. The abbess of this convent was Hildelida, whose wise administration and holy life, prolonged to a very advanced age/i^ have been celebrated by Bede, and to whom her friendship with St. Aldhelm and St. Boniface gave additional fame. It was to her and her community that the famous Abbot of Malmesbury dedicated his Praise of Virginity, composed at first in prose, and which was rewritten in verse at a later period. In this dedication, he names, besides the Abbess and Queen Cuthburga, eight other nuns, who were bound to him by ties of blood or of intimate friendship, whose holy fame seemed to him an honor to the Church, and whose many and affectionate letters filled him with joy .119

This treatise, like all the other important writings of Aldhelm, is very uninviting to the reader, being full of pedantry and emphasis. But it is very interesting to all who desire to realize the ideas and images which one of the most holy and learned pontiffs of the Anglo-Saxon Church naturally appealed to, in addressing himself to the nuns of his own country and time. He quotes to them all the great examples of virginity which the Old and New Testaments could supply, or which were to be found in the lives of the Fathers and Doctors, and especially in the history of the martyrs of both sexes. But he also quotes to them Yirgil and Ovid, and among others the well-known line—

" Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum; " and that from the Epithalamium —

" Mellea tunc roseis haerescunt labia labris." '''*'

He does not confine himself to a commonplace image, by describing them as bees who seek their honey from the most different flowers. He compares them now to athletes in the circus, taking advantage of the metaphor to make an enumeration of all the Olympian games; now to warlike cohorts engaged in a desperate struggle against what he calls 'the

¹¹⁸ "Devotadeo faraula... usque ad ultimam senectutera eidem mcnasterio strenuissime, in observantia discipline regularis et in earum quae ad communes usus pertinent rerum providentia praefuit." Hist. Secies., iv. 10. Cf. S. BoNiFACii E2nst., 10, ed. Jaffe.

¹¹⁹ u j^pj. j^Qn Osburge contribullbus necessitudinem nexibus conglutinatis, Aldgidffi ac Scholasticse, Hildburgse et Burngidje, Eulaliaj ac Teclae, runioro sanctitatis concorditer Ecclesiam ornantibus." — De Laudibus Virginitatis, p. 1, ed. Giles.

I'"' Ibid., c. 35. eight great vices; and anon he borrows his images and exhortations from military life, alwa3's mixing, in his singular Latin, modes and turns of expression which are essentially Greek, and which presuppose, among several at least of his correspondents, a certain acquaintance with the Greek language. The last lines of his treatise breathe a touching humility and tenderness. He compares himself, a poor sinner who, still plunged in the waves of corruption, shows to others the perfect shore of the perfect laud, to a deformed painter who has undertaken to represent the features of beauty. " Help me, then, dear scholars of Christ," he says; '•' let your prayers he the reward of my work, and, as you have so often promised me, may your community be my advocates before the Alraight3\ Farewell, you who are the flowers of the Church, the pearls of Christ, the jewels of Paradise, the heirs of the celestial country, but who are also my sisters according to monastic rule, and my pupils by the lessons I have given you." ^^i

Nor were the nuns of Barking the only ones to His letters whom Aldhelm addressed the effusions of his un- toother wearied pen, and his laboriously classic muse; and we are expressly told that the works he dedicated to them were very popular among all who followed the same career.122 Many of his letters and poems are addressed to nuns whose names are not given, but of whom he begs not only intercession with God, but protection against criticism here below.i^s The communities who were honored by his visits or by his correspondence took pleasure, no doubt, in his play on words, and in the Greco-Latin acrostics and verbal refinements with which the celebrated prelate adorned his prose and verse; and insignificant as this kind of production appears to us now, it implies nevertheless a certain degree of literary culture generally diffused througho4it the Anglo-Saxon cloisters.

But the interest which attaches to this revelation of an intellectual movement among the Anglo-Saxon nuns is iu-

121 II Pulchrum depinxi hortiinem pictor fcedus, aliosque ad perfectionis litus dirigo, qui adhuc in delictorum liuctibus versor.... Vaktc, o liores Ecclesiae, sorores monasticae, alumna; scholastica;, Christi margaritre, paradisi gemmas, et coelestis patriie participes." — De Laudibus Virginitatis, c. 60.

'" " Berkingensium quideni nomini dedicata; scd omnibus eamdem professionem anhelantibus valitura." — Guillelm. Malmesb., i. 35.

^^ " Sed vos virgineis comit quas infula sertis,

Hoc opus adversua querulos defendite scurras," &c.

— S. Aldhelmi Opera, p. 213, ed. Giles. creased, when it is remarked that intellectual pursuits, though intensely appreciated, were far from holding the first place in the heart and spirit of these new aspirants to literary glory. The salvation of souls and the tender union of hearts carried the day over all the rest. In a letter written to an abbess distinguished by birth as well as by knowledge and piety, enclosing to her a series of leonine verses he had made on a journey he had taken into Cornwall, Aldhelm takes pains to demonstrate that he is specially inspired by a tender gratitude towards her who of all women has shown him the most faithful affection.^^^ And another called Osgitha, whom he exhorts to a careful study of the Holy Scriptures, he addresses as his beloved sister, ten times, and even a hundred, a thousand times beloved.^-^

Let us here take leave of Aldhelm and his learned corre-' spondents, reminding our neaders that one of his most important acts, that by which he consented to remain abbot of his three monasteries after his elevation to the episcopate, is dated from Winbourne,^^^ which was the great feminine community of Wessex, founded by King Ina, and ruled by his sister Cuthburga. It was at the same time the monastery most famed for literary activity. The education of the young novices was the object of the most active and scrupulous care. Intellectual labor alternated with the works of the needle; but it is expressly said of Lioba, the nun whose name has thrown most lustre upon that community, the holy companion of Boniface in his German apostleship, that she devoted much more time to reading and studying the Holy Scriptures than to manual labor.^^^ Let us also not forget that the development of spiritual fervor by prayer and the continual celebration of the monastic liturgy, occupied much the greatest place in the employment of the time and strength of all these young and generous souls.

¹²⁴ u NuUam reperisse me istic habitantium feminini sexus personam fide- Uorem." — S. Aldhelmi Opera, p. 104.

125 f( Dilectissimae atque amantissimse sorori.... Saluto te diligenter, Osgitha, ex intimo cordis cubiculo.... Vale! decies dilectissima, imo, centies et millies." — Ibid., p. 90.

1^6 Ap. Giles, p. 351. — Cf. above, p. 539.

¹²⁷ " Crevit ergo puella et tanta abbatissae omniumque sororum cura erudiebatur, ut nihil ahud pra?ter monasteriura et coelestis disciplinai studia cognosceret.... Quando non legebat, operabatur manibus ea quae sibi injuncta erant.... Lectioni tamen atque audition! sanctarum Scripturarum magis quam labori manuum operani impendit." — Vita S. Liohce, auct. Ru- DOLPHo, c. 7, ap. Acta SS. 0. S. B., vol. iv.

There were five hundred nuns at Winbourne, who were all present at the nightly service.i^s It is easy to imagine how much authority, intelligence, and watchfulness, were necessary to rule such a crowd of young souls, all, no doubt, inspired with the love of heaven, but all, at the same time, sprung from races too newly converted to have freed themselves from the characteristic features of Saxon pride and rudeness. This necessity explains why princesses of those ancient dynasties, whom the Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to follow even without always respecting them, were everywhere son-ght for as superiors of the great communities; and why, after the sister of King Ina, another sister of the king, Tetta,i29 was called to the government of Winbourne, at the time when Lioba was being educated there. Among the crowd of minor authorities who lent their aid to this zealous and pious abbess, was the provost {i^reposita)^ the deaconess (decana), the portress, whose business it was to close the church after complines, and to ring the bell for matins, and who was furnished with an immense collection of keys, some of silver, others of copper or iron, according to their different destinations.^3'^ But neither the rank nor moral influence of the princess-abbess was always successful in restraining the barbarous impetuosity of that monastic youth. The nun who held the first rank among them after ^readthe"^^ the abbess, and who was principally occupied with [f,^, ^^g. the care of the novices, made herself odious by her tress under extreme severity: when she died, the hate which she inspired burst forth without pity: she was no sooner buried than the novices and young nuns rushed to the church^^ard, and began to jump and dance upon her tomb, as if to tread under foot her detested corpse. This went so far that the soil, freshly filled in, which covered the remains of their enemy, sank half a foot below the level of the surrounding ground. The abbess had great trouble to make them feel what she called the hardness and cruelty of their hearts, and which she punished by imposing upon them three days of lasting and prayers for the deceased.^^^

'^* Vita S. Lioba:, c. 5.

129 (I iiuic (.fgo loco post nonnuUas abbatissas et spiritales niatres prajlata est virgo religiosa nomine Tetia, gcnere quidem secundum skcuU dignitatem nobilis (soror quippe regis erat), nioruni autera probitate ct sanctarum spectamine virtutum muito nobilior." Ibid., c. 2.

'"" Ibid., c. 5.

"' "Nee tamen conquievit animus juvenum odientium earn, quin statim ut

IV.

Double All that remains to be said of the strange but monastery, general institution of double monasteries — that is, two distinct communities of monks and nuns living together in the same place and under the same government — may be attached to the name of Winbourne. It is of all the establishments of this kind the one whose organization is best known to us. We have already met with the institution in Prankish Gaul, with St. Radegund and St. Columbanus, at Poitiers, at Remiremont, and elsewhere. We shall find them again in Belgium and Germany as soon as the monastic missionaries shall have carried the light of the Gospel there. Their origin has been largely discussed,^^^ and we do not pretend to give any decision on the subject. Examples may be found among the Fathers of the desert in Egypt and as far back as the times of St. Pacome,^'^^ ^y^Q^ however, placed the Nile between the two communities under his government. We have already pointed out a remarkable attempt at the same institution in Spain caused by the prodigious crowd of monastic neophytes of both sexes who gathered round St. Fructuosus.^3^ Notwithstanding the assertion of Muratori to the contrary, the unassailable testimony of Bede proves that there was at least one community of the same kind in Rome in the middle of the seventh century .^^^

These establishments, however, were more popular in Ireland than anywhere else, where they sprang spontaneously

aspicerent locum in quo sepulta est, nialedicerent crutlelitati ejus; imrao ascendentes tumulura, et quasi funestum cadaver conculcantes, in solatium 3oloris sui aniarissimis insultationibus mortuas exprobrarent. Quod cum mater congregationis venerabilis Tetta comperisset, temerariam juvencularum prassumptionem correptionis vigore compescens, perrexit ad tumulura et mirum in modum conspexit terram quse desuper congesta erat subsedisse et usque ad semi pedis spatium infra summitatem sepulcri descendisse." —Vita S. LiohcB, c. 3.

"^ Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. i. p. 125; Lanigan, Eccles. Hist, of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20; Lingard, Antiquities, vol. i. 212; and above all, Varin, 2d Memoir, already frequently quoted.

'^^ See vol. i. p. 179. Cf. Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca, 30-42; Bolland., vol. iii. May, p. 304.

"* See above, vol. i. p. 435.

Wo u(;;;mi^ monachum quemdam de vicino Virginum monasterio, nomine Andream, pontifici otferret, hie ab omnibus qui novere, dignus episcopatu judicatus est." — Hist. Heel., vol. iv. p. 1. Muratori maintains that double monasteries have always been unknown in Italy. — Antiquit. Medii jEvi, vol. V. p. 527. from the beginning of the conversion of the island, to such a point that the apostle of the country, St. Patrick, saw himself obliged to forestall by wise precautions the disorders and scandals which might have arisen from the too close and frequent intercourse of the monks and nuns.^'^'^ At the same time, the first pontifi's and missionaries of Hibernia, strong in the exceptional purity of the Irish temperament, which has continued to our own day the glorious privilege of the race, and strong above all in their own fervor and exclusive passion for the salvation of souls, feared neither the society of the women they had converted, nor the charge of governing them when they wished to devote themselves to Grod.i^'' Less assured of themselves, if not more humble, their successors, those who are described as saints of the second order in the hagiographical annals of Ireland, declined the responsibility of administering the more or less numerous communities of virgins who grouped themselves around the older saints.^^^ They carried this restriction so far as to refuse access to their retreat even to recluses who came to seek the viaticum from them.12^ However, the custom of combining the fouu-

"* " Sanxivit ut a mulieribus viri sequestrarentur, ct utrique sua sedificia et oratoria distincta construerentur." — Jocelinus, Vit. 5'. Pa/r., ap. Bol- LAND., p. 592. The ninth canon of the 2d council, which is attributed to him, is tlius expressed: " Monachus et virgo, unus ab hinc et alia ab aliunde, in uno hospitio non commeant, nee in uno curru a villa in villam discurrant, ncc assidue inviceni confabulationem exerceant." — Ap. Coletti, vol. iv. p. 754.

137 u Mulierura administrationem et consortia non respuebant: quia super petram Christi fundati, ventum tentationis non timebant." Original text quoted by Ussher. To this category of the saints there may be added Bishop Uega Maccaryl (already spoken of above, vol. i. p. G95), who died in 589, and of whom it is said: " Confluxerunt undique ad eum sanctaj virgines, ut sub ejus regula dLegcrnnt.... Moniales illas versus septentrionem ducens, in diversis locis diversa monasteria, in quibus cum aliis virginibns seorsum Deo servirent, eis, prout, decuit, construxit." — Bolland., vol. iii. August, p. C60. It appears also that a neighboring abbot reproached the holy bishop, " ut eum de susceptione virginum objurgaret."

There is also the case of the thirty girls enamoured of St. Moclmda, who ended by becoming nuns under his authority, already mentioned, vol. i.

p. 097. And also that of St. Monynna, the contemporary of St. Patrick, who, with eight other virgins and a widow, went to the holy bishop Ibar, and " longo tempore sub ipsius disciplina cum multis aliis virginibus permansit." — Bolland., vol. ii. July, p. 291.

'^** " Pauci episcopi et multi presbytcri, diversas missas celebrabant, et diversas regulas; unum Pascha XIV. luna; unara tonsuram ab aure ad aurem; ahncgahant mulierum administrationem, scparantes eas a monasteriis." —Text quoted by Ussher.

''* This is related of St. Senanus, who, about 530, founded a monastery in an island at the mouth of the Shannon, where no woman was permitted to disembark: —

VOL. II. 59 dation, or at least the administration, of nunneries, along with that of similar communities of men, continued to prevail. But as the holy abbots declined to undertake the charge of nuns, the conditions had to be reversed. From this fact, no doubt, arose the singular custom universally established from the seventh century, not in Ireland, where I can find no example of it, but in all the Irish colonies, of two united communities, placed, not the nuns under the rule of an ecclesiastic, but the monks under that of the abbess of their neighboring nuns.

Such was the state of things in the foundations which we have seen develop under the influence of St. Columbanus, the Irish apostle of the Gauls, in the Vosges, in the valley of the Marne and of the Seine; and such too are the conditions which we shall find in Belgium when we consider the monastic influence of the Irish and Britons there. The Anglo-Saxon princesses devoted to the cloister found this custom established in the houses where they received their monastic education in Gaul, at Faremoutier, les Andelys, Chelles, and Jouarre,^^*^ and brought it into England, where it was immediately adopted; for of all the great nunneries of which we have spoken, not one was without a monastery of clerks or priests placed at the gates of the community of nans, and ruled by their abbess.^'^^ Let us recall only Whitby, where the Princess Hilda directed the monastery school, the nursery of so many bishops and missionaries, but of which the cowherd-poet Ceadmon, so often quoted, remains the principal celebrity; i*^ and Ely, where Queen Etheldreda attracted by her example, and arrayed under her authority, not only holy priests, but even men of elevated rank in secular life.^"^^ No doubt the necessity of providing for the spiritual wants, in the first place, of the numerous nuns who filled these monasteries, and of the lay population spread over the vast lands

" Cui prcesul: quid feminis

Commune est cum monachis?

Nee te nee ullam aliam

Admittemus in insulam."

Vita Rhytlimica, ap. Lanigan, ii. 7. "0 Bede, iii. 8, Mabillon, Acta SS. 0. S. B., i. 420, iii. 20. "' " Erat eo tempore monasteriis feminarum, amplis praesertim ac numerosis, conjuncta virorum, qui iis sacra administrarent, et familiam reliquam erudirent: eidem tamen abbatisste omnes obediebant." — Bolland., Z'e S. Cedmotio, vol. ii. February, p. 552.

"2 See p. 2G4.

'^3 See p. 372. Another instance is that of Repton, where St. Guthlac became a monk under the Abbess Elfrida. See p. 586 of this volume. which the foundress, generally a princess of the reigning dynasty, conferred upon her community, contributed more than anything else to the extension of so singular a custom. The priests and clerks charged with this double mission found themselves naturally collected in a sort of community under the authority of her who was at once the spiritual superior and the lady — the seigueuress, if such a word may be used — of the monastic lands.^^* The whole together formed a sort of vast family, governed by a mother instead of a father, maternity being the natural form of authority — all the more so as the neophytes were often admitted with all their dependants, as was Ceadmon, who entered Whitby with all belonging to him, including a child of three years old, whom Bede describes as being nursed and cared for in the cell of the learned nuns of Barking.^*^