Posted by St. Etheldreda/Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Etheldreda, as well as commemorating the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. St. Etheldreda was born at Exning in Suffolk, the third and most famous of four daughters of the Christian king Anna of the East Angles. King Anna had done much for the conversion of his kingdom to Christianity and all four of his daughters founded religious communities.
Etheldreda had discerned a vocation to the religious life from an early age, but she was hindered in this purpose by two marriages which her family had insisted that she enter. The first was to Tondbert, King of South Gwyre, an East Anglian subkingdom. The marriage was never consummated and her husband died soon afterwards. It was from him that she received the Isle of Ely as her personal estate and it was to Ely that she retired after her husband’s death.
In 660 her family again compelled her to marry for dynastic reasons to Ecgfrith, son of Oswy, King of Northumberland. This was probably to secure an alliance between the Christian kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumberland against the pagan king of Mercia. At the time of the marriage Ecgfrith was only fourteen or fifteen years old and he was content to let Etheldreda pursue her religious vocation. Ten years later in 670 Ecgfrith became King of Northumberland and desired to consummate his marriage to Etheldreda. By contrast, St. Etheldreda wished to become a nun.
In this she had the support of St. Wilfrid, the most prominent churchman in the kingdom at the time. Ecgfrith had appealed to Wilfrid to enforce his marital rights, but Wilfrid sided with Etheldreda. The king initially consented that Etheldreda should live in peace at Coldingham nunnery. He later changed his mind and Etheldreda was compelled to flee back to the Isle of Ely. It is often supposed that this dispute was the root cause of Ecgfrith’s long quarrel with Wilfrid, who was subsequently expelled from the kingdom.
In 673 St. Etheldreda founded Ely Abbey. It was a double monastery, in which monks and nuns lived alongside one another in separate communities with Etheldreda as abbess, with overall responsibility for both communities. She was noted for her austerity, sanctity and holiness. She died on this day in 679. Her shrine became famous and, centuries later, a great medieval cathedral was built there which remains to this day (though her shrine was destroyed at the Reformation in the sixteenth century).
St. Bede included an early account of her life in his Ecclesiastical history of the English people. He stated that “from the time of her entry into the convent she never wore linen but only woollen garments, and that she would seldom wash in hot water except on the eve of the greater festivals such as Easter, Pentecost and the Epiphany, and then only after she and her assistants had helped the other handmaids of Christ to wash. She seldom had more than one meal a day except at the greater festivals or under urgent necessity, and she always remained at prayer in the church from Mattins until dawn unless prevented by serious illness. Some say that she possessed the spirit of prophecy, and that in the presence of all the community, she not only foretold the plague that was to cause her death, but also the number who would die of it in the convent.”
The life of St. Etheldreda provides a good example of the difficulty in finding the right balance between having clear principles and being pragmatic and realistic in their application in a given situation. Each of us has a duty to our own families, but above all a duty to God. These differing responsibilities can sometimes conflict and St. Etheldreda found herself embroiled in a very difficult situation. From an early age she had a clear vocation to enter the religious life, but she was hindered from the full realisation of this through being constrained to be accept marriage, first to a local East Anglian princeling and then to the future King of Northumberland. She accepted this situation for pragmatic reasons, but did not allow it to hinder her from fulfilling her ultimate vocation. While most are called to marriage, some are called to celibacy and the religious life. St. Etheldreda was clearly one of these and she would ultimately fulfil her true vocation as the founder of Ely Abbey.
The type of double monastery which she founded was a not uncommon arrangement at the time. Typically, it would be presided over by an abbess, often of royal birth like St. Etheldreda. The monks and nuns would live separately, but under an overall head, who was usually the abbess. This method of organising a religious community subsequently fell out of favour, though there were occasional attempts to revive it in the middle ages by St. Gilbert of Sempringham and later by St. Bridget of Sweden. It is a useful reminder that there is more than one way of organising a religious community and what may be appropriate for one age may not be deemed fitting in another.
Let us conclude with the words of a hymn composed by St. Bede in honour of St. Etheldreda
Queenly by birth, an earthly crown she wore
Right nobly, but a heavenly pleased her more.
Scorning the marriage bed, a virgin wife
Twelve years she reigned, then sought a cloistered life
Unspotted to her heavenly spouse she came,
Virgin soul, her virgin robe and frame
When sixteen winters they had lain entombed,
Xrist willing it, still fresh and unconsumed
Yea, from their touch, Eve’s tempter flees dismayed,
Zealous for evil, vanquished by a maid.
Ah bride of Christ, bright fame on earth is thine.
More bright in heaven thy bridal torches shine.
Exultant hymns proclaim in glad accord:
No power henceforth may part thee from thy Lord.