‘Rage fires the fiend, who formerly Eve betrayed,
While shouting angels hail the glorious maid.
See wedded to her God, what joy remains,
In earth, or heaven, see with her God she reigns!
Behold the spouse, the festal torches shine,
He comes! Behold what joyful gifts are thine!
Thou a new song on the sweet harp shalt sing,
A hymn of praise to thy celestial King.’
Bede’s hymn in praise of the Holy Virgin Aethelthryth.1
Hilda continues to captivate across the centuries. It seems hard to believe that, at a time when women were supposed to be the powerless pawns of men, she could achieve such great things. A princess for half her life, and abbess at one of the most important double monasteries in the nation for the other half, she remains celebrated as a woman who stood out in a man’s world. She was influential among the highest strata of both the Church and the State, was surrounded by the most learned people of the time and commanded land, men and women as abbess of Whitby. While the ruins that sit on the outcrop on the Yorkshire coast post-date her by some 400 years, her name still resonates across this symbolic landscape.
At Whitby the spirit of Gothic, old and new, seeps out of the very cracks in the pavement of this extraordinary coastal town. The echoes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which the arrival of the fearful vampire upon the coast is set against dramatic cliffs and Norman ruins, can still be felt. In this town it feels like the centuries elide. Its coat of arms, bearing three ammonites, and the jet jewellery in shop windows, made from the compressed remains of monkey-puzzle trees, attest to its ancient geological significance. The skeletal remains of the ruined abbey stand in high relief on the East Cliff, while grand Georgian homes gaze down on humble fishing cottages along the seafront. The shipping legacy of the town is now reduced to a series of colourful fishing boats in the harbour. But at the end of the eighteenth century Whitby was the biggest ship-builder after London and Newcastle. Victorian trade and industry made the town prosperous, and its most important civic buildings stand testament to past glories. The sea washes in and out of the estuary like lifeblood.
Yet it is the haunting ruins of the monastery, high on the cliff, that constantly draw the eye. Surrounded by tall grass that ebbs and flows in the wind, the damaged stones and once-great vaulted arches seem to grow out of their surroundings. They sit on top of a much earlier monastic site: Streoneshalh. The name continues to baffle scholars; it may refer to a Roman settlement on the site, or to an earlier founder, Streona.2 This site became increasingly significant in the Anglo-Saxon period because the land along the East Cliff was given by King Oswui of Northumbria to a noblewoman named Hilda. Here she founded a double monastery, containing both monks and nuns, and presided over them as abbess. She is one of the most important female figures of the early medieval period, and is still venerated widely as a saint. Yet, like Cuthbert, a fellow Northumbrian noble and convert, her life charts one of the most dramatic periods in English history in terms of religious transformation.
Born around AD 614, Hilda was the daughter of Hereric, King Edwin’s nephew. She was part of the Deiran royal family and a princess. After her father was murdered while in exile at the British court in Elmet (roughly modern-day West Yorkshire), she was taken in by Edwin and brought up within the pagan royal court. It was the king who gave protection to Hilda and her widowed mother, and in return she would have to accompany the court around the royal sites and palaces. Other widowed queens and noblewomen, as well as exiles and hostages, would have joined them: seventh-century English kingship was a cousinhood.3 As with Cuthbert, it is tempting to imagine Hilda within the timbered hall at Yeavering, serving the warriors, passing round the mead cup, and listening to the local people appealing to their king for help or justice.
Most of what we know about Hilda’s life is drawn from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and in this text Bede reveals some details about the secular life she lived before becoming a nun and abbess. He records details about her family, and that she was brought up in Bamburgh Castle on the Northumbrian coast, directly opposite Lindisfarne.4 The original royal stronghold sat on an outcrop of volcanic rock, which allowed a natural vantage point some 150 feet above sea level. Its strategic position made it the perfect choice for an Anglo-Saxon fortress. Finds like the six-band pattern-welded Bamburgh sword, rediscovered in Brian Hope-Taylor’s garage in 2001, attest to the military significance of the location. A part of the Bamburgh site shows evidence for metalworking, which suggests that weapons and jewellery could have been forged within this royal stronghold.
Furthermore, parts of a stone throne were discovered at the site, which may have been the seat of power of the Northumbrian kings. Here, Edwin could have given gifts to his loyal followers, securing the military service of thegns who lived alongside him and protected his family. Hilda would have been exposed to this warrior elite; she would have seen them train and listened to their tales of battle. Indeed, her very name carries connotations of the Anglo-Saxon warrior world, since it comes from the Old English word for battle: ‘hild’. The first half of her life would have been spent performing the duties of a princess, seeing to the needs of the royal household and probably some skilled labour like embroidery and weaving.
Hilda was among the first in the north to convert to Christianity, as she joined King Edwin in a rapidly constructed timber church close to present-day York Minster for his baptism on Easter Sunday, AD 627. She was only thirteen at the time, and it is difficult to know whether her conversion was obligatory or done through choice. She would have heard Paulinus preaching to the court, and seen the great pressure the Roman missionaries were exerting on Edwin and his supporters. Whether she agreed with the ideas introduced by Paulinus or if she simply had to follow the king’s example will never be known. But she would have seen first-hand the important role that women could play within a Christian court.
Edwin’s wife, Queen Aethelburg, was the daughter of the first English king to convert to Christianity – Aethelberht of Kent. He too had probably accepted Christianity under pressure from his wife. Bertha played a salient role in encouraging her husband first to welcome in the missionaries from Rome, and then to convert to the new religion. Hilda would have seen the daughter of this union between Anglo-Saxon king and Christian Frankish princess work her own skills upon her Northumbrian king. She would no doubt have been struck by the changes that women could make with Christianity as the new religious framework for the kingdom. And the monasteries offered a new set of options to Anglo-Saxon noblewomen.
It might seem like becoming a nun would run counter to the intentions of many royal or noble families. A woman’s role was to remain loyal to her family and lord, make good marriages to secure dowries and political affiliations, and bear children. By becoming nuns, all of these roles would be curtailed. However, convents and monasteries presented noblewomen with tantalising opportunities. Firstly, in a time when divorce was incredibly rare, a king or lord could dispose of a barren or unwanted spouse by leaving her to a convent. This would suit both parties, since early convents were often places of luxury. The woman involved would no longer have to remain in an unsatisfactory union, or bend to her husband’s desire for matrimonial dues, which always insisted upon the wife being servant to her husband. Rape and abuse were often part of medieval marriage, as the woman was her husband’s possession, to do with as he wished.
Secondly, the founding of convents, with an aristocratic woman at the head, could be politically and financially expedient for noble families. Monastic lands would be granted to the woman, thus staying within the control of a particular landowning family. Produce from this land, and taxes too, could be utilised by the owners, and the woman would preside over the nuns within as abbess. Women were useful for securing marriages, but not for securing land, as the family’s wealth would pass into the hands of her husband. However, founding convents allowed for more land to remain in the possession of a family, even if they had daughters rather than sons. Instead of losing power and wealth through dowries, founding convents meant the terrain, its productivity and its loyalty could be secured. Finally, becoming a nun offered women many personal benefits. There was the chance to become educated, to have the respect of her fellows, the security of often-luxurious convent settings, and to have freedom from the male-dominated, misogynistic confines of court life.
However, for half of her life Hilda was subject to the secular responsibilities of Anglo-Saxon noblewomen. After Penda killed Edwin in battle in AD 633, Paulinus took his Christian queen and her female entourage to safety to her family’s court in Kent. It is most likely that Hilda went with her. The women of the court needed protection, so it fell to Aethelburg’s brother, King Eadbald of Kent, to protect them. Eadbald is an intriguing character. Despite the fact that both his father, Aethelberht, and mother, Bertha, were Christian, he was a pagan.
He rejected the Church when he ascended to the throne on his father’s death because he wanted to marry his father’s second wife. Marrying his stepmother was illegal within Christian law, so Eadbald returned the kingdom of Kent to the pagan religion. Religious change to secure a marriage is something that Henry VIII would so famously do with Anne Boleyn, but Eadbald did it some 800 years earlier. The sons of Edwin and Aethelburg were sent away from England to King Dagobert in Francia, since male heirs were significant pawns in the game and had to be protected until they were old and strong enough to reclaim their lands. But the women were in an equally dangerous position.
Rather than end up remarried by her brother in a politically expedient union, Queen Aethelburg took the decision to found one of the first Benedictine monasteries in England, at Lyminge, where she ruled as abbess over a double community of monks and nuns. Finds from close to the modern-day church at Lyminge suggest that Aethelburg’s monastic church was made from reused Roman stone.5 Remains of a large-scale timber hall, akin to that at Yeavering, have been discovered next to the monastic site. This, along with rich pagan burials and finds of Frankish glass, suggests that Aethelburg built her church next to a royal palace complex, with the secular palace forming the basis for a later Anglo-Saxon monastery. Here the queen had the safety and security to live out the end of her life, and her example must have made a striking impact on Hilda. She could continue to live in the luxury and security she had known in great royal halls, yet could govern a double monastery too, thus preventing the need for a potentially dangerous remarriage.
After thirty-three years of life in the court (a symbolic number, for that was the age at which Jesus died), involved in the political and social machinations of the Anglo-Saxon royal families, Hilda chose a monastic life. She had intended to follow her sister Hereswith, who had gone to the Frankish monastery of Chelles after her husband, the King of East Anglia, had died. Instead, Hilda went to Aidan of Lindisfarne, and began training at a small monastery somewhere along the banks of the River Wear. She was brought up firmly within the Celtic tradition, and Aidan then made her abbess of an existing monastery at Hartlepool. Hilda managed to secure the support of Edwin’s Bernician successor, King Oswui. First he gave his daughter, Aelfflaed, into her care at Hartlepool, and then he gave her land at Whitby to establish a double monastery.6 This is yet further evidence for the ‘top-down’ nature of Anglo-Saxon conversion, for those with connections to the court could garner the land and resources needed to establish monasteries.
In the manner of Queen Aethelburg before her, Hilda set up a double monastery on the outcrop of land overlooking the sea at Whitby. Oswui gave her ten hides (enough to support ten households) in thanks for his victory over the pagan king Penda. Here, men and women would live in separate dormitories, but would come together to hear mass at the church. The women would be involved in similar crafts to those that occupied noblewomen, namely spinning, sewing and weaving, but they would also have the opportunity to read and write. Styli have been found at Whitby that were used to scratch letters into wax tablets, and elaborate book fittings also attest to the fact that manuscripts passed through the hands of the monks and nuns.
The men would be involved in other skills, like metalworking and possibly glass making, as there was some evidence at the site to suggest that this ancient Roman practice was being reintroduced at Whitby. The monastery was designed in the Celtic manner, with two or three sharing a wooden hut, and the men separated from the women. Yet finds from the site point to it being a wealthy monastery. Hairpins and pieces of Anglian glass suggest that the nobility who followed Hilda into the monastic life did not sacrifice all their luxuries.
There are finds from Whitby that give a sense both of the courtly nature of the institution she established and the transitional world this saint inhabited. The bone comb discovered in a rubbish pit on the site of Streoneshalh is interesting because it is clearly a high-status object, used to keep its owner looking respectable, and possibly given as a gift.7 Yet it is also of interest because it is covered in runes.8 Just as the inscriptions on Cuthbert’s coffin shifted between Latin and Old English, so does the Whitby comb. It has a pious plea for God’s help, deus meus, god aluwaldo, helpæ Cy … – ‘my God, almighty God, help Cy …’. The Latin turns to the vernacular at the second cry to ‘God’.
The grant of land from the king, the royal background of Hild herself, and the noble men and women who would have joined her fledgling monastery were all tied to the court of Northumbria. This site would become significant through its connection with royalty, and it was where Oswui, his wife, daughter and many other nobles would be buried.9 Oswui would play an important role not only in Hilda’s life, but also in the life of the Anglo-Saxon Church, due to his part in the proceedings of the famous Synod of Whitby. Oswui’s life was an interesting one, since he seems to have straddled many worlds.
During his relatively long life and reign, he was married to three princesses, each from a different part of the British Isles. His first wife, Eanflaed, was the daughter of Oswui’s predecessor and rival in Northumbria, King Edwin. Upon his return to Bernicia as king he married the daughter of his father’s killer, as a means of unifying the Northumbrians houses. However, his second wife was the Irish princess Fin, and his third the British princess Rieinmellt. This shows not only what a culturally diverse place seventh-century Britain was, but that the Anglo-Saxon rulers consciously sought out closer links with the British, Irish and Picts. There has been a traditional tendency to separate the Germanic people from the Celtic, but the degrees of intermarriage and interaction evinced by an important individual like Oswui make these distinctions less clear-cut.
Also of significance in terms of his upbringing were the years spent as a Christian brought up under Irish tuition. Oswui and Oswald were Christian, and both were educated within the Irish tradition under the influence of St Aidan of Lindisfarne. This meant that a dynastic rivalry had emerged between the Deirans and Bernicians in the early seventh century. Edwin was from Deira and backed Paulinus and the Roman mission. Oswald was from Bernicia and backed Aidan and the Irish mission. Oswui would have to position himself carefully in relation to these parties and, fuelled by the power play of influential representatives of the newly established Roman Church like Bishop Wilfrid, the situation was to come to a head in AD 664.
Oswui decided to hold this important synod at Hilda’s monastery of Whitby. She was a powerful personality, who acted as a royal adviser and saw to the spiritual guidance of those under her watch. Furthermore, like Cuthbert she could be seen as a bridge between different groups. She had grown up in the court of Edwin, was baptised by Paulinus and yet trained under the guidance of Aidan of Lindisfarne. Tensions between the two parties of the Irish and Roman Church were culminating. Now that Gregory’s mission had been largely successful and a generation of Anglo-Saxon Christians were emerging, a decision on the Celtic practices had to be made.
Whitby was the perfect place to host such an important synod. Hilda would have coordinated the travel and lodgings of bishops and Church representatives from across the country and abroad. The food and accommodation required for such an event would have put great pressure on Hilda’s monastery, yet she would have been celebrated as the abbess able to accommodate the good and the great of the Church. She also would have played the role of peace-weaver, keeping tensions at bay between representatives of the different parties. Hilda must have been diplomatic and capable to steer so many opinionated men through the proceedings of the synod.
The impact of the Synod of Whitby may have been overstretched due to the huge emphasis Bede placed on it in his Ecclesiastical History.10 He was interested in the correct calculation of Easter, writing a whole tract on The Reckoning of Time, and his main concern through his theological, scientific and historical texts was to stress the unity of the English Church. Yet, however much Bede may have overemphasised it, the Synod of Whitby was a pivotal moment for the Irish Church in England, and would determine the fate of monastic communities at sites like Lindisfarne and Iona. The debate at the heart of the Synod of Whitby revolved around two seemingly simple matters: the dating of Easter and the shape of the monk’s tonsure. These may not seem the most exciting or significant issues, but the implications of the synod ran far deeper.
The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity was a relatively slow process. While certain royal houses and their entourages were encouraged by missionaries from Ireland or Rome to convert, others resisted. In some kingdoms, like Northumbria, the kings shifted allegiance, beginning Christian then returning to paganism. The large and powerful kingdom of Mercia under its king Penda resisted Christianity until AD 655, and the last pagan king, Arwald of the Isle of Wight, died in AD 686. The Synod of Whitby was held at a time when pockets of Christian power had become entrenched throughout England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, was making attempts to bring the various branches of the Church together. In some parts of Anglo-Saxon England it seems that individual churchmen and women were instructing specific royal households in a similar way to Druidic seers; their approach was parochial rather than coordinated. The Roman Church wanted this to stop.
There were deeper political reasons for the synod too, particularly in Northumbria, where the shift in power between the houses of Bernicia and Deira had meant that different approaches had developed in different establishments. Under Edwin and Paulinus, the Roman method of calculating Easter had spread throughout monastic foundations and the royal family. Yet with Oswald’s sponsorship of Aidan at Lindisfarne, alternative practices were observed elsewhere. Tensions reached a head when Aidan died and Oswui, King of Northumbria, was celebrating Easter on a different day to his queen and her followers. The date of Christ’s resurrection from death is the central event in the Christian calendar, so to miscalculate it was tantamount to heresy.
The problem revolves around the fact that the Irish Church had not followed changes in the way Easter was calculated in Rome. For much of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries they had worked out Easter in relation to the dating of the Jewish Passover, but the First Council of Nicea in AD 325 decreed against this, and so different approaches were developed. By the time of the Synod of Whitby most monastic establishments in mainland Ireland had already decided to adapt their way to the Roman method, but Iona and its sister houses stood firm. As a result, the Synod of Whitby was really a battle between the Ionan and Roman approaches.
This extended to the issue of the monastic tonsure. Why should a hairstyle cause such controversy and outrage? This again runs deeper than may first appear. The Irish monks had developed a tonsure that was shaved at the front and grew long at the back. This had emerged over time, becoming traditional by the seventh century. Along with their staff, book and bell, this tonsure was a way of identifying an Irish monk. In contrast, the Petrine tonsure, which rings around the head with the centre portion shaved bare, was associated with Peter himself. It was a sign of conformity with the Church of Rome, while the Irish tonsure was an outward sign of difference. The Irish monks looked different to those elsewhere on the Continent, and this difference could border on threatening when the individuals concerned had the ears of some of the most important people in the land. By AD 664 there was less tolerance for religious regionalism, and the Roman party wanted to bring a greater uniformity to the Church across all of Anglo-Saxon England.
The two main representatives at the synod were men: Colman of Lindisfarne and Wilfrid of Hexham. Both were politically active, educated, noteworthy leaders within the Anglo-Saxon Church. Nevertheless, Wilfrid emerged as the dominant voice, presenting sound reasons for the widespread acceptance of Roman practice. Colman based his argument on the fact that Lindisfarne and Iona had a tradition going back to that saintly individual Columba, ‘the dove of the Church’, which they were going to hold to. Wilfrid said, however, that Peter was Christ’s ‘rock’ (his name, Petrus, means stone or rock) upon which he built his church, and his successors as pope were the ultimate authority on all matters.
Oswui, in the manner of a Roman Emperor at the gladiatorial games, gave the proverbial ‘thumbs down’ to Colman and the Ionan party. The Celtic Church had been full of variety, and individual churchmen or missionaries would establish monasteries that were adapted to the local surroundings or took on board the needs of the local people and aristocratic families. The main outcome of the Synod of Whitby was to squeeze the uniqueness out of the early Christian outposts across the British Isles. Coupled with an increased use of the Benedictine Rule, with its rigour and regulation, the Church in England became a more structured place.
The Synod of Whitby was about power and control.11 The Ionan Church had to step back, and as a result Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne quit his seat, eventually returning to Ireland. Lindisfarne continued as a monastery and bishopric, however, realigning itself with Roman practices and rallying behind a new abbot and bishop – Cuthbert – who would remove some of the stigma the Synod of Whitby had left behind. Hilda also had to change her ways. Her monastery at Whitby had followed the Ionan practice of dating Easter, so her organisation had to develop. But it remained a powerhouse of authority; so much so that, immediately after the synod, a new art form began to emerge around Whitby.
One result of the Synod of Whitby was the emergence of free-standing stone high crosses. The legacy of this development can still be felt in market squares across the British Isles, and indeed, the world, where memorial crosses act as focal points for the town. At first they were roughly hewn crosses, not much taller than a tombstone. But there was an explosion of taller, more elaborate versions, particularly across the north of England. The links with Whitby are symbolic: the Roman Church triumphed at the synod, and the papacy – based on Petrus/Peter, the ‘rock’ upon which Christ built his Church – had to imprint its presence on the landscape. What better than a large piece of stone, breaking up the hills and fields, guiding the eye and providing a highly visible meeting point? That the stone was a permanent fixture on the landscape, not subject to weathering as wood and timber were, also reinforced the message that the Roman Church was here to stay. The more elaborate versions, like the Ruthwell Cross, appear in the eighth century, but the idea seems to have originated in and around Hilda’s monastery at Whitby.12
Hilda has been remembered as a patron of the arts through her support of the Old English poet Caedmon. Bede records how Caedmon tended to the animals on the estate at Streoneshalh. He was wary of being in the hall when the revelry began, as he feared he would have to join in the courtly song that rang around the mead benches. It is worth remembering that Bede is recording monks in this act of feasting, singing and passing around the harp, which again suggests that Hilda’s abbey at Whitby resembled a secular hall. Caedmon felt he could compose and sing nothing. Yet when he slept he was visited by ‘someone’ who encouraged him to sing ‘the beginning of created things’. The only part of his poetic output to survive is the so-called ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’:
Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven,
the might of the architect, and his purpose,
the work of the father of glory
as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders;
he first created for the children of men
heaven as a roof, the holy creator
Then the guardian of mankind,
the eternal lord, afterwards appointed the middle earth,
the lands for men, the Lord almighty.13
This poem – the oldest Old English poem to survive in manuscript form – occurs only in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Yet it attests to an early oral poetic tradition that flourished in Anglo-Saxon halls, and which adapted to the new subject matter of Christianity in the seventh century. According to Bede, Hilda encouraged Caedmon, and he became a monk at Whitby. Indeed, many important individuals passed through her monastery, including five future Anglo-Saxon bishops, one of whom was Wilfrid himself. It is surprising to think that a woman could wield such power and influence in the seventh century. Hilda was a transitional figure, poised at a transitional moment. The role of women would change as the Church increasingly controlled, monitored and suppressed their influence, but Hilda represents a high point for early medieval Christian women. She was not alone, either.
Hilda was not the only Anglo-Saxon woman to found important monastic institutions and be declared a saint upon her death. In the century after the Roman mission of AD 597, women within Anglo-Saxon England were systematically raised to the status of abbess, and ultimately saint.14 The family tree of King Anna of East Anglia is particularly interesting. All four of his daughters were declared saints. Despite the fact that the memory of Hilda seems to have come down through the centuries more clearly, it’s been suggested that Anna’s daughter Aethelthryth was the most popular of the female Anglo-Saxons saints, with more vernacular texts written about her than any other.15
Aethelthryth was a contemporary of Hilda, born around AD 636 and died in AD 679, and her life was tied to that of the Northumbrian noblewoman’s, particularly as Hilda’s sister Hereswith had married her uncle. She was of royal birth, and her father, Anna, was a fascinating character. He was a member of the Wuffingas dynasty – that warrior clan who had settled in the area around East Anglia after travelling from Sweden, and whose legacy appears to be commemorated in the array of finds from Sutton Hoo. Yet, while his ancestors were pagan, Anna was celebrated as a pious Christian. It seems that the East Anglians had to do whatever the rulers of the other kingdoms did, but with even greater results. So Anna, nephew of Raedwald (who is possibly the ruler commemorated in the Sutton Hoo ship burial), embraced Christianity with such aplomb that all of his children were declared saints.
Aethelthryth was a valuable commodity as daughter to the king of East Anglia. Her worth lay in her ability to secure allegiances through marriage and provide rulers with heirs. In the warrior culture of the Anglo-Saxons, marriage was akin to the relationship between a lord and his retainer; a man and wife were not equal, but rather a wife owed her husband undivided loyalty until death.16 According to Bede, Aethelthryth desired a religious life early on, and chose virginity despite being married twice. Through her two marriages she secured a number of benefits, including political allegiances and dowry payments. Her first husband was Tondberct, prince of the South Gyrwe (the area around the Fens, which included Ely), while her second was Ecgfrith of Northumbria.
However, she proved to be a problematic wife in both instances, refusing to provide her husbands with the opportunity to consummate their marriage and thereby sire an heir. This is explained by the fact that she had taken a vow of chastity before being wed, but there is another, political, way to read this. It is possible that she was unable to bear children, and the suggestion of extreme piety and virginity meant that she would not simply be cast aside by her husband, but would be provided for in terms of becoming a nun.17
When her first husband died, having apparently respected her vow of chastity, he left her the area around Ely as a mourning gift, and here she established a monastery. According to Bede, she had imagined this would signal her retirement from the world of courtly politics, but her family weren’t done exploiting her worth yet; they married her a second time, to Ecgfrith, King of Deira from AD 664. Again, Aethelthryth requested that her husband respect her virginity, but this proved hard for Ecgfrith, who needed a legitimate heir to his unstable kingdom. They remained married for ten years, but when he ascended to the throne as king of all Northumbria he became more demanding of his wife. It was the intervention of Wilfrid, one of the most powerful churchmen of his time, which seems to have finally determined the outcome of Aethelthryth and Ecgfrith’s marriage. He encouraged her to remain chaste, and she eventually left court for a monastic life.
The ideals of purity and devotion that underlie the story of Aethelthryth made her extremely popular, and Bede and Wilfrid promoted her cult. However, the reality of her situation was more complex. Bede himself questioned Wilfrid as to whether she really had been a virgin, for twelve years of marriage to a king was a long time. It may be possible, through the story of Aethelthryth, to glimpse some of the private difficulties faced by rulers. Kings wanted fertile wives who could do their bidding and provide heirs.
Ecgfrith and Aethelthryth may have found themselves in a barren union, where one or other of them could not provide children – Ecgfrith did in fact take a second wife, and she was also unable to provide an heir. As divorce laws were strict, with adultery the only legitimate reason to put a wife aside, Aethelthryth joining a convent must have been the next best option. Whether she went willingly or was coerced into making way for another queen, Aethelthryth’s story was given a spin doctor’s treatment in the hands of Bede, and she became a saint whose body was incorrupt after death, and who resembled the early Continental virgin saints and martyrs.
Aethelthryth wasn’t the only one of Anna’s daughters to walk the fine line between the secular and spiritual. Her sister Seaxburh married the King of Kent before taking over from Aethelthryth as abbess of Ely. As queen she gave birth to two sons, who both ruled as king, and to two daughters, who were both declared saints. Indeed, Seaxburh became an exemplar for ruling women, as once she retired from public life (having been a daughter, wife and mother of kings, and ruled as regent for her young son), she was able to become an abbess of a monastery and then be declared a saint.18
The response of King Anna and his family to the rise of Christianity was to embrace it with enthusiasm and draw as much benefit from the new rituals of the Church as was possible. The effect of accepting Christianity in this early wave would have been to create a further divide between this kingdom and its neighbour – the kingdom of Mercia, run by the ruthless pagan king Penda. Anna understood the benefits of Christianity in its earliest manifestation among the Anglo-Saxons in terms of empowering royal women through the establishment of monasteries. While it is tempting to see the acts of Aethelthryth and her sister Seaxburh, abbesses of Ely, as inspired by new-found devotion to the Christian faith, it is perhaps more accurate to see the establishment of monasteries and the placing of royal princesses at their head as a form of land-grabbing.
Anglo-Saxon princesses could rise in prominence through marriage in the pre-Christian period, but they were rarely able to possess land and power in their own right. The first generation of Christians, however, seemed to find a new opportunity by assigning their daughters land upon which they could establish monasteries. This enabled them to retain or even take possession of tracts of land that could be farmed and controlled under the guidance of the loyal royal or noble family. The Church was owed its taxes and share of the produce, but the ties to the local ruling dynasty meant that these areas would remain loyal and the lands would not have to leave them to pass into the hands of an opposing neighbour. Daughters had previously been a source of consternation to kings, but they could now be virgins, abbesses and saints.
Issues surrounding marriage and divorce concerned Anglo-Saxon royalty and nobility from the arrival of the Christian missionaries, and they pressed Augustine and Gregory for guidance on these matters as soon as the Roman party arrived in Kent. While the position of women within Anglo-Saxon society was affected by the early monasteries, in that it provided another option, the realities of entering a religious community were dictated by male Church leaders, many of whom had fixed views on women as descendants of Eve, the first sinner. Within the Church, women were not equal, although for a short while in the seventh century and into the eighth they carved out new niches for themselves that gave them greater power than they would come to have in the following centuries. Yet powerful male saints were far more prominent in the Anglo-Saxon period, and none more so than the fearless, powerful and uncompromising Bishop Wilfrid.