Viking invaders were terrifyingly brutal, but sometimes they met their match. Abbess Ebba of Coldingham monastery was one. Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk at St Albans. One of the finest chroniclers in medieval England, he was famed for his knowledge of foreign countries.
In the year of the Lord 870 an innumerable host of Danes landed in Scotland; and their leaders were Inguar and Hubba, men of terrible wickedness and unheard-of bravery. And they, striving to depopulate the territories of all England, slaughtered all the boys and old men whom they found, and commanded that the matrons, nuns and maidens should be given up to wantonness.
And when such plundering brutality had pervaded all territories of the kingdoms, Ebba, holy abbess of the cloister of Coldingham, feared that she too, to whom had been instructed the care of government and the pastoral care, might be given up to the lust of pagans and lose her maiden chastity, along with the virgins under her rule; and she called together all the sisters into the chapter-house, and burst into speech in this wise, saying, ‘Recently have come into our parts the wickedest pagans, ignorant of any kind of humanity; and roaming through every part of this district they spare neither the sex of woman nor the age of child, and they destroy churches and churchmen, prostitute nuns, and break up and burn everything they come upon. Therefore if you decide to acquiesce in my advice, I conceive a sure hope that by divine mercy we may be able both to escape the fury of the barbarians and to preserve the chastity of perpetual virginity.’
And when the whole congregation of virgins had undertaken with sure promises that they would in all things obey the commands of their mother, that abbess of admirable heroism showed before all the sisters an example of chastity not only advantageous for those nuns but also eternally to be followed by all succeeding virgins: she took a sharp knife and cut off her own nose and upper lip to the teeth, offering a dreadful spectacle of herself to all beholders. And since the whole congregation saw and admired this memorable deed, each one performed a similar act upon herself, and followed the example of her mother.
And after this had so taken place, when next morning dawned, the most wicked brigands came upon them, to give up to wantonness the holy women, and devoted to God; as also to plunder the monastery itself and burn it down in flames. But when they saw the abbess and each of the sisters so horribly mutilated, and saturated with their blood from the soles of their feet to their crowns, they retired from the place with haste, for it seemed to them too long to stay even for a short space there. But as they retired thence the aforesaid leaders commanded their evil satellites to set fire to and burn down the monastery with all its offices and with the nuns themselves.
And so the execution was fulfilled by the servants of iniquity, and the holy abbess and all the virgins with her attained most holily to the glory of martyrdom.