Saint Walpurga, Writer and Missionary

Saint Walpurga of Heidenheim (died 25 February 777/9)

Born in Devon, England, probably about the year 710, Walpurga was the daughter of Richard of Wessex, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain under King Ine, and a noblewoman named Wuna, who seems to have died about the time of Walpurga's birth. (At some point, both of Walpurga's parents are recognized as saints--Saint Wuna's feast day is 7 February.)

A sixteenth-century portrait
of St. Walpurga
by the Master of Messkirch

In 720, Richard wasconvinced by his two sons--Walpurga's brothers (both of whom also become saints)--to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While preparing for this journey, Richard of Wessex decided to leave his daughter, then about eleven years old, in the care of the abbess of Wimbourne Abbey. According to some traditions, however, it is the girl herself who asks to be left in the abbey rather than with relatives.

Wimbourne was a double monastery, housing both monks and nuns who followed the Rule of St. Benedict under the direction of an abbess.* Walpurga spent twenty-six years at Wimbourne, where she received an excellent education. The nuns of Wimbourne were trained in Latin and at least some Greek, and they put their language study to use with both sacred texts and the work of the early Church Fathers. The abbey also specialized in producing manuscripts and fine needlework.

Walpurga's father never got to the Holy Land. He reached Rome, then traveled with his sons to Lucca, where he died. (Willibald, the older of Walpurga's brothers, completed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then went on to Byzantium, eventually returning to Italy to live as a monk in Monte Cassino. Winebald, the younger of the two brothers, stayed in Rome and entered a monastery).

In 737, Wuna's brother Winfrid (later St. Boniface) recruited both of his nephews to accompany him on a mission to Germany. His call for evangelizing eventually included women--evidently Boniface was the first to include women as missionaries. In 748, a group of nuns from Wimbourne, Walpurga among them, traveled to the Franks to undertake their missionary work.

As part of their successful mission, Willibald and Winebald founded the double monastery of Heidenheim in 752, with Winebald serving as abbot. Walpurga was established as the abbess, governing the nuns. After Winebald's death in 761, Abbess Walpurga became the head of the double monastery.

On 25 February 777 or 779 (accounts vary), Walpurga died and was buried at the monastery founded by her brothers, where she had lived for some twenty-five years. About a hundred years after her death, her remains were translated--that is, they were removed to the cathedral of Eichstatt (Bavaria), with the aim of interring her remains with those of her brother, Wllibald, who had been consecrated as bishop there. According to tradition, the beasts pulling the cart with Walpurga's body stopped at a small church used by the canonesses at Eichstatt and refused to move further--so her relics were interred there. Later, a church was built in her honor.

Walpurgis Night (30 April) celebrates her feast day, 1 May, which commemorates the arrival of her relics in Eichstatt and Walpurga's canonization.

An extended account of St. Walburga's life is Emmanuel Luckman's "St. Walburga: Medieval Nun, Free Woman," in Miriam Schmitt and Linda Kulzer's Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings.

*In this, Wimbourne Abbey might be compared to Hilda's Whitby.

Hilda of Whitby, "A Most Religious Servant of Christ"

Hilda of Whitby (died 17 November 680)

Virtually everything we know about the extraordinary woman now most commonly known as "Hilda of Whitby" comes from the early Christian historian Bede. In his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (translated variously as The Ecclesiastical History of the English People or A History of the English Church and People), he devotes an entire chapter to "The Life and Death of Abbess Hilda" (Book 4, Chapter 23).

Hilda, 
stained glass in Cowley Convent,
All Saints Sisters of the Poor,
Oxford

Bede begins with Hilda's death, noting that on 17 November 680, when she was sixty-six years old, Hilda, the abbess of Streanaeschalch, died. It is interesting that here, in his extended discussion of her, Bede uses the older name "Streanaeschalch," a Saxon or Celtic place name, rather than "Whitby." Earlier in his history, Bede translated "Streanaeschalch" as "The Bay of Beacon."

Hilda was the daughter of a Northumbrian nobleman, Hereric, and his wife, Breguswith, brought up in the court of her paternal uncle, King Edwin of Northumbria. In 627, after his marriage to the Christian princess Ethelburger, Edwin was baptized on Easter Sunday, 12 April--and Hilda was probably among those baptized with him.

According to Bede, Hilda's "life on earth" was divided into "two equal parts": she spent her first thirty-three years living in the world, "most nobly" dedicated to "secular occupations," the second thirty-three years in the monastery, living "even more nobly" by dedicating herself to God. But Bede provides no information about that first part of Hilda's life, from her birth, probably about the year 614, until 647, when the second half of her life begins.

His biography of Hilda begins with her decision to join the religious life. Having made her decision to "abandon the secular life," Hilda had at first planned to live as a voluntary exile, renouncing not only all of her possessions but her home, and to join her sister in the monastery of Chelles, near Paris. Instead, she is "recalled home" by Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne and returns to Northumbria, where she is at first given a piece of land "where she observed the monastic rule with a  handful of companions."

After a year, she is installed as the abbess of Hartlepool, where she devotes herself to establishing a religious way of life for the nuns--following Aidan's practice, this would have been a Celtic monasticism, rather than a Roman form, like the rule of St. Benedict. Then, as Bede continues, after she had ruled this monastery "for some years," Hilda herself "undertook to found or organize a monastery at a place known as Streanaeshalch," carrying out the task "with great energy."

The establishment of Whitby, as it came to be called, was a double monastery in the Celtic tradition--that is, the monastery housed both monks and nuns, who lived separately but worshipped together. Her monastery became a center of learning. Bede relates that five men from Hilda's monastery later became bishops, and in the monastery was also found the poet Caedmon--Bede tells his story and transcribes the earliest known English poem in the chapter that follows his biography of Hilda. 

In 664, Hilda hosted the Synod of Whitby at her double monastery. Celtic and Roman traditions differed on two key points: how the date of Easter should be calculated and how monks should be tonsured (that is, how the hair should be shaved from a monk's head as a sign of humility and devotion).

Although "Abbess Hilda and her community," in Bede's words, supported the Celtic traditions, the Synod ultimately decided in favor of Rome. Bede recounts the arguments made by each side; while she may have hosted the Synod, Hilda did not take part in the debates, at least as Bede preserved them. 

But Bede does note that "all her acquaintances" called Hilda "Mother" because of her "wonderful devotion and grace." She lived as "an example of holy life" not only to the monks and nuns of her community but to all men and women: "she also brought about the amendment and salvation of many living at a distance, who heard the inspiring story of her industry and goodness."

Her life, Bede notes, "was the fulfillment of a dream which her mother Breguswith had when Hilda was an infant": she dreamed that she "discovered a most valuable jewel under her garments," a jewel that "emitted such a brilliant light that all Britain was lit by its splendour."

This "valuable jewel" was Hilda, "whose life afforded a shining example not only to herself but to all who wished to live a good life."

For the last six years of her life, Hilda suffered a serious and debilitating illness; as Bede notes, quoting St. Paul, "her strength might be made perfect in weakness." Nuns far from Streanaeshalch experienced miraculous visions of her death, and miracles were reported at her tomb. She was recognized as a saint shortly after her death.

In 867, Danish invaders destroyed her monastery. 

I've used my very old Penguin edition of Bede's A History of the English Church and People here, translated by Leo Sherley-Price; there is new Penguin edition, published with the title Ecclesiastical History of the English People, with a new introduction and an account of Bede's death by Cuthbert, but it's still Sherley-Price's translation.

Frithuswith, Princess and Patron Saint

Frithuswith (died 19 October 727)

An Anglo-Saxon princess, Frithuswith (or Frideswide) was probably born about the year 650, the daughter of Dida of Eynsham, a minor king (or sub-regulus) in Mercia (holding a territory near Oxford), and his wife, Safrida. 

Frithuswith, hiding from Algar,
detail from a stained glass window
by Edward Burne-Jones,
Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

There is a reference to Dida in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and two accounts of St. Frithuswith in the twelfth-century South English Legendary, one a longer version of her life, the other shorter, the two varying in some details.  

According to these narrative accounts, Frithuswith was reared and educated by a holy woman named Elgitha.

After her mother's death, Frithuswith persuaded her father to build a priory, actually a double monastery, one housing both monks and nuns, and the young woman, along with twelve companions, entered into the convent as a nun, dedicated to a life of perpetual chastity. 

It's not clear that they followed one particular monastic rule, such as that of St. Benedict. Aristocratic women may have been devoted to the spiritual life and to chastity, but the Benedictine vows of obedience and poverty may not have been strict in an institution which housed women of Frithuswith and her companions' social status. 

(The double monastic community was not unusual in England--I'll be posting about Hilda of Whitby, the most well-known head of such an institution, next month.)

Having heard accounts of her (and her beauty and wealth), another Mercian prince/king, Algar (or Aelfgar) pursued her--and after she refused to marry him, he attempted to abduct her. She managed to elude him by fleeing to Oxford, and there the two twelfth-century accounts of her life differ. According to one version, Algar followed her but fell off his horse and broke his neck; according to another, he became blind. In this version, Algar lucked out, because he was sorry, asked Frithuswith for her forgiveness, she bathed his eyes, and his sight was restored.

According to legend, when the nuns at
Frithuswith's convent complained
about having to go too far for water,
Frithuswith prayed to Saint Margaret,
who answered Frithuswith's prayers
with this well, now to be seen at the
Church of St. Margaret, Binsey

Frithuswith returned to her monastery, where she died on 19 October 727. 

In 1180, her remains were "translated" (moved) to a new building, now incorporated into Christ Church College, Oxford. In 1440, she was declared the patron saint of Oxford. 

There are many online accounts of the stories of St. Frithuswith. For more about the religious context, I recommend Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings by Miriam Schmitt, Linda Kulzer, and Mary Michael Kaliher, three scholars and members of the Order of St. Benedict, an excellent account of the female monastic tradition.