Ruins of Whitby Abbey
On the twenty-fourth of November we commemorate another Orthodox Yorkshirewoman of great holiness and virtue, Éanflæd daughter of Éadwine King of Northumbria, wife of Oswiu of Berenice, Benedictine nun, contemporary and kinswoman of Saint Hild, friend to Saint Cuðberht and Saint Theodore, mentor to Saint Wilfrið, mother of four including Ælfflæd of Whitby and with her, co-abbess of the monastery at Whitby.
Her father Éadwine was still a Teutonic heathen when Éanflæd was born, but her mother Æþelburg was a Christian who had been accompanied by Bishop Paulinus northward to York at her wedding. Saint Bede tells the tale that Cwichelm of Wessex afterward sent an assassin to murder Éadwine, but a servant of his, Lilla, sacrificed herself to save her king’s life. The shock of the attack caused Æþelburg to go into labour, and she gave birth to Éanflæd that same night. Bishop Paulinus prevailed upon Éadwine to have young Éanflæd baptised and to be baptised himself if Éadwine would recover from his wounds and be granted a victory over Cwichelm. He and Éanflæd were baptised together on the twelfth day after Pentecost; a Welsh tradition has it also that the one who baptised Éanflæd was Rhun ap Urien of Rheged.
Éadwine was received into the Church by baptism the following year, and many in Yorkshire were baptised with him. He led the Northumbrian armies into battle against Penda of Mercia, but was slain in the fighting – as a result, Orthodox and Catholic Christians commemorate Éadwine as a martyr for Christ. Éanflæd was raised by her saintly mother and by Bishop Paulinus at Lyminge in Kent, in exile from Northumbria as the Mercian king laid waste the Christian works that her father Éadwine had begun. Éanflæd went back to Northumbria to marry Oswiu of Berenice, who was still then a heathen. When Oswiu had his Christian cousin Oswine murdered to gain control of Deira, Éanflæd convinced her husband to lay the cornerstone of a new monastery in Oswine’s name, at the very spot where Oswine fell, at Gilling. Trumhere, Oswine’s kinsman, became the first abbot of the new monastery.
This was around the same time as the controversy in England over whether to follow the ‘Celtic’ or the ‘Roman’ calculation of Eastertide, which led to the Synod of Whitby. Most Northumbrian Christians at the time followed the ‘Celtic’ calculations, and Oswiu himself was a partizan of the Celtic date, though Éanflæd (who had been raised in Kent) favoured the Roman date. The king of Northumbria summoned the Synod, at which Saint Colmán of Lindisfarne, Saint Hild of Whitby, Saint Cedd of Lastingham, Saint Agilbert of Paris and Saint Wilfrið were all present. Though Saint Bede himself is far from a neutral historical observer of the event, we may take his word for it that Saint Wilfrið was the man of the hour at the Synod, since he managed to convince Oswiu and most of the Celtic party (except for Saint Colmán, sadly) to adopt the Roman date calculation for Easter.
Oswiu died six years after the Synod at Whitby, as he was on pilgrimage to Rome. The widowed Éanflæd was tonsured a nun at Whitby in obedience to Saint Hild while she was still Abbess there. Éanflæd and her daughter Ælfflæd became joint Abbesses after Hild’s repose, and she had her husband and saintly father translated to Whitby and buried there and began promoting their glorification. She devoted the rest of her life, as Bede recounts, to the ascetic life, to charitable works, and to prayers for the souls of her departed husband and father. Her daughter, in turn, was made of similar stuff as her saintly forebears Æþelburg and Éanflæd were; she too was an energetic and devoted Abbess of Whitby, and a saint in her own time, after her mother met her repose on the twenty-fourth of November.
Holy Mother Éanflæd of Whitby, pray to Christ our God for us sinners!
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