Church of Saint Kyneburgha, Castor
Today in the Orthodox Church we also celebrate the saintly daughters of the fierce heathen warrior-king Penda of Mercia by his wife Cynewise, Cyneburg and Cyneswíþ, as well as their kinswoman Tibba.
Although Penda himself was a fierce and unrelenting foe of Christianity and was constantly at war with the English princes on his borders who confessed the faith – being the bane of Osweald King of Northumbria, and dying himself at the hands of Oswiu King at the Battle of the Winwæd – he did not forbid the preaching of the Gospel within his own marches. Indeed, every one of his children ended up converting to Christianity, and he did not gainsay this.
Cyneburg may have been instrumental in the conversion of her brother Peada to Christianity at the hands of Finan of Lindisfarne. At some point before the Winwæd, Cyneburg married Oswiu’s son Ealhfrið of Dere, who was a partizan of Saint Wilfrið of York in the Celtic-Roman calendar dispute.Very little is known about her marriage to her father’s enemy, given that Ealhfrið disappears from the historical record just after the Synod of Whitby. Their marriage was childless and some hagiographers intimate that it was also voluntarily celibate. Cyneburg later went on, aided by her brother Wulfhere, to found a monastic house for women at Castor, which her sister Cyneswíþ and her kinswoman Tibba later joined. After Cyneburg’s repose, Cyneswíþ succeeded her as abbess, as Tibba would Cyneswíþ after her.
Mercia would later suffer from Danish raids; and the relics of all three holy women would be translated to the Cathedral at Peterborough for safekeeping – an abbey church to whose original foundation in 664, along with Wulfhere, Saint Cyneburg had been a signatory.
Holy Mothers Cyneburg, Cyneswíþ and Tibba, pray unto Christ our God to save our souls!
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