Holy Mother Wihtburg, Abbess of Dereham

Saint Wihtburg of Dereham

The eighth of July is indeed a busy one, it seems, for holy saints of the præ-Schismatic Western Church – and especially for saintly women. Not only is it the feast of Saint Éadgár [Edgar] of England; not only is it the feast of Saint Sunngifu [Sunniva] of Selja; not only is it the feast of the Welsh Saint Mwynen [Morwenna] of Morwenstow; and not only is it the feast of the Cornish Saint Iwerydd [Urith] of Chittlehampton. It also happens to be the feast of another great and holy English abbess, the younger sister of Saints Sæþrýð, Seaxburg, Æþelþrýð and Æþelburg, Saint Wihtburg of Dereham.

Saint Wihtburg [also Withburga] was, according to tradition, the youngest daughter of Anna King of the East Angles by his second wife Hǽreswíþ. This would have made her the niece of Saint Hild, and also the aunt of Saint Æbbe. Unlike her sisters, who ventured to Ely in Northumbria and Faremoutiers in France, she seems to have stayed close to home her whole life. She took vows early and lived a life of strict asceticism, nearby her father together with her nurse at Holkham; however, when Anna King reposed, she took what worldly wealth she had and used it to found a small priory at East Dereham, which is now the site for St Nicholas Church in that municipality. Here she remained for the rest of her worldly days.

As the priory at Dereham was being built, Wihtburg – who had used up all her worldly goods in buying and preparing the land – had little but dry bread to feed her workmen and nuns. She prayed to the Holy Theotokos, who came to her in a dream and told her to go the next day to the stream the next morning, and her nuns and workmen would be provided for. It turned out that, as she obeyed the dream the next day, taking with her two of her nuns – there stood two wild nursing hinds: except that before the nuns, they were as meek and tame as ewes. They stood and allowed themselves to be milked by Wihtburg and her nuns, and the yield was prodigious enough that the nuns were able to make butter and cheese enough to keep the workmen fed and well-paid in addition to their daily bread.

Not everyone was well-pleased with this saintly wonder, it must be said. As one may imagine, there are those in every age who object to workers receiving their just due, and who object yet more strongly to any real or imagined infringement on ‘private property’. The landowner on whose land the stream went where Wihtburg went to fetch water, also happened to be the reeve of Norfolk. He decided for himself that the nuns by milking the deer were, in his view, stealing ‘free milk’ from his property. And so he did what any right-thinking landowner with a trespassing problem would do: he took his horse and his hounds and his bow and he went deer-hunting. And if the trespassing nuns dared to cross his path, so much the worse for them! It so happened, though, that as he was giving chase to these nursing hinds and he happened upon Saint Wihtburg in his path, this landlord’s horse spooked and threw him, so that he fell and broke his neck.

Once built, Saint Wihtburg’s convent in Dereham flourished. During her time there, it housed six hundred fifty holy virgins within its walls. Saint Wihtburg lived to a very ripe old age, well into her hundreds – she reposed on the seventeenth of March, 743. (Consider that the Holy Theotokos visited her and told her about the milking deer ninety years before, in 653!) She was buried in the churchyard at Dereham.

Some fifty-five years later, in 798, it was agreed that the relics of Saint Wihtburg were to be translated into a more suitable reliquary. Saint Wihtburg was uncovered and her body was found to be incorrupt. This discovery led to a flourishing of her saintly cultus in East Anglia, and hundreds of faithful flocked to Dereham, where wondrous healings of mind and body occurred over her relics.

In 974, the abbot of Ely decided that it would be meet for Saint Wihtburg to rest with her sisters and niece in Northumbria; and therefore he undertook to take them from Dereham. This happened, according to local tradition, by stealth. The abbot, Byrhtnoþ, took an armed party and hosted a great feast in Dereham, making the men drunk and complacent. He then had Saint Wihtburg disinterred and removed by night. Having discovered the following day that their beloved saint was missing, the folk of Dereham were sorely grieved. But wondrously, a holy well appeared at her empty grave, and the wonders associated with her continued in still greater numbers. Sadly, the relics of Saint Wihtburg themselves were destroyed along with the rest of the spiritual treasures of Ely Monastery, in the harrowing of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Even so, the Well of St Withburga still exists under the protection of the parish of St Nicholas Church, and continues as a destination of pilgrims. Holy mother Wihtburg, righteous abbess and friend of workingmen, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!

St Nicholas Church, Dereham