Venerable Éadgýð of Wilton

Saint Éadgýð of Wilton

The West Saxon saint Éadgýð [that is, Edith] of Wilton has been particularly beloved of the English for scores of generations; and she is reckoned to be one of the ‘national saints’ whose veneration very early spread throughout the English Church in the period prior to the Great Schism. Reading her hagiography it is easy to see why. Éadgýð is notable primarily for the dazzling radiance of her kenotic giving and generosity, her sweet and gentle spirit. Though the ascetic side of her spiritual life is also there, that same ascesis is a moon made radiant by a soul set ablaze with the love of Christ and with the love of the poor. Though her life on earth was short, her inward goodness shone all that much brighter. Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we honour her memory.

Éadgýð was conceived in the irregular union of Éadgár the Frithful, King of Wessex, and his kept woman Wulfþrýð. Her two parents later became saints, but at the time of her conception neither of them was particularly saintly. Their union occurred, after all, after Éadgár had rapt Wulfþrýð – by most accounts willingly – from the monastery at Wilton where she was then either a nun or a novice. Shortly after her birth, Wulfþrýð began to have compunctions about all of their souls – her kingly lover’s, her daughter’s and her own. She separated amicably from Éadgár (though the two of them remained friends) and returned to her monastic vocation at Wilton, taking their baby daughter Éadgýð with her.

Yet though Éadgýð was a ‘love-child’, she was not one single whit less beloved by God, who truly made a place beside Him for her and for her eldern. She grew up under the eye of her repentant mother, and in the company of the sisters of Wilton. There she received a top-class education; she grew skilled both with her hands and in the exercise of her mind: she read the Psalter and the Holy Scriptures. She grew the monastery’s library significantly – some of it with her own skill at illuminating manuscripts. Her father, for her sake and for the sake of her mother, sponsored the abbey at Wilton from his own coffers for the rest of his life. Not surprisingly, with this attention and education, she grew to love God and to seek the life of a virgin in Christ. When she reached the age of fifteen years, she took the wimple and veil and joined her sisters at Wilton as a nun.

As a nun, Éadgýð’s life was marked by the same rigorous asceticism of her sisters there. She kept a strict fast, preserved the purity of her body, laboured with her sisters, and spent long hours in the study of Scriptures and singing in praise of God. But her life is noteworthy on account of the kenoticism of her witness, the social dimension of her ascetic life. Éadgýð spent her days in the company of lepers and the homeless, preferring it to that of her mother’s and father’s class. She fed the hungry, clothed the naked and took care of the ill, in a hospital she herself founded. She gave bread and shelter and whatever silver she could spare to any who came to her asking for it. She even washed and mended her sisters’ socks at night while they slept. Every spare moment she had, was given to the help of her neighbour.

Her love did not stop with human beings; she also had a deep and abiding love for animals both wild and domestic. She freely offered food to wild deer and pigeons which would then eat from her hand. She also caused something of a scandal in ecclesiastical circles by having built and keeping a home for animals near her cell on one side of the Wilton monastery.

She had a habit of washing herself regularly in hot water and dressing in magnificently fine gowns, which brought upon her the consternation of the zealous and austere Bishop Saint Æþelwold of Winchester, who along with Saint Dúnstán and Saint Ósweald was close in his friendship with Éadgýð’s family. However, she argued back to the bishop that outward beauty was not as important to God as the beauty of the heart, which must be full of love and humility. (It was not every nun that dared to talk back to a hierarch of the Church!) In addition: what Saint Æþelwold did not see was that beneath her fine and luxurious dress she wore a hair shirt. Saint Éadgýð understood well that the need for beauty is as great as the need for bread, even among the poor; and she was not stingy with her own. As Chesterton put it with regard to the dress habits of the later Thomas à Becket:

in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart.

Saint Éadgýð was also given foresight by her righteous life of mercy to the poor and steadfast devotion to Christ. She was given to see a vision in which she lost her right eye; the following morning she learned that her innocent elder half-brother, Éadweard King, had been martyred in Dorset.

She had a particular devotion to the great hieromartyr and divine philosopher Saint Dionysios the Areopagite, called ‘Denis’ after the French usage. She founded a church in Wilton which she dedicated to that saint, and even designed the frescoes herself. She died very shortly after the dedication, from a fever. During her illness she was tended personally by Saint Dúnstán, who wept as he did so because he was given to know that her death was near. He gave her the Holy Gifts before she reposed. Shortly after that, nuns at Wilton began to have visions of her ascent to heaven, and she quickly gained a local cultus which grew into a national one. Her other half-brother Æþelræd Unrǽd personally venerated her – as did the later kings Éadmund Ironside, Cnut the Great and Éadweard the Confessor.

Saint Éadgýð is far from a typical monastic saint – if indeed one can speak of any monastic saint as ‘typical’. Holiness and goodness are infinite in variation. Saint Éadgýð’s clear erudition, her willingness to argue with powerful men and her devotion to a first-century Greek philosopher-saint are unusual. But the decidedly social, decidedly political nature of her philanthrōpía for the poor – which chiefly came, one should note, from the public funds of her kingly father – lies firmly in line with the early social radicalism of Old English Benedictine spirituality. But the brightness and clarity of her virtues made her easily one of the most popularly-venerated of the holy mothers in the late Old English period and beyond. Holy Éadgýð, venerable monastic and firm friend of the poor and needy, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Thou didst love Christ from thy youth, O blessed one,
And ardently desiring to labor for Him alone,
Thou didst struggle in asceticism in the royal convent at Wilton.
And having acquired humility of soul and spiritual stillness,
Thou didst pass over to the mansions of paradise,
Where thou dost intercede for us, O venerable mother Éadgýð!