Venerable Æþelburg, Abbess of Barking

Icon of the Saints of Barking; Saint Æþelburg second from the right

Today in the Orthodox Church we venerate not only Saint James the Deacon but also one of England’s great monastic mothers, Æþelburg of Essex, who became the head of the Benedictine cloister at Barking (or Berecingum in Bede’s Latin usage). Saint Bede is, again, the foremost authority on the life of this great Church mother of ours. She was apparently high-born, and was the sister of Bishop Saint Eorcenwald of London. As Bede puts it of her: ‘She always bore herself as befitted the sister of a bishop, upright of life, and as heavenly miracles attest, constantly planning for the needs of her community.’

She was the pupil of Saint Hildalíþ, who was brought over from the Continent to tutor the young abbess in the ways of the Benedictine life. The nunnery at Barking quickly grew renowned for a holy and disciplined mode of life, as evidenced by several wonders which took place there. A deadly pestilence swept southern England in 664, and the monks of nearby Chertsey, it was quickly found, were not immune. Thinking to prepare her sisters for death, Abbess Æþelburg asked them where within the convent grounds they would wish to be buried. The nuns dithered on the question. Until: one night when the nuns had finished reciting the Psalter, they went out of the oratory to visit the monks who had died of the pestilence. As they were singing, a light from heaven ‘like a great sheet… brighter than the noonday sun’ descended on the nuns, frightening them. The light hovered, then lifted and rose to the south side of the convent, where it ascended back into the heavens. By this token the nuns understood that the spot over which the light had hovered was to be their burial-ground. One of the monks who was then inside the oratory described the light from outside as brighter than the brightest daylight, even over the thresholds of closed doors and windows.

In the convent there was a small boy named Æsica, who foretold the approaching death of one of the nuns at Barking. As he lay dying of the plague, he called out from his bed three times the name of the sister: ‘Éadg‎ýð! Éadg‎ýð! Éadg‎ýð!’ And thus blameless Æsica departed this life. The nun whom he named was also stricken by the illness and passed away some hours later, following Æsica into her heavenly reward. Yet another of the nuns at Barking was brought to her last hour by the pestilence, and as she was bedridden she began calling out to the lay-sisters to put out the lamp that lay burning by her bed. Thinking she was not in her right mind, they ignored her. But the nun again told them to do so, saying: ‘I tell you truthfully that I see the house filled with such brilliant light that your lamp only appears as darkness to me.’ The lay-sisters again ignored her, and so she told them that a man of God who had died earlier that year had come to her and told her that she would be departing this world into a more blessed light. That foretelling turned out to be true, for this nun had breathed her last the following dawn.

Some twenty years later, one of Saint Æþelburg’s assistants, the humble and earnest Saint Torhtgýð, was given to see a vision of the holy abbess’s departure from this life. One morning as she rose from her cell, she saw a gleaming body wrapped in a shroud, being borne along and lifted out of the cloister it seemed by thin strands of purest gold. The shrouded body was thus borne aloft into the heavens, and rose so high that Saint Torhtgýð could no longer see it with her eyes. Several days later, it turned out, Holy Mother Æþelburg quietly reposed in the Lord. The vision that Saint Torhtgýð had seen was indeed one of Saint Æþelburg’s departure into æternal bliss. Æþelburg was succeeded as abbess at Barking by her loving, motherly and knowledgeable tutor from the Continent in all things related to the life of a nun in Christ: Saint Hildalíþ.

At Barking there was another nun, of high birth, who was stricken with an ailment of the limbs that left her lame and in great bodily pain. Upon hearing that the body of Saint Æþelburg was being translated into the church and being prepared for burial, she asked to be carried there herself, and there bowed herself toward Æþelburg’s body as though praying to it. She spoke to the dead abbess as though she were still alive, and begged her prayers to God on her behalf that she might be released soon from her unending pain. Twelve days after this prayer was uttered, this crippled nun too reposed in the Lord.

A vision of Saint Æþelburg would appear, too, to her faithful assistant Saint Torhtgýð some three years later, when she too was on her deathbed – having seemingly been robbed of the use of her tongue by her own infirmity. But she sat up and conversed, it seemed to the nuns that attended her, with some unseen person in clear and cogent words. When they asked her with whom she spoke, Saint Torhtgýð answered them: ‘To my dearest Mother Æþelburg.’ A day and a night later, she too met her repose.

Saint Æþelburg’s blessedness was made manifest in the wonders that she wrought even after her death. At the place at which Saint Æþelburg’s relics too had been laid to rest by her beloved tutor and successor, there was often to be seen a bright heavenly light, and a sweet smell often pervaded. It so happened that there was an East Saxon nobleman living nearby, whose wife had grown ill. This nobleman’s wife’s eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, and soon she lost her sight altogether, not being able to see even the faintest glimmer of light. This poor woman spent some time in total blindness, before she recalled the abbey at Barking and bade her maid lead her thither – thinking that if she asked of the several saints who were at rest within that cloister, that their prayers to God would help restore her sight. Her maid led her by the hand to the burial ground mentioned above, and there this nobleman’s wife knelt down and prayed with her whole heart to God. As she rose from her prostration, she found that the light had fully returned to her eyes. Though she needed the hand and feet of her maid to find the abbey, she walked out of the abbey and home with her maid in joy, fully on her own power.

Saint Æþelburg guided her monastic community through a number of severe trials both spiritual and physical, as witnessed by the great number of nuns whom she lost during the pestilence. As such, she is, as she was in life, a patron particularly of the ill and the disabled – whom she served in their needs as abbess. Holy Mother Æþelburg, pray to God for us!