St ?thelthryth

In early Christianity, the virtue of a holy man’s or woman’s life was expected to be mirrored in death: the resurrection of the corpse by miracle, in the case of cephalophores; the homeopathic healing powers of their relics; or the incorruptibility of their mortal remains.

Behold, I shew you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump

for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised

incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption,

and this mortal must put on immortality.⁹

Bede tells the story of a Christian princess, ?thelthryth (died 679), who was incorruptible in life and death. Holy virtues aside, her life tells us much about the ways in which women belonging to tribal elites might exercise autonomy and the power of patronage in the face of their apparently inferior status. Sometime in the late 650s her father, King Anna of East Anglia, gave ?thelthryth in marriage to the ealdorman of South Gyrwe, a territory of the fenlands around Ely. Her husband, Tondberht, died shortly afterwards and his widow was then ‘given’ to Ecgfrith,^** a powerful king of Northumbria, to cement a political alliance. Thus she was cast in the role of ‘peace-weaver’. They were married for twelve years and in all that time, even after her husband’s accession to the throne in 671, ?thelthryth remained celibate. Bede’s source for this claim was the direct testimony of Bishop Wilfrid, the most charismatic and controversial cleric of his age. King Ecgfrith, according to Wilfrid, had offered him ‘estates and money if he could persuade the queen to consummate the marriage and produce an heir’.

Neither the king nor his bishop was successful in their endeavours. In the year 672 ?thelthryth was allowed to retire to a life of religious contemplation in a remote, rocky coastal monastery at Coldingham in what is now Berwickshire, presided over by ?bbe, the king’s aunt. A year later she travelled south to the fenlands of her first marriage and founded a new monastic community on the island of Ely.

Anglo-Saxon princesses were cup-bearers in the mead hall and accomplished hostesses; sometimes key political advisors. They were also diplomatic assets, to be deployed by their parents for political and dynastic advantage. That does not mean that they were mere chattels. ?thelthryth was able to resist all pressure to embrace motherhood and the production of heirs. She also accumulated an impressive property portfolio and commensurate powers of patronage. On her retirement from the Northumbrian court she gifted Bishop Wilfrid, her confessor, a generous grant of lands on which to found his magnificent abbey church at Hexham with its marvellous, surviving crypt built from recycled Roman stonework. Her own foundation at Ely enjoyed substantial estates. The former must have been given her as dower lands by Ecgfrith, the latter by her first husband, or as an inheritance from her mother or father; she was able to retain these lands through two marriages.

One of ?thelthryth’s sisters, Seaxburh, was married to the king of Kent, an important East Anglian ally. Another, S?thryth, was ‘wedded to the holy bridegroom’ – Bede’s acknowledgement that princesses given to the church were also regarded as diplomatic gifts, to ensure good relations with an even greater court. ?thelthryth was abbess of her foundation at Ely for six years, during which time she maintained an exemplary life of self-denial, fasting and prayer and fostered the careers of a new generation of holy women. Convent life became, for noble women, an alternative to marriage and childbearing, a sanctuary of intellectual and social communion with other women.

?thelthryth died in an outbreak of plague in 679. Her diet may have contributed to her demise: shortly before her death, a doctor cut out a ‘tumour’ from beneath her chin – probably a goitre, a thyroidal swelling caused by a lack of iodine (primarily obtained from seafood and dairy products) in the diet. The gruesome account of the treatment was recorded because, sixteen years after her death, ?thelthryth’s body was exhumed and translated to a stone sarcophagus, which some monks of Ely had found in the ruins of the Roman town at Grantchester. Her body was discovered to be miraculously incorrupt; the doctor who had treated her so many years before was called to testify to the marvellous post-mortem healing of his own incision. Virginity in the face of earthly pressures and desires and physical incorruption in death were sure signs of virtue for the admiring Bede.

While we cannot say what motivated ?thelthryth to deny her husband (who married again, still without issue) his presumptive conjugal rights, it is possible to imagine conditions under which her body, sixteen years after her first interment, might have been found incorrupt. My own experience excavating in the post-medieval crypt at Christ Church, Spitalfields,^†† convinces me that the soft tissue of a corpse kept in cool, dry and stable conditions may become desiccated before it is consumed entirely by autolysis; the appearance of the corpse can be like that of a peaceful slumberer. I have my suspicions that some celebrated holy women and men were interred with that knowledge in mind; that the skills existed in Early Medieval monastic communities to favour the preservation of their chosen saint: to improve the odds that they might be found miraculously incorrupt. Possession of an incorrupt saint was a likely guarantee of future fame and wealth for a monastery church.

The fame of this holy and virtuous woman lasted well into the Middle Ages, when she was remembered as St Audrey. Pilgrims came to visit and seek solace or healing at her shrine in Ely, where a special lace called tawdry, named after her, became a fashionable and saleable item of dress. A subsequent profusion of cheap imitations gave rise to the modern meaning of tawdry as insubstantial and inferior in quality. ?thelthryth was neither.