Saints Tancred, Torthred, and Tova were three

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

siblings A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the subject. A male sibling is a brother and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised separat ...

who were

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...

hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Ch ...

s and

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

s of the Ninth century. Their

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context d ...

was celebrated on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.

Lives

The brothers Tancred and Torthred, with their sister Tova lived at

Thorney, Cambridgeshire Thorney is a village in the City of Peterborough, Peterborough unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. Located around eight miles (13 km) east of Peterborough city centre, on the A47 road, A47. Historically ...

, at the time little more than a collection of hermit cells in the Fens, rather than a monastic institution. They, like many

s at Thorney, were killed by the Danes in 870.
Nothing other than their

dom is known of them.

Provenance

The story of their

dom rests on the ''chronicle of

Pseudo-Ingulf Pseudo-Ingulf is the name given to an unknown English author of the ''Historia Monasterii Croylandensis'', also known as the ''Croyland Chronicle''. Nothing certain is known of Pseudo-Ingulf although it is generally assumed that he was connected wi ...

'', an oft unreliable document which includes sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in

Thorney Abbey Thorney Abbey, now the Church of St Mary and St Botolph, was a medieval monastic house established on the island of Thorney in The Fens of Cambridgeshire, England. History The earliest documentary sources refer to a mid-7th century hermita ...

by the year 1000AD, as witnessed by R.P.S., C.S.P. and

William of Malmesbury William of Malmesbury ( la, Willelmus Malmesbiriensis; ) was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. He has been ranked among the most talented English historians since Bede. Modern historian C. Warren Hollister described him as "a ...

, and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold. The first record of their existence dates 973 AD when they were installed in the abbey at Thorney.

Torthred of Thorney

Saint Torthred of Thorney was a

and

Hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Ch ...

of the ninth century in

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom o ...

. According to

he was martyred with many of his brother monks by pagan Danish raiders in 869. His

is sometimes celebrated on 9 April or 10 April, and there is some conjecture that Torthred (and possibly Tova) did not die in the 869AD raids and instead lived his last years at Cerne in Dorset,Richard Challoner, A Memorial of Ancient British Piety: a British Martyrology.(W. Needham, 176
page 132
/ref> in a similar way to

Eadwold of Cerne Eadwold of Cerne, also known as Eadwold of East Anglia, was a 9th-century hermit, East Anglian prince and patron saint of Cerne, Dorset, who lived as a hermit on a hill about four miles from Cerne. His feast day is 29 August. Life St. Eadwold w ...

References

External links

* , , and {{authority control Medieval English saints 9th-century English people 9th-century Christian saints East Anglian saints Roman Catholic monks English Christian monks Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 9th-century English women 9th-century Christian monks English hermits Female saints of medieval England