Saint Ælfflæd (654–714) was the daughter of King
Oswiu of Northumbria
Oswiu, also known as Oswy or Oswig ( ang, Ōswīg; c. 612 – 15 February 670), was King of Bernicia from 642 and of Northumbria from 654 until his death. He is notable for his role at the Synod of Whitby in 664, which ultimately brought the chur ...
and
Eanflæd
Eanflæd (19 April 626 – after 685, also known as Enfleda) was a Deiran princess, queen of Northumbria and later, the abbess of an influential Christian monastery in Whitby, England. She was the daughter of King Edwin of Northumbria and Æth ...
. She was
abbess
An abbess (Latin: ''abbatissa''), also known as a mother superior, is the female superior of a community of Catholic nuns in an abbey.
Description
In the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic ...
of
Whitby Abbey
Whitby Abbey was a 7th-century Christian monastery that later became a Benedictine abbey. The abbey church was situated overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire, England, a centre of the medieval Northumbrian ...
, an abbey of nuns that were known for their skills in medicine, from the death of her kinswoman
Hilda
Hilda is one of several female given names derived from the name ''Hild'', formed from Old Norse , meaning 'battle'. Hild, a Nordic-German Bellona, was a Valkyrie who conveyed fallen warriors to Valhalla. Warfare was often called Hild's Game. Th ...
in 680, first jointly with her mother, then alone.
Ælfflæd was particularly known for her skills in surgery and her personal attention to patients, as was Hilda, who was known for her personalized medical care.
Life
Most of Ælfflæd's life was spent as a nun. When she was about a year old, her father, King
Oswiu of Northumbria
Oswiu, also known as Oswy or Oswig ( ang, Ōswīg; c. 612 – 15 February 670), was King of Bernicia from 642 and of Northumbria from 654 until his death. He is notable for his role at the Synod of Whitby in 664, which ultimately brought the chur ...
, in thanksgiving for his victory over
Penda of Mercia
Penda (died 15 November 655)Manuscript A of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' gives the year as 655. Bede also gives the year as 655 and specifies a date, 15 November. R. L. Poole (''Studies in Chronology and History'', 1934) put forward the theor ...
at the
Battle of the Winwæd
The Battle of the Winwaed (Welsh language, Welsh: ''Maes Gai''; lat-med, Strages Gai Campi) was fought on 15 November 655 between King Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Northumbria, Oswiu of Bernicia, ending in the Mercians' defeat and Penda' ...
, handed her over to abbess
Hilda
Hilda is one of several female given names derived from the name ''Hild'', formed from Old Norse , meaning 'battle'. Hild, a Nordic-German Bellona, was a Valkyrie who conveyed fallen warriors to Valhalla. Warfare was often called Hild's Game. Th ...
to be brought up at
Hartlepool Abbey
Hartlepool Abbey, also known as Heretu Abbey, Hereteu Abbey, Heorthu Abbey or Herutey Abbey, was a Northumbrian monastery founded in 640 CE by Hieu, the first of the saintly recluses of Northumbria,Bede, ''Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum ...
. When Hilda left to found
Whitby Abbey
Whitby Abbey was a 7th-century Christian monastery that later became a Benedictine abbey. The abbey church was situated overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire, England, a centre of the medieval Northumbrian ...
in 657 or 658, she brought Ælfflæd with her.
Upon Hilda's death in 680, Oswiu's widow, Eanflæd and their daughter Ælfflæd became joint abbesses and later in the 680s, Ælfflæd was sole abbess until her death in 714.
["St. Hilda (614-680)", Whitby Museum]
/ref> The Northumbrian church of Cuthbert's time was a wealthy and aristocratic institution. On at least one occasion princess Abbess Ælfflæd is found banqueting with St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
In the ''Life of St. Cuthbert'', the saint assures Ælfflæd, who is concerned over the succession, that she will find Ecgfrith's successor 'to be a brother no less than the other one' (Anon. V. Cuthberti 3.6). Cuthbert then tells the puzzled Ælfflæd that this brother is 'on some island beyond this sea', at which point she realises that he is talking of Aldfrith 'who was then on the island which is called Iona' (Anon. V. Cuthberti 3.6).
/ref> Like her mother, Ælfflæd was associated with Bishop Wilfrid
Wilfrid ( – 709 or 710) was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Francia, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and ...
, and played a large part in the settlement which placed her nephew Osred son of Aldfrith
Aldfrith (Early Modern Irish: ''Flann Fína mac Ossu''; Latin: ''Aldfrid'', ''Aldfridus''; died 14 December 704 or 705) was king of Northumbria from 685 until his death. He is described by early writers such as Bede, Alcuin and Stephen of Ripon ...
on the throne in 705. She was an important political figure from the death of her brother Ecgfrith Ecgfrith ( ang, Ecgfrið) was the name of several Anglo-Saxon kings in England, including:
* Ecgfrith of Northumbria, died 685
* Ecgfrith of Mercia
Ecgfrith was king of Mercia from 29 July to December 796. He was the son of Offa, one of the m ...
in 685 until her death.
According to one account, Ælfflaed had been afflicted with a crippling disease for some time. One day she thought about Cuthbert and wished she had something belonging to him, for she was certain that would help her. Soon afterwards a messenger arrived with the gift of a linen girdle from Cuthbert. She put this on and within three days was restored to health.
One letter of Ælfflaed, to Adolana, abbess of Pfalzel, survives in the Bonifatian correspondence, which provides rare evidence for interaction between female religious leaders in the Early Medieval period. In this letter Ælfflaed seeks advice and assistance for a fellow abbess, who wished to go on pilgrimage to Rome, shedding light on Whitby's Continental connections in the years after Hilda's death.
Her piety was praised by contemporaries such as Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
and Stephen of Ripon
Stephen of Ripon was the author of the eighth-century hagiographic text ''Vita Sancti Wilfrithi'' ("Life of Saint Wilfrid"). Other names once traditionally attributed to him are Eddius Stephanus or Æddi Stephanus, but these names are no longer p ...
. Bede refers to her high degree of holiness and devotion, while Stephen calls her the consoler of the whole kingdom and the best counsellor.
Ælfflæd was considered a saint and her feast day was celebrated on 8 February. She was buried at Whitby. A late hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...
, the ''Vita sanctae Elfledae'', survives, collected in John Capgrave
John Capgrave (21 April 1393 – 12 August 1464) was an English historian, hagiographer and scholastic theologian, remembered chiefly for ''Nova Legenda Angliae'' (New Reading from England). This was the first comprehensive collection of lives o ...
's ''Nova Legenda Angliae'' of 1516.
Excavations in the 1920s by Radford and Peers found several building foundations and two inscribed memorial stones believed to record the deaths of St. Ælfflaed, Abbess of Whitby, and Cyneburgh, queen of King Oswald.Ziegler, Michelle. "Anglian Whitby", ''the Heroic Age'', Issue 2, Autumn/Winter 1999
/ref>
References
Sources
* . Retrieved 2007-09-22.
* Bede, Life of Cuthbert
* Lapidge, Michael, "Ælfflæd" in M. Lapidge, et al., (eds), ''The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aelfflaed
Northumbrian saints
Anglo-Saxon nuns
8th-century Christian saints
Abbesses of Whitby
654 births
714 deaths
7th-century English nuns
8th-century English nuns
Royal House of Northumbria
Female saints of medieval England
8th-century Latin writers
8th-century English writers
Latin letter writers
English surgeons