Mærwynn ( AD), also known as St. Merewenna or Merwinna, was a 10th-century

abbess An abbess (Latin: ''abbatissa'') is the female superior of a community of nuns in an abbey. Description In the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran and Anglican abbeys, the mod ...

Romsey Abbey Romsey Abbey is the name currently given to a parish church of the Church of England in Romsey, a market town in Hampshire, England. Until the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was the church of a Benedictine Order, Benedictine nunnery. The surv ...

. She is recognised as a

saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

in the

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

and

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...

churches.

Life

Mærwynn was the founding abbess of the reconsecrated Abbey of Romsey, and there is some certainty that she was appointed to the position by King Edgar the Peaceable on

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

in 974. While medieval legend had it that she was born in Ireland and educated by St. Patrick, historical understanding that five centuries separate them discounts this. She is instead known more historically from several surviving documents: a king's charter, by Edgar the Peaceable, to Romsey Abbey; the medieval confraternity book of Winchester, known as the ; and the Secgan manuscript's

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 preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian ...

. (Contains full text of ''Secgan'' in Old English and Latin — via archive.org) King Edgar sent

Ælfflæd Ælfflæd is a name of Anglo-Saxon England meaning Ælf (Elf) and flæd (beauty). It may refer to: * Saint Ælfflæd of Whitby (654–714) * Ælfflæd of Mercia, daughter of Offa, wife of King Æthelred I of Northumbria * Ælfflæd, wife of Edwa ...

, his daughter, to Mærwynn for care, and she became like a foster mother to the princess.Manuscript images viewable online here at the British Library's Digitised Manuscript viewer
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Veneration

Mærwynn was buried at Romsey Abbey, close by to where her protégé Ælfflæd was buried. Her primary

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 does n ...

is 10 February in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. There are secondary commemorations in the Catholic Church marking the date of the translation of her relics (and of Ælfflæd's) on 29 October, with certain other secondary days of note mentioned by the Monks of Ramsgate.

Romsey Abbey

The foundations of Mærwynn's abbey have been located under the

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

choir stall A choir, also sometimes called quire, is the area of a church or cathedral that provides seating for the clergy and church choir. It is in the western part of the chancel, between the nave and the sanctuary, which houses the altar and Church tab ...

s and part of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

of the current Norman church. Mærwynn's abbey was the second of the four church buildings to be built on the site; it was destroyed by

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

in 1003 AD.Thomas Perkins
Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey
(Project Guttenberg, 2007) p17.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Maerwynn Medieval English saints Year of birth unknown Anglo-Saxon nuns Anglo-Saxon abbesses 10th-century abbesses Female saints of medieval England 10th-century Christian saints East Anglian saints 10th-century English nuns Burials at Romsey Abbey