Edith of Wilton
Edith of Wilton was an English saint, nun and member of the community at Wilton Abbey, and the daughter of Edgar, King of England and Saint Wulfthryth. Edith's parents might have been married and Edgar might have abducted Wulfthryth from Wilton Abbey, but when Edith was an infant, Wulfthryth returned with Edith and their marriage was dissolved. Edith and her mother remained at Wilton for the rest of their lives.
Like her mother, Edith was educated at Wilton. From a young age, Edith chose to enter the religious life, although it is uncertain whether she became a nun or a secular member of the Wilton community. Goscelin, who completed her hagiography around 1080, reports that Edith "always dressed magnificently" because it reflected her status as a member of the royal family and because she was obliged to fulfil certain roles to ensure the continued royal patronage of the Wilton community. Goscelin based his Vita on the oral testimony of the Wilton nuns and their abbess, as well as on existing written sources. The work was dedicated to Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
When she was 15 years old, Edith's father offered her the position of abbess of three convents, but she declined. In 978, after the murder of her half-brother, Edward the Martyr, she may have been offered the English throne, which she also refused.
In 984, Edith constructed a chapel at Wilton Abbey dedicated to St Denys. The chapel was consecrated by St Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who reportedly foretold her imminent death and that the thumb on her right hand would remain uncorrupted. She died three weeks later, at the age of 23, on 16 September 984 and was buried at the chapel she built as she had instructed. Dunstan presided at her translation, which occurred on 3 November 987; her thumb, as Dunstan had foretold, had not decomposed.
Few miracles were attributed to her that supported Edith's canonisation and her cult did not become popular and widespread for 13 years after her death. Many of the miracles that were reported later focused on the protection of Edith's relics and the property owned by the Wilton community, often violently retaliating against those who sought to take or steal them. The support of Edith's elevation to sainthood by both secular and religious authorities was probably politically motivated, in order to establish their power and to connect themselves to King Edgar's descendants. Her feast day is 16 September.
Birth and childhood
Edith was born around 961 at the royal village in Kemsing, in Kent, England. She was the daughter of King Edgar and Wulfthryth, who was of noble birth, received her education at Wilton Abbey, and later became its abbess. Her half-brothers, Edward the Martyr and Æthelred II, both succeeded their father as king. Barbara Yorke reports that Goscelin, Edith's hagiographer, is unclear regarding the exact date of her birth. Yorke also reports that modern scholars are uncertain regarding Wulfthryth's status. Goscelin states that Wulfthryth was Edgar's wife and Yorke calls Wulfthryth his second wife, but Susan J. Ridyard calls Wulfthryth Edgar's "wife or concubine" and the Oxford Dictionary of Saints calls Wulfthryth his concubine. When Edith was an infant, her parents' marriage was dissolved, in either 963 or 964, which allowed Edgar to remarry and allowed Wulfthryth to become abbess of Wilton shortly after Edith's birth. Goscelin calls Wulfthryth "a sister who had once been wife".Edith was dedicated to entering the religious life at Wilton at the age of two. Goscelin describes a ceremony, which Yorke calls "a major state occasion", attended by her father and other royal officials. Stephanie Hollis believes that Edith remained a lay member of the community, although Hollis suggests that Edith's status as a member of the Wilton community was "ambiguous". According to Goscelin, when Edith was two years old, her father visited her at Wilton and presented her with the finest of clothes and jewellery worn by royalty, while her mother placed before her religious objects. Goscelin relates that Edith chose what her mother offered her. Ridyard considers Goscelin's story about Edith similar to many stories told by hagiographers, told to emphasise both the royal status of many saints and their choice to renounce it for the religious life. Ridyard states that Goscelin emphasises this incident, along later stories with her concern and service to criminals, the sick, and the destitute, to demonstrate Edith's humility. Edgar arranged for Edith the best possible education at Wilton by employing "two foreign chaplains", Radbod of Rheims and Benno of Trier.
Career
Dress and response to criticism
According to Goscelin, Edith's rich and elaborate wardrobe was vindicated when a candle was accidentally dropped into a chest that stored her clothes; the chest was burnt but her clothes remained untouched and the chest remained in the convent as a reminder of the miracle. When researching Vita Edithe, his hagiography about Edith, Goscelin viewed her possessions, including "a sumptuous linen alb" she had designed and embroidered, a skill aristocratic women educated in convents like Wilton learned along with literacy, languages, and the arts. Edith wore the garment on special occasions like the reception of royalty or bishops and on high feast days.According to Hollis, Goscelin reports that Edith was obliged to wear fine clothing due to her high status and in order to maintain the court's patronage of Wilton, which Hollis states "might have rivalled a royal court in its display of affluence". Other displays of Edith's status and affluence were her design and creation of ecclesiastical vestments, "a metal casket for heating her bath water", her possession of a menagerie of exotic native and imported animals placed at the north wall of the convent, and her mother's rebuilding of the convent, which included a chapel built and designed by Edith. Yorke insists, however, that it appeared that "to all outward appearances she dressed as befitted a princess rather than a specialist in humility". Yorke states that despite Goscelin's claims that Edith and Wulfthryth renounced their wealth and status, they gave up neither. They instead retained their private wealth, a common practice of royals who resided in monasteries and convents, with which they could purchase relics and fund expensive building programmes.
Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis reports that according to Goscelin, Edith copied a manual of prayers used at Wilton Abbey, which the nuns there, along with her relics, preserved. Goscelin praised Edith for her many talents, which included music, embroidery, calligraphy, painting, writing, composing, praying, as well as "a blazing intellect in reading". Hollis calls Edith's manner of dress "evidently habitual", relating Goscelin's story about Edith assisting the workmen who built her chapel by carrying stones in her sleeves. Goscelin insists that her fine clothing, her involvement in royal politics, and her periodic visits to her father's court did not make her less approachable to "the common people".
Political and religious influence
Histories of the politics of the period only mention Edith in passing, but Yorke argues that claims made by Goscelin in his Vita of Edith that she and her mother played an important role in the intrigues concerning the succession to Edgar should be taken seriously. According to Goscelin, the English nobility and kings from other countries and their ambassadors held her in high regard and "sought her favour by letters and gifts, and high-ranking ecclesiastics sought her intercession". Goscelin states that Edith was able to convince Edgar to overturn court judgements or procure gifts for churches, "with the result that she was besieged by petitioners from all strata of society who hoped she could intervene with the king on their behalf", and that officials from Rome, France, and Germany would visit Edith if they wanted favours from Edgar, often with an addition to her zoo.According to Goscelin, when Edith was fifteen years old, her father appointed her abbess of three convents, but Sarah Foot describes the appointments as "somewhat implausible" and suggests that Goscelin confused Edith of Wilton with other women named Edith. Ridyard also doubts the veracity of Goscelin and others' claim that Edith was made abbess of any convent. Goscelin claimed that Edith initially refused the positions, preferring instead, as David Hugh Farmer states in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, "the obscurity of the cloister". Goscelin also stated that Edith insisted on staying under the authority of her mother not because she felt incompetent, but "by an overabundance of humility". According to Goscelin, Edith was an effective abbess of the communities despite her distance and that she visited them often. Very little is known about Edith's governance of the three convents outside of Goscelin's works about her. Both Edith and St Eadburgh of Winchester were praised by William of Malmesbury for their prayers and intercessions on behalf of their respective communities, as well as their members' "unfailing obedience" and devotion to their leaders and teachers.
Goscelin relates that in 978, after the murder of Edward the Martyr, Edith's half-brother, she was offered the throne by opponents of Æthelred II, which she also refused. Edith also had a dream about losing her right eye, which Edith believed foretold her brother's imminent death, which Ridyard calls "highly improbable" and "the creation of an eleventh-century hagiographic imagination which found in the story of Edith's rejection of the earthly a poignant illustration of her devotion to the heavenly". Hollis that it probably occurred because it was an attempt to legitimise the succession of Æthelred and because it was consistent with Edith's manner of dress and her close involvement in royal politics. Ridyard argues that Goscelin relates both stories in order to emphasise "the saint's extreme reluctance to accept a position of authority and influence". The claim that Edith was offered the throne is generally dismissed by historians as a "hagiographic invention", but Yorke argues that it may not have been as far-fetched as it seems, stating that it was "a possibility that Edith would leave Wilton to be married if circumstances dictated" and that her upbringing and education at Wilton, as it was for other well-born Anglo-Saxon women educated there, was to prepare her for a future public role.
A seal was created during Edith's lifetime; later members of Wilton Abbey adopted and used it as its official emblem until the abbey was dissolved in 1539. The seal demonstrates the Wilton community's "confidence in its ability to represent their patron saint as the guarantor of their documents' authenticity and in her guarantee's enduring significance to those in and out of the community". Bugyis states that it "figures her in half-length, frontal view, raising her right hand in a sign of benediction and holding up a book, perhaps the manual of prayers she copied, with her left hand". She is described as a "royal sister" on the seal. According to Alison Hudson, an archivist at the British Library, Edith's seal gives "a rare contemporary insight into the priorities, identities and possibly even the jewellery of a young princess in late tenth century England". Yorke states that Edith's seal was another indication of her status and independent wealth, as well as her affirmation of her status as Edgar's daughter.
According to Bugyis, Edith was not recorded as a former abbess in Nunnaminster sources, but claims that Goscelin described what he regarded as two relics of Edith's rule over Nunnaminster, both of which he considered full of mystical significance and were still used by the community when he wrote about them. One relic was an alb and the other was a flowering rod, which also according to Bugyis, Goscelin stated had continued to grow even after Edith's death and was reminiscent of Aaron's rod, symbolising her innocence. According to Bugyis, Edith's alb reflected her identification with Mary Magdalene's need to be forgiven of her sins and be remembered for her faith, devotion, and piety, as well as Edith's view of her office as abbess. As Bugyis claims, the alb "reflected the virtue she prized most in a monastic leader—humility", a duty the Benedictine Rule required from its monastic leaders, washing the feet in humble service for members of their communities, as Christ washed his disciples' feet and the woman washed Christ's feet in the Gospel of John. Also according to Bugyis, Edith might have placed herself as Magdalene on her alb in order to represent her commitment to serve the poor and the outcast. Bugyis speculates that Edith's choice of the costly gems, golden thread, and pearls might have also demonstrated the conflict between her roles as abbess and as the king's daughter, as well as a way to inspire her sisters and to provide them with a model of her kind of service and leadership to the community. The alb also demonstrated, as Bugyis claims, that "the liturgical and pastoral ministries of medieval monastic leaders were often inextricably entwined".