Medeshamstede
Medeshamstede was the name of Peterborough in the Anglo-Saxon period. It was the site of a monastery founded around the middle of the 7th century, which was an important feature in the kingdom of Mercia from the outset. Little is known of its founder and first abbot, Sexwulf, though he was himself an important figure, and later became bishop of Mercia. Medeshamstede soon acquired a string of daughter churches, and was a centre for an Anglo-Saxon sculptural style.
Nothing is known of Medeshamstede's history from the later 9th century, when it is reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 864 to have been destroyed by Vikings and the Abbot and Monks murdered by them, until the later 10th century, when it was restored as a Benedictine abbey by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, during a period of monastic reform. Through aspects of this restoration, Medeshamstede soon came to be known as "Peterborough Abbey".
The name "Medeshamstede"
The name has been interpreted by a place-name authority as "homestead belonging to Mede".An alternative description is 'Medu' meaning Mead then 'Hamme' a village on a river and 'Steð' meaning a bank or sea shore, so the 'Mead village in the valley with a landing stage'
According to the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the 12th century, this name was given at the time of the foundation of a monastery there in the 7th century, owing to the presence of a spring called "Medeswæl", meaning "Medes-well". However the name is commonly held to mean "homestead in the meadows", or similar, on an assumption that "Medes-" means "meadows".
The earliest reliable occurrence of the name is in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where it is mentioned in the genitive Latinised form "Medeshamstedi", in a context dateable prior to the mid-670s. However the area had long been inhabited, for example at Flag Fen, a Bronze Age settlement a little to the east, and at the Roman town of Durobrivae, on the other side of the River Nene, and some five miles to the west. It is possible that "Medeshamstede" began as the name of an unrecorded, pre-existing Anglian settlement, at or near the site.
Another early form of this name is "Medyhæmstede", in an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon royal charter preserved at Rochester Cathedral. Also found is "Medelhamstede", in the late 10th century Ælfric of Eynsham’s account of the life of St Æthelwold of Winchester, and on a contemporary coin of King Æthelred II, where it is abbreviated to "MEĐEL". A much later development is the form "Medeshampstede", and similar variants, which presumably arose alongside similar changes, e.g. from Old English " Hamtun" to the modern "Northampton". Despite the fact that they are therefore strictly unhistorical, forms such as "Medeshampstede" are found in later, historical writings.
Locally, Anglo-Saxon records use "Medeshamstede" up to about the reign of King Æthelred II, but modern historians generally use it only to the reign of his father King Edgar, and use "Peterborough Abbey" for the monastery thereafter, until it changes to "Peterborough Cathedral" in the reign of King Henry VIII.
An important Mercian monastery
Royal foundation
Located in Mercia, near the border with East Anglia, Medeshamstede was described by Sir Frank Stenton as "one of the greatest monasteries of the Mercian kingdom". Hugh Candidus, a 12th-century monk of Peterborough who wrote a history of the abbey, described its location as:Hugh Candidus also reports that Medeshamstede was founded in the territory of the "Gyrwas", a people listed in the Tribal Hidage, which was in existence by the mid-9th century. There, the Gyrwas are divided into the North Gyrwas and the South Gyrwas: Medeshamstede was clearly founded in the territory of the North Gyrwas. Hugh Candidus explains "Gyrwas", which he describes in the present tense, as meaning people "who dwell in the fen, or hard by the fen, since a deep bog is called in the Saxon tongue Gyr": use of the present tense indicates that inhabitants of the area were still known as "Gyrwas" in Hugh Candidus' own time.
According to Bede, Medeshamstede was founded by a man named Seaxwulf, who was also its first abbot. While it is possible that Seaxwulf was a local prince, Hugh Candidus described him as a "man of great power", and a man "zealous and , and well skilled in the things of this world, and also in the affairs of the ." Historian, Dorothy Whitelock, believed that Seaxwulf had probably been educated in East Anglia, given the heathen state of Mercia prior to the mid-7th century. He was later appointed Bishop of Mercia, and his near contemporary Eddius Stephanus mentions, in his Life of St Wilfrid, "the profound respect of the bishopric which the most reverend Bishop Seaxwulf had formerly ruled".
A charter, dated 664 AD, records the gift by King Wulfhere of Mercia of "some additions" to the endowment for the monastery of Medeshamstede, already begun by his deceased brother King Peada of the Middle Angles, and by King Oswiu of Northumbria. This charter is a forgery, produced for Peterborough Abbey either in the late 11th century, or in the early 12th; but, like Hugh Candidus, clearly it reflects Peterborough tradition, and it is both accurate and historically interesting in a number of ways, including in the chronology of kings. The connection with Peada places Medeshamstede's foundation between about 653 and 656 AD.
Numerous local saints are connected to varying degrees with Medeshamstede, and many of them are Mercian royal in nature. These include:
- Guthlac, a former monk of Repton, in Derbyshire. Repton had until recently been the Mercian episcopal see, and was most likely a colony of Medeshamstede. Guthlac is a titular saint of Crowland Abbey, about seven miles north of Medeshamstede, and is generally regarded as its founder.
- Pega, whose name survives in "Peakirk", meaning "church of Pega", about five miles north of Medeshamstede. She was a sister of Guthlac.
- Cyneburh and Cyneswith, sisters of King Peada. Cyneburh founded a nunnery at Castor, four miles west of Medeshamstede, and Cyneswith succeeded her as abbess there. It seems that both sisters had been married into foreign Anglo-Saxon royalty, in Northumbria and East Anglia, and perhaps Medeshamstede and Castor then formed a double monastery for men and women, a feature of contemporary monasticism. Cyneburh is the titular saint of the parish church of Castor, as "St Kyneburgha".
- Tibba, who is believed to have been a recluse at Ryhall, about twelve miles north west of Medeshamstede, as well as another relative of King Peada.
- Tancred, Torhtred, and Tova: these are believed to have lived at Thorney, about five miles north east of Medeshamstede. It seems that Thorney was formerly known as Ancarig, a name which was preserved only at Peterborough, and itself suggests the presence there of anchorites. Of these three saints, the first two were male, and the last is described as a female virgin; they are said to have been siblings, martyred during the late-9th-century Viking invasions.
- Tondberht, "prince of the Gyrwas", and husband of St Æthelthryth of Ely. He is named as an English martyr in an early source, and, though nothing further is known of him, his name alliterates suggestively with those of Tancred, Torhtred and Tova, who thus may also have been drawn from local, petty royalty.
- Tatwine, monk of Breedon, Archbishop of Canterbury, and probably mentor to Guthlac. Given his connection with Breedon, and his similarly alliterative name, he may himself have been from Medeshamstede, and would naturally have been commemorated there.
Monastic colonies
King Wulfhere's charter, and Bede's mention of Medeshamstede's foundation, place this in the period of the Christianisation of Mercia. Documents preserved at Peterborough Abbey indicate that Medeshamstede played a central role in spreading and consolidating Christianity in Mercia and elsewhere, for example through the pastoral care provided by a string of daughter churches. Apart from churches connected with the local saints mentioned above, these are held to have included, among other candidates, churches at Breedon in Leicestershire, and Bermondsey and Woking, in Surrey. Medeshamstede has also been identified as the mother church of Repton, in Derbyshire, which has been described as an 8th-century Mercian royal mausoleum. Another charter preserved at Peterborough was written at Repton in 848 AD, and concerned Breedon. This suggests that this monastic empire continued for some considerable time. However, this is the latest surviving reference to any connection between Medeshamstede and its daughter churches, and these connections probably suffered a similar fate to many of the episcopal sees of eastern England: extinguished in the later 9th century by Viking invasion.The importance of these daughter churches, and indeed that of Medeshamstede itself, is indicated by the likely relationship with royal Repton; by the consecration of the Breedon monk Tatwine as Archbishop of Canterbury in 731 AD, and his later canonisation; and by St Guthlac's history as a former monk of Repton.