m Improving links and other minor cleanup tasks using AWB
|
m Robot - Speedily moving category People from Barking to Category:People from Barking, London per CFDS.
|
||
Line 58: | Line 58: | ||
[[Category:Christian female saints of the Middle Ages]] |
[[Category:Christian female saints of the Middle Ages]] |
||
[[Category:8th-century English women]] |
[[Category:8th-century English women]] |
||
[[Category:People from Barking]] |
[[Category:People from Barking, London]] |
||
[[Category:8th-century English people]] |
[[Category:8th-century English people]] |
||
[[Category:8th-century Christian nuns]] |
[[Category:8th-century Christian nuns]] |
Hildelith of Barking, also known as HildilidorHildelitha, was an 8th-century Christian saint,[2] from Anglo-Saxon England but of foreign origin.[1]
Very little is known of her life; however, she is known to history mainly through the hagiography of the Secgan Manuscript,[3] and the Life of St Hildelith written in 1087 by the Medieval Benedictine hagiographical writer Goscelin.[4] She was abbess of the nunneryatBarkinginEngland.[5] She was also the superiortoCwenburhofWimborne prior to that saint's founding of Wimborne Abbey.
Earconwald is said to have engaged Hildelith to instruct his sister Æthelburh, abbess of the monastery which he had founded at Barking.[1] Hildilid succeeded her pupil as abbess at some date later than 692, if we accept the charter of Æthelred to Æthelburga given under that date (Kemble, Codex Dipl. i. 39).[1] According to another account it must have been after the death of Earconwald (693), who died on a visit to his sister. Florence of Worcester, however, gives her accession under 664, but again mentions it under 675 (i. 27, 33).[1]
Bede speaks of Hildilid's long rule, of her translation of the bones of saints into the church of St. Mary and of a miraculous cure of a blind man which took place in her time.[1][6]
It is not known who replaced her as the next known abbess is Wulfhild of Norway, three centuries later and just prior to the Norman Invasion. She was unique in that under her control the abbey acted as a double monastery.[7]
The date of Hildilid's death is uncertain, but Bede speaks of her long rule and says she lived to a great age.[1] She was apparently dead before the date of a 717 or 718 letter from Saint BonifacetoEadburga, Abbess of Minster that mentions Hildilid.[1] She was abbess until about 700 AD and she died about 725 AD, being buried in Barking. On the other hand, an excavation of Hartlepool Abbey in 1833 found human burials and Anglo-Saxon artefacts, several of which, in consultation with the British Archaeological Association, were identified, including Hildelith, along with two other nuns of Barking Abbey, Eadgyd and Torchtgyd.[8]
This article about a saint from England is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |