Wulfhilda of Barking
Wulfhilda, also known as Wulfhild and Wulfreda among several other names (c. 940-c. 1000) was an Anglo-Saxon abbess and a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Life[]
Wulfhilda was born in 940. The daughter of a Wessex nobleman named Wulfhelm, she was raised and educated by the Benedictine nuns of Wilton Abbey and joined their community when she became of age. Around 970, she was appointed as abbess of Barking Abbey by Edgar the Peaceful.[1] Under Wulfhilda's leadership, the monastery flourished and was greatly expanded.[2] Wulfhilda herself donated 20 villages to the abbey and established another monastery at Horton in Kent.[3]
According to Goscelin Saint-Bertin, the nuns at Barking laid complaints against their abbess Wulfhilda, and the English queen Ælfthryth deposed her, only to reinstate her twenty years later. The demotion might have been the result of jealousy as Ælfthryth's husband Edgar may have had romantic interest in Wulfhilda.[4]
She died around 1000 and was buried at the abbey with two other saints, Hildelith and Ethelberga.[4]
References[]
- ^ Monks of Ramsgate. "Wulfilda". Book of Saints 1921. CatholicSaints.Info. 9 December 2016
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- ^ Butler, Alban (December 1, 1956). Lives of the Saints (New Full ed.). St John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota: Christian Classics. p. 179. ISBN 0-8146-2385-9.
- ^ Dunbar, Agnes (1904). A Dictionary of Saintly Women. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
- ^ a b Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents. DS Brewer. 2012. ISBN 9781843842958.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the External links[]
- Wulfhild 2 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
- Yorke, Barbara (2004). "Wulfhild [St Wulfhild] (d. after 996)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/49417. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
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- 940 births
- 1000 deaths
- Barking, London
- 10th-century English people
- 10th-century Christian saints
- Anglo-Saxon saints
- 10th-century English women
- Female saints of medieval England
- Benedictine abbesses
- Benedictine saints
- Anglo-Saxon Benedictines
- 10th-century Christian nuns
- Saint stubs