St Wærburh: The Multiple Identities of a Regional Saint

Abstract

The saint’s cult discussed in this chapter originated in Mercia but was promoted over a wide area, including Chester and, eventually, a monastery which as been described as “to all intents and purposes a West Saxon institution.”1 As such it forms a particularly fitting subject for a volume in honour of Barbara Yorke who has written so extensively and influentially about Anglo-Saxon Wessex in particular and the royal women of Anglo-Saxon England as a whole. This chapter has had an extremely long gestation—I first wrote about St Wærburh in the early 1980s—and it is with great pleasure that I finally present it here to a scholar whose work has made us all rethink our views about Anglo-Saxon kingship and the religious communities and cults that it engendered. The traditions relating to St Wærburh and her relics are well-known. She was the daughter of King Wulfhere of Mercia (657–75) and his wife Eormenhild, and through her mother was closely connected with both the Kentish and East Anglian royal families. She early showed a disposition towards the religious life, and entered the monastery of Ely where her great aunt Æthelthryth was abbess. She remained for some time at Ely, where according to some sources she succeeded her grandmother Seaxburh and her mother Eormenhild as abbess, but was recalled to Mercia by her uncle, King Æthelred, Wulfhere’s brother and successor (675–704), and given authority over the nunneries of his kingdom. She performed miracles while living on her father’s estate at Weedon (Northants) and died about 700 in her monastery of Triccingham (almost certainly Threekingham, Lincs.). After some dissension, she was buried in accordance with her wishes in the monastery of Hanbury, near Repton (Staffs.), where nine years later, in recognition of her sanctity, her remains were elevated at the command of her cousin, the Mercian king Ceolred (709–16), and were found to be miraculously preserved and uncorrupted. Her relics remained enshrined at Hanbury until the time of the Danish invasions, shortly after which