St. Etheldreda, Foundress of the Ely Monastery

St. Etheldreda was one of the pious daughters of St. Anna who raised several pious daughters, many of whom became nuns including Ethelburga, Sexburga, Withburga. Etheldreda, who is also known as Audrey, had the desire to form a monastery and was able to always live in virginity but was forced into marriage to the ealdorman Tombert, prince of the Girvii in 652. It was through Tombert though that she would acquire the settlement in East Anglia of Ely. The marriage lasted three short years before Tombert's reposal. Either from indifference or respect to her desire for virginity, Tombert allowed her to remain a virgin. Upon his death, Etheldreda was committed to settling as a nun but political tensions would once again force her into an unwanted marriage.

In order to secure an alliance for the House of Uffings with the Kingdom of Northumbria against the aggression of the Mercians, Etheldreda was married to Egfrid, the son of St. Enfleda. She was 30 by now and he was estimated to be about half her age. As a younger child, she had a great influence over him and he looked to her as a learned woman, permitting her to keep monastic practices in his courts as he learned from her religious instruction. Etheldreda was deeply inspired by the monks and nuns and made donations to the monasteries, one of those was St. Cuthbert, of whom she was a contemporary.

After winning many battles against the Mercians though, and aging, the satisfaction that the young king Egfrid had once gained from her religious instruction was to no avail. He began to be inspired by pride, sought an heir, and desired after her flesh. Etheldreda was still desirous to preserve her virginity so she ran from him. He consulted with his brother Wilfrid to convince her that her duty to her husband was her duty to God. But Wilfrid, rather than surrendering Etheldreda to something that she had never desired in her life, convinced Etheldreda instead to abandon her throne and become a nun. Etheldreda took the advice of Wilfrid. She was then tonsured a nun by the same St. Wilfrid, a year later, she was given permission to return to her estate at Ely. There, using the estate of her late husband, Tombert, she built and founded the Ely Monastery, becoming its first Abbess. She ruled the monastery for seven years and served as an example of piety to her nuns. She governed this monastery until she reposed in 679.

In 679, she developed an illness of the tonsils, a condition known as "quinsy" and she attributed this illness as a punishment from God for her former love of fine clothes and jewels. She would never recover from this illness and would repose soon afterward, on June 23. As the Venerable Bede records in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the remains would be dug up 15 years after her death as ordered by her sister and her successor as Abbess, St. Sexburga. The remains would be found in an incorrupt state. As recorded by Bede,

The body of the holy virgin and spouse of Christ, when her grave was opened, being brought into sight, was found as free from corruption as if she had died and been buried on that very day; as the aforesaid Bishop Wilfrid, and many others that know it, can testify. But the physician, Cynefrid, who was present at her death, and when she was taken up out of the grave, was wont of more certain knowledge to relate, that in her sickness she had a very great swelling under her jaw. “And I was ordered,” said he, “to lay open that swelling, to let out the noxious matter in it, which I did, and she seemed to be somewhat more easy for two days, so that many thought she might recover from her distemper; but the third day the former pains returning, she was soon snatched out of the world, and exchanged all pain and death for everlasting life and health. And when so many years after her bones were to be taken out of the grave, a pavilion being spread over it, all the congregation of brothers were on the one side and of sisters on the other, standing about it singing, and the abbess, with a few, being gone to take up and wash the bones, on a sudden we heard the abbess within loudly cry out, ‘Glory be to the name of the Lord.’ Not long after they called me in, opening the door of the pavilion, where I found the body of the holy virgin taken out of the grave and laid on a bed, as if it had been asleep; then taking off the veil from the face, they also showed the incision which I had made, healed up; so that, to my great astonishment, instead of the open gaping wound with which she had been buried, there then appeared only an extraordinarily slender scar. (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bk. IV, ch. XIX)

St. Ethledreda is one of the most popular saints in English history. Incorrupt remains, faithfulness to her virginity and her dedication to God even in the midst of an abusive relationship with her second husband, and her founding of the Ely Monastery. Tragically, the Danes would destroy the monastery she founded in one of their campaigns against the Anglos in the ninth century but it would be fully restored in the year 970, along with her own tomb and that of the other Abesses. More reading on St. Etheldreda can be found in the following:

Agnes B.C. Dunbar, Dictionary of Saintly Women

Joan Carroll Cruz, The Incorruptibles

Protopresbyter John Thornton, Pious Kings and Right-Believing Queens: An Encyclopedia of the Royal and Imperial Saints of the Orthodox Church

St. Etheldreda, pray for us!