Saint Æthelthryth

Æthelthryth (or Æðelþryð or Æþelðryþe; 4 March 636 – 23 June 679) was an East Anglian princess, a Fenland and Northumbrian queen and Abbess of Ely. She is an Anglo-Saxon saint, and is also known as Etheldreda or Audrey, especially in religious contexts. She was a daughter of Anna, King of East Anglia, and her siblings were Wendreda and Seaxburh of Ely, both of whom eventually retired from secular life and founded abbeys. Æthelthryth was "in turns, princess, wife, queen, nun and abbess, enjoying every possible position of power a woman could claim in early Anglo-Saxon England". There are a number of accounts of Æthelthryth's life in Latin, Old English, Old French, and Middle English. According to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, "more medieval vernacular lives [about Æthelthryth] were composed in England than any other native female saint". Æthelthryth appears in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Ælfric's Lives of Saints, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin's Lives of Female Saints, the Liber Eliensis, Marie de France's La vie seinte Audree, the South English Legendary, and a Middle English life in BL Cotton Faustina B.iii, among others. The earliest account for Æthelthryth's life comes in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book iv.19, in which Bede calls her 'the virgin mother of many virgins'. Æthelthryth was probably born in Exning, near Newmarket in Suffolk. She was one of the four saintly daughters of Anna of East Anglia, including Wendreda and Seaxburh of Ely, all of whom retired from secular life and founded abbeys. Æthelthryth made an early first marriage in around 652 to Tondberct, chief or prince of the South Gyrwe. Throughout the marriage, she maintained her vow of perpetual virginity that she had made. Upon Tondberct's death in 655, she retired to the Isle of Ely, which she had received from Tondberct as a morning gift. Æthelthryth was remarried for political reasons in 660, this time to Ecgfrith of Northumbria, who was fourteen or fifteen at the time.