ST SEAXBURGH, ABBESS

ST SEAXBURGH, ABBESS - 6 JULY

SAINT SEAXBURGH, ABBESS

She was daughter of Anna the religious king of the East-Angles, and his devout queen Hereswide, sister to St Hilda.

SHE HAD A PIOUS EDUCATION

A pious education laid in her the foundation of that eminent sanctity for which she was most conspicuous during the whole course of her life.

SHE GOT MARRIED

She was given in marriage to Ercombert, king of Kent, a prince of excellent dispositions, which she contributed exceedingly to improve by her counsels and example.

PROMOTING VIRTUE

She had a great share in all his zealous undertakings for promoting virtue and the happiness of his people, especially in extirpating the last remains of idolatry in his dominions, and in enforcing the observance of Lent, and other precepts of the church by wholesome laws.

HUMILITY AND DEVOTION

Her virtue commanded the reverence, and her humility and devotion raised the admiration of all her subjects; and her goodness and unbounded charity gained her the love of all, especially the poor.

SHE BEGAN TO FOUND A MONASTERY IN THE ISLE OF SHEPEY

She had a longing desire to consecrate herself wholly to God in religious retirement; and that others at least might attend the divine service for her night and day without impediment, she began in her husband’s lifetime to found a monastery of holy virgins in the isle of Shepey, on the coast of Kent, which she finished after his death in 664, whilst her son Egbert sat on the throne.

SHE RETIRED TO ELY

Here she assembled seventy-four nuns, but hearing of the great sanctity of St Etheldreda at Ely, and being desirous to live in greater obscurity, and to be more at liberty to employ all her thoughts on heaven, she left the kingdom of Kent, and retired to Ely before the year 679, in which she was chosen to succeed her sister St Etheldreda, or Audrey, in the government of that house.

SHE PASSED IN A GOOD OLD AGE

Sixteen years after she caused the body of that saint to be taken up; and passed herself to bliss in a good old age, on July 6, towards the end of the seventh century.

THE MONASTERY WAS DESTROYED AND REBUILT

Her monastery in Shepey, called Le Mynstre in Shepey, was destroyed by the Danes, but rebuilt in 1130, and consecrated by William, archbishop of Canterbury, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Seaxburgh; and it subsisted in the hands of Benedictine nuns till the dissolution of abbeys.

HER RELICS WERE MOVED TO LEICESTER

St Ermenilda, daughter of king Ercumbert and St Seaxburgh, was married to Wulpher, king of Mercia, but after his death retired to Ely, near her mother and her two aunts St Audrey and Withburge, three daughters of king Anna. St Wereburgh, daughter of St Ermenilda and king Wulpher, was a nun at Hearburgh, (which seems to have been near Stanford or Croyland.) Her relics were venerated at Hearburgh, till in the ninth century they were removed to Leicester.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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