ST EBBA, ABBESS, AND HER COMPANIONS, MARTYRS - 2 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 2nd of April

WELCOME!

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST EBBA, ABBESS, AND HER COMPANIONS, MARTYRS

Saint Ebba of Coldingham

In the ninth century Saint Ebba [Æbbe, Abb] governed the great monastery of Coldingham, situated in Merch, or the Marshes, a province in the shire of Berwick, which was for some time subject to the English, at other times to the Scots. 

THE LARGEST MONASTERY IN SCOTLAND

This was at that time the largest monastery in all Scotland, and had been founded by another St Ebba, who was sister to St Oswald and Oswi, kings of Northumberland. 

THEY PRESERVED THEIR CHASTITY

In the year 870, according to Matthew of Westminster, or rather in 874, according to the Scottish historians, in an incursion of the cruel Danish pirates, Hinguar and Hubba, this abbess was anxious, not for her life, but for her chastity, to preserve which she had recourse to the following stratagem: Having assembled her nuns in the Chapterhouse, after making a moving discourse to her sisters, she, with a razor, cut off her nose and upper-lip, and was courageously imitated by all the holy community. The frightful spectacle which they exhibited in this condition protected their virginity. But the infidels, enraged at their disappointment, set fire to the monastery, and these holy virgins died in the flames spotless victims to their heavenly spouse, the lover and rewarder of chaste souls. 

NOTE:

The monastery of Coldingham was burnt by John, king of England, and after it was rebuilt retained only the rank of a priory till the change of religion. A nephew of bishop Lesley, a Scottish Jesuit, tells us, in the lives of Scottish Saints, which he compiled in Latin, that he found the ruins very stately when he took a survey of them in 1610. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 🎨 The self-mutilation of Saint Ebba and her community. Plate from Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophae (1584), after murals by Niccolo Circignani in the chapel of the Venerable English College, Rome.)