For my latest commission I need to do a bit of research to try and identify who the saint actually is whose icon I am trying to paint. Sometimes saints really are lost to us in all but name, but where possible it is important to try and be as tuned in as possible to the saint as a living person whose commitment to Christ was lived out with such luminosity. I thought people might find it interesting and iconographers in particular might find it helpful to see how you can sometimes mine information in order to dig a saint out of historical obscurity in order to shine more brightly among the acclaimed saints in a church.

The commission is for an icon of St Editha for the Catholic Church in the centre of Tamworth in Staffordshire. The ancient Anglican church in Tamworth is dedicated to her, but it is not clearly identifiable which St Editha this is.

Early Sources:

The earliest mention associating St Editha with TAMWORTH is the celebration of a Mass in her honour there in the 9th century. (Christine Smith, online article).

St Editha is mentioned as St. EALDGYTH in the SECGAN. This an 11th century Anglo- Saxon list of where English saints are known to be buried, and hence where their relics are to be found and venerated. Her relics are listed as being buried at POLESWORTH on the River ‘Oncer’ (now ‘Anker’). All of the identifiable saints on this list date to no later than the 9th century, so this is evidence to suggest that the St Editha of Polesworth is an early Anglo-Saxon saint.

But why would St Editha of Polesworth be the same as St Editha of Tamworth?

Geography:

Though Polesworth is in Warwickshire, and Tamworth in Staffordshire, they are actually neighbouring settlements . Polesworth is a neighbouring village to Tamworth, and was under the same feudal lord in the Norman period. Thus we can safely associate St Editha of Polesworth with Tamworth as being part of the same feudal district.

Polesworth was, it seems, a monastic foundation that was suppressed by the feudal Lord Marmion in the 12th century. He was also the Lord of neighbouring Tamworth castle. According to legend St. Editha, a former abbess of the monastery, appeared in a dream to remonstrate with him over the eviction of her nuns.

Conchubran of Ireland and Abbot Geoffrey of Burton

The main hagiographical source for her is in the “Life & Miracles of St Modwenna ” by Geoffrey, Abbot of nearby Burford in Satffordshire, 1114-50AD, the monastery where St Modwenna's relics were kept. When he took over the abbey he was concerned to compile a definitive text outlining her life, and apart from oral sources which he considered reliable, there was also one ancient text in which Abbot Geoffrey was certain St Modwenna was mentioned.

This was a "Life of St Monenna" ( sic ), an Irish noblewoman, abbess and saint, by Conchubran, an Irish monk. Geoffrey was somewhat critical of this source - “the style was displeasing and some parts of the book were, so to speak, a disorderly jumble” but he believed that the St Eadgyth who was a companion of St Monenna during her travels in England and on pilgrimage to Rome, was the same as his own St. Eadgyth (Editha) of Polesworth.

As the good abbot acknowledges he supplemented and altered Conchubran’s Life in the light of other sources and his own conjecture, thereby seeking to make sense of what even for him seems to have been places and events difficult to identify. As a result he makes some errors which make it very confusing for us, but with a little attention to detail, and allowing that to challenge the bigger picture, I think we can find a reasonable answer as to who this St Editha was.

The Tamworth Legend.

This is the legend that comes to us from Conchubran via elaborations by Abbot Geoffrey, which then becomes the source from which a series of Medieval compositions are subsequently derived, all of which make changes that then make it difficult to identify who is whom, and who did what and to locate that with any historical certainty. So, perhaps its best to outline the Legend, and then examine what seems to be reasonable historically to deduce from it.

At its core is Conchubran's story of how one nun, Ite (Editha), living with another, Osid (Osgyth), sent her to take a book to a third nun, Monenna (Modwenna), living a little distance from them. On the way she falls into a river and drowns. Three days later, after the saints had prayed, she was returned to them healed, and with the book intact.

Modwenna (I will use Geoffrey's form of the name from now on to save confusion) had previously healed an English king’s son, called Alfredus, when he visited her in Ireland. When she had to flee her own country, she came to the court of Alfredus’s father at Streneshalen seeking help. In gratitude the king allotted her a parcel of land on the edge of the Forest of Arderne where she founded her monastic cell with her companion Athea. The king entrusts his sister (at this stage an unnamed princess we later learn is called Ite (or ‘Ita’ or ‘Eda’, Conchubran alters the spelling throughout his text, but they are phonetically close enough to be one and the same as Editha) to her care and she enters as a novice.

Modwenna subsequently returns to Ireland leaving the others at Streneshalen, but when she returns on her way to Rome she takes them with her. On their return she stays with them for three years before she takes these two plus Ite’s sister Osid to a new location. Here they build two small enclosures with a chapel. Ite and Osid stay in one, Modwenna and Athea in the other. It is here that the miracle at the river occurs, the only narrated miracle of Conchubran’s compilation.

According to the legend Edith sends Osid with a book for Modwenna who is living a little distance away. On the way she falls into the swollen river and drowns. Three days later, after the prayers of the two saints, Osid rises from the dead, unharmed and with her book intact.

Subsequently the group expands to five with Lazar, and they build a church dedicated to St Andrew on a small island called ‘Andreseie’ which is opposite Burton in the middle of the River Trent. Ite and Osid then return to their original foundation.

Fragments of a holy life

The above narrative hangs together quite well, but in doing so a lot of additional information has been excluded which appears in later sources as well as in Abbot Geoffrey and Conchubran’s narratives. Those elements are those which try to identify these people with known personages of the times.

The conundrum that puzzled these chroniclers was which king was St Editha’s father. That her nephew was called ‘Alfredus’ immediately suggested King Alfred the Great. But it is no more than an assumption, with nothing in the text to remotely suggest that. Obviously it gives prestige to have the saint associated with such a giant of English history, but it has nothing more to commend it than that, and so it is best to jettison that notion at the outset.

Others suggested that she was the daughter of Edward the Elder, sister of King Aethelstan who had his court nearby in Tamworth, which they identified as the mysterious Streneshalen, that Conchubran said was where the king had a ‘villa’. His sister, who was unnamed in the early records, was married briefly to Sihtic, King of Dublin and York, and being quickly widowed she retired to a monastery, which realistically could well have been the foundation at Polworth given its proximity to the royal court at Tamworth.

However, a villa is hardly a palace, and suggests a ‘home away from home’ at a lesser but nonetheless significant centre. Geoffrey guessed at this being Polesworth, while others later still guess at Tolworth. However, Streanæshealh was the old name for Whitby , where St Hilda had her prestigious monastery. Given allowances for phonetical spellings, this would make sense as the narrative records that Modwenna and her companion Athea stay there for three years on her way back from a pilgrimage to Rome, more reasonable if it was a centre of spiritual rather than just temporal power. However, it was also closely associated with royalty, many of the nuns coming from noble families, as was its most famous abbess Hilda. Whitby is a much more likely location both because of the close similarity in the sound of the name, and that it was a place closely associated with royal power. It was ruined by the Vikings by 870AD and thus would push our characters back again towards the golden age of the evangelisation of the North, the time of Chad and Wilfrid and of Hilda in the 7th and 8th centuries.

In any case, the identifications with Aethelstan are late, no earlier than the 12th century, and there is one very substantial problem – Aethelstan was king in the 10th century, which would be precluded by the dates from the Secgan and the votive Mass mentioned above, as well as making any rendezvous with the Irish Saint Modwenna impossible as she dates from the 7th century. So, it seems best to also put that assumption to one side.

So what does seem verifiable?

Examining the story as retold by Conchubran, Geoffrey saw clear typographical evidence of a match between this 7th century saint and the saint whose relics were held in his monastery in Burton, which still holds up to examination today.

• The King gives St Modwenna land at the edge of an ‘Arderne Forest’. Polesworth is on the edge of The Forest of Arden, as it was known in Geoffrey’s time. A forest was a ‘wild place’ and so associated with those doing battle with the devil in the desert after the example of Christ, which applies to one of the core aspirations of monastics. Irish monasticism was known for its love of nature and its incredible dedication to the most arduous demands of extreme monastic life. The narrative speaks of St Modwenna and a very few companions, and when the number increases to five they separate into two groups even if located in close proximity, suggesting that these were not coenobites but anchorites seeking to live in isolation. In time many such holy mothers attracted a number of disciples and these formed regular monasteries. This has been a regular pattern since the very earliest times.

• The river at Polesworth is called the River Anker, in Geoffrey’s time the 'Anchora’ or ‘Nunnepool’. ‘Anchorite’ is the name for a hermit, ‘nunne’ is obvious in its monastic association. It suggests that something of significance took place for the river to be named after the nuns or anchorites who lived there.

• The nuns build a church at ‘Scalecliff’ near Burford which Geoffrey translates as Mons Calvus, today known as Scalpcliff opposite Bourton.

• They build another chapel on the island which Conchubran calls ‘Andreseie’. In Geoffrey’s time there was an island in the middle of the River Trent called ‘Andressey’.

So, the account seems to be rooted in actual history rather than religious imagination, located with real places that weren't all known to the writers. So, working on that assumption, we can tentatively push to assume that the fundamentals of the story about St Modwenna correct, that she is an Irish saint, and of royal stock, an anchoress, maybe having founded a number of small communities around her in Ireland. There seems to have been a pattern of such royal females in Ireland around this time, and we know from St Bede and other Chroniclers that it was a practice among English royal families too.

Northumberland is where Whitby, Streanæshealh, is found and the royal family of the 7th century followed the same pattern in this as their Irish kin. This was a place of intense spiritual life and culture, a place where secular and religious converged at the Synod of Whitby, and where royal princesses were nuns and rose to become abbesses and saints. It was a place of coming and going from far across Europe, and the meeting point between Irish and Continental Christianity.

The description of Modwenna as a royal monastic on pilgrimage to Rome stopping off at such a place for a significant period of time would make perfect sense. Her missions to Polesworth and Burford and the attempts to establish small hermitages would also fit in with the expansion of monastic missions from these spiritual centers across the north of England, spearheaded by such figures and Chad and Wilfrid. It was exactly what the spiritually fervent were doing and encouraged to do by the Church.

However, can we find any historically verifiable people who can help turn a possible to a probable?

What for example of the figure named Alfred, which the medieval scholars were so quick to assume was the great Alfredus from two centuries after St Modwenna? There is another Alfred(Ealhfrith), the son of Oswy. His mother was an Irish princess, and he spent quite a time in exile in the Dal Riata which spanned western Scotland and north east Ireland. It would explain why this young man or boy was in Ireland and in need of the help of St Modwenna, and why he was so deeply devout and steeped in the ways of the Irish Church as Bede tells us he was. It would also explain why she would, in turn, flee to that kingdom when in danger herself.

It was also Oswy who called the Synod at Whitby in part at the instigation of Alfred, which establishes a close royal association with Streanæshealh which is an essential element in the Conchubran story. In fact Oswy 's daughter was a nun there and rose to become both the abbess and a saint. It would therefore be far from fanciful to suggest that another close, female member of that royal family would be both inspired by and entrusted to this saintly and courageous Irish cousin. And much of the energy for which stemmed from Whitby was an essential impetus is the spread of monastic Christianity across the north.

I don't think we can push much further than this in identifying exactly which member of the Northumbrian royal family Editha is, but I think it at least gives us some clues as to the sort of person she was, her background and the sort of Christian life she led. She was not a member of vast community but of a small semi-hermit community, inspired by and trained in the harsh asceticism of the Irish Church, living in demanding conditions and in a time of uncertainty, part of the deeper political upheavals between Northumbria where she was born and the Kingdom of Mercia to which she came as a missionary. She was a pilgrim to Rome, with the fervour to endure the arduous trials of such a journey. She was a scholar, for there were books in her community however small it might be, and this would not be surprising given that she lived just as the Golden Age of Northumbrian culture was beginning. She was a person of sufficient faith that miracles were associated with her in her lifetime, and inspired other women to join her over time so as to establish a community strong enough to endure into the Norman age. She was also a humble woman, who has not incised her name in the annals of history other than in a modest and hidden way, but bore witness in her own corner of the Kingdom enough that her memory lived on among her neighbours for centuries to come. She was a saint and the friend and the companion of saints, born into the nobility but choosing to life in a harsh and diminished state, a woman of faith in a time when paganism was in retreat and the light of the Gospel was reaching out powerfully into every corner of our country, re-shaping its culture and uniting the nation with a new vision about what it meant to be human made in the image and likeness of God, living on the edge of eternity.