Today is the feast day of Saint Etheldreda, also known as Ethelthryth (and variations on that name), an Anglo-Saxon saint. You say you've never heard of her? Neither had I, until this morning. It's a reason I stay on various social media sites, because I pick up nuggets that enrich me. For clarity, I'm only on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not adding more because I don't need the distractions.
A Twitter tweet took me to this blog post, which gives rich information about Saint Etheldreda. In some ways, it's a familiar story: a medieval woman of some privilege, who found monastic life more appealing than married life. That's a gross oversimplification of course. She almost certainly had deep spiritual yearnings that led her to monastic life.
My experience in Church History I class showed me how much I view ancient life through my own modern lens and how much of a problem that can be. I hear about Etheldreda leaving her second husband with two other women and founding a monastery, and I assume she was escaping a bad marriage. Perhaps it was a bad marriage or perhaps a political marriage that she wanted no part of. Perhaps it was a turning to God, a fulfillment of a calling that she had sensed before she was ever married: she took a vow of chastity before her first marriage, and her first husband respected that vow. According to a Wikipedia article, her second husband wanted to have his conjugal rights, and that's why she fled.
Flee she did, and she founded a religious order which flourished for several generations, during times of great turmoil, like the Norman invasion. In the best of times, it's no small thing, to create a religious order. She built a monastery on a cold northern sea, in a land under assault by fierce invaders, in a time where she was a woman of some wealth, but not much in the way of rights.
I'm glad to know about her.
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