Person:Edith of Wilton (1)

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Edith of Wilton (c. 961 – 16 September 984) was an English nun, saint, and the only daughter of Edgar the Peaceful, king of England (r. 959–975) and Saint Wulfthryth, who later became abbess of Wilton Abbey. Edgar most likely abducted Wulfthryth from Wilton; when Edith was an infant, Wulfthryth brought her back to the convent, where they both spent the rest of their lives. Like her mother, Edith was educated at Wilton; she chose to enter the religious life from the age of two, although there is some controversy regarding if she was a nun or a secular member of the Wilton community. Goscelin completed her hagiography in c. 1080; he reports that Edith "always dressed magnificantly" because her status as a member of the royal family obligated her to fulfill certain roles to ensure the continued royal patronage of the Wilton community. Goscelin's main sources for his Vita were the oral testimony of the Wilton nuns and their abbess, as well as "from existing books", and it was dedicated to Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Edith was 15, her father offered her the position of abbess of three convents, which she refused. In 978, after the murder of her step-brother Edward the Martyr, she might have been offered the English throne, which she also refused.

In 984, Edith built a chapel at Wilton Abbey dedicated to St Denys. The chapel was dedicated by the archbishop, St Dunstan, who foretold her immanent death and that the thumb on her right hand would remain uncorrupted. She died three weeks later, at the age of 23, on September 16, 984 and as she instructed, was buried at the chapel she built. Dunstan presided at her translation, which occurred on November 3, 987; her thumb, as Dunstan had foretold, had not decomposed.

Few miracles were performed to support Edith's sainthood and her cult did not become popular and widespread for 13 years after her death. Many of the miracles that occurred later focused on the protection of Edith's relics and the property owned by the Wilton community, often to retaliate, at time violently, against those who wanted to take or steal them. The support of Edith's elevation by both secular and religious authorities to sainthood was most likely political, in order to establish the legitimacy of their power and to connect themselves to King Edgar's children.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Edith of Wilton, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
2.   Eadgyth (?), in Lundy, Darryl. The Peerage: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe.
3. ↑ EADGIFU, in Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families.
4. ↑ Eadgar, in Baldwin, Stewart, and Todd Farmerie. The Henry Project (King Henry II ): Ancestors of King Henry II.
5.   Eadgyth 4 (Female), in The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England.
6. ↑ Searle, William George. Anglo-Saxon bishops, kings and nobles, the succession of the bishops and the pedigrees of the kings and nobles. (Cambridge: University Press in Cambridge, 1899)
   p. 347.