(A.D. 716.)
[Inserted in Anglican Martyrology by J. Wilson, and in the
Benedictine by Hugh Menard; and Ferrarius in his Gen. Catalogue.
Authorities:--Bede and Malmesbury.]
Throughout his life, Penda, the fierce heathen king of Mercia, or the
midland counties of England, waged war with the kingdom of
Northumbria, which included Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland. But
this bloodthirsty and stubborn hatred led him to his destruction.
Oswy, son of Ethelfrid, the ravager, and grandson of Ida, the Man of
Fire, was king of Northumbria, which had been so wasted and exhausted
by the former ravages of Penda, that it could ill withstand another
attack. It was only at the last extremity, that king Oswy resolved to
engage in a final conflict with the terrible enemy who had conquered
and slain his two predecessors, Edwin and the saintly Oswald. He had
married his son and his daughter to children of Penda; and he gave him
another of his sons as a hostage. But Penda would not consent to any
durable peace. During the thirteen years that had elapsed since the
overthrow of Oswald, and the accession of Oswy, he had periodically
subjected Northumberland to frightful devastations. In vain Oswy,
driven to desperation, offered him all his jewels, ornaments, and
treasures, of which he could dispose, as a ransom for his desolated
and hopeless provinces. The arrogant and fierce octogenarian refused
everything, being resolute, as he said, to exterminate the whole
Northumbrian race, from first to last. "Well, then," said Oswy, "since
this heathen despises our gifts, let us offer them to one who will
accept them--to the Lord our God." He then made a vow to devote to God
a daughter who had just been born to him, and at the same time to give
twelve estates for the foundation of as many monasteries. After this
he marched at the head of a small army against Penda, whose troops
were, according to a Northumbrian tradition, thirty times more
numerous, and a battle was fought near the site of the present town of
Leeds, in which Penda was defeated and slain. Thus perished, at the
age of eighty, after a reign of thirty years, the conqueror and
murderer of five Anglo-Saxon kings, and the last and indefatigable
champion of paganism among the Anglo-Saxons.
Oswy faithfully kept his word. He set apart twelve estates to be
thenceforward monastic property--six in the north, and six in the
south of his double kingdom. He then took his daughter Elfleda, who
was but yet a year old, and consecrated her to God by the vow of
perpetual virginity. Her mother, the daughter of Edwin, first
Christian king of Northumbria, had been also dedicated to God from her
birth, but only by baptism, and as a token of the gratitude of a still
pagan father for the protection of the Christian's God. The daughter
of Oswy was to be the price of a yet higher gift of heaven--the
conclusive victory of his race, and of the Christian faith in his
country; the sacrifice reminds us of that of Jepthah's daughter; but
she, far from desiring to escape her vow, showed herself, during a
long life, always worthy of her heavenly Bridegroom. The king took her
from the caresses of her mother, to intrust her to the abbess Hilda of
Hartlepool, who nearly ten years before had been initiated into the
monastic life by S. Aidan.
In 658, when Elfleda was three years old, S. Hilda founded her
monastery of Streaneshalch, now called Whitby, and moved thither with
her little spiritual daughter.
Elfleda was scarcely twenty-five years of age, when S. Hilda died, and
she was called to succeed her as abbess of Whitby. She is described by
Bede as a most pious mistress of spiritual life. But like all the
Anglo-Saxon princesses whom we meet within the cloister at this epoch,
she did not cease to take a passionate interest in the affairs of her
race and her country, and to exercise that extraordinary and salutary
influence which was so willingly yielded by the Anglo-Saxon kings and
people to those princesses of their sovereign races who became the
brides of Christ.
She maintained that reverent and affectionate relation with S.
Cuthbert which had been maintained by S. Hilda.
Before he became bishop, while he lived on a desert rock near
Lindisfarne, she prevailed on him to grant her an interview in an
island on the Northumbrian coast, called then, as now, Coquet Island.
She was anxious and alarmed for her brother Egfrid, and she desired to
consult the holy Cuthbert on the affairs of the state and her family.
The hermit and the abbess went each to their meeting by sea; and when
he had answered all her questions, she threw herself at his feet, and
entreated him to tell her, by virtue of those prophetic powers, with
which he was known to be gifted, whether her brother, Egfrid, would
have a long life and reign. "I am surprised," he answered, "that a
woman well versed, like you, in the Holy Scriptures should speak to me
of length with regard to human life, which lasts no longer than a
spider's web, as the Psalmist has said. How short then must life be
for a man who has but a year to live, and has death at his door!" At
these words, she wept long; then, drying her tears, she continued,
with feminine boldness, and inquired who should be the king's
successor, since he had neither sons nor brothers. "Do not say," he
replied, "that he is without heirs; he shall have a successor whom you
will love, as you love Egfrid, as a sister." "Then tell me, I entreat
you, where this successor is." "You see," returned Cuthbert, directing
the eyes of his companion towards the archipelago of islets which dots
the Northumbrian coast around Lindisfarne, "how many isles are in the
vast ocean; it is easy for God to bring from them some one to reign
over the English." Elfleda then perceived that he spoke of a young
man, Aldfrid, supposed to be the son of her father Oswy, by an Irish
mother, and who, since his infancy, had lived as an exile at Iona,
where he gave himself up to study.
The troubles concerning S. Wilfrid which had vexed the Northumbrian
Church still prevailed. Wilfrid was still in banishment for his
persistence in introducing the Roman customs into the Keltic Church of
the north of England. The new king, Aldfrid, had brought with him from
Iona attachment to the ritual of SS. Columba and Aidan. Elfleda
inherited the prejudices of her spiritual mother, Hilda, against the
stern and inflexible innovator; but there was on their side a desire
for reconcilation with the Church of the province of Canterbury, which
was of Roman foundation, and they hoped that now Wilfrid was an aged
man, some of his harshness might have been softened.[26]
To the new king, as well as to his sister, the Abbess Elfleda,
Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury wrote, to exhort them both to lay
aside their enmity against Wilfrid, and to receive him with unreserved
kindness. They yielded, and recalled Wilfrid, but were mistaken in
supposing that age had altered his determination. He returned in 687
to excite storms throughout his diocese, and was again exiled, in 691.
Aldfrid died in 705, and the Northumbrian crown descended to a prince
named Eadwulf. Wilfrid had taken advantage of the death of Aldfrid to
return to Ripon, but was ordered to leave the country in six days. But
Eadwulf was dethroned, and a son of Aldfrid, Osred, aged eight, was
given the realm of Bernicia, the counties of Northumberland and
Durham. By means of some mysterious influence, the nature of which is
unknown, the aged exile Wilfrid, who had been expelled from the
country for fourteen years, and was to all appearance forgotten,
became, all at once, the master of the situation, and the arbiter of
events. He soon acquired a more powerful protector than the young
sovereign in the person of Earl Bertfrid, who was considered the most
powerful noble in the kingdom, and who was at the head of Osred's
party. King Eadwulf marched against the insurgents, and obliged them
to retreat to the fortress of Bamborough, where the earl, shut up in
the narrow enclosure of this fortified rock, and reduced to the last
extremity, vowed that, if God would deliver him and his charge, the
young prince and his people should bow to the Roman subjection. An
opportune desertion of Eadwulf's followers gave victory to Bertfrid,
and Eadwulf was exiled after a short reign of two months. As soon as
the royal child was placed on the throne, the Archbishop of Canterbury
made his appearance, perceiving that the time was come for reinstating
Wilfrid, and settling his affairs in a general assembly. This was held
in the open air on the banks of the Nid. Wilfrid was present, and met
there Bertfrid and the Abbess Elfleda, who had come over to his side,
and to Roman obedience. All the Northumbrians regarded her as the
consoler and best counsellor of the kingdom. The bishops and abbots
present opposed the claims of Wilfrid, and refused to accept him,
though he came armed with the authority of the Holy See. At this
point, the Abbess Elfleda interposed: in a voice which all listened to
as an utterance from heaven, she described the last illness and agony
of the king her brother, and how he had vowed to God and S. Peter to
accomplish the papal decrees which he had so vigorously rejected.
"This," she said, "is the last will of Aldfrid the king; I attest the
truth of it before Christ." Bertfrid afterwards spoke and announced
his vow. Nevertheless the three bishops would not yield, they retired
from the assembly to confer among themselves, and with Archbishop
Britwald, but above all with the sagacious Elfleda. Thanks to her, all
ended in a general reconciliation.
Shortly before his death, and during his last pastoral visitation, S.
Cuthbert went to see Elfleda in the neighbourhood of the great
monastery of Whitby, to consecrate a church which she had built there,
and to converse with her for the last time. They dined together, and
during the meal, seeing his knife drop from his trembling hand in the
abstraction of supernatural thoughts, she had a last opportunity of
admiring his prophetic intuition, and his constant care for the
salvation of souls. The fatigue of the holy bishop, who said
laughingly, "I cannot eat all day long; you must give me a little
rest"; the eagerness and pious curiosity of the young abbess, anxious
to know and do everything, who rushed up breathlessly during the
ceremony of the dedication to ask the bishop a _memento_ for a monk,
whose death she had just heard of,--all these details, says a modern
writer,[27] form a picture complete in its simplicity, upon which the
charmed mind can repose amid the savage habits and wild vicissitudes
of the struggle, then more violent than ever, between the
Northumbrians and Picts, the Saxons and the Celts.
S. Elfleda died at the age of sixty. No account of her last illness
has been transmitted to us.