(END OF 7TH CENT.)
[Anglican Martyrology, Molanus, and Saussaye. It is uncertain which
of her two festivals, Feb. 20th or July 13th, is the day of her
death, and which the day of her translation. In the first edition of
Wilson's Anglican Martyrology, Feb. 20th is given as the day of her
death; in the second edition as that of her translation; and he is
probably right, for he follows in this William Thorne's Chronicle.]
Domneva, or Ermenberga, the wife of Merewald, son of Penda, King of
Mercia, had by him three daughters and a son, who were all reckoned by
our ancestors among the saints. These were Milburgh, Mildred,
Mildgitha, and Mervin. King Egbert having built and endowed the
nunnery of Minster, in the isle of Thanet, Domneva became its first
abbess, and the house was soon occupied by seventy nuns. But she soon
gave up the government to her daughter Mildred, whom she had sent to
France, to Chelles, to receive a literary and religious education. The
Abbess of Chelles, far from encouraging the young princess to embrace
monastic life, employed every kind of threat and ill-usage to compel
her to marry one of her relations. But Mildred resisted victoriously.
She returned to England to govern the abbey founded by her mother, and
to give an example of all monastic virtues to her seventy companions.
Very few details of her life have been preserved, which makes the
extraordinary and prolonged popularity which has attached to her name,
her relics, and everything belonging to her, all the more wonderful.
Her popularity eclipsed that of S. Augustine, even in the district
which he first won to the faith, and to such a point that the rock
which had received the mark of his first footsteps, and which lies a
little east of Minster, took and retained, up to the last century, the
name of S. Mildred's Rock.