St. Etheldreda and the Art of Compromise

St. Etheldreda (636–679) was a queen and a nun in England, 1500 years ago.

Although her life looks completely dissimilar to modern lives, she faced an all too familiar choice. She had a vision for the person that she wanted to be. But those around her had a different vision.

Should she stand firm and be true to herself? Or should she give in to the wishes of others?

How she chose to answer that question made her the interesting and thought-provoking saint that she is.

Etheldreda and Her Family

In early medieval times, England was divided into many small kingdoms. Etheldreda’s parents ruled the kingdom of East Anglia, which was just above modern-day London (and Essex).

   Ancient England (Image from Wikipedia)

We know very little about Etheldreda’s family, other than that they took their Christian faith very seriously. Her parents and siblings are all venerated as saints.

We don’t know how many siblings Etheldreda had. It was probably three or four, including an older brother and an older sister.

Etheldreda’s older sister was married to the powerful King of Kent, to form an alliance. This was essential to the security of the kingdom, as central England was dominated by a warmongering pagan, King Penda (d. 655) of Mercia.

With the security of the kingdom assured, Etheldreda felt free to pursue her heart. She wanted to be a nun, and so she made a vow of virginity in her early teens.

Etheldreda’s Problem

In 652, when Etheldreda was 16, her father told her that he wanted her to marry a neighboring prince, Tondberht. The prince ruled an area between East Anglia and Mercia, where the pagan King Penda continued to be a military threat.

The marriage was important for security reasons. So, Etheldreda was placed under considerable pressure to agree. People could admire her religious aspirations, but they told her to be reasonable and do what was best for everyone else.

Etheldreda responded with a clever compromise. As the marriage was to ensure a military alliance, she agreed to marry but only on condition that she could remain true to her vow, and thus not consummate the marriage.

On the surface this looks like a ridiculous compromise. One of the priorities of any ruler is always heirs to continue the family line. But it seems that Prince Tondberht was as worried by the Pagan King Penda as Etheldreda’s father. The threat of annihilation today was far greater than worries about heirs tomorrow. So he agreed to the marriage conditions.

This meant that Etheldreda found herself married in 652, at the age of 16. The need for the marriage alliance was quickly shown when King Penda invaded in 654. Its ineffectiveness was also shown as her husband, father and older brother were all killed in battle.

Political Turmoil

Finding herself a widow at the age of 18, Etheldreda was in considerable danger. As a potential claimant to the throne of East Anglia, King Penda’s armies wanted to capture her.

She fled into the Fen marshes, to the Isle of Ely (which had been her husband’s wedding gift to her). The isle lies 20 miles north of the modern City of Cambridge and at the time it could only be approached by secret paths across impenetrable bogs.

Ancient Map of East Anglia (Image from Wikipedia)

An uncle became the new King of East Anglia, chosen by the conquering King Penda.

Etheldreda, however, continued living on the Isle of Ely, content to be forgotten by the world. She lived a life of prayer and fasting, giving herself entirely to her vision of a religious life focused on God.

We don’t know why Etheldreda didn’t join a convent. It may have been because her potential claim to the throne left a threat of assassination hanging over her head.

A Marriage Proposal

In 660, when Etheldreda was 24, an unexpected marriage proposal arrived.

By this time Etheldreda was getting old for a wife. East Anglia was also relatively weak, so she had few political advantages to recommend her.

Yet, there was something to her. She was a beautiful young woman who had enjoyed the trappings of royalty. On her death bed she referred to a sore under her chin as something that she “deserved,” because of all the golden necklaces she had enjoyed wearing when she was a princess. If we recast the story in modern concepts, she would be lamenting a youthful obsession with designer clothes.

We also know that she was personable. She gathered a band of devoted followers to live with her on an inhospitable isle, eating eels in a stinking bog for six years.

And she had a heroic image. She had successfully frustrated the evil King Penda when she fled for her life to the Isle of Ely. Throwing away her claim to a throne also gave her a reputation for self-sacrificing holiness.

With these attributes it is not surprising that the Kingdom of Northumbria wanted her as a wife for their heir to the throne.

By this time Northumbria had defeated King Penda of Mercia. It was the new superpower in the region, so it did not need a marriage with political advantages. It wanted a marriage with PR advantages and Etheldreda’s character put her firmly in their sights.

Queen of Northumbria

The marriage “offer” put Etheldreda in an impossible situation. She could not refuse the marriage without the risk of turning the rising superpower against her own kingdom of East Anglia.

So, Etheldreda tried to find a way to make Northumbria withdraw the marriage offer, without her having to cause offence by declining it. She said that she had made a vow and could only marry the 15-year-old Prince Ecgfrith if she could keep her vow of virginity.

Astonishingly Northumbria accepted the condition. We can only imagine that Etheldreda’s image made her such a celebrity “trophy” that they would agree to almost anything just to secure her.

Perhaps they assumed that once she was a queen she would swoon over her rich husband and plead to bear heirs? Or maybe they just assumed they could browbeat her into changing her mind?

Whatever the thinking, the marriage took place in 660. At first everything went well. Northumbria’s prestige as a Christian nation rose to new heights as the saintly queen ran her court like a convent.

But the inevitable car crash arrived. Ten years into the marriage, Ecgfrith became King. He needed an heir for political stability. Etheldreda wanted him to honor the agreed marriage condition. They began to argue, and things became fraught. Upset by the deteriorating situation, Etheldreda asked to leave and enter a convent. Ecgfrith refused.

Ecgfrith seems to have genuinely loved Etheldreda and he seems to have thought that he could bribe her into his bed. He offered her money, which she immediately gave to the poor. He offered her lands, which she immediately gave to convents. The more unattainable she was, the more alluring she became.

In 672 matters came to a head. They were twelve years into the marriage. Ecgfrith was 27 and Etheldreda was 36. We do not know exactly what happened but there are hints that Ecgfrith might have tried to use force and rape Etheldreda.

Whatever transpired, Ecgfrith unexpectedly agreed to Etheldreda becoming a nun. The suddenness of the capitulation may be a sign that he was feeling guilty about something.

Having secured Ecgfrith’s consent, Etheldreda quickly left. She went to a local convent and made her religious vows. She had finally achieved her dream of becoming a nun.

But Ecgfrith repented of his decision. Within a few months he sent soldiers to bring Etheldreda back. Tipped off in advance, she fled to the only safe place she had ever known: the Isle of Ely.

Etheldreda’s Convent and Shrine

When Etheldreda arrived back at her isle in 672, she was now a properly professed nun. She set about establishing a formal “double monastery” for men and women.

Finally able to live the life she had dreamed of from her earliest teens, Etheldreda gave herself to a life of quiet prayer and charity towards her religious sisters.

A colorful little detail illustrates how she behaved as abbess. When the nuns bathed, they used a small bath, sharing the water after each other. Rather than going first as her status allowed, Etheldreda always went last so that she was the individual who had to endure the coldest and dirtiest bath water. This was so surprising to her contemporaries that it is one of the few details about her which they noted down and passed on.

Five years into her religious life, Etheldreda succumbed to an outbreak of plague and died at the age of 43.

Her reputation for holiness was cemented when her grave was opened seventeen years after her death and her body was found to be perfectly preserved (incorrupt).

Etheldreda’s cult was one of the most popular in medieval England and her monastery quickly became a shrine. The flow of pilgrims turned it into the enormous Ely Cathedral which still dominates the modern city of Ely.

During the English Reformation, King Henry VIII (d. 1547) ordered that her shrine and her body be destroyed.

Etheldreda’s story would stop there, but for a discovery in 1811. An ancient house was being repaired and a Priest hole was uncovered. Priest holes were cavities behind the walls where Catholic priests hid during the era of persecution. At the back of the Priest hole a container was found with a hand and an inscription saying that it was the “hand of St. Etheldreda.”

The hand was so white that it was first thought to be an ivory carving. It was only later realized to be a real human hand.

No one knows when the hand was separated from Etheldreda’s body, or how it ended up in the Priest hole. We can only surmise that a priest was fleeing persecution and left it hidden there, perhaps hoping to recover it later.

During the last hundred years, the hand has decayed to the point that it no longer looks like an incorrupt hand. There have been occasional discussions about trying to authenticate it with carbon dating and even DNA mapping, but there have never been the resources to do so. Today, the hand can be seen in a niche in the Catholic Church of St. Etheldreda, in Ely.

Conclusion

After the Reformation the Puritans held up Etheldreda as an example of everything that was wrong with Catholicism. She was criticized as a weak woman persuaded into marriages that she didn’t want, which she wrecked with stupid ideas about virginity, and thus irreligiously broke her marriage vows.

This view completely misunderstands the complexity of Etheldreda’s situation. Far from being weak-willed, she held constant to her vision for herself. And far from being stupid she cleverly tried to find compromises that enabled her to be true to herself, while also avoiding political pitfalls which could adversely affect her nation.

Her attempts to square the circle of conflicting choices was ultimately unsuccessful. The nature of the choices made that outcome inevitable. So modern Christians cannot look at her life as something to be imitated.

But modern Christians can admire her spirit and learn something from her. She reminds us that it is important to be true to yourself, but not at the cost of selfishly ignoring everyone else’s needs. And it is important to be accommodating to others’ needs, but not at the cost of completely abandoning your own hopes and aspirations for yourself.

Balancing these conflicting principles is the essence of living well, and it can only be achieved by compromise.

When we seek compromise, we will inevitably make mistakes. We will sometimes face criticism that we have drawn the lines of compromise in the wrong place, as Etheldreda has been accused of. All we can do, ultimately, is to do our best and hope to find the peace that Etheldreda found in her final years.