St. Æthelthryth of East Anglia and St. Mildrith of Kent. The Same Hagiographical Perspective: Two Different Stories
Keywords:
hagiography, England, 7th cent., early Christendom, women, saints, legends of the saints, St. Æthelthryth, St. MildrithAbstract
The Vita, a popular medieval literary genre, in spite of its uniformity and conventional nature reveals a lot of thematic variety in the stories of individual saints, which causes this literary genre to be a rewarding topic of research in literary history and comparative literature. This paper concentrates on the comparison between two well-known women saints from the early Anglo-Saxon period, St. Mildrith of Kent (†13. July, 732/733) and St. Æthelthryth of Anglia († 23 June, ca. 635-679), the abbesses of two prestigious monasteries, Mildrith at Minster-in-Thanet, Kent, and Æthelthryth at Ely, East Anglia. For its analysis of both saints the paper relies – from the perspective of comparative literature – on two medieval texts which are the earliest accounts to provide a relatively complete survey of their lives: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (HE, IV 19 in 20), a Latin history of the English people from the early eighth century, with clearly recognisable hagiographic elements, examines St. Æthelthryth’s claim to sanctity, while Goscelin’s Vita Deo dilectae virginis Mildrethae, a Latin hagiographic text from the late 11th century, gives the account of the life of St. Mildrith. This paper focuses in particular on three narrative elements: first, the influence of the saints’ nearest relatives within their monastic communities, which was essential for the activation of the process of sanctification and development of both cults, second, the strategies used by both saints to achieve their goal, the life of monasticism, and finally, the values cultivated in their chosen monastic communities. Apart from the similarities between both saints, such as their royal birth, the same spiritual determination and the life of monasticism, the differences between the two are examined as well, St. Mildrith, destined by her mother for monastic life, is juxtaposed with St. Æthelthryth, the queen and royal consort, who must elicit a permission from her husband to let her leave his court. What is more, the accounts reveal certain differences in the values the abbesses tend to prioritise in their monastic houses, with St. Æthelthryth emphasising asceticism and St. Mildrith valuing the life of tranquillity. These differences reveal that hagiography in spite of its insistence on clearly defined directives nevertheless tolerates a certain degree of thematic flexibility within hagiographic texts, which causes hagiography, as mentioned before, to be a rewarding object of research in the field of literary history and comparative literature.References
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