A Glance At St Edmund by kamransodhi

A GLANCE AT ST EDMUND

SANCT M A R T Y R I A N

We will be looking at some of the events of St Edmunds life.

869 (during) The Great Heathen Army, now led by Ivar the Boneless and Ubba, returned south and attacked East Anglia.

Here is a timeline of his life which includes all the main events. (Read from left to right).

869 (during) The Vikings offered to leave East Anglia in peace if Edmund would rule as their vassal and renounce Christianity. Edmund refused to give up his religion.

866 (during) It is likely that Edmund joined forces with King Aethelred of Wessex to repel the Danes.

865 (during) A huge Viking force known by the Saxons as The Great Heathen Army, led by Ubba, Ivar the Boneless, Sigurd Snake-inthe-Eye, Halfdan and Guthrum, landed in East Anglia but quickly moved north.

869 (20th November) Edmund attempted to fight the Vikings but they tied him to a tree and shot him with arrows until he died. He was then beheaded and his head thrown into a river. Some sources give his year of death as 870.

855 (during) Edmund became King of East Anglia. 841 (around) Edmund was born in East Anglia.

902 (during) Edmund’s body was moved to Bedricsworth which was renamed Bury St Edmunds. A shrine was built and it became a place of pilgrimage. He also became the patron of England.

869 (during) Edmund’s head was located and he was buried in East Anglia. Legend states that those looking for his head heard a voice saying “here, here” which led them to the head.

The Basics of St Edmund Almost nothing is known about Edmund. He is thought to have been of East Anglian origin and was first mentioned in an annal of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written some years after his death. The kingdom of East Anglia was devastated by the Vikings, who destroyed any contemporary evidence of his reign. Later writers produced fictitious accounts of his life, asserting that he was born in 841, the son of Æthelweard, an obscure East Anglian king, whom it was said Edmund succeeded when he was 14 (or alternatively that he was the youngest son of a Germanic king named Alcmund). Later versions of Edmund’s life relate that he was crowned on 25 December 855 at Burna (probably Bures St Mary in Suffolk), which at that time functioned as the

royal capital, and that he became a model king. In 869, the Great Heathen Army advanced on East Anglia and killed Edmund. According to Asser and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he died in battle, but by later tradition he met his death at an unidentified place known as Haegelisdun, after he refused the Danes’ demand that he renounce Christ: the Danes beat him, shot him with arrows and then beheaded him, on the orders of Ivar the Boneless and his brother Ubba. According to one legend, his head was then thrown into the forest, but was found safe by searchers after following the cries of an ethereal wolf that was calling out in Latin, “Hic, Hic, Hic” – “Here, Here, Here”. 3

A medieval illumination depicting the death of Edmund the Martyr on 20 November 869 by the Vikings.

Ruins of Glastonbury

A coinage commemorating Edmund was minted from around the time East Anglia was absorbed by the kingdom of Wessex and a popular cult emerged. In about 986, Abbo of Fleury wrote of his life and martyrdom. The saint’s remains were temporarily moved from Bury St Edmunds to London for safekeeping in 1010. His shrine at Bury was visited by many kings, including Canute, who was responsible for rebuilding the abbey: the stone church was rebuilt again

in 1095. During the Middle Ages, when Edmund was regarded as the patron saint of England, Bury and its magnificent abbey grew wealthy, but during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his shrine was destroyed. Medieval manuscripts and works of art relating to Edmund include Abbo’s Passio Sancti Eadmundi, John Lydgate’s 14th-century Life, the Wilton Diptych, and a number of church wall paintings.

Contemporary portrait from Liber Vitae, 1031. 5

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Title page from a tract written by Abbo of Fleury, showing the word “ABBO”, created between 962 and 986 in Fleury Abbey.

Accession and rule of St Edmund Edmund is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle annal for 870, which was compiled twenty years after his death. By tradition, Edmund is thought to have been born in 841 and to have acceded to the East Anglian throne in around 855. Nothing is known of his life or reign, as no contemporary East Anglian documents from this period have survived. The devastation in East Anglia that was caused by the Vikings destroyed any books or charters that may

have referred to Edmund and a lack of contemporary evidence means that it is not known for certain when his reign began, or his age when he became king. Later medieval chroniclers have provided dubious accounts of his life, in the absence of any real details. The most credible theory for Edmund’s parentage suggests Ealhhere, brother-in-law to King Æthelstan of Kent, as Edmund’s father and Edith (Æthelstan’s sister) as Edmund’s mother.

Edmund was the King of the East Angles.

The kingdom of the East Angles. 9

EADMUND REX AN EADMUND REX

Edmund cannot be placed within any ruling dynasty. Numismatic evidence suggests he succeeded Æthelweard. According to the historian Susan Ridyard, Abbo of Fleury’s statement that Edmund was ‘ex antiquorum Saxonum nobili prosapia oriundus’ was Abbo’s verbose way of saying that Edmund was descended from the ancient nobility of his race. It is known that a variety of different coins were minted by Edmund’s moneyers during his

reign. The letters AN, standing for ‘Anglia’, only appear on the coins of Edmund and Æthelstan of East Anglia: they appear on Edmund’s coins as part of the phrase + EADMUND REX AN. Later specimens read + EADMUND REX and so it is possible for his coins to be divided chronologically. Otherwise, no chronology for his coins has been confirmed. A coin from the reign of Æthelstan. 11

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He is depicted as crowned and robed as a monarch, holding a scepter, orb, arrows, or a quiver.

The Supposed Death of St Edmund Hoxne: killing-place of King Edmund? The death of Edmund, king of East Anglia, is recorded by his chronicler Abbo as occurring at Hægelisdun. His burial was at a place called Sutton.

Hægelisdun dates back to at least 1101. With its chapel, healing spring, bridge and memorial of the tree on which Edmund died, this little village has become a focus for traditions around the holy warrior-king.

There are a few contenders for the killing-place of Edmund. Hellesdon near Norwich is one. Another good fit for the locations of Hægelisdun and Sutton are Bradfield St Clare, where a nearby field is called ‘Hellesdon Ley’, and a moated house called ‘Sutton Hall’ lies a mile to the south. Both are roughly five miles from Bury. But Hoxne, close to the River Waveney, remains the favourite. Its claim to being

The supposed place of St Edmunds death. 15

On 20th November 869, at the age of twenty-nine years, Edmund was brought before the Danish leaders and, possibly in front of his own captured men, tortured. He was tied to a tree and scourged, shot with arrows and speared with javelins until he was covered with missiles ‘like the bristles of a hedgehog.’ Finally, he was beheaded. Just south of Hoxne village is a stone cross, which allegedly marks the spot of the oak to which Edmund was tied. The memorial reads ‘St. Edmund the Martyr, AD 870. Oak Tree fell August 1848 by its own weight.’

On the road from Hoxne to Cross Street lies Goldbrook Bridge, where Edmund is said to have hidden from the Danes. According to legend, a newly-wed couple spotted his spurs glistening in the moon (or sun) and, as the Danes dragged him away, he cried a curse on all bridal couples who should ever cross the bridge. Apparently until well into the 19th century, many local wedding parties would go the long way round rather than chance the curse.

Modern day Goldbrook Bridge. 19

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“It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction.” - Edward the Martyr

When his people went looking for Edmund’s body, his decaptitated head was found between the paws of a grey wolf. A miraculous freshwater spring broke through the soil where the head had lain. North of Abbey Farm, on the site of a Benedictine monastery near Hoxne, is a deep moat enclosing a small island on which the very same freshwater spring was said

to be found. This spring ‘the occupiers of the field have never been able to divert.’ The ill and infirm journeyed there in the Middle Ages for healing. This tale echoes similar miracles from the lives of Celtic saints, which have their origins in the Celtic veneration of the head as the seat of the soul. 23

The Supposed Death of St Edmund Hellesdon: killing-place of King Edmund?

traditions of association with Edmund, and no records of old woodland in the area. About a Now a north-west suburb of mile away, further up the valley Norwich, Hellesdon (pronounced of the river Wensum, is Bloods ‘Hellsdun’) has long been the Dale at Drayton, where Dane favourite of place-name experts is said to have fought Saxon and historians for the site of - but no hint of a connection ‘Hægelisdun’. It appears in with the king’s last battle or Domesday Book as ‘Hailesduna’, death. Nevertheless, it has been which is exactly the form theorised by Joseph Mason in his one would have expected ‘St. Edmund’s Norfolk’ of 2012 ‘Hægelisdun’ to have evolved that Edmund was indeed slain at into. Even in the mythology, by Bloods Dale, then buried in what the time of Roger of Wendover in is now King’s Grove at Lyng. the early 13th century, the site of the martyrdom was being written as ‘Hæilesdune’. But the name is the only thing Hellesdon has going for it. There are no chapels, no legends, no

Domesday Book, which mentions Hellesdon. 25

The Supposed Death of St Edmund Bradfield St. Claire: killing-place within the former Bury Abbey, of King Edmund? and that the abbey cellarer paid rent for some small parcels of About 5 miles south-east of Bury land in St. Clare, denote a close St. Edmunds is the scattered historical connection. Also, parish of Bradfield St. Clare. Just within the parish are several south of Pitcher’s Green within areas of lost or existing medieval the parish has been found, on woodland, including Bradfield the 1840 Tithe Map, the medieval Woods and Monkspark Wood. field name of ‘Hellesden Ley’, which is the new favourite But once again, there are no location of ‘Hægelisdun’. traditional or cultic associations with St. Edmund. And quite Its position, close to Bury frankly, we don’t know the origin and only about 15 miles from of the name ‘Hellesden’. It could the Danish winter quarters at be named after a person or the Thetford, are in its favour, as are actual Norfolk village for all we several ‘Kingshall’ place-names know, or it could be a corruption a couple of miles to the north of something else entirely. Recent at Rougham (where Bury owned research by Dr. Keith Briggs a ‘Kingshalle’ manor before has certainly shown that the the Conquest). It has also been identification with ‘Hægelisdun’ suggested that the presence of a is far from a certainty. building called ‘Bradfield Hall’

Bury, St Edmunds Abbey remains. 27

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A 12th-centur y depiction of Edmund’s mar tyrdom in the Morgan Librar y & Museum in New York.

Bury St Edmunds, the abbey was once one of the richest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England. Its remains are extensive and include the complete 14th century Great Gate and Norman Tower, as well as the impressive ruins and altered west front of the immense church. The relics of the martyred Anglo-Saxon king St Edmund, whose remains were moved to this site in 903, and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage. The abbey itself was founded in 1020 and grew in power and wealth up until its suppression in 1539.