By DEB PIROCH
Her life is the stuff of fairy tales.
But to understand this Anglo-Saxon princess, we need to fill in an almost Tolkienesque history that surrounded her. Her grandfather, King Ethelbert of Kent, was the first Christian king in England.
At one time there were vestiges of Christianity already in England, brought by the Romans. But the Anglo-Saxons had reverted to paganism and St. Gregory the Great, knowing this, sent St. Augustine to convert England once again. Because Ethelbert was so powerful, he began with him.
And Augustine had a chance, for the King had married Bertha, a Frankish princess. Her condition for marrying the pagan king was that she be allowed to continue the practice of her faith and, indeed, even brought with her a chaplain. She restored or rebuilt the church of St. Martin, incorporating Roman ruins into the Anglo-Saxon walls, and it became her personal place of worship.
Today, it is also the oldest places of continuous worship in the United Kingdom alongside the site of St. Augustine’s Abbey (now in ruins due to King Henry VIII) and Canterbury Cathedral. St. Augustine did indeed convert Ethelbert and the Venerable Bede relates some of these important events in his writings. St. Augustine would also become the first archbishop of Canterbury.
But once Ethelbert had passed, his succeeding son King Eadbald reverted to paganism. Bishops including St. Laurence were leaving the country, it was so bad. This is from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History:
“LAURENTIUS, being about to follow [bishops] Mellitus and Justus, and to quit Britain, ordered his bed to be laid that night in the church . . . wherein having laid himself to rest, after he had with tears poured forth many prayers to God for the state of the Church, he fell asleep; in the dead of night, [Peter,] the blessed chief of the Apostles appeared to him, and scourging him grievously a long time, asked of him with apostolic severity, why he was forsaking the flock which he had committed to him? or to what shepherd he was leaving, by his flight, Christ’s sheep that were in the midst of wolves? ‘Hast thou,’ he said, ‘forgotten my example, who, for the sake of those little ones, whom Christ commended to me in token of His affection, underwent at the hands of infidels and enemies of Christ, bonds, stripes, imprisonment, afflictions, and lastly, death itself, even the death of the cross, that I might at last be crowned with Him?’
“Laurentius, the servant of Christ, roused by the scourging of the blessed Peter and his words of exhortation, went to the king as soon as morning broke, and laying aside his garment, showed the scars of the stripes he had received. The king, astonished, asked who had presumed to inflict such stripes on so great a man. And when he heard that for the sake of his salvation the bishop had suffered these cruel blows at the hands of the Apostle of Christ, he was greatly afraid; and abjuring the worship of idols, and renouncing his unlawful marriage, he received the faith of Christ, and being baptized, promoted and supported the interests of the Church to the utmost of his power” The Ecclesiastical History of The Venerable Bede.
King Eadbald instead married a Frankish princess as his father had done, and St. Eanswythe was his youngest child. She wanted to remain a virgin and dedicate herself to God. Her father did float the idea of her marrying on at least an occasion or two, once to a pagan prince from Northumbria. She allegedly said she would consider marrying the man only “when by prayer to his gods he can make this log of wood grow a foot longer.” King Eadbald seems to have had a soft spot for his daughter, for he built her a monastery on the seacoast, near Folkestone. It must have been a beautiful place to lead a life of prayer.
Thus, she became the first nun and hers the first convent in all of England. She would not have been the abbess, because historical minds think she was too young — perhaps 16 — when she began living there. Much is speculation, but some think Gaullist contemplatives might have been brought over to help begin the monastery. And her father named the convent after St. Peter. She lived only a few more years, dying at the latest by the age of 22.
Two hundred years after her death, the convent had already been abandoned — attacked by the Danes — and her remains removed to another Benedictine monastery at Folkestone around the eighth century. This in turn began to be swallowed up by the sea, and she was again moved inland to Folkestone proper in 1138, resting at the church of what is now known as Saints Mary and Eanswida’s. Sadly not Catholic today, it is Anglican. Although there were many miracles associated with her up until the Middle Ages, around the Reformation her memory was made to fade and her relics disappeared.
But the story does not end here. In 1885, men were preparing to do work near the main altar. Behind the wall, they found hidden in a secret space an ancient, deformed lead container, containing bones. Because of the proximity to the main altar, surely these were bones of the saint? If they were, it made sense that they would have been hidden during the Reformation to keep them safe for a long time, and forgotten. The church built a small alcove for the remains which were placed behind a grill with a metal door and sometimes taken out for veneration…until some congregants complained that this seemed “worshipping” a saint.
But again, this is not the end of the story. The saint seems determined to remind England of its Christian heritage. Two years ago, in early 2020, a team from the Canterbury Archeology Trust visited and worked with the church, to agree to terms under which they could examine the reliquary and bones. They brought the team into the church, kept the bones there, and set up a lab to examine them. They even slept in the church for reasons of security. The only things sent away initially were two samples for radio carbon dating and conservation. Some of the information below was provided by Dr. Andrew Richardson.
The bones present almost certainly are that of a female, a small adult, who died sometime between ages 17-22, in the seventh century.
The lead container was likely remade from Roman lead coffin panels from the eighth to the ninth century, meaning they were likely from the old Anglo-Saxon church.
Isotopic results of the bones reflect a high meat diet, meaning no malnutrition present and that she was from richer society.
She is the oldest Anglo-Saxon saint whose remains have ever been found.
She is the only member of the Kentish rule dynasty whose remains have been found, making her bones the oldest extant relative of the Queen.
“Everything pointed in the right direction,” he said. Why else would these bones, meeting all the right parameters, have been where they were, in the right place? One can only come to the conclusion that yes, these are the relics of St. Eanswythe.
The irony is that archeologists hope to put the bones on display for reasons of their great historical significance. I think St. Eanswythe is smiling, because her bones will be available for veneration once again.
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