Audrey, Cuthbert and the Durham Stole

[I haven't been able to post much lately, but life seems to be getting straightened out so I hope on a regular basis back soon. It may be August before I'm back to the frequency I had last spring though. Hang in there with me...]

Today is the feast of St Æthelthryth so I can’t let today pass without a post on Audrey. Did you know that according to Marie de France, St Audrey made the very stole that is among St Cuthbert’s treasures at Durham (pictured right)?

“But above all others she loved Saint Wilfrid who advised her and Saint Cuthbert for his goodness and his great integrity. To Saint Cuthbert she often gave very generously of her wealth: Saint Audrey made a finely-worked stole and maniple out of gold and silk, adorned it with precious stones and gave it to him. These adornments are still kept with great affection in Durham. To honor God in memory of Saint Cuthbert the church made a monstrance for them. The love between these two [Cuthbert and Audrey] was proper and acceptable to God for they were both virgins who led chaste and holy lives. One was always mindful of the other, [praying] that God would bring each of them into His glory.” [Vie Seinte Audree, lines 1091-1110, McCash and Barban, p. 77, 79]

It is highly unlikely that Audrey ever gave Cuthbert, only a prior when she died, a gold and jewel encrusted stole and maniple. It is true that this stole, considered part of the treasures of St Cuthbert, is not jewel encrusted but that could either be an elaboration on Marie’s part or the jewels may have been removed over the years. It appears as though the backing of the stole and perhaps its edges have been removed at some point. (See the frayed edges to the right.) If this stole was kept in a monstrance (a type of reliquary) that could explain how it survived so well and very little of it would likely have been visible to see jewels or much of the design.

The stole and maniple was actually made by Queen Aelfflaed, the second wife of Edward the Elder for Bishop Frithestan of Winchester. It was donated to Durham by Aelfflaed’s step-son King Aethelstan in 934. Indeed, it seems likely that if former Queen Aethelthryth of Northumbria had given Cuthbert a jewel encrusted gold and silk stole, he would have been buried in it! King Aethelstan’s gift may have been used by the Bishops of Durham as a sign of their loyalty to Wessex or it may have been intended for a statue of St Cuthbert in Durham cathedral.

It is possible that we have yet another case of Marie’s inability to read or discern Anglo-Saxon names so that Aelfflaed was mistaken for a version of Aethelthryth (whose English name would have been spelled more like Audree by Marie’s time). It is also possible that the monks of Durham were trying to boost the relationship between Audrey and Cuthbert for their mutual benefit. Keeping it in a monstrance would have prevented many people from inspected the inscription.

Looking at the stole itself, it is a work of art. It is clear that needlework of the tenth century was at least as good as illuminations, if not better. I have long thought that these two art forms influenced each other a great deal. The photo to the left comes from The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 1913, vol 23 (121), at p. 4. You should be able to enlarge it by clicking on the picture or the link above (if you have access to JSTOR). The picture to the left is the prophet Amos and then the ends of the stole that record the name of its maker Aelfflaed and Frithestan who it was made for. A few years ago I picked up a bunch of slides from Durham of the stole and other treasures, I must get them scanned someday.

Enjoy this fine summer day and think a little of Audrey on her feast day. We commemorate what would not have been a fine summer day for Ely at all. Not only did they loose their founder and abbess, it was the beginning of a plague upon the Isle of Ely.

Reference:

June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Barban, eds. (2006) The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France. McFarland.

PW: St Owine

St Owine is a somewhat malleable figure in the veneration of St Audrey.

He first appears in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People where he is a member of St Chad’s household at Lichfield. Owine witnesses an exchange between Chad and an angel shortly before Chad’s death. Bede goes on to explain that Owine had been chief of her officers and the head of Æthelthryth’s household when she married prince Ecgfrith of Northumbria (Bede, HE IV.3). Bede goes on to relate that Owine joined Chad at Lastingham dressed plainly and carrying only an axe and adze to show that he came to work. He was not skilled at the study of Scriptures but more than made up for this in his earnest manual labor. When Chad moved to Lichfield to become bishop he asked Owine to join his household there. He was working outside of Chad’s personal oratory when he overheard Chad conversing with an angels. Chad then sent Owine to collect the others of the household and he gave them all, including Owine, his last instructions. Chad died on March 2, 672; the same year Æthelthryth (Audrey) left her marriage and entered Coldingham. Thus, Owine had left Æthelthryth’s service long before she left her marriage. Owine is also only associated with Lastingham and Litchfield by Bede. To join Lastingham while Chad was there he would have joined between 664 and 670; most of this time Chad was also Bishop of York (c. 665-669).

The Liber Eliensis expands Owine’s role. It casts Owine as Æthelthryth’s protector who only entered the church after she took up monastic life. He is clearly portrayed as following her lead. This is clearly impossible. It does claim that Owine entered Lasthingham when it was ruled by Bishop Chad of Mercia whose great friend he became, so it pushes his entry into Lasthingham as late as possible (LE i.8, 10). In LE i.23, Owine is, ironically, called her tutor. This may be a plea to link the cults of Chad and Audrey, particuarly after Ely largely came under the control of Mercia in the time of Offa. However, the expansions are not too great over what Bede reports.

This caution to keep within the outline laid out by Bede is completely lost in Marie de France’s Life of St Audrey. Marie claims that Audrey founds the church of St Andrew at Augustaldeus (Hexham) which she staffed with ‘her people’ who established the house there. Audrey placed the monk Ovin (Owine) as the “master of that church and its religious life”. Ovin became friends with Chad but is not said to have joined Chad’s household. Later, Marie claims that Ovin, “spiritual leader of Saint Audrey’s people” followed Audrey into Coldingham.

We can see an escalating of Owine’s relationship to Audrey. I haven’t yet found a source that claims that Owine came to Ely with her, but that may be the implication of Marie’s claim that he followed her into Coldingham. Commemoration of St Ovin — notice Marie’s French spelling — is part of remembrances of St Audrey at Ely today. This cross is apparently a medieval relic from a neighboring village. This drawing is from Cambridgeshire History.

Today at Ely Cathedral, a procession to St Ovin’s Cross takes place at second evensong on both St Audrey’s day and the feast of her translation in October using the ‘verses and collect’ of St Ovin.

Sources:

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731

Janet Fairweather, trans. Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth. Boydell, 2005.

June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Barban, trans and ed. The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie De France. McFarland, 2006.

St Mary at Ely

[I'm going to use Audrey for St Aethelthryth because of the similarity of her name to Queen Aelfthryth.]

I was reading a paper by Mary Clayton recently and she mentions that the re-dedicated house of Ely was dedicated to Sts. Mary, Peter and Audrey, but that Audrey soon became the dominant patron after the death of the initial reformers (ie Bishop Aethelwold and his colleagues). What caught me up here is the dedication to Peter….doesn’t that sound more like Bishop Wilfrid? It also calls to mind that when Wilfrid has his stroke-like illness on return from his last trip to Rome one of his instructions from the Archangel Michael is to dedicate a church to St Mary before he dies. Fair enough, but this vision is long after Audrey is dead. Now Audrey’s church might not of counted because Wilfrid didn’t own it or build it but it still gives me pause to think that we don’t really know who her church was dedicated to, if anyone.

Clayton goes on to discuss how the Virgin Mary was really the unifying saint of the whole reform movement and was used to bolster the position of the queen, initially Queen Aelfthryth. In St Audrey Bishop Aethelwold had the perfect setting, a native virgin queen to be the focus of his Marian dedications (already suggested by Bede). Further, Queen Aelfthryth was the first consecrated queen of England. The increase in her prestige was in parallel to the support for the virgin queen St Audrey and the Queen of Heaven, St Mary. Building up Queen Aelfthryth proved disastrous though as she is associated with ruthless means of bringing her son Aethelred Unred to the throne and at Ely, with the murder of their first abbot after re-foundation, so that by the time the Liber Eliensis was written she was remembered as an evil witch.

Clayton observes that St Mary became a supporter of native saints because there were no established pilgrimages to Marian shrines in the Anglo-Saxon period. St Mary could be venerated anywhere, and nowhere had corporal relics of her. She also argues that veneration to Mary was restricted to monastic settings in the Anglo-Saxon period; she simply didn’t appeal to the laity until after the Norman conquest.

St Mary continues to have a significant presence at Ely because the association has antiquity in Bede’s writings and she supports Audrey’s veneration so well. Yet, as we saw with the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, St Mary is pushed to the side in favor of St. Audrey. The extra large Lady Chapel and rich Marian-Audrey iconography will later been a great boon to Ely when Ely is placed on the pilgrim trail from London to the great Marian shrine at Walsingham.

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Mary Clayton (1994) Centralism and Uniformity versus Localism and Diversity: The Virgin and Native Saints in the Monastic Reform. Peritia 8: 95-106.