https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/etheldreda-of-ely-at1350
—–Now Updated—–
Welcome to Between The Stools on 25th June 2023, which isn’t live this month as there’s a special birthday and I’m out celebrating. There’s a 1350th birthday party for today’s subject.
We’re half way through our History Year with BTS. We’ve been mostly in the 16th century, whence we will return, but last month we were in 1373 with Julian of Norwich – I’m sure we’ll go back for Margery Kempe, probably an extra post in late September or early October. Thus we’ve been in Norfolk; and in November, we journeyed to 1020 in Suffolk to meet the Abbey of St Edmundsbury and the titular martyr king who inspired it. Now, we’re going our further back in time, to 673, and to the third of the four counties of East Anglia – the part of England which projects like a bum into the North Sea.
In context of our history year: why are these people singled out and admired? Not for the same reasons. Some are warriors; some, martyrs; some theologians; some tacticians; some conquerors. Not all of those are equally admirable in my view. Today we’re with another Queen – not that that status itself makes her more worthy – but it’s usually what she did next that makes her remarkable and a saint.
In context of our femme du jour:
The Land
East Anglia is often called flat, but as any Weedy Cyclist knows, this is inaccurate. We don’t have hills like Dorset and Somerset; we certainly don’t have rocky mountains. We do undulate – I say ‘we’ since it’s my native land and has often, but not exclusively, been my home. Cambridgeshire, the most westerly of the four counties of the region and the only landlocked one, is flat. It is characterised by a feature known as The Fens which extends into West Norfolk: an interminable straight horizon of watery reedy worlds underneath which resides rich dark soil. Until the Fens were drained, East Anglia was semi cut off from the rest of the island; where we’re going today was an island, despite being far from the sea or even an estuary. Its name derives from Elig, Eel Island, and is still known as the Isle Of Ely.
Ely has been my home and it’s a remarkable place. I’ll be there today, with Ethel – we are on familiar terms. Today’s Ely is a small market town of under 20,000 – although it’s almost doubled in 30 years – but it’s proud of its long city status. It is the only rising ground for miles and thus can be seen, on a clear day, for up to 15. Friends told me that as kids they chanted the name of the famous landmark as their family drove towards it. Since it can be viewed for so long, this chant (which I think of whenever this place comes up) would have irritated immensely.
On this one place that could be called a hill, rising out of the marshes, is one of Europe’s longest cathedrals. It is 537ft long – more than double many others – but presides over England’s second smallest cathedral town.
Will you allow me the vanity of quoting from my forthcoming sequel to Parallel Spirals – my first published novel – because this is the best way that I can describe that place of unique atmosphere, especially for those listening/reading internationally.
Today’s Ely cathedral is here because of today’s focus. However, the building we can see (and thus chant about) for all those miles isn’t the one that she had built. That came four hundred years later, and was extended in the 13th and 14th centuries, with ceilings of the 15th and 19th. Ely has a majestic Norman screen front – our best, although half fell in, perhaps when its tower received an octagonal topping. (I’m intrigued by the regular juxtaposition, especially in East Anglia, of polygonal shapes on top of round and square ones in church towers. I’m sure it has sacred geometrical meaning). Ely is famed for the 14th C central crossing tower built by Alan of Walsingham. It too is octagonal and is an engineering feat since it is suspended by an oak frame in the ceiling and not pillars. I’ve climbed it for a view of those flatlands. From there you can also see the remains of what Ely claims is England’s best preserved collection of monastic buildings, now a school, like a blanket round the cathedral’s feet. This monastery is not the one of Ethel’s time; those black habits which gave the hostry below its name were of the big Italian chain, which founded here in 970; the Norman building of 1083 became a cathedral in 1107.
I’d like you to note that it’s the Normans who begun the extant huge building; that the monks were Benedictine (and that it was only monks ever after, unlike nearby Denny Abbey)…and I want you to compare with what I said about Edmunds’s abbey in November and Durham on my other blog. I’m sensing a pattern…of Benedictine take over of a Saxon era independent monastery, which was consolidated with a huge 12th C edifice. Does anyone know of more?
Today, Ely is a place popular with commuters due to the excellent rail links, the use of which demonstrates more of those Fens; it celebrates the eels of its name with an annual festival and they feature in a 20 year old park by the gentle river Ouse. It’s the land of post Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell, whose home is the Tourist Information Centre… I am sure I need to explore him at some point with you. Could Ely, like Norwich, be said to be a place of historically ‘doing different?’ As in the 17th Century, so the 7th…?
The Time
Neighbouring Suffolk is celebrated for its Saxon ship burial, Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge in the east of the county. There are two on this site, another in a village to the north called Snape famed for concerts in a maltings. It is claimed that the only other known ship burial in the world is in Sweden. I’m intrigued by that connection which clearly begins with V and has horns.
The person thought to be buried in this plateau at Sutton – popularised by the recent film, The Dig, based on John Preston’s novel – is of the same century as today’s focus. He died about 50 years before today’s anniversary and was her great uncle. I’d like to make clear that it isn’t proven that it is King Raedwald of the Eastern Angles whose helmet and other extraordinary treasures lay in an 88 ft boat. I’ll also throw in that nearby Rendlesham, whose royal palace was excavated last year, is renowned as England’s Roswell…and for its ring of military bases in a forest. Another connection to explore?
The England of Etheldreda and Raedwald was divided into seven kingdoms – the era was thus known as the Heptarchy. England as one nation under one ruler did not come for a couple more centuries; and Wales and Scotland were then separate. The Romans had gone two centuries previously, and in their stead came various other often aggressive ‘visitors’ – this time from the north of Europe. Etheldreda’s native and adopted people came from the same stock – the Angles. This is also the era of St Edmundsbury Abbey’s founding – although it wasn’t named that then. King Siegbert and Ethel have something more in common than being neighbours and contemporaries, and from the same family.
I’ve been exploring the Saxon era recently for this and found a theme come up which I wanted to speak of. It is the relationship between Christians and Pagans then – or their modern portrayal. I think this could be very different from today’s Pagans, but the beliefs espoused are a depiction of immature understandings of gods in any faith. Sutton Hoo’s new video is almost evangelistic. The Pagans want to please their gods by showing them their status and wealth. The TV series Valhalla has the Pagans’ gods not knowing their people unless introduced, unlike the Christian God who knows each of his children by name, forms us in the womb, walks with us our whole lives, and welcomes us home at the end of it. He doesn’t need telling that you’re coming or clues to work out how to treat you when you arrive. Jesus speaks of treasures that are destroyed by rust and moth – although the beautiful gold items at Sutton Hoo have done remarkably for 14 centuries – but there’s that adage: you can’t take it with you. The royal house of Wuffings tried to do just that, yet they’re in the British Museum, not Valhalla. Jesus’s treasures are non material, lasting, and entirely transferable. It also seems that the journey to the afterlife – and note that implies that appearing in Valhalla wasn’t instantaneous – required an earthly vessel.
Ship is a link between Ely and Sutton – for this great hulking church, with its 248ft main public space – the nave – named for its nautical resemblance – is oft and aptly known as Ship Across The Fens. (It’s also the title of a song I wrote which features in my novel)
The Sutton Hoo video discussion between two servant women cleaning the shield, sword, belt and shoulder clasps to put into the grave is an interesting contrast between the warring belief systems. The younger woman’s new, imported faith was dangerous. Christianity is thought to have returned to Britain rather than come for the first time at the end of the previous century – only a couple of decades before the ship burial. Thus it was still a new faith in Ethel’s day. The missionary Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory, brought Christianity back to England via Kent and began spreading it by building monasteries and cathedrals up the Roman route from the Continent to the capital and beyond. Like Game of Thrones, there was the old way – the Pagan way – and a gospel preaching equality regardless of earthly status. Hence its danger – and we’ll find that again during our History year in different eras.
However, Christians have often behaved as if their God needed placating too, and here I use pagan with a small P to denote all the many pantheons of gods in other faiths, such as that of Rome. That empire discoloured the Christian message, creating it as a conquering tool. In the TV show Valhalla, the Christians are depicted as despicable hypocrites who preach mercy and brotherhood but then slaughter in the name of Christ. For them, you either kill those of other faiths, or you convert by violence. Baptism is not for them a sign of being cleansed by the Holy Spirit and walking a new – and voluntary – life with Christ, but a sign of acceptance of new rulers. I am staggered that anyone calling themselves Christian could have any clue of the Bible, and especially Jesus, and behave thus, for they continued to behave as characters in the Old Testament, the sort who thought their God was better because he was the one who in a contest could magically make fire…and so that gave license to kill the priests of the other faith (1 Kings 18). Or… as still hanging around in the legend of St George, the pagans came to your side because they were impressed by the feats of the Christian God – as performed by earthly warriors. George became a popular dedication for churches at the time of the Crusades – more confusing conquest with conversion and landgrabbing with soul-winning, this time against a different ‘foe’.
I add that the aforementioned TV series on Netflix depicts the Pagans undergoing unspeakable horrors to placate their gods, couching it as ritual and honour. Thus it shows both faiths committing atrocities and that they both do not understand the real God.
Etheldreda’s time was also that of the Synod of Whitby, told to us by highly biased Bede in his early but influential history chronicle, in which she features. Christianity was (re)spreading in Britain from two separate corners. The one that started in Kent in 597 was the Roman way, from the institution which took over from the military empire of the same name. From the North West came Irish monk Columba, landing at Iona (another abbey and isle still sacred today) in 563, and bringing with him the Celtic version of the faith.
The 664 Church Synod (or council meeting) at the Yorkshire town of Whitby – the abbey that inspired Dracula – was Wilfrid, a leader very influenced by the finery of Rome, the sort of gold that was found at Sutton, versus Hilda, abbess of a double monastery for men and women of the Celtic tradition. Both were in a land called Northumbria; today’s ceremonial county of Northumberland partly covers its vast former scope. Lower Scotland and Cumbria – the West side of England’s North – and Yorkshire were part of this strongly evocative kingdom, often still associated with this era. It’s wild and craggy – quite unlike Ely – and although industrialised and urbanised it still contains a special space which you might encounter at Lindisfarne (another holy island) or Durham, which is also a rising in hill and almost an isle.
The question was: which path would the Church here follow? Rome’s way, with rules and rubies and robes, or the simpler, perhaps austere way of the Celts which seems (I like to think) to have melded with the native extant earth religions rather than trying to stamp them out.
Would we go the way of Hild(a) of Hartlepool, or Wilfrid of Ripon and York?
I gained a strong impression against Wilfrid, especially from the novels about Cuthbert by Katherine Tiernan, but also conversations with other history lovers. Wilfrid appears to be worldly and ambitious and destructive. Even a Yorkshire newspaper commenting on his special anniversary this year calls him a controversial saint.
The established church, despite the Reformation, is still the way that Synod decided, although there’s much renewed clamour for the other. And that’s relevant to our Woman of The [Half] Hour.
The Woman
Hilda had something in common with Etheldreda, other than being related by marriage.
What wonderful names the Saxons had! This lady had three – no, I’m not referring to her middle names. Ethel was also known as Aethythryth or Audrey, which is why Ethel can apparently be a diminutive of Audrey. And the adjective ‘tawdry’ comes from a corruption of St Audrey’s day, and the tacky low quality trinkets people bought at her feast day fairs.
She lived c636-79: interestingly, although her years are sometimes asserted as facts, she’s once again someone famous whose dates are approximate.
Etheldreda also had a sister Ethel – Ethelburga (there are male Ethel—s of the era too), and another called Sexburga. All were queens, abbesses and saints.
Ely cathedral’s website tells the story quite differently to other sources. For them, the family of the Ethel/burgas was one of devout Christians in difficult pagan times – they don’t give pagans a capital P. Their father was King Anna. Yes, a male Anna. A biographical aside: when a child, I played with plastic interlocking shapes and created a horned man that I called Viking Anna. And despite the name Anna being well known to me as a female one, I was adamant that this Viking, who I saw as a chieftain if not regal, was a man. Twenty years on, browsing Ipswich Museum [which is closed for alarming refurbishments], I discovered that there had been a Viking Anna of East Anglia. I felt vindicated…but why did I sense him, and why is he significant?
Anna married his virtuous daughter off twice, for political reasons. She was soon widowed of Tondbert, a prince or chieftain depending on who you ask, also from the West of Anglia. It is his wedding gift of land that allowed Etheldreda to settle in Ely later. She had refused to consummate this marriage, but was married again to a very young Northumbrian prince, Egfrid. He agreed to this condition – until he got older and became the regional king (thus making Etheldreda queen). Interesting use of words as to what comes next…
Did he want a ‘normal marriage’ or did he pursue Etheldreda to rape her and claim her as property? The fact she fled into a monastery, first in Northumbria and then to the land she owned in Ely suggests coercion and the need for sanctuary.
Who counselled Etheldreda to leave her husband? Who was her spiritual companion as well as friend of the Northumbrian king, whence he was bishop? Oh, it’s Wilfrid. This was the point of the story where I wondered – will I like this woman?
A history site – not connected to Ely cathedral or hagiography – suggests that the many sainted daughters of King Anna was more about accolades for his large family – there were other children – than ‘piety’. It was kind of badge getting and mythmaking.
It wasn’t uncommon for aristocrats to found religious houses. Siegbert had entered one after abdicating at what became Bury St Edmunds. He was sainted but also martyred in battle. What did Etheldreda do?
It seems she simply was a good woman. (Isn’t simply being good enough?) The remarkable things came, as they often did, posthumously. She died of a neck tumour, but this was seen in some accounts as a sign of vanity for her regal necklaces, which she accepted (illness is never a punishment!!) but she was healed of it after lying in her coffin and of course found uncorrupted…. and then the excuse for a super shrine to get pilgrims to come to see and pay towards… even if they had to endure the marshes by boat to do so.
Does the cathedral of Etheldreda still feel like the space of a woman, or a feminine space? My gut is not. I note that despite the fuss of this weekend, that the cathedral is now St Peter’s.
Was she good? Or like her spiritual counsellor, just a badge to collector as much as those pilgrims?
As with Edmund, there is an area called The Liberty of St Etheldreda (this address was inspirational to me). Does she bring us liberation, as she liberated herself from her marriage?
I’ll find out today and will report if there’s more to this story.
Do comment if you know the story of Etheldreda and her family (or want to stick up for Wilfrid)
or would like to reach out for prayer, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk
Speaking of prayer, let’s end with one
If you’re interested in meeting in person, do let me know
Next time is Magdalene Sunday on July 23rd and about people to definitely (I think) learn from and admire: we’re back to the 16th Century and three women, two we’ve met already this year. (8pm BST)
Do join me then – blessings to you all and goodnight
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Post Party Update:
I learned little from my sojourn to Ely. I liked the story of Etheldreda’s sprouting staff – also in the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, and an inversion of the Burning Bush. It’s a powerful symbol of claiming ground, setting an intention, and then it flowering. I took interest in the depictions of Ethel in the city. There’s the one I’ve used from this year’s brochure by Lisa Gifford – note the octagon, which came 600 years later. My favourite was in the Babylon gallery – yes, I’ve been to Babylon and its rivers (cue Boney M) by Kristin VG Bailey. It was both a traditional icon style and a modern print. (I cannot find a link). Sometimes, Etheldreda has a crown; sometimes a staff which distinctly looks like a bishop’s crook, appropriate as an abbess, although I’ve heard this downgraded to a simple but miraculous staff. (Perhaps not all like women leaders of the church – we do still have the bishop of Richborough for those Anglicans who don’t approve of female vicars!!). Audrey often seems rather Marian – blue dress, white headcover, and of course, virginal. She sometimes holds a church, but other times, a book – more discomfort at a woman foundress? (although they get two saint’s days out of her a year). The information about Etheldreda was in the darkest part of the cathedral; I reiterate my remark that it’s not a light and maternal space – save the Lady Chapel. In the very Gothic retrochoir were a few boards telling her story, skipping the raping husband and instead focussing on Audrey’s pious leanings, wanting to commit to nunhood at an early age. A crowd gathered for Ethel around the spot she was buried – still marked, sans shrine; I felt that despite the pompous organ and simple ditty that we raised the energy of that heavy space.
Etheldreda events continue – if I am able to get to more (or find out about Wilfrid) I’ll let you know – and if you get to any, let me know.
I did hear about Wilfrid in the abbey which Etheldreda made possible: Hexham in Northumbria. Ah, so is that why Wilfrid encouraged her? because as Queen, land giving was in her gift and Wilfrid wanted to start playing monolopy with churches instead of hotels? I asked a guide atHexham if he wanted to stick up for Wilfrid but he too was wary of this supposed saint. There was a depiction of Etheldreda who looked very Joan of Arc…yet it seems at odds with her story and the picture I’ve formed.
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 