Eanflæd

Eanflæd was an Anglo-Saxon queen and abbess of the seventh century, born at Easter in 626 as the daughter of King Edwin of Northumbria and Queen Æthelburh of Kent. The Venerable Bede records that her birth occurred on the night of an assassination attempt against her father at a royal residence beside the River Derwent, when an envoy of King Cwichelm of Wessex struck at Edwin with a poisoned dagger. Edwin, then still a pagan, vowed that if the Christian God granted him victory over his enemies he would convert and would dedicate the infant girl to Christ. After a successful campaign against the West Saxons, he entrusted Eanflæd to Bishop Paulinus, who baptized her at Pentecost of the same year together with twelve others of the royal household. She was thus among the earliest members of the Northumbrian royal family to receive Christian baptism according to the Roman rite that Paulinus had brought from Kent and from the mission of Augustine of Canterbury.

When Edwin was killed in 633 at the Battle of Hatfield Chase by the forces of Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia, Queen Æthelburh fled south with her children, including Eanflæd, and with Bishop Paulinus, seeking refuge at the court of her brother King Eadbald of Kent. Eanflæd grew up in Kent, in a kingdom already converted and closely tied to the Roman church. In the early 640s she was married to Oswiu, king of Bernicia, a union intended to bind together the rival Northumbrian dynasties of Bernicia and Deira and to strengthen Oswiu’s claim in Deira, her father’s former kingdom. As queen she remained attached to the Roman calculation of Easter and to the customs she had learned in Kent, while Oswiu, who had been educated in exile among the Irish of Iona, followed the Ionan dating. Bede describes the resulting discord in the royal household, in which the king might be keeping Easter while the queen was still observing Palm Sunday. This liturgical division, together with the wider controversy in the English church, formed part of the background to the Synod of Whitby in 664, at which Oswiu decided in favour of the Roman practice. Eanflæd was also an important patron of Wilfrid: she supported his early journey to Rome and later his rise as a champion of Roman customs in Northumbria.

Eanflæd and Oswiu had several children who played significant roles in seventh-century politics and religion. Their son Ecgfrith became king of Northumbria; another son, Ælfwine, ruled Deira as a sub-king and was killed in battle against Mercia; their daughter Osthryth married King Æthelred of Mercia and was later murdered; and their daughter Ælfflæd was dedicated to the religious life in fulfilment of a vow made by Oswiu before the Battle of the Winwaed and became abbess of Whitby. After Oswiu’s death in 670, Eanflæd withdrew from the court and entered the double monastery of Streoneshalh, better known as Whitby, which had been founded and ruled by Hilda. Following Hilda’s death in 680, Eanflæd served jointly as abbess with her daughter Ælfflæd. She promoted the cult of her father Edwin, arranging for his relics to be translated to Whitby, and the monastery became a centre of memory for the Deiran royal line as well as a house of learning.

Eanflæd was still living in the 680s, when she and Ælfflæd received Bishop Trumwine after the Pictish victory at Nechtansmere in 685 and when they were associated with the community that preserved traditions later used by Bede. Her precise date of death is not recorded by Bede and is conventionally placed around 704. She was buried at Whitby Abbey. In later centuries she was venerated as a saint, especially in connection with Whitby and the Northumbrian church, and her feast has been observed on 24 November in some calendars. Primary knowledge of her life depends chiefly on Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, on Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid, and on the anonymous Life of Gregory the Great written at Whitby, which together portray her as a link between the Kentish Roman mission, the Northumbrian royal conversion, and the monastic culture of the later seventh century.