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Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.

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February 23 · Virgin, Abbess

St. Earcongotha

St. Earcongotha

Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.

Traditional feast

February 23
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Virgin
Abbess

Their story

Adapted in modern English from Baring-Gould (1897) · original text below · little is known

Earcongotha was the daughter of Ercombert, King of Kent, and great-granddaughter of the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king. She became a nun at Faremoutier in France, where many English princesses were trained, and Bede (the English monk-historian, d. 735) praises her virtue. She became abbess there.

Warned that she would soon die, she went round the infirmary cells asking her sick sisters to pray for her,. According to the account, the monks in the other half of the double monastery heard a sound like a great crowd and, going out, found themselves in a flood of light as her soul rose to heaven.

Early life

Selected sentences from the original account, unaltered.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 162 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

Earcongotha , great granddaughter of the first Christian king of the Anglo-Saxons, and daughter of Ercombert, King of Kent, was a nun in the French community of Faremoutier, where so many of the English princesses were trained.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Build up the community you belong to. This life was lived with and for a community.

Look after people who are sick or suffering. The sick come up again and again in this story.

Pray a little every day. Prayer runs all through this account.

Learn from the kind of life it was. Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.

Read more

The full original · 162 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Benedictine Martyrology. Authority:—Bede, lib. iii., c. 8.

Earcongotha , great granddaughter of the first Christian king of the Anglo-Saxons, and daughter of Ercombert, King of Kent, was a nun in the French community of Faremoutier, where so many of the English princesses were trained. She was, says Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)], a virgin of great virtue, worthy in everything of her illustrious origin, and was elevated to become Abbess. Being warned of her approaching end, she went from cell to cell in the infirmary of the monastery, asking for the prayers of her sick nuns. She died during the following night, at the first glimpse of dawn. At the same hour the monks, who occupied another part of the double monastery, heard a sound like the noise of a multitude, who, to the sound of heavenly music, invaded the monastery. When they went out to see what it was, they found themselves in a flood of miraculous light, in the midst of which the soul of the foreign princess ascended to heaven.

Feast days

Feast: February 23

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Earcongotha's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on February 23
M

St. Martha

February 23 · Virgin, Martyr
S

St. Serenus

February 23 · Martyr
P

St. Priamianus

February 23 · Bishop, Martyr
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Story sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.