Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.
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February 23
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Virgin
Abbess
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.
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.
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: February 23
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.
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.