Baring-Gould’s sources: Inserted in Anglican Martyrology by J. Wilson, and in the Benedictine by Hugh Menard; and Ferrarius in his Gen. Catalogue. Authorities:—Bede and Malmesbury.
Throughout his life, Penda, the fierce heathen king of Mercia [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English Midlands], or the midland counties of England, waged war with the kingdom of Northumbria [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of northern England and south-east Scotland], which included Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland. But this bloodthirsty and stubborn hatred led him to his destruction. Oswy, son of Ethelfrid, the ravager, and grandson of Ida, the Man of Fire, was king of Northumbria, which had been so wasted and exhausted by the former ravages of Penda, that it could ill withstand another attack. It was only at the last extremity, that king Oswy resolved to engage in a final conflict with the terrible enemy who had conquered and slain his two predecessors, Edwin and the saintly Oswald. He had married his son and his daughter to children of Penda; and he gave him another of his sons as a hostage. But Penda would not consent to any durable peace. During the thirteen years that had elapsed since the overthrow of Oswald, and the accession of Oswy, he had periodically subjected Northumberland to frightful devastations. In vain Oswy, driven to desperation, offered him all his jewels, ornaments, and treasures, of which he could dispose, as a ransom for his desolated and hopeless provinces. The arrogant and fierce octogenarian refused everything, being resolute, as he said, to exterminate the whole Northumbrian race, from first to last. "Well, then," said Oswy, "since this heathen despises our gifts, let us offer them to one who will accept them—to the Lord our God." He then made a vow to devote to God a daughter who had just been born to him, and at the same time to give twelve estates for the foundation of as many monasteries. After this he marched at the head of a small army against Penda, whose troops were, according to a Northumbrian tradition, thirty times more numerous, and a battle was fought near the site of the present town of Leeds, in which Penda was defeated and slain. Thus perished, at the age of eighty, after a reign of thirty years, the conqueror and murderer of five Anglo-Saxon kings, and the last and indefatigable champion of paganism among the Anglo-Saxons.
Oswy faithfully kept his word. He set apart twelve estates to be thenceforward monastic property—six in the north, and six in the south of his double kingdom. He then took his daughter Elfleda, who was but yet a year old, and consecrated her to God by the vow of perpetual virginity. Her mother, the daughter of Edwin, first Christian king of Northumbria, had been also dedicated to God from her birth, but only by baptism, and as a token of the gratitude of a still pagan father for the protection of the Christian's God. The daughter of Oswy was to be the price of a yet higher gift of heaven—the conclusive victory of his race, and of the Christian faith in his country; the sacrifice reminds us of that of Jepthah's daughter; but she, far from desiring to escape her vow, showed herself, during a long life, always worthy of her heavenly Bridegroom. The king took her from the caresses of her mother, to intrust her to the abbess Hilda of Hartlepool, who nearly ten years before had been initiated into the monastic life by S. Aidan [Irish monk, founder of Lindisfarne (d. 651)].
In 658, when Elfleda was three years old, S. Hilda founded her monastery of Streaneshalch, now called Whitby, and moved thither with her little spiritual daughter.
Elfleda was scarcely twenty-five years of age, when S. Hilda died, and she was called to succeed her as abbess of Whitby. She is described by Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)] as a most pious mistress of spiritual life. But like all the Anglo-Saxon princesses whom we meet within the cloister at this epoch, she did not cease to take a passionate interest in the affairs of her race and her country, and to exercise that extraordinary and salutary influence which was so willingly yielded by the Anglo-Saxon kings and people to those princesses of their sovereign races who became the brides of Christ.
She maintained that reverent and affectionate relation with S. Cuthbert [bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 687)] which had been maintained by S. Hilda.
Before he became bishop, while he lived on a desert rock near Lindisfarne, she prevailed on him to grant her an interview in an island on the Northumbrian coast, called then, as now, Coquet Island. She was anxious and alarmed for her brother Egfrid, and she desired to consult the holy Cuthbert on the affairs of the state and her family. The hermit and the abbess went each to their meeting by sea; and when he had answered all her questions, she threw herself at his feet, and entreated him to tell her, by virtue of those prophetic powers, with which he was known to be gifted, whether her brother, Egfrid, would have a long life and reign. "I am surprised," he answered, "that a woman well versed, like you, in the Holy Scriptures should speak to me of length with regard to human life, which lasts no longer than a spider's web, as the Psalmist has said. How short then must life be for a man who has but a year to live, and has death at his door!" At these words, she wept long; then, drying her tears, she continued, with feminine boldness, and inquired who should be the king's successor, since he had neither sons nor brothers. "Do not say," he replied, "that he is without heirs; he shall have a successor whom you will love, as you love Egfrid, as a sister." "Then tell me, I entreat you, where this successor is." "You see," returned Cuthbert, directing the eyes of his companion towards the archipelago of islets which dots the Northumbrian coast around Lindisfarne, "how many isles are in the vast ocean; it is easy for God to bring from them some one to reign over the English." Elfleda then perceived that he spoke of a young man, Aldfrid, supposed to be the son of her father Oswy, by an Irish mother, and who, since his infancy, had lived as an exile at Iona, where he gave himself up to study.
The troubles concerning S. Wilfrid [bishop of York (d. 709)] which had vexed the Northumbrian Church still prevailed. Wilfrid was still in banishment for his persistence in introducing the Roman customs into the Keltic Church of the north of England. The new king, Aldfrid, had brought with him from Iona attachment to the ritual of SS. Columba and Aidan. Elfleda inherited the prejudices of her spiritual mother, Hilda, against the stern and inflexible innovator; but there was on their side a desire for reconcilation with the Church of the province of Canterbury, which was of Roman foundation, and they hoped that now Wilfrid was an aged man, some of his harshness might have been softened. [26]
To the new king, as well as to his sister, the Abbess Elfleda, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury wrote, to exhort them both to lay aside their enmity against Wilfrid, and to receive him with unreserved kindness. They yielded, and recalled Wilfrid, but were mistaken in supposing that age had altered his determination. He returned in 687 to excite storms throughout his diocese, and was again exiled, in 691.
Aldfrid died in 705, and the Northumbrian crown descended to a prince named Eadwulf. Wilfrid had taken advantage of the death of Aldfrid to return to Ripon, but was ordered to leave the country in six days. But Eadwulf was dethroned, and a son of Aldfrid, Osred, aged eight, was given the realm of Bernicia, the counties of Northumberland and Durham. By means of some mysterious influence, the nature of which is unknown, the aged exile Wilfrid, who had been expelled from the country for fourteen years, and was to all appearance forgotten, became, all at once, the master of the situation, and the arbiter of events. He soon acquired a more powerful protector than the young sovereign in the person of Earl Bertfrid, who was considered the most powerful noble in the kingdom, and who was at the head of Osred's party. King Eadwulf marched against the insurgents, and obliged them to retreat to the fortress of Bamborough, where the earl, shut up in the narrow enclosure of this fortified rock, and reduced to the last extremity, vowed that, if God would deliver him and his charge, the young prince and his people should bow to the Roman subjection. An opportune desertion of Eadwulf's followers gave victory to Bertfrid, and Eadwulf was exiled after a short reign of two months. As soon as the royal child was placed on the throne, the Archbishop of Canterbury made his appearance, perceiving that the time was come for reinstating Wilfrid, and settling his affairs in a general assembly. This was held in the open air on the banks of the Nid. Wilfrid was present, and met there Bertfrid and the Abbess Elfleda, who had come over to his side, and to Roman obedience. All the Northumbrians regarded her as the consoler and best counsellor of the kingdom. The bishops and abbots present opposed the claims of Wilfrid, and refused to accept him, though he came armed with the authority of the Holy See. At this point, the Abbess Elfleda interposed: in a voice which all listened to as an utterance from heaven, she described the last illness and agony of the king her brother, and how he had vowed to God and S. Peter to accomplish the papal decrees which he had so vigorously rejected. "This," she said, "is the last will of Aldfrid the king; I attest the truth of it before Christ." Bertfrid afterwards spoke and announced his vow. Nevertheless the three bishops would not yield, they retired from the assembly to confer among themselves, and with Archbishop Britwald, but above all with the sagacious Elfleda. Thanks to her, all ended in a general reconciliation.
Shortly before his death, and during his last pastoral visitation, S. Cuthbert went to see Elfleda in the neighbourhood of the great monastery of Whitby, to consecrate a church which she had built there, and to converse with her for the last time. They dined together, and during the meal, seeing his knife drop from his trembling hand in the abstraction of supernatural thoughts, she had a last opportunity of admiring his prophetic intuition, and his constant care for the salvation of souls. The fatigue of the holy bishop, who said laughingly, "I cannot eat all day long; you must give me a little rest"; the eagerness and pious curiosity of the young abbess, anxious to know and do everything, who rushed up breathlessly during the ceremony of the dedication to ask the bishop a memento for a monk, whose death she had just heard of,—all these details, says a modern writer, [27] form a picture complete in its simplicity, upon which the charmed mind can repose amid the savage habits and wild vicissitudes of the struggle, then more violent than ever, between the Northumbrians and Picts, the Saxons and the Celts.
S. Elfleda died at the age of sixty. No account of her last illness has been transmitted to us.
