St. Everilda

A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

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July 9 · Virgin

St. Everilda

St. Everilda

A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

Traditional feast

July 9
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

July 9
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Virgin

Their story

Adapted in modern English from Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints · little is known

After King Cynegils of the West Saxons was baptised by St Birinus in 635, Everilda came to know Christ. She fled secretly from her parents' house to look for a convent, and on the way two other young women, Bega and Wuldreda, joined her.

St Wilfrid gave her a place called the Bishop's Dwelling, later named Everildisham after her; even the Bollandists (Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints) could not identify it. There she trained many women in the religious life. She died on 9 July. Butler notes that her name survives only in old breviary readings and an early copy of Usuard's martyrology.

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

Keep their day. Remember them on July 9 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Not in any Martyrology; but admitted by the Bollandists, on the authority of a pre-reformation English Breviary, of what place not certain, but probably of Evesham, which contained an office with three lections for the festival of this Saint. Nothing is known of her except what is said of her in these three lessons.] A certain maiden named Everilda lived in England in the days of S. Wilfred. Unknown to her parents, Everilda resolved to embrace the religious life, and she ran away from home. She fell in with two virgins named Bega and Wuldreda, and went on with them, chanting the “ Te Deum,” till they came to a place were they met S. Wilfred, 1 who gave them the veil, and they abode there till their death. The place was afterwards called Everildsham, probably Evesham. If this be so, it was no doubt in the year 689, when S. Wilfred, at an advanced age, went to Evesham to consecrate the Benedictine Church just built there by Bishop Egwin and Ceonred, king of Mercia.

Feast days

Feast: July 9

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

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

Also on July 9
P

Sts. Processus and…

July 9 · Martyrs
T

Sts. Three Soldiers

July 9 · Feast
M

St. Monegunda

July 9 · Widow
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Story sources

Sources

Credits

Image: St Everilda's Church, Everingham.jpg · Stuart and Fiona Jackson · CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

Image: Stuart and Fiona Jackson, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). 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.