35. SAINTS CYNEBURGA, CYNESWITHA, ABBESSES, AND TIBBA, NUN, OF MERCIA

Saints Cyneswitha and Cyneburga were daughters of the pagan King Penda of Mercia. According to one source, St. Cyneburga married Alcfrith, son of King Oswy of Northumbria, and then became the foundress and abbess of the monastery of Castor, Northamptonshire. After having gathered a large community of nuns and lived a holy life, Cyneburga died in abut 680 and was succeeded as abbess by her younger sister Cyneswitha. King Offa of East Anglia fell in love with St. Cyneswitha, and together with her brothers put pressure on her to marry him. However, Cyneswitha, strengthened by a vision of the Mother of God, rejected his advances. Then Offa was persuaded by him to go to change his plans and go to Rome with King Kenred of Mercia and St. Egwin of Worcester, where he received the monastic tonsure.

St. Tibba was a hermitess at Ryhall in Leicestershire, and may have been related to SS. Cyneburga and Cyneswitha. She appeared in a vision to a certain holy man, saying: «I have come down from a festivity on high to announce to you the day of my translation. For this is the night and day of the blessed Lucy, in which I have surrendered my soul to the Lord Jesus Christ.»

In 963 the relics of Saints Cyneburga and Cyneswitha were translated to Peterborough by Abbot of Aelfsige of Peterborough. At about the same time the relics of St. Tibba were also transferred from Ryhall to Peterborough; for, as Hugh Candidus wrote in the twelfth century, «she bade him [Abbot Aelfsige] to do so and showed great miracles that she was minded there to repose with her friends.» In the reign of King Aethelred they were translated to Thorney, but in the reign of King Henry I they were restored to Peterborough.

Saints Cyneburga, Cyneswitha and Tibba are commemorated on October 6.

Holy Mothers Cyneburga, Cyneswitha and Tibba, pray to God for us!

(Sources: David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978 pp. 97–98; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, IV, 180; John of Tynemouth, in Nova Legenda Anglie, pp. 130–132; Trevor Bevis, Fenland Saints and Shrines, March: Westrydale Press, 1981, p. 4)