39. SAINT EANSWYTHE, ABBESS OF FOLKESTONE
Our holy Mother Eanswythe was the only daughter of the pagan King Eadbald of Kent and the Christian Queen Emma, daughter of the king of the Franks. She was probably born around 614. From early childhood she renounced worldly pomp and sought to serve God alone. However, her father had other designs for her and urged her to marry. But Eanswythe firmly stuck to her purpose of becoming a nun. She told her father that if he was recommending to her an everlasting love and an immortal spouse, the fruit of marriage with whom would, while preserving her virginity, bring her endless joy, then she would willingly comply with his counsel. If, on the other hand, he was offering her a partnership in which love would be mingled with dislike, a human husband, children who would die, and all this at the cost of her virginity, then even the advice of her father would tell her to choose the better thing, unless he wished to strip himself of the title of father.
«For Mary,» she went on, «hath chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her. Since, therefore, in human affairs the universal law of death prevails, I thirst for the embrace of a heavenly and immortal spouse. For Him do I preserve the flower of my virginity; if I love Him, I am chaste; if I touch Him, I am pure; if I embrace Him, I am a virgin! For the service of a spouse such as this, I beseech you, father, to build me a house of prayer!»
And so, finally persuaded, King Eanbald built a church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul within Folkestone fortress, and close to it a monastery with its own church for Eanswythe.
While the monastery was in the process of being built, a pagan Northumbrian prince came in person to ask for the hand of the holy virgin in marriage. Her father now wavered, and tried once more to persuade her to accept such a favourable offer. However, Eanswythés mind was made up, and she thought of an excellent expedient whereby she might get rid of the unwelcome suitor. She took him to the unfinished building, and stopped before a beam that was too short for the place it was required to fill.
«This noble prince,» she said, «earnestly desires to have me, the handmaid of Christ, for his companion. He seeks me for his bride. Oh, what a foolish exchange, what hateful stupidity, what an unbearable loss, if I were to exchange heavenly things for earthly, everlasting joys for those which pass. Nevertheless, though this man is mortal and earthly, I will take him for husband if, through the power of his god, he can by prayer make this piece of wood as long as is required. If he cannot, then let him leave me alone.»
The prince was quite satisfied with this proposal, but though he prayed long to each of his gods in turn, it was of no avail, and, covered with confusion, he went
away. Eanswythe then approached the beam, and at her prayer it immediately extended itself to the required length.
St. Eanswythés monastery was founded, according to tradition, in 630, being probably the earliest convent in Anglo-Saxon England. Eanswythe was not immediately made abbess, but a little later. Now it happened that water had to be carried from a spring a long way from the monastery. Abbess Eanswythe prayed, went to the spring, and, striking the rock with her crosier, bade the water follow her. This it did, uphill and over rocks and streams, until it arrived at her monastery. From that time on, the spring plentifully supplied the nuns with water. The holy virgin performed other miracles both before and after her death, including the restoring of sight to a blind woman and the release of a man possessed by a demon.
She died very young, probably on August 31, 640, after only ten years of monastic life.
The monastery was probably destroyed in the ninth century. In 927, King Athelstan gave the land on which it had been situated to the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury, calling it the place «where there was once a monastery and abbey of holy virgins, and where St. Eanswythe was buried.» On September 12, 1138, the relics of the saint were again translated to the church of Saints Mary and Eanswythe. On June 17, 1885, her relics were discovered in a twelfth-century reliquary in the chancel wall of the church.
St. Eanswythe is commemorated on August 31.
Holy Mother Eanswythe, pray to God for us!
(Sources: Dame Eanswythe Edwards, Dame Eanswythe of Folkestone, 1980; the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, vol. 40, p. 685; David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978, pp. 115–116)