72. SAINT MILDBURGA, ABBESS OF MUCH WENLOCK

Our holy Mother Mildburga was the daughter of King Merewald of Hecani (South Shropshire and Herefordshire) and St. Ermenburga (Domneva), the daughter of Ermenred, brother of King Erconbert of Kent. She was the eldest of four holy siblings: the sisters Mildburga, Mildred, Mildgytha and the brother Merefin, who died young. Merewald was at first a pagan, being a son of the famous persecutor of the Faith, King Penda of Mercia; but he was converted to the true faith after receiving a miraculous vision which was interpreted to him by the Northumbrian priest Edfrith.

Goscelin, writing in about 1100, tells the story: «What I am now telling I have learned partly by reading and partly through conversation with a certain venerable old priest. He said that King Merewald of the Mercians was devoted to paganism when the holy priest Edfrith, a man famous for his learning and renowned for his life, was told by a heavenly message to come from Northumbia in order to convert him. As it is said, he himself undertook in accordance with this divine message to proceed to the land of the Mercians, to a place called Readesmith, and to preach there the word of God, to convert the king and his people, who were pagans, to Christianity. St. Edfrith therefore set off and started the task of preaching, not knowing the king and the district to which he had been ordered to go by heaven. From heaven he was told the way, and from heaven he was led to the place.

«Finally, therefore, he reached the place at sunset. Day was covered in night and the new visitor, lacking shelter, was protected in the open air during the night. Lest, however, he might become despondent because of the uncertain reason for his journey, he was visited by a divine power foretelling the king's conversion. For while he was sitting down to a small meal in the evening, having first paid to God due praises and prayers, he was approached by a huge lion with his man bristling over his shoulders. When he saw the lion, the holy man, intrepid God-fearer that he was, did not give way to fear, but handed him a crust of his bread as if he were someone sent from heaven. The beast took this morsel handed to him, no longer like a lion but more gently than a lamb with a bland mouth, rolling on the ground before the feet of the provider as he calmly ate it. What more? Having eaten, the lion disappeared and the holy man spent the night in the same place.

«The sun returned to the upper sky, the sun shone forth golden bright. The visitor prayed, rose from the place and, having gone round the neighbourhood, found out where the king and his family were living. He was given a house to lodge in and was looked after by one of the king's soldiers.

«The following night the king had a dream and when he told it in the morning to his court none of his court could interpret it. The soldier remembered the guest that he had taken in, and just as Pharaoh was advised by his vizier about Joseph as an interpreter of his dream, so he suggested to the king: «My Lord King,» he said, »your majesty should order that a certain man whom I received as a guest under my roof last night should be presented to you. His manners seem different from ours, and if I am not mistaken he is a disciple of the Christian Faith. For he denounces our gods and reviles them, and promises and threatens that our worship of them will bring the punishment of eternal death. Perhaps if he hears the dream of my Lord the King he will be, I fancy, no false interpreter of it.» The king said to the soldier: «Let your guest be summoned quickly.»

«When the Christian ambassador had been summoned into the presence of the king, the king began to tell him his dream as follows.

««Last night, while I was sunk in sleep on my couch, I seemed to see two foul and huge dogs tearing me by the throat. Then from the country a certain person of venerable appearance, with his hair shorn round his ears into a crown of locks, came to my help. He rescued me from the fangs of the dogs with a golden key which he carried in his hand. The vast size of the dogs and their ravenous attack on me terrified me, but I was comforted by my speedy rescue and the pleasing vision of my rescuer. But I do not know what such a foul vision, so wild and uncontrolled, holds for me, or who is meant by my rescuer... »

«The king had finished speaking and the disciple of Christ replied: "You are to be congratulated on your dream, O king, for it tends to your eternal salvation. My king, listen and understand what good is portended by the horrible appearance of those attacking you and striving to throttle you, and what is foretold by the pleasant appearance of the key-bearer, your liberator. The huge foul dogs are the attendants of darkest Pluto, the enemies of your life and mortal salvation, to whose jaws you will be given as prey and food, and, having been devoured, you will always remain devourable. In this way you will always be dying and never end by death your perpetual terror, your sulphurous miasmas, gnashing of teeth, burning of fire, and vast and intolerable penalties by which you will be tortured by them in the middle of Hell. Unless you renounced paganism completely and are converted wholeheartedly to Christ, the Son of the Living God.»

The priest then explained to the king that the key-bearer was the holy Apostle Peter who, together with the other apostles, holds the keys to Paradise whereby whomsoever he binds is bound and whomsoever he looses is loosed.

The result of this sermon was that the king was converted to the holy Faith, in about the year 660. After removing his royal purple and crown, he repented in sackcloth and ashes and was baptized. Then he founded a monastery, over which he placed Fr. Edfrith, and gave all his wealth for the building of churches throughout this kingdom, endowing them with rich farms and «families».

Shortly after, King Merewald and his wife Domneva decided to abandon the world and become monastics. So Domneva took Mildburga and her two sisters, Mildred and Mildgytha, – then aged about twelve, ten and eight – to her native Kent.

And from there she sent her daughters to the convent of Chelles, near Paris in France, which had been founded by the Englishwoman St. Bathildes, Queen of France, and was a favourite school for the daughters of the English aristocracy.

On returning from France about six years later, the three holy sisters went different ways: Mildred went to her mother's monastery at Thanet; Mildgytha went to Northumbria; while Mildburga returned to her father's kingdom, to a monastery founded by King Merewald especially for her at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire – probably on the site of the present parish church at Much Wenlock, which contains fabric contemporary with St. Mildburga in the south aisle and the Lady chapel. The king placed this monastery under the direction of St. Botulph, abbot of Ikanhoe. Its first abbess was Liobsynde, a French nun from Chelles.

The saint was tonsured as a nun by St. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, who was a Greek from Tarsus in Cilicia. In 685 her father, the former King Merewald, died and was buried in the crypt at Repton, which remains to this day. In 687, St. Mildburga was raised to the rank of abbess, while her spiritual mother, Liobsynde retired to an estate of land at Hampton.

Under Mildburgás direction the monastery of Much Wenlock flourished «like a paradise». She was famous for her beauty, elegance and intelligence, but even more for her humility and chastity. Soon she was receiving donations of land from all over England. The list of donors in the ancient charters includes five kings and one prince, six bishops, four abbots, two earls and one nun. One of her properties was at Llanfillo in Wales, where a church is dedicated to St. Mildburga and where there were three large stones associated with the saint and believed to have healing power.

Once a neighbouring Welsh prince wished to take the saint by force and marry her. When she refused his advances, saying that she wished to remain a virgin, he became angry and pursued her on a horse. As she fled she came to the river Corve, which she crossed. But when her pursuer arrived, the river suddenly became so swollen that it was impossible for him to follow. St. Peter's church at Stanton Lacy was built near this spot. At Stoke St. Milborough, where she was thrown from her mount, it is said that the saint miraculously obtained water to bathe her wounds from a spring which issued forth from a rock struck by her horse at her bidding.

It was in the same parish of Stoke that another miracle was performed by the saint. It was reported to her that some wild geese were devastating the fields of the peasants. So she ordered the geese to remove themselves, and they did. And for years thereafter the geese would keep away from those fields. Hence the old peasant rhyme:

If old Dame Mil will our fields look over,

Safe will be corn and grass and clover;

But if the old Dame is gone fast asleep,

Woe to our corn, grass, clover and sheep.

Also at Stoke there is St. Milborough's well. This is said to have sprung up when the saint was injured while fleeing from her enemies, and no water could be found to bathe her wound. She then ordered her horse to strike the rock with his hoof, and a spring gushed up.

One day, while she was praying in a little chapel in the garden, a poor widow came up to her and laid her dead child at her feet, beseeching her with tears to restore him to life. Mildburga was full of compassion for the woman, but she refused, saying that only God can raise from the dead. «Go, rather, and bury your child, remembering that you yourself will shortly follow him, for all mankind must die.» But the woman persisted, saying that she knew that God always listened to the saint's prayers, and that she would not move from that spot until her request was granted. At length, St. Mildburga prostrated herself beside the body of the child and prayed as St. Benedict once prayed on a similar occasion: «O God, look not upon my sin, but on the faith of this woman who asks for the life of her child, and restore to life the body which Thou didst create.» As she prayed a bright light encircled her, and it seemed as if she was on fire. When one of the nuns saw this, she said: «My lady, get up quickly and run from the fire: I see the whole of your body enveloped in a great flame.» But at that moment the appearance of fire vanished, and the holy virgin arose and gave the child back to his mother restored to his former health.

The saint reposed in peace in the midst of her community on July 7 (February 23, according to another source) in about the year 715. Her last words were: «Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.» After her death many miracles were performed through her intercession; but after the Norman Conquest, the situation of her tomb was forgotten.

However, her holy relics were discovered again in the year 1079, when the monastery was being rebuilt. Goscelin tells the story: «The monks brought over by Earl Roger had acquired, possibly as one of the costly ornaments with which Leofric had endowed his church, a silver casket reputed to contain the remains of St. Mildburga. The brethren decided to open the casket to verify this belief. They did so. The shrine was empty. Not long afterwards, one of the lay brothers, Raymond by name, in the church of the Holy Trinity which is about a stonés throw from the oratory of St. Mildburga, was doing some renewal and repair work to parts of the building over the altar that had fallen into disrepair. He noticed among other things an old box jutting out above the altar. Inside the box was a very old document written in Old English by a priest, Alstan. This stated that the body of St. Mildburga was buried in the church near the altar. But a long time had passed since that altar had been above the ground. It had either disintegrated through the passage of time, or been destroyed during the desolation of the region. The monks obtained permission, indeed direction, from Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to excavate and find the burial. But the actual discovery was inadvertent. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, while the monks were celebrating the night office, an even occurred in the monastery of the Holy Trinity in the very place where the document said the holy body lay. Two boys were playing when the ground under their feet collapsed, and they sank up to their knees into a kind of circular pit. At the sight of this, Raymond, the lay-brother, ran off to the monastery of St. Mildburga where the brethren were chanting Mattins. As it was night, nothing was done until morning. Then, with tools, the ground was excavated and the bones of the Saint exposed, together with remains of iron bands. The sacred limbs had been buried in a wooden coffin. No signs of the altar mentioned in the parchment had yet appeared. On the following day the brethren began to dig throughout the whole church. Eventually there appeared beyond any possible doubt the foundations of the altar mentioned in the document, near to which, as was universally known, the holy body had been found the previous day... »

When a beautiful fragrance as of balsam pervaded the church, her body was taken up and many miracles were performed through it. People suffering from leprosy and blindness were healed. Once a woman was cured when she vomited a «monstrous worm».

In 1540, during the Protestant Reformation, St. Mildburgás relics were burnt in the market place.

St. Mildburga is commemorated on February 23.

Holy Mother Mildburga, pray to God for us1

(Sources: Mary Gifford Brown, An Illuminated Chronicle: Some Light on the Dark Ages of Saint Milburga^]s Lifetime, Bath University Press, 1990; Old English manuscript Cott. Caligula A. xiv (10th c.); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum; Nova Legenda Anglie; David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 279; Janet and Colin Bord, Sacred Waters, London: Paladin, 1986, p. 121; St. Mildred and her Kinsfolk, Ramsgate, 1950; Christopher Jobson, «Saint Milburga», Orthodox Outlook, vol. VIII, no. 6, 1995, pp. 22–25; A.J.M. Edwards, «An Early Twelfth Century Account of Saint Milburga of Much Wenlock», Trans. Shropshire Archaeological Society, vol. lxvii, pp. 134–142; Fr. Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, English Orthodox Trust, 1995, chapter 82)