St. Etheldreda (Audrey) (P 003) Button

St. Etheldreda (or Audrey; c. 636-679) is one of the most popular medieval English saints in Britain. She was born an East Anglian princess, became Queen of Northumbria, and died a nun. Widowed once and married twice for reasons of State, nevertheless, she remained a virgin. When her second husband began to press for his marital rights, she sought the counsel of St. Wilfred, Archbishop of York, who advised her to become a nun and abetted her vocation. She made her vows at Coldingham in 672. In the ensuing years, she founded a great double monastery for both men and women at Ely, Cambridgeshire, over which she presided as abbess. In little more than four centuries, in 1109, the site of her abbey at Ely would be constituted a Cathedral. She died of a painful throat ailment in 679. + Here, St. Etheldreda (Audrey) is depicted as abbess, having laid aside her royal robe with its ermine lining, scepter, and secular crown which appear on the floor beside her. She now wears a rayed crown tipped with stylized flowers. In her right hand, she holds a book; in her left, her abbess’s crosier with its sudarium or ‘sweat cloth’ used to prevent discoloration of the staff’s metal shaft by a sweaty palm. Ordinarily, she holds a model of Ely Cathedral and a budding rod or lily of purity. + Behind the figure of the St. Etheldreda is a detail from a Late Medieval map of Great Britain showing the location of Ely Cathedral on today's Kimmeridge Clay island. St. Etheldreda had received the Isle of Ely as it was then known as a morning gift from her first husband. Dating from c. 1360, the Gough Map or Bodleian Map was drawn in pen, ink, and colored washes on two skins of vellum. The map, which measures about 45.28” long x 22.05” wide (115 cm. x 56 cm), was donated to Oxford’s Bodleian Library by Richard Gough in 1809. + Feast: June 23 + Image Credit (P 003): Details extracted from an antique image of S[t].Etheldreda.A[bbess].V[irgin]. from a late 19th-century devotional print in chromoxylography, originally published by Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, New York, and Cincinnati. From the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera. + Image Credit (Gough Map): From Wikimedia Commons {{PD-Art|PD-old-10}}. The image file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.