Everilda
Saint Everild of Everingham (Old English: Eoforhild)[1] was an Anglo-Saxon saint of the 7th century who founded a convent at Everingham, in the English county of the East Riding of Yorkshire. All we know of her comes from the York Breviary.[2]
There are two churches dedicated to St Everilda: St Everilda's Church, Nether Poppleton, and Ss Mary & Everilda, Everingham.
She was converted to Christianity by Saint Birinus, along with King Cynegils of Wessex, in 635. Her legend in the York Breviary states that she was of the Wessex nobility. She fled from home to become a nun, and was joined by Saints Bega and Wuldreda. Saint Wilfrid of York made them all nuns at a place called the Bishop's Dwelling, later known as Everildisham. This place has been identified with present-day Everingham. She gathered a large community of some eighty women.
Veneration
[edit]Her name appears in the Martyrology of Usuard as well as in the church calendars of York and Northumbria.
Notes
[edit]- ^ "Everilda" in Frances Egerton Arnold-Forster, Studies in church dedications: or, England's patron saints, 1899:403f, based on Acta Sanctorum, "setting forth three lessons on the saint". Also Everildis.
- ^ David Hugh Farmer, ed. The Oxford Dictionary Of Saints, s.v. "Everild (Everildis, Averil)".
External links
[edit]- "St. Everildis, Virgin, in England", Butler's Lives of the Saints
- Saints of July 9: Everild of Everingham
- St. Everild of Everingham
- Catholic Online entry
- Converts to Christianity from Anglo-Saxon paganism
- West Saxon saints
- Northumbrian saints
- Anglo-Saxon nuns
- History of the East Riding of Yorkshire
- Christianity in the East Riding of Yorkshire
- Yorkshire saints
- 7th-century Christian saints
- Female saints of medieval England
- 7th-century English nuns
- 7th-century Christian nuns