Hereswith
Our Venerable Mother Hereswith, Princess of Northumbria, Nun at Chelles
Venerable · Princess · b. early 7th century, Deira (Northumbria) — d. c. 690 (conventional date; no early source), Chelles in Gaul
Commemorated 3 September
Hereswith (died c. 690) was a princess of the Northumbrian royal house of Deira — daughter of Hereric, King Edwin's nephew, and elder sister of Hilda, the great abbess of Whitby. Married into the Wuffing royal house of East Anglia, she was the mother of Aldwulf, king of the East Angles. She entered the monastic life before her famous sister did: Bede records that by about 647, when Hilda resolved to leave the world, Hereswith was already living under the rule at Chelles near Paris, "waiting for her eternal reward," and it was her example that first drew Hilda toward Gaul. She remained at Chelles until her death, conventionally placed about 690; her feast is kept on September 3.
The record of Hereswith is essentially one passage of Bede (Ecclesiastical History IV.23, the chapter on Hilda), and this entry is as long as that passage allows. Bede makes Hilda "the daughter of Hereric, nephew to King Edwin" — so Hereswith, her sister, was likewise Hereric's daughter, of the royal line of Deira; Bede's account of Hilda's infancy names their mother as Breguswith. Hereswith married into the East Anglian royal house: Bede calls her "mother to Aldwulf, king of the East Angles" (Aldwulf reigned from about 664 into the early eighth century). Bede does not name her husband; the East Anglian royal genealogies make Aldwulf a son of Æthilric, son of Eni and brother of King Anna, and modern scholarship accordingly identifies her husband as this Æthilric (see Disputed questions).
At some time before about 647 Hereswith left England for Gaul and took the monastic habit at Chelles ("the monastery of Cale") in the diocese of Paris — one of the Frankish royal nunneries to which, as Bede notes elsewhere (III.8), English noblewomen resorted in those years because their own land had as yet almost no monasteries. Bede's single sentence about her states that when Hilda, aged thirty-three, resolved on the monastic life and spent a year in East Anglia hoping to cross to Gaul, Hereswith "at that time living in the same monastery, under regular discipline, was waiting for her eternal reward"; Hilda was "led by her example." Hilda was recalled to Northumbria by Aidan; Hereswith stayed, and nothing further is recorded of her. No early source records her death: the year c. 690 given by the modern calendars is a conventional estimate, and her burial place is not transmitted.
Feast and commemoration
September 3 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 16). The witness for this commemoration in the Antiochian GB&I layer is the St Constantine York calendar, whose line for this day reads "St. Hereswith, sister of St. Hilda (c. 690)." Orthodox England keeps her this day ("Hereswith Sept 3 + c 690"), as does Stanton's Menology of England and Wales; for the divergent later Western dates see Disputed questions. She does not appear on the OCA's September 3 page (checked live 2026-07-29). She falls under the common of a monastic woman saint (see references/common-readings.md). Her sister Hilda of Whitby (†680) is commemorated separately in November and does not yet have an entry in this corpus.
Iconography
No iconography of Hereswith is transmitted, ancient or medieval; she is not known to appear in any surviving insular or Frankish image. No licence-clean image has been located; the entry is listed among the wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- Her husband. Bede names only her son. The Anglian genealogies point to Æthilric son of Eni; Florence of Worcester's tradition, followed by the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia, makes her instead the wife of King Æthelhere (Anna's brother, killed at the Winwaed in 655) and mother also of Alfwold — but the Encyclopedia's corollary, that she entered Chelles only as Æthelhere's widow after 655, cannot be reconciled with Bede, who has her at Chelles before c. 647. The Liber Eliensis makes her a wife of King Anna himself, which would make her mother of Anna's sainted daughters (Sexburga of Ely and her sisters); this is generally rejected. The disagreement is recorded here without resolution, noting that Bede's chronology weighs against the Æthelhere and Anna versions.
- Her feast day. September 3 (Stanton's Menology, Orthodox England, and the York calendar); but the old English Martyrology of Wilson gives September 20, Ferrari September 23, and Bucelinus and the Bollandists December 1 — the variance is reported by the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia.
- Her death. The date c. 690 rests on no surviving early source; it is the convention of the modern calendars, repeated here as such.