Wulfhild of Barking

Our Venerable Mother Wulfhild, Abbess of Barking and Horton

Venerable · d. c. 1000 (c. 996 and c. 980 in other accounts)

Wulfhild (†c. 1000) was a tenth-century English abbess of noble birth, educated at the nunnery of Wilton, who as a young woman refused the attentions of King Edgar; the king, desisting, made her abbess of the restored abbey of Barking in Essex, and she founded and endowed a second house at Horton from her own estate, ruling both together. Expelled from Barking by Queen Ælfthryth after Edgar's death, she lived some twenty years at Horton before being restored — as she herself had foretold, the tradition says — under King Æthelred, and died about the year 1000. Her body was found incorrupt at its translation, and she came to be venerated at Barking equally with the abbey's first saints, Ethelburga and Hildelith. Her Life was written by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. She is not to be confused with her kinswoman Wilfrida (Wulfthryth) of Wilton, mother of St Edith.

The record of Wulfhild is medieval and monastic: the principal witness is the Latin Life written about 1080 by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin from the traditions of the Barking community, with notices in William of Malmesbury and the later hagiographic digests. What follows is confined to what those witnesses, as reported in the older menologies and the modern literature, transmit.

Wulfhild was of a noble English family — the modern accounts, following Goscelin, name her father as a Wessex nobleman, Wulfhelm — and was brought up and educated by the nuns of Wilton near Salisbury, whose community she joined. As a young woman she became the object of the attentions of King Edgar (reigned 959–975); the tradition transmitted by Goscelin is that she refused him, holding to the consecrated life, and that the king, repenting of his pursuit, appointed her about 970 abbess of Barking in Essex — the ancient royal abbey, founded in the seventh century by St Erkenwald with his sister St Ethelburga as first abbess, which was then being reconstituted after the devastations of the Danes. Stanton's Menology records that she built and endowed with her own estate the abbey of Horton in Dorset, and that she presided over Barking and Horton at the same time; the modern accounts add, from Goscelin, that she conveyed some twenty villages to Barking's endowment.

Her rule at Barking was remembered as a restoration of the house's first perfection: Stanton writes that under her "the house again flourished in its primitive perfection, in observance, and the holy lives of the religious," and Goscelin's portrait — as digested in the modern literature — is of an abbess who served her sisters with her own hands, drawing water, gathering wood, kindling fires, preparing food, distributing clothing, and giving alms freely to the poor.

In the troubles which followed King Edgar's death (975) she was expelled from Barking by the queen-dowager Ælfthryth, and withdrew to her own foundation at Horton, where she remained some twenty years. She was restored to Barking — "according to her own prediction," Stanton records — under King Æthelred, about 993 in the modern accounts, which relate that the community's fortunes under Ælfthryth's control had decayed and that a vision of the first abbess, St Ethelburga, was said to have directed her return. She died about the year 1000 (the accounts vary; see below) and was buried at Barking, her successor being Leofflæd. Stanton records that at her translation, thirty years later, her body was found wholly incorrupt, "as though only just interred," and that the miracles at her shrine won her a veneration at Barking equal to that of her great predecessors Ethelburga and Hildelith.

Feast and commemoration

Wulfhild is commemorated on September 9 by the St Constantine York calendar (the Antiochian GB&I witness for this layer: "St. Wulfhild, abbess of Barking and Horton (c. 1000)"), by its named upstream, Fr Andrew Phillips's Orthodox England list ("Wulfhild Sept 9 + c 1000. Abbess of convents at Barking and Horton, both in England"), and on this same day by the older Western menologies (Stanton: "At Barking, in Essex, the festival of St. Wulfilda, Virgin and Abbess"). She does not appear in the OCA's Lives of the Saints or on the other major Orthodox jurisdictional calendars consulted. No proper service is known; the common of a venerable woman applies. The day falls within the afterfeast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.

Iconography

No medieval image of Wulfhild is known to this collection, and no licence-clean icon has been identified; she is listed among the wanted icons. An icon of her would follow the type of a venerable abbess: monastic habit, abbatial staff or church-model, with Barking's abbey church; her incorrupt translation and her charity to the poor are the episodes the record offers an iconographer.

Disputed questions

Year of death. The York feed and Orthodox England give c. 1000; the modern literature commonly c. 996; Stanton's chronological table c. 980. William of Malmesbury — who, Stanton notes, knows nothing of her early history or of Horton — places her "a little before the time of Edgar." Recorded here without resolution.
Horton: Dorset or Kent. Stanton and the monastic historians place her Horton in Dorsetshire (Horton Abbey, later annexed to Sherborne); some modern popular summaries say Kent. This entry follows the older and better-documented identification with Horton in Dorset, recording the variance.
Not to be confused with her kinswoman Wilfrida (Wulfthryth) of Wilton (†c. 1000, feast September 13), abbess of Wilton and mother of St Edith — a distinct saint, whom the same medieval tradition makes the object of Edgar's later attentions after Wulfhild had refused him. Stanton already noted that Goscelin's "early details... suggest a doubt that there may be some confusion between her and St. Wulfrida, the mother of St. Edith"; the two entries carry reciprocal notes.