A woman who led hundreds
St. Hilda oversaw a double monastery of men, women
By Tony Staley
Compass Editor
Lost to many in the centuries of church history is the role women sometimes played as leaders. Among these strong leaders was Hilda of Whitby, a fifth century English abbess.
Hilda was 13 when St. Paulinus baptized her at the same time as her great-uncle, King Edwin of Northumbria, England.
It was a time of frequent wars as rival kings fought. Somehow, Hilda escaped both death and capture, but by age 33, she had enough of the fighting and asked to join her sister, Hereswitha, as a nun at Chelles Monastery in France. She went to her nephew, the king of East Anglia, to await a ship to France.
Before that ship arrived, St. Aidan, who had worked as a bishop in Northumbria before fighting broke out, asked Hilda to return to the now peaceful area. He planned for them to work together to establish a monastery in the Irish tradition of prayer and learning.
He gave Hilda land along the Wear River, where she stayed until becoming abbess of Hartlepool, a double monastery by the North Sea. Double monasteries, common at the time, and often led by abbesses, had men and women worshiping together, but living apart.
Hilda served eight years as the abbess at Hartlepool. St. Bede, in his early 8th century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, spoke of her "innate wisdom and her delight in the service of God" and how ordinary people, kings and princes sought her advice. The nuns, he said, lived in strict "justice, piety and chastity," but mostly "peace and charity."
After King Oswy won a major battle, he gave Hilda property at Streaneshalch (Lighthouse Bay) - later called Whitby - where she supervised building a monastery.
This double monastery, under her leadership, became a center for holiness and learning for hundreds of monks and nuns. Community members spent their days studying and copying the Bible and other books, and translating and illustrating manuscripts. Whitby soon had one of England's best libraries.
Leading scholars taught there, and all its members could play a musical instrument. The monastery followed the New Testament model of holding all possessions in common with no distinction between rich and poor (not always the case in European abbeys of the time.)
Whitby was so highly regarded that five of its monks became bishops and bishops went there in search of priests. It also was home to Caedmon, the first Christian poet in England. The monastery was the site of the Synod of Whitby in 664, which decided to follow the Roman, rather than Celtic, practice in determining the date of Easter. Hilda preferred the Celtic method, but accepted the decision.
Hilda was sick the last seven years of her life, but continued to govern the monastery.
Sources: All Saints, Dictionary of Saints, Lives of the Saints, Treasury of Women Saints, Voices of the Saints and Women in Church History
|
