Hildelith of Barking, also known as Hildilid or Hildelitha, was an 8th-century Christianity saint,[The Oxford Dictionary of Saints] from Anglo-Saxon England but was of foreign origin.
Very little is known of her life; however, she is known to history mainly through the hagiography of the Secgan,[ Stowe MS 944, British Library] and the Life of St Hildelith written in 1087 by the Medieval Benedictine hagiography Goscelin.[M.L. Colker, Lives of the female saints of Barking Abbey, "Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which relate to the history of Barking Abbey." Studia Monastica 7.2 (1965). 383-460.] She was abbess of the Barking Abbey at Barking in England.[William Page & J. Horace Round, ed. (1907). 'Houses of Benedictine nuns: Abbey of Barking', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2. pp. 115–122.] She was also the superior to Cwenburh of Wimborne prior to that saint's founding of Wimborne Abbey.
Abbess of Barking
Earconwald is said to have engaged Hildelith to instruct his sister Æthelburh, abbess of the
Barking Abbey which he had founded at Barking.
Hildilid succeeded her pupil as the abbess at some date later than 692, if we accept the charter of Æthelred to Æthelburga given under that date (Kemble, Codex Dipl. i. 39).
According to another account it must have been after the death of Earconwald (693), who died on a visit to his sister. Florence of Worcester, however, gives her accession under 664, but again mentions it under 675 (i. 27, 33).
Bede speaks of Hildelith's long rule, of her translation of the bones of saints into the church of St. Mary and of a miraculous cure of a blind man which took place in her time.[Hist. Eccl. iv. 10 Bædæ Hist. Eccl. and Florence of Worcester in Engl. Hist. Soc]
It is not known who replaced her as the next known abbess is Wulfhild (c940-1000), three centuries later and just prior to the Norman Invasion. She was unique in that under her control the abbey acted as a double monastery.[Hollis, Stephanie. Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing A Common Fate. Rochester: Boydell, 1992. p259.]
Death and burial
The date of Hildilid's death is uncertain, but
Bede speaks of her long rule and says she lived to a great age and historian Katie Bugyis states that Hildelith died sometime after 686.
A letter dated to 716 from
Saint Boniface to Eadburga, Abbess of Minster mentions Hildilid
as the original source for his Vision of the Monk of Wenlock, but he does not indicate whether she was at the time still living or dead.
[Emerton, Ephraim. The Letters of St. Boniface. Records of Civilization: Sources & Studies 31. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940, 25.] She was abbess until about 700
anno Domini and she may have died about 725 AD, being buried in Barking. On the other hand, an excavation of
Hartlepool Abbey in 1833 found human burials and Anglo-Saxon artefacts, several of which, in consultation with the British Archaeological Association, were identified, including Hildelith, along with two other nuns of
Barking Abbey, Eadgyd and Torchtgyd.
[1873. A Handbook for Travellers in Durham and Northumberland. J. Murray, page 116] However, this later 'identification' has been more recently discredited by
Tees Archaeology, who hold the Historic Environment Records for all known archaeological sites in Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees. See the
Corpus Record of Anglo Saxon Stone Sculpture for further details.
