St Edith’s Thumb
The way Edith kept tracing little crosses with her thumb made a great impression on Archbishop Dunstan.
961-984
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
© Derek Harper, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Parish Church of St Edith of Wilton, in Eaton-under-Heywood, Shropshire. From the time of her death in 984 (the year given by Goscelin) at the age of twenty-three Edith, a nun at Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire and a daughter of King Edgar (r. 959-975), remained one of the most popular of all English saints. Goscelin, a Flemish monk who was chaplain to the Abbey, said that he often felt her presence on his visits, a century after she died.
Introduction
This post is number 2 in the series St Edith of Wilton
Edith, a nun at Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire, was a daughter of King Edgar (r. 959-975). One of her pretty idiosyncrasies was the way she made the sign of the cross by wiggling her right thumb, on herself and on anyone whom she wished to bless. It captivated St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had come to dedicate a new chapel.
freely translated from the Latin
WHEREVER Edith went, the cross of Christ was her companion: upon her brow, upon her breast, in her coming and going, in all her works the cross came first. On one occasion, she was serving food from a bowl into a pauper’s pouch, as was her custom, when a boy suddenly ran up to her side begging alms. She handed him something with her customary sign of the cross; the boy vanished abruptly, and she never saw him again.*
When she founded a church in honour of St Denis,* and invited St Dunstan to its dedication,* the holy bishop saw the holy virgin frequently use her thumb to make the sign of the cross on her forehead. Much affected by this, he took her right hand and said: ‘May this thumb never perish!’*
freely translated from the Latin
From ‘Life of St Edith’, by Monk Goscelin (fl. 1050-1090), as given in J. P. Migne’s ‘Patrologia Latina’ MPL 155 cols 0109-0116B. Freely translated. For substantial extracts in English, see ‘A Catholic History of England’, by William Bernard MacCabe (1801-1891), and there is a life of St Edith at OrthoChristian.
Next in series: The Setting of Edith’s Star
Goscelin evidently wishes us to see this boy as a miraculous manifestation, of an angel or perhaps of Christ himself. See also a story about St Cuthbert, The Man Who Left No Footprints.
St Denis, a third-century Bishop of Paris who is believed to have been martyred during the reign of Roman Emperor Decius (r. 249-251). Edith was much devoted to him, and is said to have designed the frescoes for the interior herself.
St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 988. Appointed during the reign of Edith’s father King Edgar, Dunstan inspired a wide-ranging reform of both church and state, and deserves much of the credit for Edgar’s soubriquet of ‘the Peaceful’.
It was said afterwards that when Edith’s tomb was opened many years later, her thumb and the parts of the body on which it rested were indeed uncorrupted. Her unassuming idiosyncrasy is reminiscent of St Nicholas Mogilevsky, who was partial to pronouncing little blessings. See The Blessings of Nicholas Mogilevsky.
