EDMUND THE MARTYR

'Edmund the Martyr' (841–20 November 869) was a King of East Anglia.^[1] He succeeded to the East Anglian throne in 855, while still a boy.^[2] In or around 870, Edmund was defeated in battle by the Great Heathen Army, he was captured, tortured, and he died the death of a martyr.^[3] He is recognised as a saint and a martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion.
He is seen as the patron saint of kings, pandemics, the Roman Catholic diocese of East Anglia, the English county of Suffolk, torture victims, and wolves. Edmund of East Anglia ^[4] He was a patron saint of all England until the mid-14th century,⁴ when Edward III replaced him by associating Saint George with the Order of the Garter.^[5]

Contents

Life

Death

Date and location of death

Legacy

Edmund in legend

Legend of Edmund's martyrdom

Legendary revenge

Legendary tree

Edmund in fiction

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Life

According to both Abbo of Fleury followed by John of Worcester, he came "''ex antiquorum Saxonum nobili prosapia oriundus''," which when translated seems to means that St Edmund was of foreign origin and that he belonged to the Old Saxons of the continent.^[6] This is a very doubtful tradition, as there is no evidence that his alleged father, King Alcmund, ever existed. The earliest and most reliable accounts represent Edmund as descended from the preceding kings of East Anglia.⁸ Never the less, the story of Old Saxon origins was later expanded into a full legend which spoke of Edmund's parentage, his birth at Nuremberg to the otherwise unknown Alcmund, his adoption by King Æthelweard of East Anglia, his nomination as successor to the king, and his landing at Hunstanton to claim his kingdom.^[7]
Other accounts state that his father was King Æthelweard.^[8] What is certain is that the king died in 854, and was succeeded by Edmund when the boy was only a fourteen year old. Edmund was said to have been crowned by St Humbert on 25 December 855.² at "Burna" (probably Bures St Mary, Suffolk), which at that time functioned as the royal capital.⁷
Almost nothing is known of the life of Edmund during the next fourteen years.
It was recorded that Edmund was a model king who treated all with equal justice and was unbending to flatterers. It was also written that he retired for a year to his royal tower at Hunstanton and learned the whole Psalter, so that he could recite it from memory.⁸

Death

In the year 869 or 870, the Danes who had wintered at York, marched through Mercia into East Anglia and took up their quarters at Thetford. Edmund engaged them fiercely in battle, but the Danes under their leaders Ubbe Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless had the victory, killed King Edmund, and remained in possession of the battlefield.^[9] Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and other contemporary sources, , Simon, Keynes, Penguin Classics, 2004, The conquerors may have simply killed the king in battle, or in a later martyrdom episode. It is not known which account is correct. The more popular version of the story, which makes Edmund die as a martyr to Danish arrows when he had refused to renounce his Catholic faith or hold his kingdom as a vassal from heathen overlords, dates from comparatively soon after the event.¹ According to Abbo of Fleury, Edmund's earliest biographer, it came to Abbo by way of St Dunstan, who heard it from the lips of Edmund's own standard–bearer. Given accepted birth and death days, this is just chronologically possible.¹ In Abbo of Fleury's alternative version of events Edmund refused to meet the Danes in battle himself, preferring to die a martyr's death:

"(Edmund) was all beset with their shots, as with a porcupine's bristles".

A page from the Anglo –Saxon Chronicle.

Date and location of death

The traditional date of his death, quoted by most reference works, is 870.^[10] However recent research has led to the claim that he actually died in 869,^[11] and this date is now accepted as fact in most new histories.¹
This uncertainty arose because the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dated the start of the year from September, so an event that took place in November 869 according to the modern calendar would be considered by them to take place in 870.⁹ The Great Heathen Army conquered the Kingdom of Northumbria in 866. They then invaded Wessex, the English kingdom whose history from that time is best documented, in December 870. The uncertainty raises the question of whether they did so within a few weeks of killing Edmund, or whether they spent a year pillaging and consolidating their position in East Anglia.
One possible location for the battle is at Hoxne near Eye in Suffolk, some 20 miles east of Thetford.² Another candidate is in Dernford, Cambridgeshire,^[12] while Bradfield St Clare, near Bury St Edmunds is also a possible site for the martyrdom.^[13]

Legacy

The king's body was ultimately interred at Beadoriceworth, the modern Bury St Edmunds.^2[14] The shrine of Edmund soon became one of the most famous and wealthy pilrgimage locations in England and the reputation of the saint became universal.¹ The date of his canonisation is unknown, although Archdeacon Hermann's ''Life of Edmund'', written in the late eleventh century, seems to state that it happened in the reign of Athelstan (924–939). Edmund's popularity among the English nobility was lasting. It is known that his banner was borne in the Irish expedition of the Anglo-Normans and also when Caerlaverock Castle was taken in 1300. A banner with Edmund's crest was also carried at the battle of Agincourt.¹⁶
Churches dedicated to his memory are found all over England, including Christopher Wren's St Edmund the King and Martyr in London. There are a number of colleges named after St Edmund. His shrine at Bury St Edmunds was destroyed in 1539, during the English Reformation. His feast day in the Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican traditions is 20 November.²
In 2006, a group that included BBC Radio Suffolk and the East Anglian Daily Times saw the failure of their programme to get St Edmund named as the patron saint of England. The Bury St Edmunds MP David Ruffley had taken up the cause and helped deliver a large petition to the government in London.⁴ BBC Radio Suffolk also called for a change of the English flag from the Cross of St George (''Argent, a cross Gules'' or ''a red cross on a white field'') to the Flag of St Edmund.^[15] This consists of three gold crowns on a field of blue (''Azure, three crowns Or'').^[16] This is an heraldic banner introduced during the Norman period.^[17] Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the request, however the programme was successful on another level:

Edmund in legend

Legend of Edmund's martyrdom

Edmund in ''The Little Lives of the Saints'', illustrated by Charles Robinson in 1904.

According to legend, Edmund was killed by being tied to a tree shot to death with arrows and finally decapitated. His head was thrown into a nearby forest so that his entire body could not be buried.²
The legend continued, when his body was found, but without a head, eyewitnesses reported to the villagers that the head was lost in the forest. For several days they searched for the head in the brambles and bushes, calling out "Where are you, friend?" to which the head would answer, "Here, here, here." After almost a week of searching, they found Edmund's head in the possession of a grey wolf, clasped between its paws.
The wolf, sent by God to protect the head from the dangers of the forest, was starving but did not eat the head for all the days it was lost. After recovering the head the villagers marched back to the kingdom, praising God and the wolf that served him. The wolf walked beside them as if tame all the way to the kingdom, after which it turned around and vanished into the forest.
After giving the head and body a speedy burial, the kingdom rebuilt itself for several years before finally erecting a church worthy of Edmund's burial.¹ Legend told that upon exhumation of the body, a miracle was discovered. All the arrow wounds upon Edmund's corpse were healed and his head reattached to his body. The only evidence of his previous decapitation was a thin, red line around his neck. Despite being buried for many years in a flimsy coffin, his skin was soft and fresh as if he were merely sleeping the entire time.

Legendary revenge

In Percy Dearmer's ''The Little Lives of the Saints'', we are told of Edmund's posthumous revenge on the Danes:
Sweyn's son, King Canute, converted to Christianity and rebuilt the abbey at Bury St Edmunds. In the year 1020, he made a pilgrimage there and offered his own crown upon the shrine as atonement for the sins of his forefathers.⁷

Legendary tree

Until the middle of the 19th century, an old tree stood in Hoxne Park and it was believed that it was the tree on which Edmund had been martyred. In 1849, the old tree fell down and was chopped up. According to the story, in the heart of the tree an arrow head was found. Pieces of the tree were kept and one of them was used to form part of the altar of a church which was dedicated to Edmund.⁷ Another piece of this tree is in the collection of Moyse's Hall Museum. A dentist volunteered to x-ray this piece and found that it contained a bent nail.

Edmund in fiction

A realistic and possible account of Edmund's martyrdom is given in Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction novel, ''The Last Kingdom''. There is also a description of Edmund just before his death in ''The Namesake'', a juvenile historical novel by C. Walter Hodges. An alternative fictional version of Edmund's martyrdom is given in the short story, "November Saints", included in Alan Moore's novel/story collection, ''Voice of the Fire'' (2004).

See also

★ List of monarchs of East Anglia

References

1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition, , , , Oxford University Press, ,
2. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints, , , Bunson, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0–87973–588–0
3. The Birth of Britain p.102, , Winston, Churchill, Dodd, Mead, ,
4. St Edmund, Patron Saint of Suffolk
5. From Norman Conquest to Magna Carta: England, 1066 – 1215, , Christopher, Daniell, Routledge, ,
6. Life of St Edmund in Anglo – Saxon Primer 9th Ed, , , Abbo of Fleury, Oxford University Press, ,
7. The Little Lives of the Saints, , Percy, Dearmer, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co, ,
8. St Edmund the Martyr
9. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, , Michael, Swanton, , ,
10. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo–Saxon England, , , , Blackwell Publishing, ,
11. Fact and Fiction in the Legend of St Edmund in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology Volume 31, , Dorothy, Whitelock, , ,
12. Do you know where King Edmund died in 869 AD ?
13. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History Volume 35 part 3, , , , , ,
14. The conquest of Mercia: AD 867–870
15. St Edmund
16. British Flags, , W.G., Perrin, Cambridge University Press, ,
17. The Romance of Heraldry, , W.C., Scott–Giles, J. M. Dent, ,

Further reading

★ Grant, Judith, editor. ''La Passiun de Seint Edmund''. London: Anglo–Norman Text Society, 1978. ISBN 0–905474–04–X

★ Hervey, Francis. ''Corolla Sancti Eadmundi''. London: J. Murray, 1907.

External links

★ The history of the legend of Saint Edmund at the St Edmundsbury's website.

★ A detailed example of Edmund's martyrdom legend.

★ The Prime Minister's rejection letter to BBC Radio Suffolk