Saint Etheldreda. Abbess. Feast Day 23 June. White Vestments.

Saint Etheldreda (Æthelthryth) of Ely. 

The Benedictional of Saint Æthelwold 

illuminated Manuscript in the British Library.

Date: 10th-Century.

Source: [1]

Author: Monk.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Text from Wikipedia — the free encyclopædia,
unless stated otherwise.

Etheldreda (or Æthelthryth or Æðelþryð or Æþelðryþe;
4 March 636 A.D. — 23 June 679 A.D.) was an East Anglian Princess, a Fenland and Northumbrian Queen, and Abbess of Ely. 

Æthelthryth is an Anglo-Saxon Saint, and is also known as Etheldreda, or Audrey, especially in Religious contexts.

She was a daughter of Anna, King of East Anglia, and her siblings were Wendreda and Seaxburh of Ely, both of whom eventually retired from Secular Life and founded Abbeys. 

Saint Etheldreda’s Church is located in Ely Place, 

off Charterhouse Street, Holborn, London. It is dedicated 

to Æthelthryth, or Etheldreda, an Anglo-Saxon Saint who Founded the Monastery at Ely, East Anglia, in 673 A.D. 

The building was the Chapel of the London residence 

of the Bishops of Ely.

Photo: 31 July 2013.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/

photos/brighton/9410796726/

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Author: Jim Linwood

(Wikimedia Commons)

Etheldreda was “in turn, Princess, Wife, Queen, Nun, and Abbess, enjoying every possible position of power a woman could claim in Early-Anglo-Saxon England”.[1]

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Etheldreda Founded Ely Abbey, a Double Monastery in 673 A.D., which was later destroyed in the Danish invasion of 870 A.D.

Saint Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place, Holborn, London, is dedicated to the Saint. It was originally part of the London Palace of the Bishops of Ely.

After the English Reformation, part of Saint Etheldreda’s Church was briefly used by a Spanish Ambassador for Catholic Worship.

In the Early-17th-Century, it served briefly as an Embassy Chapel for the Spanish Ambassador, and a haven for English Catholics.

The Chapel was purchased by The Catholic Church in 1874 and is one of the oldest Churches in England to be in current use by The Catholic Church.

Saint Etheldreda’s Church, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, is 13th-Century and was originally Anglo-Saxon. It was named for Saint Etheldreda because it was adjacent to a Palace of the Bishops of Ely, who held her as their Patron Saint.

Saint Etheldreda’s Church, Ely, Cambridgeshire, is a Catholic Parish Church. It is part of the Diocese of East Anglia, within the Province of Westminster. The Church contains the Shrine and Relics of Æthelthryth (Etheldreda).

The common version of Æthelthryth’s (Etheldreda’s) name was Saint Audrey, which is the origin of the word “Tawdry”, which derived from the fact that her admirers bought modesty-concealing Lace goods at an Annual Fair held in her name in Ely, Cambridgeshire. 

By the 17th-Century, this Lace-work had become seen as old-fashioned, vain, or cheap, and of poor quality, at a time when the Puritans of Eastern England disdained ornamental dress.[18]