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St. Edburga of Minster-in-Thanet,
Abbess of Minster-in-Thanet
(Died AD 759)

St. Edburga of Minster-in-Thanet was the, apparently only, daughter of King Centwine of Wessex and his wife, Engyth. She was a disciple of St. Mildred and became Abbess of her Abbey at Minster-in-Thanet in AD 716. A woman of great ability and zealous in her pursuit of knowledge, she secured several Royal charters for her monastery. She was a friend and correspondent of St. Boniface and is to be identified with Heaburg, more commonly called Bugga, to whom several interesting letters of his are addressed, including the account of the Monk of Much Wenlock's vision of heaven. Unfortunately, hers to him are not preserved. His letters to Edburga were written in 718 and 719, before she had become an abbess. Between 718 and 722 her mother wrote to Boniface and soon after, Edburga herself wrote to him, sending him an altar cloth and some money. She went to Rome, a good many years later, and there met Boniface, who sent a message through her to Aethelbert, King of Kent, promising to pray for him. Edburga built a new church for her monastery and removed, into it, the body of her re predecessor, St. Mildred. St. Edburga died at Minster on 13th December AD 759 and was buried alongside her, but both appear to have later been translated to the chapel of St. Gregory's Hospital in Canterbury.

Edited from Agnes Dunbar's "A Dictionary of Saintly Women" (1904).

 

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