01 — Foundations
The royal and ecclesial ground on which Hilda’s life stands: her birth into the Deiran branch of the Northumbrian royal house, grand-niece of King Edwin, in the first decades of the seventh century, and her baptism — with Edwin and his court — by the Roman missionary Paulinus on Easter 627, in the first generation of English Christians. What can be said of these years rests almost wholly on Bede.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; abbess of Whitby)
Hilda was born into the convulsive politics and the new faith of seventh-century Northumbria. Bede tells us she was of noble, indeed royal, stock — a kinswoman of King Edwin of the Deiran line — and that she received baptism as a girl of about thirteen when the king and his nobles were baptized at York in 627, the fruit of Paulinus’s mission and of Edwin’s marriage to the Christian Kentish princess Æthelburh. These files set out what is known of her family and of that first Northumbrian conversion, and mark the long silence that follows: of the more than thirty years between her baptism and her entry into religion, Bede tells us nothing.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Deiran Royal House | Hilda’s birth (c. 614) into the royal house of Deira; her father Hereric, grand-nephew of King Edwin; the dynastic world of Bernicia and Deira and the dream-portent Bede attaches to her birth. |
| Baptism with Edwin, 627 | The conversion of Edwin’s Northumbria, the mission of Paulinus, and Hilda’s baptism with the court at York on Easter 627; the first generation of English Christians and the fragility of that first planting. |
See Also
- The Turn at Thirty-Three — the conversion that ends the silence after her baptism
- Bede on Hilda — the single source for these years
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church into which Hilda was baptized
References
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (II.9–14 on Edwin’s conversion; IV.23 on Hilda.)
- Yorke, Barbara. Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses. London: Continuum, 2003.
- Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.