02 — The Call to Monastic Life
The turning of Hilda’s life from the world to religion: her decision, at thirty-three, to embrace the monastic state; the plan — abandoned at Bishop Aidan’s recall — to join her sister Hereswith in a monastery in Gaul; and her first abbacy, the small community on the north bank of the Wear at Hartlepool. From here her vocation flows directly out of the Ionan mission of Aidan and Lindisfarne.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; abbess of Whitby)
Bede places Hilda’s conversion to the monastic life in the thirty-fourth year of her life — she had, he says, lived thirty-three years “most nobly in the secular habit” and the remaining thirty-three “still more nobly” in the monastic. Resolved to leave Britain altogether and live as a stranger for the Lord’s sake in the Frankish monastery of Chelles, where her sister Hereswith already lived, she was recalled by Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, who gave her a small holding on the Wear and then set her over the monastery of Hartlepool. These files trace that turning and her first years of rule, and locate her firmly within the Ionan-Lindisfarne stream of English monasticism.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Turn at Thirty-Three | Hilda’s monastic conversion at thirty-three; the abandoned plan to follow her sister Hereswith to Gaul; Aidan’s recall and the decisive role of the Ionan mission in shaping her vocation. |
| Abbess of Hartlepool | Her first abbacy: the monastery of Heruteu (Hartlepool), founded by Heiu; Hilda’s ordering of its life on the regular pattern; the archaeology of the site and what little can be reconstructed. |
See Also
- Baptism with Edwin, 627 — the faith she now embraced fully
- Founding Streanæshalch — the greater house to which Hartlepool was the prelude
- St. Aidan of Lindisfarne — the bishop who recalled and formed her
- Monasticism — the monastic life she entered
References
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (IV.23.)
- Foot, Sarah. Veiled Women. 2 vols. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.
- Yorke, Barbara. Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses. London: Continuum, 2003.