06 — Mother of the Church
The reach of Hilda’s authority and influence beyond the walls of her monastery: Bede’s portrait of an abbess to whom kings and commoners alike came for counsel, who is called “mother” by all who knew her; and the larger question her career raises — the scope and meaning of an Anglo-Saxon double-monastery abbess’s authority, and what it shows of the place of women’s leadership in the early English Church.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; abbess of Whitby)
Bede writes that Hilda’s prudence was so great that not only ordinary people but kings and princes sought and received her counsel; and that all who knew her called her “mother,” for her singular grace and devotion. That a woman should so stand at the centre of the Church’s life is, for the modern reader, the most arresting thing about her — and it raises a genuine historical question, on which scholars differ, about how exceptional she was and what her authority rested upon. These files treat first Bede’s witness to her counsel, and then, even-handedly, the debate over the authority of Anglo-Saxon abbesses and its bearing on the history of women in the Church.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Counsellor to Kings and Bishops | Bede’s portrait of Hilda as counsellor — kings and commoners alike seeking her wisdom; the title “mother”; her role at the synod and in the formation of clergy; and what the portrait does and does not let us see of the woman. |
| A Woman of Authority | The scope of an Anglo-Saxon double-monastery abbess’s authority; the scholarly debate (Fell, Hollis, Yorke, Foot, Schulenburg) over what it shows of women’s leadership; an even-handed account that resists both anachronistic projection and minimisation. |
See Also
- The Rule and the Life — the governance from which her wider authority grew
- The Nurturing of Learning — the bishops she formed, an exercise of that authority
- The Double Monastery and the Eastern Tradition — holy women’s leadership East and West
- Women in Orthodoxy — the wider tradition of women’s ministries in the Church
- The History of the Deaconess — a related question of women’s office in the early Church
References
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (IV.23.)
- Fell, Christine. Women in Anglo-Saxon England. London: British Museum Publications, 1984.
- Hollis, Stephanie. Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992.
- Yorke, Barbara. Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses. London: Continuum, 2003.