We have so many amazing saints this month – so many that I often feel like our calendar is crowding in as many saints as possible before the end of the year! Because of course in the Church, the New Year starts not on January 1 but on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls this year on November 30 (ye be warned.)
 
In this coming week we have four fascinating saints: Queen Margaret of Scotland on the 16th, Bishop Hugh of Lincoln on the 17th, Abbess Hilda of Whitby on the 18th, and King Edmund of East Anglia on the 20th. They are all amazing, and I have linked them to their stories if you would like to learn more about them, but Hilda of Whitby is maybe my favorite.
 
Hilda (or Hild, in Old English) was born into the royal house of the kingdom of Northumbria, in the 7th century. It was a violent and turbulent time. Her father had been murdered, and she and her sister Hereswith were raised at the court of their great-uncle King Edwin. Edwin was instrumental in the spread of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England, and he was baptized in 627. He decreed that his household should all be baptized too, including Hilda and her sister. Hilda was thirteen at the time, and we don’t know what she thought about her baptism, or if she had much interest in Christianity at first. We do know that by the time she was 33, she had decided to pursue a monastic vocation.
 
Eventually Hilda founded her own monastery at Whitby, on a windswept promontory overlooking the North Sea. This foundation was what is known as a “double house,” meaning that both monks and nuns lived there, with Hilda as their abbess. Whitby flourished as a center of arts, education, and religious devotion. One of Hilda’s monks, Caedmon, wrote some of the oldest English-language poetry that we have. At its peak, Whitby would have housed hundreds of monks and nuns, and Hilda oversaw all of them as well as all the support staff, farmland, and revenues necessary for such a large foundation. As the north’s primary religious center, Whitby hosted clerics, princes, and pilgrims, all of whom sought the abbess’s favor and intercession. Like many abbesses, Hilda functioned as a bishop, and in fact a surviving seal depicting Hilda shows the abbess carrying a crozier (a bishop’s staff) flanked by two priests saying mass and elevating the Host in her direction.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It can be easy for us to think, sometimes, that women in visible positions of spiritual authority is a modern innovation. Sometimes the Church itself promotes this idea, either because those who oppose women clergy want to dismiss women in leadership as a new-fangled radical idea, or because those who support women clergy want to boast of how forward-thinking and progressive we are now. But the truth is that throughout the Church’s history, women have occupied prominent positions of spiritual leadership. Women doing the same thing today is neither radical nor progressive, but simply more of what we have always done in the Church. We recognize the truth that God calls all alike, for “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
 
Abbess Hilda and Whitby became so important in the life of the church in northern Europe that Whitby hosted an important church meeting, or synod, that sought to reconcile the Roman tradition of Christianity with the Celtic tradition of Christianity, setting the course for the English Church’s unique blend of traditions and customs that is our Anglican heritage today. Hilda’s reputation for reconciliation and bringing peace made her a natural host for the Synod of Whitby and a force for good in the turbulent world of the seventh century.
 
Writing the life of Blessed Hilda about 100 years later, St. Bede the Venerable wrote that while Hilda’s monastery was known for its strict observance of justice, piety, and chastity, it was peace and charity that were the real hallmarks of her leadership. In large foundations like Whitby it was commonplace for the monastic world to be a miniature of the world outside, with monks and nuns from rich families treating those from poorer families like servants, and hoarding private possessions and status. Hilda would have none of that at Whitby, where all were equal. “In her monastery,” Bede wrote, “no one there was rich, and none poor, for they had all things common.”
 
Blessed Hilda, pray for us that we may in our own time seek peace, love justice, and pursue Christ’s kingdom above all else.