Edith of Wilton

Born around 961, daughter of king Edgar the Peaceful and Wulfthryth, she was raised from childhood at the monastery of Wilton in Wessex, where her mother became abbess. She stayed there by choice: her father offered her charge of three abbeys, which she declined in order to remain a simple nun beside her mother. On the death of her half-brother Edward the Martyr, murdered in 978, part of the nobility offered her the crown, which she also refused. She had a church built at Wilton dedicated to Saint Denis and richly adorned it, for which she was reproached: Goscelin, her hagiographer, records that she answered bishop Æthelwold, who blamed her costly garments, that a proud heart may hide under rags as well as under gold. She died at twenty-three, in 984. Her cult, among the most followed in Anglo-Saxon England, is attested from the end of the century. She is commemorated on 16 September.