Saint Edith of England

The young princess profited so well from the examples and instructions of her mother that she became a nun in the same monastery. She performed the office of Martha toward all the nuns and outsiders, and the functions of Mary toward Our Lord; for, without considering her birth, she applied herself to the lowliest ministries of the house, assisted the sick, and made herself the servant of strangers and the poor. She founded for them, near her monastery, a hospital to maintain thirteen of them at all times. Succoring with her alms and her care those she knew to be in indigence, she sought out the afflicted to give them consolation, and preferred to converse with lepers, who are abandoned by everyone, than with the first princes of the kingdom. The more people were repulsed by others because of their infirmities, the more welcome they were to her; in a word, Editha was incomparable in her zeal to render service to her neighbor. Abstinence was her greatest delight, and she fled from delicate meats as much as others seek them with eagerness, joining to this mortification that of a rough hairshirt which she wore on her bare flesh, in order to repress the movements of nature early on. Such was the life of this young princess until the age of fifteen.

The king, informed of so many fine qualities in his daughter, wished to make her abbess of three monasteries; but she thanked him, and contented herself with proposing to him for that purpose nuns whom her humility led her to judge much more capable than herself of occupying those positions. She could not bring herself to leave a house where she had already received so many graces; she preferred to obey rather than to command, and to remain under the guidance of her mother, than to be charged with the guidance of others. But her humility appeared much more when she refused the cro wn of England; f saint Edouard II King of England and half-brother of Saint Edith. or, after the death of Saint Edward II, her brother, whom the Church honors as a martyr, the lords came to find her to present the scepter to her, and employed all possible reasons, and even attempted ways of violence to oblige her to accept it. She always resisted them generously, and one would have sooner transmuted metals, says her historian, than to withdraw her from her cloister, and to make her abandon the resolution she had taken to be all her life devoted to the service of God.

She had built a church in honor of Saint Denis; she prayed to Saint Dunstan to perform the dedication. During the solemnity of the Mass, this holy prelate had a revelation that the death of the young princess, who was only twenty-three years old, would occur at the end of forty days. This news softened his heart and drew torrents of tears from his eyes: "Alas!" he said to his deacon who asked him the reason for his sadness, "we shall soon lose our beloved Edith; the world is no longer Édithe English princess and nun at the monastery of Wilton. worthy to possess her. She has, in a few years, purchased the crown that is prepared for her in the heavens. Her fervor condemns our cowardice; our old age has not yet been able to merit this grace; she is going to enjoy the eternal lights, and we remain always on earth in the darkness and shadows of death." Having noticed, during the ceremony, that the Saint often made the sign of the cross on her forehead, he also said by a spirit of prophecy: "God will not allow this thumb to ever perish." The event ve rified b ce pouce Relic that remained incorrupt after the saint's death. oth of these predictions; for, at the end of forty days, on September 16, 984, she rendered her soul in the same church, into the hands of the angels, who honored her passing with their presence and a celestial melody; and this same thumb, which she had so often used to form the sign of the cross upon herself, was found thirteen years after her death without any mark of corruption, although all the rest of her body was almost entirely reduced to ashes. This church of Saint-Denis, which she had often visited and watered with her tears during her life, also served as her burial place. Thirty days after her passing, she appeared to her mother with a serene and luminous face, telling her that the King of angels, her dear Spouse, had placed her in His glory; that Satan had done everything he could to prevent her from entering, by accusing her before God of several faults; but that, through the help of the holy Apostles, and by the virtue of the cross of her Savior Jesus, she had crushed his head, and, in triumphing over his malice, had sent him into the depths of hell.

Many miracles were performed through her merits. We shall report only the following example, which shows how much those who usurp the goods of the Church sin. A man having appropriated a land of Saint Edith, suddenly fell so ill that he was thought dead without having had the time to do penance. But a little later, having come to himself, he said to those present: "Ah! my friends, have pity on me and help me through the fervor of your prayers; the indignation of Saint Edith against me is so great that, to punish me for the usurpation I have made of a land that belonged to her, she drives my wretched soul from heaven and earth. I must die, and yet I cannot die. I want to repair my injustice, and restore to the Church the property I have stolen from it." No sooner had he shown this good will than he expired peacefully.

She is depicted holding a purse in one hand and a coin in the other, to mark her great love for the poor. Acta Superiorum; Godescard; Surtus.