[MR] Wikipedia: Feast Day of St. Werburgh

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

February 3 is the feast day, as well as the death anniversary, of Saint
Werburgh of Chester. Her life, and her veneration, provide an interesting
window into how and why certain saints rose to prominence, and how they
continue to be venerated today.

Werburgh was the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon King Wulfhere of Mercia and
Ermenilda (also later a saint), a royal princess from Kent. Those are
pretty good creds, and were a big boost to Werburgh's religious career.
With her father's blessing, she entered  a convent at Ely. She eventually
became the 4th Abbess of Ely, succeeding her grandmother, great aunt and
mother, who all held that post. It must have been sort of a family thing.
After all, it was her grandmother, St. Ethelreda who founded the abbey
(later cathedral) at Ely. Werburgh is credited with convent reforms across
England, as well as founding several religious houses herself.

According to Wikipedia, Saint Werburg left this mortal world in 700.
Several Catholic sources put her passing at 699. I am inclined to put more
trust in the Catholic date, but what's a year among saints anyway?

Saints are expected to perform miracles, but here Werburg fell a little
short of the mark. She apparently specialized in geese, one of which she
raised from the dead according to the writer Goscelin. Her other goose
miracle was the alleged banishment of the birds from the village of Weedon
Bec. Medieval "lives", meaning saints' histories, can be a bit on the dodgy
side. It is also said Wergurgh could read minds, something a holy person
could get away with, but would have gotten a lay person burned as a witch.
A more important and posthumous miracle attributed to her was lifting Gruffydd
ap Llywelyn's siege of Chester, probably around 1055-1057.

Upon her death Werburgh was buried in a parish church at Hanbury, a small
village in Staffordshire, where she had passed away. Her relics were later
moved to Chester during the 9th century Viking raids. This was when her
cult really took off, and her shrine within Chester Cathedral became an
important, if second tier, pilgrimage destination. Pilgrim badges with her
geese have survived (duplicated by modern pewter casters; I have one in my
collection). In 1540 Saint Werburgh's shrine was destroyed by Henry VIII's
agents, and her relics were lost. Later much of the shrine was reassembled,
and it is still displayed in Chester Cathedral.

Wikipedia's article is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werburgh .

A roster of Catholic saints has an entry for Saint Warburg at
https://catholicsaints.info/saint-werburgh-of-chester/ . Note that Saint
Werburgh's patronage is for City of Chester, and she has no other
patronages in her portfolio. Not even geese.

Wikipedia offers a page on Chester Cathedral (which is magnificent), and
the chapel still dedicated to Saint Werburgh can be noted on the plan at
location 16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Cathedral .

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆