St etheldreda biography

This year, Ely Cathedral celebrates the 1,350th anniversary of its origins in 673, when the Anglo-Saxon queen and saint Etheldreda (also known as Aethelthryth or Audrey) founded a monastery on, or near, the site of the modern cathedral.

Although Etheldreda is little known today, she was once one of England’s most popular saints, and her shrine at Ely was a site of pilgrimage up to the Reformation.

The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede gives us the earliest known account of Etheldreda’s life in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in 731, around half a century after Etheldreda’s death.

He tells us that she was the daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles, and that she was brought up in the Christian faith (at the time of her birth some kingdoms, notably Mercia, were still pagan).

Etheldreda entered into two arranged marriages.

The first was to an ealdorman, or chieftain, of the local South Gyrwe tribe, a man name