![]() The head of St. Edmund guarded by a wolf at Pulham St. Mary | |
Monastery information | |
---|---|
Order | Secular Canons |
Established | Possibly 7th century (by Sigeberht of East Anglia) |
Disestablished | Re-founded as Bury St Edmunds Abbey c.1020 by King Canute |
Dedicated to | Edmund the Martyr |
Diocese | Diocese of Elmham |
People | |
Founders | Possibly Sigeberht of East Anglia; re-founded by King Æthelstan |
Site | |
Location | Beodricesworth (modern-day Bury St Edmunds), Suffolk, England |
Coordinates | 52°14′47″N0°43′09″E / 52.2463°N 0.7192°E |
Public access | Ruins of the successor abbey are open to the public |
Beodricesworth monastery was a monastery that would later become Bury St Edmunds Abbey.
The site that probably had a monastery founded by St Sigeberht some three centuries earlier [1] to which he retired after abdicating.
Edmund the Martyr was a King of East Anglia who had been killed by the Viking Great Heathen Army, traditionally thought to be Ivar the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lodbrok [2] with his severed head thrown into the wood. As Edmund's followers searched for him, calling out "Where are you, friend?" the head answered, Her, her, her ("Here! Here! Here!") until at last they found it, clasped between a wolf's paws, protected from other animals and uneaten. The followers then recovered the head. [3] [4]
His incorrupt [5] relics were venerated [6] at a wooden chapel in Haegelisdun near to where he was killed.
At a date generally assumed by historians to have been during the reign of Æthelstan, who became king of the Anglo-Saxons in 924, Edmund the Martyr's body was translated to Beodricesworth [7] [8] In 925 Æthelstan refounded a monastery at Beodricesworth to take care of Edmund's shrine, [9] and the town changed its name to St Edmunds Bury. The chronicler Abbo of Fleury failed to date these events surrounding Edmund's translation to Beodericsworth, although from his text it can be seen that he believed that the relics had been taken to Beodericsworth by the time that Theodred became Bishop of London in around 926. [10] At this time the early shrine was guarded by a group of secular priests.
Upon exhumation of the body, a miracle was discovered. All the arrow wounds upon Edmund's undecayed corpse had healed and his head was reattached. [3]
In 942 or 945, King Edmund I had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the town of Bury St Edmunds, free from all secular services.
In 1010, Edmund's remains were translated to London to protect them from the Vikings, where they were kept for three years before being returned to Bury. [9]
In c. 1020, under the auspices of King Canute and Ælfwine of Elmham, the then Bishop of Elmham, [11] they were replaced by monks from St Benet's Abbey and a Benedictine Abbey of St Edmundsbury was founded, free from control of a bishop.