Death and Veneration
The date of Seaxburh's death is not known, but when she died at Ely, she was at "a good, late age", according to the Liber Eliensis, which also related that 'Richard, Bishop of Ely' translated the remains of Seaxburh and of "all the saintly women reposing in that place". Her feast day is July 6.
Seaxburh is mentioned in a written account of Kent's earliest Christian kings and their canonised relatives, known as the Kentish Royal Legend (Old English: Þá hálgan). These kings, queens and princesses were unified by their holiness and royal connections. Pauline Stafford notes that the Legend "may have been a Christian alternative to pagan geneaology" to the rulers of 10th and 11th century mediaeval England, as it described an earlier period of sustained Christian piety within the royal dynasty of Kent. Being both a queen and a saint, Seaxburh was held in high regard within the Legend: within it her role as queen and the founder of the minster at Sheppey was highlighted.
The 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia lists several separate accounts of the saint's deeds and miracles, or so-called Lives. The Life (or Vita) printed in John Capgrave's Nova, Legenda and used by the Bollandists, was perhaps copied from a Cotton manuscript in the British Museum. There is another Vita in Latin in the same collection, but it was so damaged by fire that it is useless. The surviving versions of the Vita Sexburge were compiled after 1106 (the year the relics of Seaxburh were translated) and are copies from an earlier manuscript, now lost. The Vita describes Seaxburh's early life, marriage to Eorcenberht, withdrawal to Milton and then Minster-in-Sheppey, and her final years as a nun and the abbess at Ely. The section relating to her life at Sheppey is similar to another fragment, dating between the 9th and 11th centuries, and currently kept at Lambeth Palace. It has been suggested that part of the Vita Sexburge was derived from this manuscript, or that both parts originated from an earlier version of Seaxburh's Life.
Read more about this topic: Seaxburh Of Ely
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