Æthelgifu, Abbess Of Shaftesbury
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Æthelgifu (, fl. 870s to 890s) was a daughter of
Alfred the Great Alfred the Great ( ; – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who both died when Alfr ...
, King of
Wessex The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886. The Anglo-Sa ...
. She was the third surviving child of the marriage between Alfred and
Ealhswith Ealhswith or Ealswitha (died 5 December 902) was the wife of King Alfred the Great. She was the mother of King Edward the Elder who succeeded King Alfred to the Anglo-Saxon throne. Her father was a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucel, Ealdorman ...
in 868. Alfred's biographer,
Asser Asser (; ; died 909) was a Welsh people, Welsh monk from St David's, Kingdom of Dyfed, Dyfed, who became Bishop of Sherborne (ancient), Bishop of Sherborne in the 890s. About 885 he was asked by Alfred the Great to leave St David's and join ...
, wrote that "Æthelgifu, devoted to God through her holy virginity, subject and consecrated to the rules of monastic life, entered the service of God'. Asser recorded that Alfred founded
Shaftesbury Abbey Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and Dissolution of the monasteries, dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VI ...
for nuns. It is not known when the abbey was founded, but it must be by 893 when Asser was writing. Alfred appointed Æthelgifu as its first abbess and she was joined by "many other noble nuns". Alfred granted the abbey one sixteenth of his royal revenues. According to a tradition recorded at the abbey, she adopted a religious life due to ill health. In Alfred's will he left Æthelgifu estates at Candover, probably Preston Candover, and
Kingsclere Kingsclere is a large village and civil parish in Hampshire, England. At the centre of the village lies the Church Of England parish church of St. Mary's with its distinctive tower. St. Mary's church has C12 origins. It is cruciform and has N ...
, both in
Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...
. The estates do not appear to have ever been held by the abbey, and she may not have survived her father, who died in 899.


References


Sources

* *


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Aethelgifu Alfred the Great 9th-century English women Anglo-Saxon abbesses 9th-century abbesses House of Wessex Anglo-Saxon royalty 9th-century English nuns Daughters of kings Abbesses of Shaftesbury