Saint Cuthburh or Cuthburg (died c.

Circa

Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...

 718) was the first abbess of Wimborne Minster

Wimborne Minster

Wimborne Minster is a market town in the East Dorset district of Dorset in South West England, and the name of the Church of England church in that town...

. She was the sister of Ine

Ine of Wessex

Ine was King of Wessex from 688 to 726. He was unable to retain the territorial gains of his predecessor, Cædwalla, who had brought much of southern England under his control and expanded West Saxon territory substantially...

, King of Wessex

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

 and was married to the Northumbria

Northumbria

Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

n king Aldfrith.

King Osred

Osred I of Northumbria

Osred was king of Northumbria from 705 until his death. He was the son of King Aldfrith of Northumbria. Aldfrith's only known wife was Cuthburg, but it is not certainly known whether Osred was her son...

 was Cuthburh's son; whether King Osric

Osric of Northumbria

Osric was king of Northumbria from the death of Coenred in 718 until his death on the 9th of May, 729. Symeon of Durham calls him a son of Aldfrith of Northumbria, which would make him a brother, or perhaps a half-brother, of Osred...

, and the Offa killed in Eadberht

Eadberht of Northumbria

Eadberht was king of Northumbria from 737 or 738 to 758. He was the brother of Ecgbert, Archbishop of York. His reign is seen as a return to the imperial ambitions of seventh-century Northumbria and may represent a period of economic prosperity. He faced internal opposition from rival dynasties...

's reign, were also her sons is less certain.

According to a report by "Florence of Worcester

Florence of Worcester

Florence of Worcester , known in Latin as Florentius, was a monk of Worcester, who played some part in the production of the Chronicon ex chronicis, a Latin world chronicle which begins with the creation and ends in 1140....

", writing long afterwards, at some time before Aldfrith's death in 705 he and Cuthburh "renounced connubial intercourse for the love of God."
Following this, Cuthburh entered Abbess Hildelith's nunnery at Barking Abbey

Barking Abbey

The ruined remains of Barking Abbey are situated in Barking in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in east London, England, and now form a public open space.- History :...

. The dedication of Aldhelm's treatise De virginitate includes Cuthburh, who was then at Barking; it is thought that she was in some way related to Aldhelm.

After Aldfrith's death, Cuthburh and Cwenburh established a double-monastery in her brother's kingdom of Wessex

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

, at Wimborne in Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

.

She is described as austere, and she communicated with prelates through a little hatch in the nunnery at Wimborne. Among Saint Boniface

Saint Boniface

Saint Boniface , the Apostle of the Germans, born Winfrid, Wynfrith, or Wynfryth in the kingdom of Wessex, probably at Crediton , was a missionary who propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century. He is the patron saint of Germany and the first archbishop of Mainz...

's surviving letters is an anonymous account of a vision of Abbess Cuthburh in hell. The feast day associated with her is August 31.

No early hagiography

Hagiography

Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...

 is known, that which survives was composed after the Norman Conquest.

Sources

• Farmer, David Hugh, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 96.
• Lapidge, Michael, "Cuthburg", in M. Lapidge et al., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)