Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury

Saint Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury was the first wife of King Edmund I of England, who reigned from 939 to 946. She was Queen of the English from her marriage around 939 until her death in 944, and the mother of two future kings, Eadwig and Saint Edgar the Peaceable.

The Church honours her for her mercy and wisdom and for the miracles at her tomb in the nunnery of Shaftesbury. Her cult arose in the years soon after her death, in England before the Norman Conquest.

Family

Nothing is known of Ælfgifu's father or siblings. Her mother appears to have been a certain Wynflæd, connected with the nunnery of Shaftesbury in Dorset, founded by King Alfred the Great.

The clue comes from a charter of King Edgar confirming a gift to the nunnery by his grandmother Wynflæd, an estate at Piddletrenthide. She is probably the same Wynflæd who appears in a charter of 942 as a woman vowed to God, a nun or vowess, and who received from King Edmund several estates in Dorset that later passed to the community.

Some historians, such as H. P. R. Finberg, identified her with a Wynflæd who made a will around the middle of the tenth century, holding many estates in Wessex and closely linked to the royal nunneries of Wilton and Shaftesbury. On that basis Ælfgifu has been given a sister Æthelflæd, a brother Eadmær and a grandmother Brihtwyn.

Other scholars reject this identification, since the will shows no sign of royal connections. The question remains open and depends largely on the date of the will, which the palaeographer David Dumville places later than was once thought.

Queen

The sources do not record when Ælfgifu married Edmund. Their eldest son, Eadwig, had barely come of age when he became king in 955, so he was probably born around 940.

There is no contemporary evidence that she was ever consecrated queen. In a charter of doubtful authenticity from 942 to 946 she witnesses as the king's companion, but later in the century the chronicler Æthelweard calls her queen.

Ælfgifu and Edmund had three children, two sons and a daughter. Both sons later reigned over England: Eadwig from 955 to 959 and Edgar from 959 to 975.

Patron of Shaftesbury

Like her mother, Ælfgifu had a close, if not fully understood, bond with the nunnery of Shaftesbury. A charter of King Æthelred from 984 shows that the nunnery had given King Edmund the large estate of Tisbury in Wiltshire in exchange for another.

Ælfgifu received that estate from her husband and intended to leave it back to the nunnery. This did not happen at once, because her son Eadwig demanded that the estate given in exchange should first return to the royal family.

Her life according to William of Malmesbury

In the early twelfth century the chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote that Ælfgifu would secretly ransom those publicly condemned to harsh punishment and gave costly garments to the poor. He also credits her with gifts of prophecy and healing.

The same writer says she suffered from an illness in her last years, but he may have confused this with details from the life of the first abbess of Shaftesbury. Another tradition, preserved in Russian sources, holds that Ælfgifu outlived her husband and entered the nunnery of Shaftesbury, where she ended her days, though tenth-⁠century documents do not confirm this.

Death

According to most sources Ælfgifu died before her husband, probably in 944 (other sources say 946), perhaps in giving birth to her son Edgar. Her body was buried and enshrined in the nunnery of Shaftesbury.

Veneration as a saint

Ælfgifu was venerated as a saint soon after her burial. The chronicler Æthelweard writes that many miracles had taken place at her tomb up to his own day.

The earliest witness of her cult is Lantfred of Winchester, writing in the 970s. He tells of a blind young man from Collingbourne who went to Shaftesbury and kept vigil there in hope of healing, having heard of the tomb of the venerable Ælfgifu, where many sick people were cured by the almighty power of God.

Lantfred links her healing power both to her own merits and to those of her son Edgar. The D text of the Anglo-⁠Saxon Chronicle, from the mid-⁠eleventh century, calls her "Saint Ælfgifu" where it names the parents of Kings Eadwig and Edgar.

Her connection with Shaftesbury may be why, in 979, the body of her murdered grandson, Saint Edward the Martyr, was brought with great ceremony to that nunnery. Her cult continued to flourish afterwards alongside his.

Ælfgifu and the founding of the nunnery

Ælfgifu's fame at Shaftesbury seems to have overshadowed that of its first abbess, Æthelgifu, the daughter of King Alfred. William of Malmesbury gives differing accounts of the nunnery's beginnings: in one work he rightly names Alfred's daughter as the first abbess, but in another he credits the foundation to Edmund's wife.

Either he met conflicting traditions, or he meant that Ælfgifu refounded the house. William probably also wrote a verse life of the saint for the community at Shaftesbury, of which only a fragment survives.

Commemoration

Her name appears in an Anglo-⁠Saxon list of the resting places of saints, in at least eight calendars from before the Norman Conquest, and in three or four litanies from Winchester. According to a Winchester tradition her feast is kept on 18 May, while other calendars give 21 December.