CatholicSaints.Info

Saint Edmund of East Anglia

detail of a stained glass window of Saint Edmund of East Anglia, date and artist unknown; clerestory of Our Lady and the English Martyrs church, Cambridge, England; swiped with permission from the flickr account of Brother Lawrence Lew, OP Also known as

Edmund the Martyr
King of the East Angles

Memorial

20 November
formerly 2 November
29 April (translation of relics)
25 December on some calendars

Profile

King of East Anglia at age 14, crowned on Christmas Day 855 by Bishop Saint Humbert of Elmham. Edmund was a model ruler, concerned with justice for his people and his own spirituality; he spent a year sequestered at Hunstanton learning the Psalter by heart. Following one of a series of armed engagement with invading Danes, he was captured. He was ordered to give his Christian people to the pagan invaders; he refused. Martyr.

Born

c.841 probably at Nuremburg, Germany

Died

beaten, whipped, shot with arrows “until he bristled with them like a hedgehog”, and beheaded at Hoxne, Suffolk, England 20 November 870
buried at Hoxne
relics moved to Beodricsworth, England (modern Bury Saint Edmunds (Borough of Saint Edmunds)) in the 915
relics moved to the Cathedral of Saint Paul in London, England in 1010 ahead of an invading Viking force
relics returned to Bury Saint Edmunds in 1113
relics re-enshrined in a new church in a Benedictine monastery built by King Canute in 1020
relics re-enshrined in a new Norman church in Bury Saint Edmunds in 1095
following a fire, the relics re-enshrined in a new church in 1198
following a battle in Lincoln, England in 1217, French troops claim to have taken the relics, but modern testing has disproved this; the real relics may have been hidden, destroyed, looted – we just don’t know, and no authentic relics exist today