St Edmund the Martyr, King

20 November


Born 841; died at Hoxne, Suffolk, England, in 869 or 870. Feast day also November 2.

On Christmas Day 855, 14-year-old Edmund was acclaimed king of Norfolk by the ruling men and clergy of that county. The following year the leaders of Suffolk also made him their king.

For 15 years Edmund ruled over the East Angles with what all acknowledged as Christian dignity and justice. He himself seems to have modelled his piety on that of King David in the Old Testament, becoming especially proficient in reciting the Psalms in public worship.

From the year 866 his kingdom was increasingly threatened by Danish invasions. For four years the East Angles managed to keep a shaky, often broken peace with them. Then the invaders burned Thetford. King Edmund's army attacked the Danes but could not defeat the marauders. Edmund was taken prisoner and became the target for Danish bowmen.

In a later account in the "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," reputedly derived second-hand from an eyewitness, Abbo compared Saint Edmund to Saint Sebastien, and so he also became a saint invoked against the plague. Edmund was captured at Hoxne. He refused to share his Christian kingdom with the heathen invaders, whereupon he was tied to a tree and shot with arrows, till his body was 'like a thistle covered with prickles'; then his head was struck off. He died with the name of Jesus on his lips.

The record continues that the Danes "killed the king and overcame all the land . . . they destroyed all the churches that they came to, and at the same time reaching Peterborough, killed the abbot and monks and burned and broke everything they found there."

Saint Edmund thus remains the only English sovereign until the time of King Charles I to die for religious beliefs as well as the defence of his throne. Edmund was quickly revered as a martyr and his veneration spread widely during the middle ages (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Hervey, Roeder).

King Saint Edmund is generally depicted as a bearded king holding his emblem--an arrow. Sometimes he is shown suspended from a tree and shot, or his head between the paws of a wolf (Roeder).

He is venerated at Bury Saint Edmunds (Saint Edmund's borough), where his body was enshrined and a great abbey arose in 1020. There are only three teeth there now. His body is in Arundel Castle and his head in Toulouse.

Through the prayers of the holy martyr Edmund and of all the Saints of Britain, Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us!

Icon of Saint Edmund:
http://www.allmercifulsavior.com/icons/Icons-Edmund.htm##1



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content © 2008, Ambrose Mooney
layout © 2008, Kathleen Hanrahan and Mo! Langdon
Page last updated: 8 November 2008
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