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Died c. 664. The daughter of King Anna of the East Angles, Ethelburga longed to live the life of a nun. It seems that she lived in a family of saints that included her sister Saint Etheldreda.

Her eldest sister, Saint Sexburga, married King Erconbert of Kent. Sexburga influenced her husband a great deal. The Venerable Bede says that Erconbert was the first English king to order the complete abandonment and destruction of idols throughout the kingdom. He also ordered everyone to observe the Lenten fasts. Their daughter, Saint Ercongota, entered a convent in Gaul with her aunts Ethelburga and Sethrida because, according to Bede, as yet there were few monasteries in England.

About 660, Ethelburga succeeded her convent's founder, Saint Fara and her half-sister Sethrida, as abbess of the monastery of Faremoutier in the forest of Brie. She began to build a church there dedicated to all twelve Apostles, but she died before completing it and was buried in the half-finished building in 665. Later the nuns decided they could not afford to complete the church and Ethelburga's relics were reinterred in the nearby church of Saint Stephen the Martyr. At that time, her body was found to be incorrupt.

Ethelburga is mentioned in the Roman, French, and several English martyrologies (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopaedia, Farmer).

In art, Saint Ethelburga is depicted as an abbess carrying the instruments of the Passion. She is invoked to cure rheumatism (Roeder).


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