ST. DUNSTAN
chancel of this interesting church. The memorials of other Kentish saints have fared even worse. The holy virgin Siburgis or Sigeburga, was the fourth Abbess of the Saxon Nunnery of St. Mary (afterwards called St. Mildred) at Minster in the Isle of Thanet. This nunnery had been founded by a royal widow, Ermenburga, otherwise Ebba, called Domina Ebba, or more commonly Dompneva, who had been the wife of Merwald, son of the heathen Penda, king of the Mercians. Dompneva was the great-grand-daughter of Ethelbert, king of Kent, and of Bertha his wife who was a grand-daughter of Clovis and Sainte Clotilde. Dompneva and her husband were most pious Christians, and were the parents of three daughters, all three sainted virgins, of whom the second—Mildred—followed her mother as second Abbess of the Minster nunnery. Dompneva had received the veil in A.D. 672 from Archbishop Theodore, and had built her nunnery which had been hallowed by the Archbishop in 675 under romantic and tragic circumstances.
This early Religious House was situated on the site of the present vicarage of Minster-in-Thanet, which is to the north-west of the parish church of St. Mary, the two westernmost bays of the nave of that church having been the chapel of the nunnery. According to the charter of Wihtraed, Dompneva was alive in A.D. 697, but at that date she was succeeded by her daughter Mildred, who was then about thirty-seven years of age, as 2nd Abbess.
Mildred had also received the veil from Archbishop Theodore at a date unrecorded. The miraculous legends related by the chroniclers as occurring during the lifetime of this saint, were only surpassed by the surprising wonders and miracles wrought at her tomb after the days of her earthly pilgrimage. She passed to the heavenly kingdom the 3rd before the Ides of July (July 13), A.D. 725, and her feast day has always been kept as a "Double." Mildred was buried in the church of St. Mary, but her relics were translated to a new church by her successor Eadburga, and again later in 1031 to the abbey church of St. Austin at Canterbury, by Abbot Elfstan. King Canute had given the Manor of Minster in that year to the Abbot and Convent of St. Austin's and had vowed the translation of St. Mildred's relics to the Mater primaria of Saxon Monasticism.
Eadburga,[1] or Bugga, as she was called by her friends, the 3rd Abbess, found the accommodation at St. Mary's insufficient for the growing needs of the nunnery; there were then between seventy and ninety nuns professed there. She therefore transferred the nuns to a new building on a site about a furlong to the north-east of the parish church, where the court-house now known as Minster Abbey stands. This is a more elevated situation, farther from the marshes and so far healthier than the old site by the creek.
- ↑ For some most interesting episodes in the life of this saintly lady and her letters to St. Winfrith (Boniface) of Crediton, see English Girlhood at School, by Dorothy Gardiner, 1929.
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