Saint Egwin

What is known of Egwin was written down by the monks of the house he founded. The Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook, who wrote a life of him in 1904, list the manuscripts: an eleventh-century life now in the British Museum, the narrative of Prior Dominic of Evesham from about 1125, and the abridgment that Thomas of Marlborough, later Abbot of Evesham, made of Dominic about a century after that. ⁴ They say frankly that "the history of the Saint's life, a few main facts apart, is generally acknowledged to be legendary," and tell the legends anyway, as legends. ⁴

The Catholic Encyclopedia makes the same point more briefly: his fame as the founder of Evesham "no doubt tended to the growth of legends which, though mainly founded on facts, render it difficult to reconcile all the details" with the known history of the time. ¹

He was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings and gave himself to the service of God while young. ¹³ Stanbrook says he was born among the Hwicce, the people of the province around Worcester, was taught to read on the Psalms at seven, and was ordained priest. ⁴ When Oftfor, the second bishop, died, the people, the clergy and the king all wanted Egwin to succeed him, and he was forced into the see against his own wishes. ¹⁵ Butler dates this to 692, the encyclopedia to 692 "or a little later," and Stanbrook to about 693. ¹³⁴ Stanbrook adds that, strictly, he was the fourth Bishop of the Hwicce, because the first one chosen, Tatfrith, died before he could be consecrated. ⁴

The diocese was young, and its people, the encyclopedia says, "hardly appreciated the sanctity of Christian marriage." ¹ Egwin preached hard against that and in favor of the Church's discipline, and was zealous to evangelize the pagans still living nearby. ¹ Stanbrook says that some of his flock could scarcely be persuaded to come to Mass, and came for the talk and the business when they did. ⁴ His strictness made enemies. In the encyclopedia's account King Ethelred of Mercia remained his friend, so the complaints went instead to the bishop's ecclesiastical superiors. ¹ Stanbrook says they were lodged with the Pope and the king alike and got him banished from his see, and Stanton has his enemies turn the king and the archbishop against him, so that he had to leave his diocese. ⁴⁵

He went to Rome to be vindicated. ¹³ The legend that every source tells is that he locked iron shackles on his own legs before he set out and threw the key into the river. ¹³⁴⁵ The encyclopedia, Stanbrook and Stanton name the Avon; Butler says some legends name the Severn instead. ¹³⁴⁵ In the encyclopedia's telling, while he prayed at the tomb of the Apostles in Rome, one of his servants brought him the key, found inside a fish just caught in the Tiber. ¹ Stanbrook's version has his attendants fishing from a bridge while he said his office, and the cook finding the key when the fish was opened; its source sums it up as "the Roman Tiber gave back what the English Avon had swallowed up." ⁴ Butler and Stanton both note another version in which the fish was found earlier, on the journey. ³⁵

Whatever happened on the road, the result is not in doubt in any source: the Pope cleared him and sent him home. ¹⁴⁵ Stanton names that pope as Constantine and says he had Egwin celebrate Mass in his presence. ⁵ Stanbrook adds that Ethelred welcomed him back and gave him the education of his sons. ⁴

Egwin had asked the king for a wooded tract beside the Avon, where he liked to pray, and set a few herdsmen to graze his animals there. ⁴⁵ The story of what followed is the founding legend of Evesham. A herdsman named Eoves, a swineherd in Stanbrook's account, saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in the wood and told the bishop; Egwin went to the place himself and saw the same vision. ¹²⁴ Stanbrook describes three maidens, one far more beautiful than the others, holding a book and a cross, who blessed him and vanished. ⁴ The place was called Eoves ham, Eoves's "dwelling," and the abbey built there kept the name. ¹²

The dates do not agree. The Evesham article says the abbey was founded about 701, and that the founder's charter is dated 714; the Egwin article says later monastic tradition put the foundation in 714 but that recent research pointed to a year before 709; Stanbrook has the building begun about 702. ¹²⁴ The house was for Benedictine monks and was dedicated to the Virgin, and Ethelred and his successor Coenred, or Kenred, both endowed it. ²³

About 709 Egwin went to Rome a second time, with Coenred, King of Mercia, and Offa, King of the East Saxons. ¹³ Pope Constantine granted the abbey the extraordinary privileges for which it was later known, among them freedom from the jurisdiction of the bishop. ¹² Stanbrook dates the journey to about 708 and says the two kings stayed in Rome, took the monastic habit and died there, so that Egwin came home alone. ⁴ Butler says simply that they gave up their kingdoms "to labour with greater earnestness to secure an eternal crown." ³ One of the last important acts of his episcopate, the encyclopedia says, was his part in the first great Council of Clovesho. ¹

Stanbrook says he retired to Evesham in 710 after sixteen years as bishop, took the habit, and became its first abbot. ⁴ It has been said that he resigned the see to do it, but both the Evesham article and Stanbrook say that contemporary charters show him still Bishop of Worcester until he died. ²⁴

Stanbrook also tells the legend of a mission to Alcester, a town of smiths who drowned out his preaching with their hammers until, the story says, the ground swallowed them; the nuns themselves say they hesitate to accept it in all its details. ⁴ Of his ordinary life as abbot, they admit, "his biographers are silent." ⁴ What they do report is a long final illness, in which he kept on caring for the sick and the poor, wore his hair shirt and prayed the Psalms. ⁴ His last words to his monks, as they give them, were to keep God's commandments and their vows: "Follow after peace and holiness, without which, as the Apostle says, no man can see God." ⁴

He died on December 30, 717, by the reckoning of Butler, Stanbrook, Stanton and the Evesham article. ²³⁴⁵ The Egwin article gives Mabillon's date, December 20, 720, and adds that he may in fact have died three years earlier. ¹ He was buried in the abbey church. ²³

His shrine became one of the richest and most popular in the west of England, and many miracles were recorded there. ² Stanton and Stanbrook both tell how Aelfward, Bishop of London and Abbot of Evesham, caught in a storm at sea, vowed a new shrine to Egwin if the ship were saved, and translated his relics into it on September 10, 1039. ⁴⁵ Butler and Stanbrook record another translation in 1183. ³⁴

The abbey outlived its founder by eight centuries. After the Danish raids the few surviving monks were turned out in 941 and secular canons put in their place; Saint Dunstan and Saint Ethelwold restored them in 960, and after a second expulsion they came back for good in 1014. ² The exemption from the bishop that Egwin had obtained was confirmed by Rome in 1206, and at its height Evesham was one of the largest and most stately abbeys in England. ² It was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1539. ² Its church, with the shrine of Saint Egwin among its fifteen altars, was pulled down, and the bell tower that Abbot Clement Lichfield built about 1533 still stands. ²

None of the sources used for this page names Saint Egwin patron of anything. ¹³⁴⁵ He is remembered as the founder of Evesham, and Stanbrook says the Evesham monks kept two feasts of him every year among the seven most solemn days of their house. ⁴

Saint Egwin's feast is December 30, the day of his death, and the Roman Martyrology lists him that day as the bishop who founded the monastery at Evesham. ⁶ Stanton's Menology keeps the same day. ⁵ At Evesham itself, Stanbrook says, the Deposition on December 30 and the Translation on September 10 were both solemn feasts. ⁴

Butler places his notice on January 11 and says many English martyrologies mark the feast then, probably the day of the translation of 1183. ³ Stanbrook disagrees: there is, it says, "no foundation in any of the Evesham documents" for January 11. ⁴

He did not want the office he was given, and once he had it he used it to say things his people did not want to hear. ¹⁴ It cost him his reputation, and for a time his diocese. ¹⁵

Every source tells the story of the shackles, and the sources do not agree on a single detail of it. ¹³⁴⁵ What they agree on is the man who chose to go to Rome as a penitent, in chains of his own making, to answer the charges against him. ⁴⁵

He spent the rest of his life on the abbey he founded in honor of the Virgin, and ended it as one of its monks. ²⁴ His last recorded words were not about himself: keep your vows, and follow after peace and holiness. ⁴