User:Rich Farmbrough/DNB/H/i/Hildilid

Saint Hildilid||| Saint Hildilid (fl. 700), abbess of Barking, was, according to the legendary life of Erkenwald or Earconwald, bishop of London, of foreign origin, and Reyner has inferred from this that she came from Chelles (Apost. Bened. pages 64–5). Earconwald is said to have engaged her to instruct his sister Ethelburga, abbess of the monastery which he had founded at Barking. Hildilid succeeded her pupil as abbess at some date later than 692, if we accept the charter of Æthelred to Æthelburga given under that date (Kemble, Codex Dipl. i. 39). According to another account it must have been after the death of Earconwald (693), who died on a visit to his sister. Florence of Worcester, however, gives her accession under 664, but again mentions it under 675 (i. 27, 33). Bede speaks of Hildilid's long rule, of her translation of the bones of saints into the church of St. Mary, and of a miraculous cure of a blind man which took place in her time (Hist. Eccl. iv. 10). St. Boniface, writing to Eadburga, abbess of Minster, in 717 or 718, mentions Hildilid as the authority on which the visions of men who had been raised from the dead are reported. Among her pupils at Barking was Cuthburga, daughter of Ina, king of Wessex, and afterwards abbess of Wimborne, Dorsetshire. The date of Hildilid's death is uncertain, but Bede says she lived to a great age, and she was apparently dead before the date of Boniface's letter. Wilson (Martyrologium Anglicanum) gives her day as 22 December, but the more usually accepted date is 24 March. There is a life of Hildilid in Capgrave's 'Nova Legenda Anglie' (see Hardy, Catalogue British Hist. i. 414). Aldhelm, while abbot of Malmesbury, dedicated to her his treatise, 'De Laudibus Virginitatis' (Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. page 143, Rolls Ser.)

DNB references
These references are found in the DNB article referred to above.