The saints of Minster inThanet

This beautiful tapestry, showing the first three saintly Abbesses of Minster Abbey hangs above the door in the Abbey Chapel and was made by the nuns who refounded the Abbey in 1937

St Mildred, also known as Mildrith and Mildreda (c.660-730 AD) is one of three saintly women who were Abbesses at the Abbey of Minster-in-Thanet, near Ramsgate, very shortly after the mission of St Augustine to reintroduce Christianity to England in AD 597, which began when he landed nearby on the shore of the Isle of Thanet, with a small band of fellow monks sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. 

The Abbey at Minster was founded by her mother,  St Domne Eafe, great-grand-daughter of King Ethelbert, the first Christian king of Kent. She was married to Merewalh, the king of Mercia. Her cousin, King Ecgbert of Kent had had two of her brothers murdered, but instead of insisting on a payment of “wergild”, the restitution paid to the family when someone was killed to prevent revenge killings, Domne Eafe asked to be given the amount of land around which her pet deer could run  in a single lap so that she could found a convent. Miraculously the deer ran around a substantial portion of the Isle of Thanet! Domne Eafe became the first Abbess, (possibly Merewalh had died, but it was not unusual for people to leave their marriages to enter religious life). Her three daughters all joined her in the convent, and St Mildred followed her as Abbess. Her name, Mildred, means “Peaceful Counsel”, a reflection of her ministry among and within the often warring Anglo-Saxon tribes of her time. Abbesses, especially royal ones, often exercised very considerable moral authority at this period, and her advice would have been respected by those with secular power. The third Abbess, Eadburgha, was also considered to be a saint, though few details of her life are known. 

St Mildred was buried first in the parish church in Minster, dedicated to St Mary, then moved to the now destroyed church of St Peter and St Paul in the Abbey grounds, and then, eventually, translated to St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, despite fierce local opposition, in AD 1030. This was probably a wise move, however, as a Danish raid in 1011 had destroyed the Abbey, and its last Abbess, Leofruna, had been taken captive by the Danes. 

Some of Edith’s relics were taken to Deventer in the Netherlands during the 11th Century, which meant they were preserved during the Reformation when many English relics were lost. In 1882,  a monastery was refounded in Thanet, and the relics were returned to England, and later given to the community of Benedictine nuns who bought the old Minster buildings in 1937, coming as refugees from Germany to this country. This community still holds Mildred in high esteem. Her reliquary is in their chapel, and her relics are taken to the parish church for a special Mass on her feast day, July 13.

I spent a day talking to some of the nuns at Minster Abbey, (St Mildred’s Priory),  - many thanks to them for their wonderful hospitality - and then Philip and I joined them on their feast day for the Deanery Mass. What struck me was the great affection and joy they took in their connection with their founding saints. 

Ss Domne Eafe and Mildred’s stories are told in The Kentish Royal Legend, a collection of Medieval writings which record the spread of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon Kent, as well as in a number of other early writings. Members of royal families had a disproportionate tendency to became considered as saints in Anglo-Saxon England, like our own St Edith, but that does not mean that they didn’t deserve the recognition!

St Mildred's Priory. The nuns live in part of the original building. This is the ruined tower which would once have been part of the old Abbey church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. St Mildred's body was first buried in what is now the parish church, then moved to this Abbey church, then translated (moved) to Canterbury. 

The beautiful modern chapel at St Mildred's Priory

St Mildred's relics are in this reliquary in the priory chapel.

The vast parish church, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, now belongs to the Church of England. 

It is sometimes called the cathedral of the marshes - a huge building for a small village!

On the Feast of St Mildred, the Roman Catholic Deanery hold their Deanery Mass in the parish church
We were lucky enought to be able to go along. St Mildred's relics were brought in, in procession,
and venerated during the service.  It was great that the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches work
together in Minster to make this possible.

The procession on St Mildred's feast day, in the grounds of the Priory. 

In a back street in Minster, we found the old Catholic Church, now a private house,
 but still sporting a statue of Mildred, with the deer which marked out the boundaries
of the Abbey's land.

The land around the Abbey is flat as a pancake- Minster is on a slight rise.

The River Stour  not far from the Abbey. The Saxon Shore way runs along the opposite bank. In Mildred's time the sea came up to this point. The shore has now receded, through natural and intentional land reclamation.