Today's saintAll livesDecember saints
WO

Devotional card

St. Wulfhild of Barking

Saint-specific image not yet available.

This devotional card is shown because a saint-specific image is not yet available.

Saints and feasts

St. Wulfhild of Barking

Virgin and Abbess

Wulfhild governed religious communities at Barking and Horton. Butler remembers her fidelity to her vocation, charity as an abbess and endurance through expulsion and restoration.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Communities governed: Barking and Horton
Butler records her abbacy at Barking and foundation at Horton, with the later expulsion and restoration.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 9, “St Wulfhilde, Virgin and Abbess,” pp. 224-226.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 9, “St Wulfhilde, Virgin and Abbess,” pp. 224-226.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 9, “St Wulfhilde, Virgin and Abbess,” pp. 224-226.

Wulfhild was placed in a monastery at Winchester while young. Butler follows the traditional account of her refusal of King Edgar’s attentions and her determination to consecrate her life to God. Her vocation endured the pressure placed upon it.

She became abbess of Barking and gave property of her own to the community. She also founded a monastery at Horton. Butler describes prudence, charity, meekness and humility in her government, joined to austerity in her personal life.

The account records that she was driven from her monasteries through the hostility of the queen and later restored. Her veneration continued at Barking alongside the remembrance of earlier holy abbesses. Butler’s reading draws on William of Malmesbury and the English collections of saints’ lives.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 source. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

The royal pursuit, expulsion and restoration are presented as the older English narrative followed by Butler. The precise death year is not asserted in this adaptation.

Carry this reading into prayer

Act of Charity

Ask God for love of Him and your neighbor, and carry this reading into your own life.

Pray now →

Keep reading

Nearby saint lives

Move through the calendar without leaving the saint library. These nearby feast-day lives help keep the reading trail connected.

Previous feast

The Seven Martyrs of Samosata

December 9

Next feast

St. Gregory III

December 10

Browse December saintsBrowse all saint livesGo to today's feast
More prayers, novenas and litanies

More devotions

Continue in prayer

Choose a connected devotion or a clearly labeled general prayer.

Choose a novena

Find a novena for your intention

Browse existing novenas by the need you want to bring to prayer.

Choose a novena

Pray with all the saints

Litaniae Sanctorum

Invoke the communion of saints with the traditional Latin Litany of the Saints.

Pray the Latin litany

Keep learning

What is prayer?

Read question 1099 and its complete answer in the Baltimore Catechism.

Read the Beatitudes in Matthew 5