The adornment of virgins: Thelthryth and her necklaces

Bede uniquely honoured æthelthryth of Ely by praising her life in prose and verse in the Historia Ecclesiastica. He related that æthelthryth preserved her virginity during two marriages, including twelve years as King Ecgfrith of Northumbria's queen, before finally receiving her second husband's permission to enter the monastic life. She spent a year at the monastery of Coldingham before returning to East Anglia, where she founded the monastery of Ely, which she ruled as abbess until her death in 679.1 This paper will examine Bede's prose account of æthelthryth's final illness, when she suffered from a tumour on her neck (HE 4.19). This passage has given rise to quite diverse interpretations.2 The paper will argue that the key to understanding the meaning of æthelthryth's tumour is in æthelthryth's reported speech on the subject. After presenting æthelthryth's physician's account of her final illness and the discovery of her bodily incorruption at her translation, including the post-mortem healing of the wound that the physician had made when lancing her tumour, Bede included æthelthryth's reaction to her suffering and explanation of it.