Even before he was born, St Dunstan was marked out to lead the English Church and nation to more peaceful times.
In 793, Vikings swept across Northumbria and extinguished the beacon of Lindisfarne, symbol of England’s Christian civilisation. Much of the land lay under a pagan shadow for over a century, but St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of King Edgar (r. 959-975), helped to rekindle both Church and State.
Edith left behind her a distraught Archbishop Dunstan, but also a legacy of love for the suffering.
Edith of Wilton died on September 16th, 984, at the age of just twenty-three. That August, the elderly Archbishop of Canterbury, Dunstan, had crowned a project dear to her, the building and beautifying of a chapel dedicated to St Denis of Paris, with a personal visit, and had taken to her right from the start.
The way Edith kept tracing little crosses with her thumb made a great impression on Archbishop Dunstan.
Edith, a nun at Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire, was a daughter of King Edgar (r. 959-975). One of her pretty idiosyncrasies was the way she made the sign of the cross by wiggling her right thumb, on herself and on anyone whom she wished to bless. It captivated St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had come to dedicate a new chapel.