November 20th. St. Edmund

This is not our diocesan patron, St. Edmund of Abingdon, but St. Edmund, King of East Anglia and martyr, born 841. He became king in 865, and in 869 led his army against the Viking invaders. Defeated and captured, he refused to deny his Christian faith, was tied to a tree and shot with arrows. This took place near Norwich. His body was later taken to the place now known as Bury St. Edmunds, where after the end of the Danish raids, King Canute had a proper church built, served by a community on Benedictines. This was to develop into the abbey of Bury, one of the most influential in the land. The abbey gatehouse and certain other features still survive, some of them incorporated into the present Anglican cathedral. In the Middle Ages, St. Edmund was presented as a patron of this land on a par with St. Edward the Confessor, in the famous Wilton Diptych, in the National Gallery, it is these two saints who are shown presenting King Richard II (1377-99) to the Virgin and Child, the occasion of England becoming "Mary’s dowry".