Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

and that of Ega, the mayor of the palace (see above, at 123). The support of family
members was essential to the survival of the monastery, but aristocratic connections
could at the same time be something of a double-edged sword. Earthly worries were
compounded by the precarious ability of the monastery to feed itself, and if it could not,
resources would have to be found from elsewhere to buy what the inhabitants could not
grow. It is on a spiritual plane, however, that Eangyth and Bugga's letter underlines the
very real pressure facing the abbess. The responsibility for taking care of the souls of the
women and men under their care was weighty, and the prospect of having to answer to
God for it a real one. The very human ‘lack of full and perfect confidence that whatever
we may do is good’ made clear by the worries in Eangyth's letter seems something of an
antidote to the confidence and ability described in normative texts and hagiography.
A further point implied by the joint authorship of the letter is the association of
Bugga in the abbatiate of the monastery. When Bregowine of Canterbury wrote to
archbishop Lull sometime between 759 and 765 he described the recently deceased
Bugga as honorabilis abbatissa, which may suggest that she had succeeded her mother as
abbess. 84 Again, this situation found parallels in Gaul: Anstrude succeeded her mother
Sadalberga as abbess of her convent in Laon, for example. 85
As must already be evident, the dedicated women corresponding with Boniface
were possessed of a high degree of education and literacy. That this extended to their
monasteries as a whole is demonstrated by their function as centres of book production
for Boniface. Boniface wrote to Eadburg, abbess of Thanet (d. 751) to request a copy of
the Epistles of St Peter, which were to be written in gold ‘to impress honour and
reverence for the Sacred Scriptures visibly upon the carnally minded to whom I preach’. 86
Although Boniface also included the materials to produce such a work, he was evidently
confident that the nuns at Thanet could use them to produce the book to the standard he
required. Bugga also procured books to send to Boniface, in addition to money. 87 On a
84 Epist. 117, MGH Epp. III, 407-8, at 408.
85 Vita Anstrudis abbatissae Laudunensis in Levison, ed., MGH SSRM VI: 64-78; cap.4.
86 Epist. 35, MGH Epp. III, 285-6, tr. Emerton, The Letters of Saint Boniface, 64-5.
87 Epist. 15, MGH Epp. III, 264-5.
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