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Birth:          ABT  922 Wessex
Death:           944 

Notes
canonized
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfgifu_of_Shaftesbury
Saint Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, also known as Saint Elgiva[1] (died 944) was the first 
wife of Edmund I (r. 939–946), by whom she bore two future kings, Eadwig (r. 955–959) 
and Edgar (r. 959–975). Like her mother Wynflaed, she had a close and special if 
unknown connection with the royal nunnery of Shaftesbury (Dorset), founded by King 
Alfred,[2] where she was buried and soon revered as a saint. According to a pre-
Conquest tradition from Winchester, her feast day is 18 May.[3][4]
Family background[edit]
Her mother appears to have been an associate of Shaftesbury Abbey called Wynflaed 
(also Wynnflæd). The vital clue comes from a charter of King Edgar, in which he 
confirmed the grant of an estate at Uppidelen (Piddletrenthide, Dorset) made by his 
grandmother (ava) Wynflæd to Shaftesbury.[6] She may well be the nun or vowess 
(religiosa femina) of this name in a charter dated 942 and preserved in the abbey's 
chartulary. It records that she received and retrieved from King Edmund a handful of 
estates in Dorset, namely Cheselbourne and Winterbourne Tomson, which somehow 
ended up in the possession of the community.[7]

Since no father or siblings are known, further speculation on Ælfgifu's background has 
largely depended on the identity of her mother, whose relatively uncommon name has 
invited further guesswork. H. P. R. Finberg suggests that she was the Wynflæd who 
drew up a will, supposedly sometime in the mid-10th century, after Ælfgifu's death. 
This lady held many estates scattered across Wessex (in Somerset, Wiltshire, 
Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Hampshire) and was well connected with the nunneries at 
Wilton and Shaftesbury, both of which were royal foundations. On that basis, a 
number of relatives have been proposed for Ælfgifu, including a sister called 
Æthelflæd, a brother called Eadmær, and a grandmother called Brihtwyn.[8]

There is, however, no consensus among scholars about Finberg's suggestion. Simon 
Keynes and Gale R. Owen object that there is no sign of royal relatives or connections 
in Wynflæd's will and Finberg's assumptions about Ælfgifu's family therefore stand on 
shaky ground.[9] Andrew Wareham is less troubled about this and suggests that 
different kinship strategies may account for it.[10] Much of the issue of identification 
also seems to hang on the number of years by which Wynflæd can plausibly have 
outlived her daughter. In this light, it is significant that on palaeographical grounds, 
David Dumville has rejected the conventional date of c. 950 for the will, which he 
considers “speculative and too early” (and that one Wynflæd was still alive in 967).
[11]

Married life[edit]

The sources do not record the date of Ælfgifu's marriage to Edmund. The eldest son 
Eadwig, who had barely reached majority on his accession in 955, may have been 
born around 940, which gives us only a very rough terminus ante quem for the 
betrothal. Although as the mother of two future kings, Ælfgifu proved to be an 
important royal bed companion, there is no strictly contemporary evidence that she 
was ever consecrated as queen. Likewise, her formal position at court appears to 
have been relatively insignificant, overshadowed as it was by the queen mother 
Eadgifu of Kent. In the single extant document witnessed by her, a Kentish charter 
datable between 942 and 944, she subscribes as the king's concubine (concubina 
regis), with a place assigned to her between the bishops and ealdormen. By 
comparison, Eadgifu subscribes higher up in the witness list as mater regis, after her 
sons Edmund and Eadred but before the archbishops and bishops.[12] It is only 
towards the end of the 10th century that Æthelweard the Chronicler styles her queen 
(regina), but this may be a retrospective honour at a time when her cult was well 
established at Shaftesbury.
Much of Ælfgifu's claim to fame derives from her association with Shaftesbury. Her 
patronage of the community is suggested by a charter of King Æthelred, dated 984, 
according to which the abbey exchanged with King Edmund the large estate at 
Tisbury (Wiltshire) for Butticanlea (unidentified). Ælfgifu received it from her husband 
and intended to bequeath it back to the nunnery, but such had not yet come to pass 
(her son Eadwig demanded that Butticanlea was returned to the royal family first).[13]

Ælfgifu predeceased her husband in 944.[14] In the early 12th century, William of 
Malmesbury wrote that she suffered from an illness during the last few years of her life, 
but there may have been some confusion with details of Æthelgifu's life as recorded in 
a forged foundation charter of the late 11th or 12th century (see below).[15] Her body 
was buried and enshrined at the nunnery.[16]
Sainthood[edit]

Ælfgifu was venerated as a saint soon after her burial at Shaftesbury. Æthelweard 
reports that many miracles had taken place at her tomb up to his day,[17] and these 
were apparently attracting some local attention. Lantfred of Winchester, who wrote in 
the 970's and so can be called the earliest known witness of her cult, tells of a young 
man from Collingbourne (possibly Collingbourne Kingston, Wiltshire), who in the hope 
of being cured of blindness travelled to Shaftesbury and kept vigil. What led him there 
was the reputation of “the venerable St Ælfgifu [...] at whose tomb many bodies of sick 
person receive medication through the omnipotence of God”.[18] Despite the new 
prominence of Edward the Martyr as a saint interred at Shaftesbury, her cult continued 
to flourish in later Anglo-Saxon England, as evidenced by her inclusion in a list of 
saints' resting places, at least 8 pre-Conquest calendars and 3 or 4 litanies from 
Winchester.[19]

Ælfgifu is styled a saint (Sancte Ælfgife) in the D-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
(mid-11th century) at the point where it specifies Eadwig's and Edgar's royal 
parentage.[20] Her cult may have been fostered and used to enhance the status of 
the royal lineage, more narrowly that of her descendants.[21] Lantfred attributes her 
healing power both to her own merits and those of her son Edgar. It may have been 
due to her association that in 979 the supposed body of her murdered grandson 
Edward the Martyr was exhumed and in a spectacular ceremony, received at the 
nunnery of Shaftesbury, under the supervision of ealdorman Ælfhere.[22]

According to William of Malmesbury, Ælfgifu would secretly redeem those who were 
publicly condemned to severe judgment, she gave expensive clothes to the poor, and 
she also had prophetic powers as well as powers of healing. [23]

Ælfgifu's fame at Shaftesbury seems to have eclipsed that of its first abbess, King 
Alfred's daughter Æthelgifu,[24] so much so perhaps that William of Malmesbury wrote 
contradictory reports on the abbey's early history. In the Gesta regum, he correctly 
identifies the first abbess as Alfred's daughter, following Asser, although he gives her 
the name of Ælfgifu (Elfgiva),[25] while in his Gesta pontificum, he credits Edmund's 
wife Ælfgifu with the foundation.[26] Either William encountered conflicting 
information, or he meant to say that Ælfgifu refounded the nunnery.[27] In any event, 
William would have had access to local traditions at Shaftesbury, since he probably 
wrote a now lost metrical Life for the community, a fragment of which he included in 
his Gesta pontificum:[28]

Parents
----- ----- ()
____ Wynflaed ()

Siblings
____ Elgiva "Saint" (ABT  922 -  944)

Marriage To ____ Edmund I "the Magnificent" "the Deed Doer" (ABT  922 - 26 May  946)
    m.  

Notes
his 1st

Parents
____ Edward I "the Elder" ( 875 - Jul  924)
OF KENT Edgiva (ABT  896 -  961)

Children by ____ Edmund I "the Magnificent" "the Deed Doer" ABT  922 - 26 May  946
____ Edgar "the Peaceable" (ABT  943 - 8 Jul  975)

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