Egburg


Egburg was a 9th-century abbess about whom little is known. A letter by her remains in the Boniface correspondence, in which she writes to Saint Boniface of her grief. The letter evidences that she was highly learned--according to Eleanor Duckett, "Her letter is short, and her misery is very great; she manages, however, to bring in four reminiscences of Vergil's Aeneid, two of various writings of Aldhelm of Malmesbury..., two of a letter written by Jerome to the monk Rufinus, together with at least half a dozen quotations from the Bible". Lina Eckenstein proposes she might have been a daughter of Ealdwulf, king of East Anglia, and the abbess of Repton.