November 20th is the feast day of St. Edmund the Martyr. He was an important saint of the Anglo Saxon church fulfilling the role of patron saint until superseded in medieval times by St. George. He is commemorated today in the town and abbey of Bury St. Edmunds.

Edmund was Saxon and was born into the nobility in 841. He was brought up in the Christian faith and while still quite a young man he became ruler of the kingdom of the East Angles some time before 865 AD. This was a time of Viking invasions and Edmund, along with other Anglo Saxon kings, had to go to war against the Norsemen. In 869 the "Great Army of the Vikings" invaded East Anglia and Edmund engaged in battle with Ingwar, the Viking leader. He was defeated and captured, and when pressed to renounce his Christian faith and become Ingwar’s vassal, he refused and was put to death. He died at Hellesden in Norfolk and was buried in a small wooden chapel close to the battle field. This was to be the first of several "final" resting places. He shared the fate of several Celtic and Anglo Saxon saints being moved from pillar to post either to escape the attentions of the Vikings or to be re-interred in sites deemed to be more suitable as they grew in importance in the eyes of their followers.

In 915 it was discovered that Edmund’s body was still whole and he was transferred to Bedricsworth. This settlement later became Bury St. Edmunds. Ten years later his grave had become a shrine and Athlestan, the current king, founded a small community of priests and deacons to tend it. Later on in 1010 the Vikings had returned and a Danish army had landed in Ipswich. This prompted the custodians of the shrine to hastily remove Edmund to London where he remained for three years.

The cult of St. Edmund was now growing. In a time of constant threat from the Vikings, the ideals personified by the young king who had shown courage in battle and been martyred for his faith, appealed to the beleaguered Anglo Saxons. By the early eleventh century the kingdom was now in the hands of the Danes. King Cnut wished to reconcile both his Danish and Anglo Saxon subjects and to make reparation for his compatriots earlier misdeeds. He built a stone church at Bury for St. Edmund which was established as an abbey for Benedictine monks from Ely and St. Benet Hulme. By 1028 it had received a charter of jurisdiction over the town and several endowments of land. In 1044 King Edward the Confessor extended the charter over most of west Suffolk and Bury was soon to become one of the most powerful and important Benedictine abbeys in England. After the Norman Conquest, a large church in the Norman style was built and in 1198 St. Edmund’s remains were translated here and he was re-enshrined. Here he rested until the Reformation when, once again, he was reburied but this time in a place unknown!

St. Edmund has a considerable number of artistic and literary memorials. There is a fine illustrated Life which was written at Bury in 1130 and a later Life, now in the British Library, written in verse and illustrated by another Bury monk, John Lydgate. It had been originally presented to the young King Henry V1 on his visit to the abbey in 1433. There are several paintings of the saint; the most famous being the Wilton Diptych. Here he is depicted with Edward the Confessor as two royal patrons presenting King Richard II to the Virgin and Child. All over England there are screen paintings and murals and more than sixty churches are dedicated to him. He had indeed become a "patron" saint.

There is a further chapter to the story. East Anglia was once again embroiled in war in 1217 - this time with the French! After the Battle of Lincoln the defeated French army fled back to France taking with them the body of St. Edmund. Why men fleeing for their lives would burden themselves with the remains of a foreign saint is a mystery but that was the claim. If that was the case then who was supposed to have been re-interred at the time of the Reformation? In 1912 a set of relics, residing at Saint Senin in Toulouse, was offered to Westminster Cathedral. Several eminent scholars of the time, including the historian M. R. James, protested that these were certainly not the remains of St. Edmund and the offer was politely declined.

The last resting place of England’s first patron saint is still, therefore, unknown. Wherever he might be, let us hope that Edmund the Martyr rests in peace.