This week in Christian history: Handel’s ‘Messiah’ debuts, Medieval abbess baptized on Easter, Russian Orthodox reformer killed

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, April 09, 2023

Hilda of Whitby baptized – April 12, 627

St Aidan visits St Hilda, as seen in a glass window at Gloucester Cathedral. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when St. Hilda of Whitby, a prominent Medieval abbess also known as Hild, was baptized at 13, on Easter Sunday in 627.

Hilda was baptized at the city of York alongside members of the royal court of her relative, King Edwin of Northumbria, who had recently converted to Christianity.

Becoming a nun in her 30s, Hilda oversaw a monastic community in Hartlepool, and then later oversaw a “double monastery” (meaning that it included both men and women) in Streoneshalh.

“Hild focused the attention of her religious community on Bible reading and good works. This regimen was so successful that five of the men under her tutelage became bishops of the Anglo-Saxon church,” explained the Christian History Institute.

Hilda would also host the Synod of Whitby at her monastery and encouraged the work of a pioneering early English poet named Caedmon.