Saint Cuthburga or Cuthburg (died c. 718) was the first abbess of Wimborne Minster. She was the sister of Ine, King of Wessex and was married to the Northumbrian king Aldfrith. King Osred was Cuthburg's son; whether King Osric, and the Offa killed in Eadberht's reign, were also her sons is less certain. According to a report by "Florence of Worcester", writing long afterwards, at some time before Aldfrith's death in 705 he and Cuthburg "renounced connubial intercourse for the love of God." Following this, Cuthburg entered Abbess Hildelith's nunnery at Barking Abbey. The dedication of Aldhelm's treatise De virginitate includes Cuthburg, who was then at Barking; it is thought that she was in some way related to Aldhelm. After Aldfrith's death, Cuthburg and Cwenburg established a double-monastery in her brother's kingdom of Wessex, at Wimborne in Dorset. She is described as austere, and she communicated with prelates through a little hatch in the nunnery at Wimborne. Among Saint Boniface's surviving letters is an anonymous account of a vision of Abbess Cuthburg in hell. The feast day associated with her is August 31. No early hagiography is known, that which survives was composed after the Norman Conquest.
Michael Grimes
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