St. Edmund the Martyr

St. Edmund the Martyr (c. 841 – 20 November 869) was king of East Anglia, one of the Christian kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. A just and devout ruler who governed his people well, he faced the onslaught of the invading Great Heathen Army of the Danes, who overran his kingdom in 869. According to the tradition preserved by Abbo of Fleury and others, the Danes demanded that he submit and rule as their vassal, renouncing his faith or holding it only on their impious terms.

Refusing to betray Christ or abandon his people to the heathen, Edmund was captured, and — when he would not yield — was beaten, shot through with arrows, and beheaded. Devotion to him grew swiftly; his body was found incorrupt, and a great shrine and monastery arose at the place that became Bury St. Edmunds, one of the foremost pilgrimage centers of medieval England. Long regarded as a patron of England before St. George, he is honored as a martyr-king who died rather than deny his faith.