by Sophia D’Ignazio

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Lat. Vindobonensis 751, f. 21r-v

(c) Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Leoba (Leofgyth) was one of the most famous students and residents of medieval Wimborne in Dorset. Leoba was celebrated during and after her lifetime as a person of exceptional spiritual and political force, who acted as a valued advisor to bishops and royalty, including Charlemagne and his father, Pepin III.

As a young nun at Wimborne Abbey, Leoba was educated in scripture, poetry composition, Church laws, patristics, and the liberal arts. In a letter to Boniface, written c.732, Leoba showcases her mastery of contemporary Latin rhetoric, prose, and verse composition. She gives the name of her poetry teacher, Eadburh, with whom Boniface also corresponded, and includes in her letter an original four-line poem which demonstrates her familiarity with the newest trends in Anglo-Latin poetry. Leoba’s poem is one of the earliest surviving examples of poetry from England by a named author, male or female, and the earliest by a named English woman.

During Leoba’s time at Wimborne, the double monastery was ruled by an abbess named Tetta. Like Leoba, Tetta was a correspondent of Boniface. Leoba’s ninth-century biographer Rudolf reports that it took Boniface many letters to persuade Tetta to let the immensely talented Leoba leave Wimborne for Germany. Leoba went on to join his Christian mission and to enjoy a highly successful career as teacher, abbess, advisor, and handpicked successor to Boniface.

Beyond showcasing Leoba’s talents, Leoba’s letter to Boniface gives scholars important information about early medieval literary culture, kinship networks, and monastic life. Given the high caliber of Leoba’s writing and the evidence from Boniface’s letters to Eadburh of a robust book-making center in Wimborne, it is not surprising that Leoba’s own students Thecla of Kitzingen and Walburg of Heidenheim went on to run monasteries with some of the most prolific book production and creative literary output in early medieval Germany.

Wimborne Minster. Photo credit: Bellminsterboy, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The women’s religious house at Wimborne was destroyed in the early eleventh century in a Viking attack. It was not rebuilt. The surviving abbey buildings were extensively remodelled in the twelfth century. Wimborne Minster church therefore looks very different now to how it would have in Leoba’s time. Its extraordinary chained library dates to the seventeenth century.

Although Leoba completed her career abroad, it is clear that she held fond memories of her years as a student in Wimborne. Leoba’s biographer includes two stories that Leoba used to recount about her time under Abbess Tetta. In one story, the students at Wimborne were punished after jumping and stomping around in vengeance on the grave of their recently deceased teacher, who had been particularly harsh to her students. In another story, the keys to the church went missing one night, only to be found held in the mouth of a small dead fox at the church doors several hours later, after the community had celebrated Matins in a different building.

Through Leoba, the educational, literary, and spiritual cultures of Wimborne shaped the growing network of monastic life in Germany and Europe more widely.

Further Reading

1.Translation

The Epistolae Database includes translations of women’s letters to and from Boniface, including Leoba’s letter

2. Secondary Sources

Watt, Diane, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650-1100 (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).

Yorke, Barbara, ‘Leoba [St Leoba, Lioba, Leofgyth] (d. 782), abbess of Tauberbischofsheim,’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/39268. Accessed 29 July 2024.