Æbbe the Younger

{{Short description|Abbess of Coldingham Priory in Scotland}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}

{{For|the earlier Abbess of Coldingham|Æbbe the Elder}}

{{Infobox saint

|name=Saint Æbbe of Coldingham

|birth_date=Unknown

|death_date= 2 April 870

|feast_day= 2 April

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|image=Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophae - Plate 18.jpg

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|caption=The self-mutilation of Saint Æbbe and her community. Plate from Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophae (1584), a collection of engravings by Giovanni Battista de'Cavalieri after murals by Niccolò Circignani in the chapel of the Venerable English College, Rome.

|birth_place=

|death_place=Coldingham Monastery, Scotland

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|canonized_date=Pre-Congregation

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Saint Æbbe of Coldingham (also Ebbe, Aebbe, Abb), also known as Æbbe the Younger, (died 2 April 870) was an Abbess of Coldingham Priory in south-east Scotland.{{cite book|last=Farmer|first=David|title=The Oxford Dictionary of Saints|date=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-19-959660-7|page=133}}

Like many of her fellow female saints of Anglo-Saxon England, little is known about her life.{{cite journal|last=Pulsiano|first=Phillip|title=Blessed Bodies: The Vitae of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints|journal=Parergon|date=1999|volume=16|issue=2|page=6|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/parergon/summary/v016/16.2.pulsiano.html|access-date=1 February 2014|doi=10.1353/pgn.1999.0008}} She presided over the Benedictine Abbey at Coldingham.[http://catholicsaints.info/calendar-of-scottish-saints-saint-ebba-virgin-and-abbess-and-her-companions-martyrs-a-d-870/ Barret, OSB, Michael. "Saint Ebba, Virgin and Abbess, and her Companions, Martyrs, A.D. 870". The Calendar of Scottish Saints, 1919]

She is best known for an act of self-mutilation to avoid rape by Viking invaders: according to a thirteenth-century chronicle, she took a razor and cut off her nose in front of the nuns, who followed her example.{{cite book|last=Bartlett|first=Anne Clark|title=Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature|url=https://archive.org/details/maleauthorsfemal00bart|url-access=registration|access-date=8 February 2013|year=1995|publisher=Cornell UP|isbn=9780801430381|page=[https://archive.org/details/maleauthorsfemal00bart/page/39 39]}} Their appearance so disgusted the invaders that the women were saved from rape but not from death, as the Danes soon returned and set fire to the convent, killing Æbbe and her entire community.{{cite journal|last=Horner|first=Shari|year=1994|title=Spiritual Truth and Sexual Violence: The Old English Juliana, Anglo-Saxon Nuns, and the Discourse of Female Monastic Enclosure|journal=Signs|volume=19|issue=3|pages=658–75|jstor=3174773|doi=10.1086/494916}}