Hieu

Hieu was a 7th-century Irish abbess who worked in Northumbria. She was the founder of abbeys at Hartlepool and Healaugh in Yorkshire England. Hieu, was also the first of the saintly recluses of Northumbria,^[1] and the first known abbess (Woman) of a Double monastery anywhere.^[2]

Nothing is known of her early life, until she met Aidan of Lindisfarne who appointed her Abbess of Hartlepool Abbey and subsequently a monastery at Healaugh near Tadcaster.^[3][4] She was the first known woman to rule a double monastery.^[5]

She died at Healaugh on 12 March of an unknown year in the 7th century.^[6] It is possibly the towns of Hartlepool (Hereteu) and Healaugh are named after her.

References

1. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, lib. iv, c. 23.
2. Archaeologia Aeliana, xix, 47.
3. Michael Lapidge, & Helmut Gneuss, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday (Cambridge University Press, 1985) page 8.
4. Susan G. Bell, Women, from the Greeks to the French Revolution, (Stanford University Press, 1980) page 103.
5. Lina Eckenstein, Woman Under Monasticism (CUP 1972) p88.
6. Agnes Dunbar,"A Dictionary of Saintly Women" (1904).

External links

• Heiu 1 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England