November 18, 2006
Hild
If our new Speaker of the House went looking for a patron saint (which I’ve no reason to think she is, only that in her best interest, she might), she couldn’t improve on Hilda, Abbess of Whitby. Hild, as she was known by her friends, gets her fifteen minutes of fame today and has a resumé, as they say, that any CEO would die for.
She, too, ran a “double monastery,” women and men in adjoining quarters. She had saints and poets among her boarders and a few prima donnas, as well. Whitby Abbey hosted a major seventh-century conference about whether they’d follow Celtic or Roman ecclesiastical customs, Hild, opting for the Celts. Talk about influence, to this day, I don’t know of any basketball team called the Romans.
She was the advisor of rulers as well as ordinary folk. The influence of her example of peace and charity extended beyond the walls of her monastery. It is said that “all who new her called her Mother, such were her wonderful godliness and grace.” And all that was nearly 1400 years ago, a few centuries long before checks and balances.
Now, I ask you, what more could a Speaker want?