Feastday: April 2
Death: 870
Abbess of Coldingham, England, on the Scottish border, called "the Younger." She and her nuns were martyred by Danes in an invasion. She mutilated her face to discourage rape by the invading Danes. The raiders set fire to Coldingham, killing all of the nuns.
For the earlier Abbess of Coldingham, see Æbbe the Elder.
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.
Like many of her fellow female saints of Anglo-Saxon England, little is known about her life. She presided over the Benedictine Abbey at Coldingham.
She is best known for an act of self-mutilation to avoid rape by Viking invaders: according to a ninth-century chronicle, she took a razor and cut off her nose in front of the nuns, who followed her example. 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. It has been suggested that this is the origin of the saying cutting off the nose to spite the face.
