Saints Tancred, Torthred, and Tova were three Anglo-Saxon siblings who were saints, hermits and martyrs of the ninth century.David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Fifth Edition Revised(Oxford University Press, 2011) page 409 Their feast day was celebrated on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.
Lives The brothers Tancred and Torthred, with their sister Tova, lived at Thorney, Cambridgeshire, Tancred, Torthred and tova.at Answers.com. at the time little more than a collection of hermit cells in the Fens, rather than a monastic institution.Samuel Lysons, Magna Britannia: Being a Concise Topographical Account of the Several Counties of Great Britain, Volume 2, Part 1 (Google eBook) (T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808) page 266. They, like many hermits at Thorney,Michelle P. Brown, Carol A. Farr, Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (Continuum International Publishing Group, Limited, 2005). were killed by the Danes in 870. Saint Torthred of Thorney at SQPN.com. Nothing other than their martyrdom is known of them.
Provenance The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulf,Pseudo-Ingulf, Croyland Chronicle an often unreliable document which includes sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in Thorney Abbey by the year 1000, as witnessed by R.P.S.,F. Liebermann, On the Resting-Places of the Saints’, (Hanover, 1889) C.S.P.Catalogus Sanctorum Pausantium in Anglia, Lambeth Palace MS. 99 and William of Malmesbury,William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton (R.S., 1870), pp. 327–9 G.P., pp. 327–9; E.B.K. after 1100, i. 129–44. and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold. The first record of their existence dates from 973, when they were installed in the abbey at Thorney. Saints Tancredi, Torthred and Tova Hermits in England.
Torthred of Thorney Saint Torthred of Thorney was a saint and hermit of the ninth century in Anglo-Saxon England.Saint Torthred of Thorney at SQPN.com. According to Pseudo-Ingulf he was martyred with many of his brother monks by pagan Danish raiders in 869.Pseudo-Ingulf Croyland Chronicle His feast day is sometimes celebrated on 9 April or 10 April,Matthew Bunson, Stephen Bunson, Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2003) page 160 and there is some conjecture that Torthred (and possibly Tova) did not die in the 869 raids but instead lived his last years at Cerne in Dorset,Richard Challoner, A Memorial of Ancient British Piety: a British Martyrology.(W. Needham, 1761)page 132 in a similar way to Eadwold of Cerne.
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