| Saints Tancred, Torthred, & Tova | |
| Death Date: | circa 869 or 870 |
| Feast Day: | 30 September 9 or 10 April |
| Venerated In: | Catholic Church Anglican Communion Western Orthodoxy |
| Death Place: | England |
| Titles: | Hermits, Martyrs |
| Canonized Date: | Pre-Congregation |
| Major Shrine: | Thorney Abbey (destroyed) |
Saints Tancred, Torthred, and Tova were three Anglo-Saxon siblings who were saints, hermits and martyrs of the ninth century.[1] Their feast day was celebrated on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.[2] [3]
The brothers Tancred and Torthred, with their sister Tova, lived at Thorney, Cambridgeshire,[4] at the time little more than a collection of hermit cells in the Fens, rather than a monastic institution.[5] They, like many hermits at Thorney,[6] were killed by the Danes in 870.[7]
Nothing other than their martyrdom is known of them.
The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulf,[8] 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.,[9] C.S.P.[10] and William of Malmesbury,[11] 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.[12]
Saint Torthred of Thorney was a saint and hermit of the ninth century in Anglo-Saxon England.[13] According to Pseudo-Ingulf he was martyred with many of his brother monks by pagan Danish raiders in 869.[14] His feast day is sometimes celebrated on 9 April[15] or 10 April,[16] 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,[17] in a similar way to Eadwold of Cerne.