A saint's day
St Edward the Martyr
St Edward, son of King Edgar the Peaceable, became King of England as a boy and held prayer and Christian piety to be the heart of a true kingdom. In 978, riding alone to Corfe Castle to visit his young half-brother, he was stabbed as he took a cup of welcome. A heavenly light in the hut where his body was hidden healed a blind woman, and his incorrupt relics, found again in 1931, were enshrined at Brookwood in 1984.
The dates
- Kept on
- 18 March (31 March on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Orthodox pilgrims still venerate his relics at Brookwood, and English Orthodox pray to him for eye disease and for peace in divided families.
The Russian Church Abroad added him to its calendar in 1983; the shrine at Brookwood is now kept by a Greek Old-Calendarist brotherhood.
Anglicans also keep his feast.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast:
The saint
Icons for the feast
Have it consecrated by our priest before it reaches you — Consecration, $49.