[7] An anoymous hagiography from the early 14th century described "Eadburh's strict disciple of psalmody" and claimed that "she expressed divine praise through the singing of hymns",[7] and reported that wore out her body fulfilling the injunction in the Psalms to pray seven times per day.
[7] According to Bugyis, Eadburh was also a "highly skilled singer of chants",[8] which had been assigned to other cantors in earlier and contemporary customaries and liturgical books published and used in other monastic communities.
Osbert related a story during a banquet held at the Winchester community during a visit from her father in which he commanded her to sing for the crowd; she initially resisted performing for them, but agreed when he promised to give her a reward.
The audience was "held captive by the beauty of her singing"[9] and she successfully procured additional financial support for the community from him and a promise to complete the construction of the abbey.
There is little contemporary information for her life, but in a Winchester charter dated 939, she was the beneficiary of land at Droxford in Hampshire granted by her half-brother King Æthelstan.
[3] The hagiography written of her in the 12th century by Osbert of Clare shows evidence of some of the unusual occurrences that might have happened in that time period when a member of a royal family became a monk or nun.
[15] Osbert reported that despite her royal lineage, Eadburh obeyed her elders in the Nunnaminster, showed respect to her peers and members of the community who were younger than her, and "devoted herself to performing works of service" for her followers "that others deemed to be beneath her".
[1] Osbert reported that she led the Winchester community in song and praise, "even near the moment of her death",[8] and that the other nuns continued to honor her memory by singing during her burial.
[10] The monks at Pershore Abbey, who commissioned Osbert to write Eadburh's hagiography, named her as one of their patron saints and acquired her relics in the late tenth century.
[3] The abbey's seal, created in the 1300s, Eadburh is depicted "in three-quarter length, facing forward, wearing a veil, holding a chalice in her right hand and an open book, likely the gospels, in her left".
Bugyis insists that the seal conveys the Pershone Abbey monks' view of Eadburh as a representative of their identity and that they considered her as a figure of the abbot of their community.