The chapel was consecrated by St Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who reportedly foretold her imminent death and that the thumb on her right hand would remain uncorrupted.

Many of the miracles that were reported later focused on the protection of Edith's relics and the property owned by the Wilton community, often violently retaliating against those who sought to take or steal them.

The support of Edith's elevation to sainthood by both secular and religious authorities was probably politically motivated, in order to establish their power and to connect themselves to King Edgar's descendants.

[18] According to Goscelin, when Edith was two years old, her father visited her at Wilton and presented her with the finest of clothes and jewellery worn by royalty, while her mother placed before her religious objects.

Ridyard states that Goscelin emphasises this incident, along later stories with her concern and service to criminals, the sick, and the destitute, to demonstrate Edith's humility.

They instead retained their private wealth, a common practice of royals who resided in monasteries and convents, with which they could purchase relics and fund expensive building programmes.

[8] Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis reports that according to Goscelin, Edith copied a manual of prayers used at Wilton Abbey, which the nuns there, along with her relics, preserved.

Goscelin praised Edith for her many talents, which included music, embroidery, calligraphy, painting, writing, composing, praying,[28][29] as well as "a blazing intellect in reading".

Goscelin insists that her fine clothing, her involvement in royal politics, and her periodic visits to her father's court did not make her less approachable to "the common people".

[34] Goscelin claimed that Edith initially refused the positions, preferring instead, as David Hugh Farmer states in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, "the obscurity of the cloister".

[36] Both Edith and St Eadburgh of Winchester were praised by William of Malmesbury for their prayers and intercessions on behalf of their respective communities, as well as their members' "unfailing obedience"[37] and devotion to their leaders and teachers.

[39] Ridyard argues that Goscelin relates both stories in order to emphasise "the saint's extreme reluctance to accept a position of authority and influence".

[28] According to Alison Hudson, an archivist at the British Library, Edith's seal gives "a rare contemporary insight into the priorities, identities and possibly even the jewellery of a young princess in late tenth century England".

[45] Bugyis speculates that Edith's choice of the costly gems, golden thread, and pearls might have also demonstrated the conflict between her roles as abbess and as the king's daughter, as well as a way to inspire her sisters and to provide them with a model of her kind of service and leadership to the community.

[28][46] Yorke states that its construction was an indication of her status and wealth; it was made from wood, but had "lavish fittings of gold and semiprecious stones and decorated with a cycle of wall-paintings".

Ridyard relates Goscelin's account that after Edith's death, the nuns at Wilton, including her mother, experienced strange events at her tomb.

[27] Thirty days after her death, Ridyard reports that Edith appeared to Wulfthryth in a vision, assuring her that "she had been well received by her king in eternal grace".

[53] The Vita was completed several generations after the events it describes and was "firmly grounded in the traditions current at Wilton in the final quarter of the eleventh century";[54] it demonstrates Goscelin's familiarity with and affection for the abbey.

[61] Much of the information Goscelin gathered about Edith came from Brihtgifu (d. 1065), the daughter of noble parents, who came to the abbey as a child during Wulfthryth's lifetime and later became abbess in the years immediately before the Norman Conquest (c. 1040–1065).

[51] Ridyard explains the interval between her death and the development of her cult, despite the favourable circumstances, by stating that her promotion to sainthood was removed from the control of the Wilton nuns and taken over by "a number of prominent individuals",[67] all of whom received visions of Edith urging them to elevate her remains.

[67][68] Ridyard states that both Æthelred and Cnut supported the promotion of her cult to establish their legitimacy as rulers and to connect themselves to the lineage of Edgar's children.

[69] Cnut, for example, may have viewed his support of Edith's elevation to sainthood as a way to solidify his connection to West Saxon royalty, which began with his marriage to Æthelred's widow.

[72] The other attempt involved a monk from Glastonbury, horrified when he tried to remove a fragment of Edith's clothing from her grave and his knife slipped and touched her body; "a wave of blood gushed forth, as if drawn from a living vein".

Both Hollis and Ridyard relate the popular story about a nobleman named Agamund who in the late 1030s, had stolen Wilton properties and had a vision of Edith on his deathbed.

She tormented him by preventing him from dying in peace and entering heaven until he returned what he had stolen;[68][75] Hollis states this story "testifies to fear of Edith among the laity".

[68] As Bugyis put it, Edith's had dominion over both the condemnation and salvation of individual souls and demonstrated both her power of judgment and forgiveness, especially as it related to the violation of her community's spiritual and temporal possessions.

[72] For example, when a man named Brexius seized land owned by the abbey and refused to make amends on his deathbed, one of his relatives who was also a nun at Wilton, reported having a vision in which she witnessed "the rough treatment"[72] at the hands of Edith.

Edith bestowed symbols of convent authority upon Ælfgifu, which Bugyis argues justified and endorsed the community's choice of their abbesses during a time when such decisions were made by kings and nobles.

[74] Hollis states that the Wilton community's faith in Edith had diminished after the Norman Conquest because she had failed to help them recover some lost land and fortune and to protect them from a plague.

[59] Up to that point, Edith was remembered more for her wardrobe, her private zoo, her political influence, her artistic and literary talents, and the church she built and decorated, than for her holy life and miraculous powers.