Wulfhilda, also known as Wulfhild and Wulfreda among several other names (c. 940 – c. 996), was an Anglo-Saxon abbess who is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
[4] According to Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, the nuns at Barking laid complaints against their abbess Wulfhilda, and the English queen Ælfthryth deposed her, only to reinstate her twenty years later.
[6] Goscelin also described Wulfhilda's service to her followers, which he compared to the qualities of a humble, attentive, and nurturing mother[2] and included "drawing water, gathering wood, kindling fires, preparing provisions, distributing clothes, and bathing her sisters",[7] which he called her ministry.
Goscelin praised her hands during his description of her regular and secret practice of sitting in front of the abbey church's doors and distributing alms to the poor as they passed by.
[7] He dedicated his vita of Wulfhilda to Bishop Maurice of London, Barking Abbey's diocesan at the time, and appealed to him to defend and accept the nuns who kept her memory alive, citing the role of women's testimony throughout the history of the Christian Church.