November 20 -- Feast of Saint Edmund of East Anglia

An arrow in a saint's portrait never suggests a peaceful death

Edmund of East Anglia was crowned king of his country on Christmas Day, AD 855, at age fourteen.  Most of us, I fear, would learn to abuse our power and indulge our worst desires if we became absolute monarchs at such a young age.  Nero (emperor at age 17) and Commodus (co-emperor at age 16, sole ruler at 19) are two easy examples.

Is he bristling like a hedgehog?  Not yet!

Not our boy Edmund, though.  He sought spiritual perfection for himself and justice for the East Anglians.  In fact, he shut himself up in an abbey for a year to learn the Psalter (Book of Psalms and other devotional writings).  I find it hard to imagine that the country could chug along on its own without a ruler for a whole year, but perhaps his administration was sophisticated enough to run without him.  Or justice had blossomed to such an extent that government was nearly unnecessary.  Or he wasn't quite as cloistered as that. 

The wolf guarding Edmund's head

Anyway, the Age of Aquarius had come early to East Anglia, lasting fourteen years or so,  until (cue the foreboding music) The Dane arrived.  The twenty-nine year old king led his army against the Pagan Danish Horde in a series of encounters, but he was eventually captured.  He refused to submit his people to a pagan overlord, and so he was whipped, beaten, and shot through with arrows until he bristled like a hedgehog.  He was then beheaded and his head was thrown into a thicket of brambles.  When his loyal subjects later searched for the head, they found it guarded by a wolf, the totem of his dynasty (going back to Wuffa -- Little Wolf -- the first of the Wuffing Dynasty).