Historians have traditionally depicted the Age of Bede as a golden age for women in the medieval English church. They have seen this as an era in which women faced a range of opportunities by which to explore their religious vocations and to enjoy significant economic, social and political power, as well as to exercise spiritual authority in ways not open to their sisters in later centuries. Female actors assumed important roles in early narratives of the conversion of the English kingdoms, and the names of many of these feminae gloriosae are well known, thanks in large measure to Bede's vivid and memorable accounts of their activities. Bede's apparent willingness to accord equal attention to female as to male religious has done much to bring the female vita religiosa in early Anglo-Saxon England to our attention; so prominent are his detailed descriptions of the holiness and virtue of several abbesses that the fourth book of his Historia ecclesiastica has even been termed ‘the book of the abbesses’.

The names of Bede's most celebrated abbesses – Hild of Whitby, Athelburh of Barking and Athelthryth of Ely – come so readily to mind that one might imagine them as representative of a much larger group of lesser-known religious women leaders active in his day. It thus proved rather sobering to discover that a systematic search of all of Bede's historical and hagiographical writings reveals the names of only twelve other women who served as abbesses between the mid-seventh and early eighth centuries. Three of those identified by Bede exercised authority over monasteries in northern Gaul in the era before the creation of the first monasteries for women in Anglo-Saxon England: “the most noble abbess called Fara”, abbess of Brie, near Meaux in northern France; Athelburh, daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia; and Sathryth, Anna's stepdaughter, who both also became abbesses of Brie, “by merit of their virtues”. Of the remainder, eight ruled over six different houses in Bede's native Northumbria (Coldingham, Hartlepool, Partney, Watton, a house on the River Wear, and Whitby), while the other four governed just two double houses in southern England: Barking in the kingdom of the East Saxons and Ely in East Anglia.