Ebba was an abbess. She, in the 9th century, was Abbess over the largest monastery in sometimes-England-sometimes-Scotland (depending on who was winning the skirmishes surrounding the monastery and when).

In the 870s (historians dispute whether it was in 870 or 874, but it was in that decade), Danes (a.k.a. “infidels”) attacked that particular area of the British Isles. Butler tells us that Ebba the Abbess was not worried for her life–only for her chastity. In fact, Ebba was so worried that she not be raped, that she gathered all the nuns together and gave what Butler calls “a moving discourse to her sisters”–and then, taking a razor, Ebba sliced off her nose and upper lip. The other nuns followed suit.

This made all the sisters so utterly unattractive, even ghastly appearing, to the marauding Danes that they did not in fact rape these women. Instead, their own urges for sexual violence thwarted, the infidels decided to burn down the entire monastery, killing all inside. Butler proudly proclaims that “these holy virgins died in the flames, spotless victims to their heavenly spouse, the lover and rewarder of chaste souls.”

This vignette screams for some deconstruction, and here I tread carefully, inasmuch as I am male and recognize the limitations of both my experience and my imagination. I do believe that one might well prefer outright death to rape. I also believe that one might take extreme steps to avoid being raped.

On the other hand, what kind of obscene God would not just as warmly welcome raped nuns into heaven as those who were “chaste”? And since when is a woman unchaste by virtue of being raped? Moreover, if these women had razors in their possessions, why would it be more blessed to self-mutilate than to castrate rapists who attack them (if we are talking strategies)?

The challenge lies in why we remember Ebba and her nuns on this day: Is it to elevate the extraordinary measures that they went to so that they could all present themselves virgo intacta before the Heavenly Throne? If so, then this is one more reason to hate and despise patriarchal religion and to be moved by compassion and pity for the lessons instilled into females through the centuries by Christianity.

Or is to to recognize that women have always had agency, even under horrific circumstances, and that these specific women living with a set of particular understandings and in an almost unimaginable set of circumstances made an assessment: They saw two choices, namely, (1) be raped, quite possibly repeatedly and most certainly brutally, and then be killed; or (2) be killed without being raped (even if it meant disfiguring their own faces while amongst supportive and loving sisters)? These women took action–different than we might have taken, different than we might want them to have taken, different than we would ever counsel people today to take–in line with their values. That is well worth remembering. (And, like the main character in Toni Morrison’s Beloved–the next time around, those razors may will be meant for the attackers, and not the victims!)