It is so hard to deny things that taste of the apple. —Saint Hildegard of Bingen THE VIKING FORCES that landed on the North Sea coast of Scotland in 870 swept south with a vengeance, leaving utter devastation in their wake. The only thing that traveled faster than the Vikings was the news that they were on the way. When word of the approaching berserks reached Ebba the Younger, abbess of Coldingham Abbey, a convent located just north of the present-day border between England and Scotland, she gathered the sisters together, knowing that they had no greater strength than the community they shared. Warning her community of virgins of the probability that they would all be raped by the invaders when the convent was sacked, Ebba took a razor and sliced off her own nose and upper lip, making a bloody, mutilated spectacle of her face that she hoped would repel the invaders. One after the other, the nuns followed suit, fearlessly carving into their own flesh with cold steel in the hopes that it might forestall their having to endure a violation of their bodies that these consecrated virgins perceived as far worse than the ones to their faces.
What do You think about Virgin: The Untouched History?
