Saint Frithuswith – A Short Biography

Saint Frithuswith – A Short Biography

Saint Frithuswith (c. 650 – 19 October 727; also known as Frideswide, Frideswith, Fritheswithe, Frevisse, Fristhwilde, Frithswild or simply Fris). English princess and abbess who is enshrined at Christ Church College in Oxford. Frithuswith is the patron saint of Oxford and her feast day is the 19th October.

There are a few versions of the story so I will do my best to keep a consistent summary.

In the early 7th century, the area around Oxford was governed by a Saxon king who was a vassal of the King of Mercia. In one account, he is called King Didan, and it was he who had founded a monastery - possibly for both monks and nuns - which was ruled by his daughter, Frithuswith.

Her name is a Germanic Saxon one, meaning Peace-Strong, or Bond of Peace.

Algar, the King of Leicester, sends envoys to bring back Frithuswith for his bride, but she refuses to renounce her vows, and when they try to  carry her off, they are struck blind.

They repent, their sight is restored, and they return to King Algar, who then sets out to seize her by force, but an angel warns her to flee, which she does, going upstream on the Thames.

Arriving at the gates of Oxford, Algar is also blinded, but being unremorseful, never regains his sight.
Meanwhile, Frithuswith performs miracles, healing the sick, enabling the blind to see, and after three years returns to Oxford, again by boat, and returns to the monastery.

In later life, the nuns in Binsey complain of having to fetch water from the distant River Thames, so Frithuswith prays to God and a well springs up. The well water has healing properties and many people come to seek it out.

This well can still be found today at the Church of St Margaret in Binsey, a few miles upriver from Oxford.

Frithuswith stayed in the monastery until her death on October 19th, 727AD.

There are three separate historical accounts of the life of St. Frithuswith but all were written in the early 12th century, around four hundred years after the time in which she is supposed to have lived. One of the problems with the two main accounts is that one says Frithuswith went into hiding at Bampton, and the other that she did so at Binsey.

She may have stayed in both places, but there is a healing well in the churchyard of St. Margaret's church at Binsey, where even now people leave flowers, and where pilgrims with eye ailments came to bathe their eyes, hoping for a cure, and barren women prayed to conceive.

St. Frithuswith's monastery was sacked by the Danes in 1002.

The monastery was re-established for Austin Canons in 1122. The church was rebuilt in 1180 and the prior of the monastery had her bones disinterred, and laid with great ceremony in a reliquary which was displayed in a shrine to which pilgrims flocked, hoping for miracles. These pilgrims included Henry III, Edward I and Henry VIII's queen, Catherine of Aragon.

In 1525, Cardinal Wolsey gained permission from Pope Clement VII to dissolve the monastery and transform it into Cardinal College, with the Abbey Church as the college chapel. In 1546, Henry VIII changed this to Christ Church College and the church became the Cathedral of the new Diocese of Oxford.

Frithuswith still lies buried here beneath part of her reconstructed shrine.

It stands in the Latin Chapel, in front of a wonderfully detailed stained glass window telling the story of her life, designed by Edward  Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, in the 1850's.

This is where the shrine is now, but a little to the south of it, in the Lady Chapel, there is also a dark paving stone in the floor carved simplywith the name 'Frideswide', and it is here that the anniversary of her death is commemorated on October 19th each year.

In art, she is depicted holding the pastoral staff of an abbess, a fountain springing up near her and an ox at her feet. The fountain probably represents the holy well at Binsey.

A wonderfully written account of the legend can be found here: 
http://www.britannia.com/history/legend/berks/frideswide01.html