Suggest an Edit — Virgin Frideswide

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Biography

Short Description

Saint Frideswide (also Frithuswith, Frideswith, or Frevisse) was an Anglo-Saxon princess and abbess associated with Oxford in the kingdom of Mercia, living in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. No contemporary written record of her life survives. What is known comes chiefly from twelfth-century sources, including William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum Anglorum and Latin lives composed at the later Augustinian priory on her site. These present her as the daughter of Didan (Didanus), a sub-king or local ruler of the Oxford region, and his wife Safrida (Sefrida). From youth she is said to have chosen consecrated virginity rather than marriage and dynastic alliance.

According to the medieval vitae, she persuaded her father to found a monastery at Oxford and became abbess of a community of nuns there. The central episode of her legend concerns a royal suitor named Algar or Aelfgar, described as a king of Leicester or a Mercian noble, who sought to marry her against her will. When she refused, he tried to seize her by force. She fled Oxford and hid in the countryside; traditions name Binsey, Bampton, and a swineherd's hut in the forest. In the story his pursuit ended in miraculous punishment: he was struck blind, or in some versions killed, as he approached the city. She later returned to her monastery. A well at Binsey, long linked with her and with Saint Margaret, was said to have sprung up at her prayer so that she and her sisters might have water.

She is held to have died at Oxford on 19 October, the date kept as her feast. Later writers give her death as 727 or about 735; neither year can be confirmed from contemporary evidence. She was buried at her monastery. The community suffered in the Danish wars of the late Anglo-Saxon period. In the twelfth century the church was refounded as the Augustinian Priory of St Frideswide, and her relics were solemnly translated in 1180, which strengthened her cult. In 1440 Archbishop Henry Chichele of Canterbury ordered that her feast be observed with greater solemnity in the province of Canterbury. At the Reformation the priory was suppressed and became Christ Church, Oxford; her shrine was destroyed. A reconstructed shrine now stands in Christ Church Cathedral, which remains her principal cult site.

Frideswide is the patron saint of the city of Oxford and of the University of Oxford. She is entered in the Roman Martyrology on 19 October. The miraculous details of her legend cannot be verified historically, but her cult is among the oldest continuously associated with Oxford, and she remains that city's and university's principal saint.

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