St Frideswide

Today is the feast of St Fridewide, patron and probably foundress of Oxford.

The following account of her, slightly adapted, and the two images are copied from Pilgrim-WordPress.com:

Image from St George Orthodox Information Service

St. Frideswide, Oct. 19; translation, Feb. 12 (FREDESWEND, FREDESWYTHA, FRITHESWITHA, FRITHESWOED, etc.; in French, FREVISE, FREWISSE). c. 650-735. Patron of Oxford and of Bomy, in Artois. Represented with the pastoral staff of an abbess, a fountain springing up near her, an ox at her feet. 

Born at Oxford, which was then in the kingdom of Mercia. Her pious parents, Didan and Safrida, committed her to the care of a holy woman named Algiva. After her mother’s death, she returned to live with her father. He built a church at the gates of Oxford, and there she took the veil with twelve young women of her acquaintance. Didan then built them a convent near the church, and they lived there, not bound by the rules of the cloister, but by holy charity and love of seclusion. Algar, prince of Mercia, sent to ask Frideswide to marry him, as she was beautiful and very rich. She excused herself on the plea of her vow of celibacy. He persisted, and at last made a plan to carry her off. She fled to the river, and finding a boat, floated to Benton, about ten miles from Oxford. She took up her abode in a deserted hut used to shelter the swine that fed on the acorns in the forest. Here a fountain sprang up at her prayer. She remained concealed for about three years, while Algar tried to find her, at one time threatening to burn the city of Oxford unless she were given up to him. At last he discovered her hiding-place, and vowed to sacrifice her not only to his own brutality, but to that of his men. Just as she was about to fall into his hands, and was so worn out with fatigue and starvation that her last strength was forsaking her, she bethought her of the great saints who in the days of the early Church had saved their honour at the price of life; she invoked SS. Catherine and Cecilia. Immediately her persecutor was struck blind, and she was unmolested. She restored sight to her enemy on his repentance. She returned to Oxford, and there collected round her it number of Saxon maidens, over whom she presided in great holiness until her death in 735.

Many miracles are told of her in her life, and after her death. One of the former is that a leper conjured her in the name of Christ to kiss him, and she, overcoming her fear of infection and natural disgust at his loathsome condition, made the sign of the cross and kissed him. Immediately the scales fell from him, and his flesh came again like that of a child. Multitudes of pilgrims resorted to her tomb, the chapel on the site of the pigs hut, and the fountain which had sprung up at her prayer, and which soon became famous for miraculous cures. In 1180 her body was solemnly taken up from the obscure part of the church where it was buried, and translated to the chief place in the church, in presence of a great concourse of nobles, prelates, and people. For centuries no king of England would enter Oxford for fear of being struck blind. Henry III. was the first to disregard the tradition, and there were not wanting persons who attributed all his misfortunes to his presumption. Many kings, however, gave munificent offerings to the churches and schools of Oxford. The first school known with certainty to have existed in the sanctuary of St. Frideswide has become one of the most famous centres of literary and intellectual life in the world. Her monastery is now Christ Church college, and her church, rebuilt in the 12th century, is the cathedral. One version of her story says that she lived, died, and was buried at Thornbury, now Binsey, and that her body was translated thence to Oxford in the 12th century.

At Bomy, near Therouanne, in Artois, there is a tradition that she fled thither from the pursuit of Algar, and a fountain, said to have sprung up at her desire, is resorted to for cures and other answers to prayer. Notwithstanding these discrepancies in the accounts, and the fact that Bede, who was living during her reputed period, does not mention her, critics agree that her story is true in the main.

Image from frideswide.org – not attributed.

After Mass at the Oxford Oratory this evening, at which the fine music for the propers was provided by the female Frideswide Voices, we concluded with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and sang, as is our custom, a hymn in her honour. I have reproduced the text of this truly wondrous composition, which came to us from Christ Church, in my post Hymn to St Frideswide from this day in 2011.

The icon reproduced at the head of this post can be purchased online if you search for it.

Brothers Pilgrimage to Binsey

Today the Brothers of the Secular Oratory here in Oxford went on a walking pilgrimage to the medieval church of St Margaret at Binsey and to the Holy Well which lies in its churchyard.

We walked by the Oxford Canal and along the riverside to cross Port Meadow - and a view of the ugly Castle Mill Stram accomodation blocks the University managed to slip by the planning authorities - and went to visit St Margaret's Church at Binsey.

This simple early Norman church occupies a place within what until recently identifiable as an earthen Anglo -Saxon defensive enclosure - soon after it was identified it was largely obliterated by a local farmer -  and is the traditional place of St Frideswide's refuge when pursued by Algar of Leicester. Tradition asserts tht it was with the water from the Holy Well in the churchyard that St Frideswide cured Algar of the blindness with which he was struck as punishment for his pursuit of her.

 

Binsey Church 

Image:Wikimedia



The interior of the church 

Image:aclerkofoxford.blogspot

In the church Fr Jerome and I talked about its history and architecture to the other Brothers.

Thomas Hearne the Oxford antiquary records that until it was demolished in the early eighteenth century, there was a shrine -like well house over the well itself, which lies to the west of the church.

St Margaret's Well in Binsey churchyard in spring

Image:osneybenefice.org.uk

The well was restored in 1874 and that might cast doubt on the idea that it is the inspiration for the Treacle Well ( Treacle meaning balm or healing ) in Alice in Wonderland, which began with a boat trip to Binsey in 1862, and was published in 1865.

We took a group photo of the Brothers by the well, before going on to lunch at the Perch, a well known hostelry destination after a walk across Port Meadow.

We walked back across the Meadow and went back to have tea in the Oratory Library and discussed the planning of future events.

I realised that it was over a decade since I had been at Binsey - not I think since I was thurifer at the celebration of St Margaret's day there in 2002, when July 20th fell on a Sunday and the parishes of St Thomas and St Frideswide with Binsey combined their efforts to keep the patronal feast. It was a glorious summer day and a real sense of history an occasion as the Anglican liturgy was celebrated in the church. A day which seems both recent and yet so distant, before my reception as a Catholic and all that has happened since.

St Frideswide's shrine and well

Today is the feast of St Frideswide the patron saint of Oxford, and indeed, the foundress of the city. Her monastic community appears to have been the first permanent settlement here, and from that developed the University. So she is rightly venerated as patron of both town and gown. I thought the psalm verse in today's propers for a Virgin in the Divine Office, "Thou shalt have sons instead of thy fathers Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth" (Ps 44/45) could be applied to the success of Oxford men, and indeed women, educated by this University under St Fridewide's patronage.

My posts about her and her cult from previous years can be read at St Frideswide from two years ago and from last year Hymn to St Frideswide and  Church of St Frideswide Oxford.

There is an illustrated online account of her life and cult here.

The base of St Fridewide's shrine as reassembled in what is now considered to have been its original site in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.

Image: Lawrence Lew O.P. on Flickr

The stained glass window to the east of the shrine is by Edward Burne-Jones and tells the story of St Frideswide. It is said that Burne-Jones became so irritated with the authorities at Christ Church over the commission that he took his revenge by including a very nineteenth century water closet in the background of one of the scenes.

One of the places tradition associates with St Frideswide is the church of St Margaret at Binsey, just west of the city centre and a rural oasis by the streams of the Thames, but within the modern ring-road. The site is claimed as one where St Frideswide hid from Algar, and St Margaret was a virgin saint associated with deliverance from enemies. The church is a simple early Norman structure with a numinous atmosphere.
 

Binsey church from the east

Image: binseystmargaret.org.uk

In the churchyard, immediately west of the church is St Margaret's Well, from whence some legends claim St Fridewide drew water to heal Algar's blindness. By the late middle ages this acquired a protective well house described by the antiquarian Thomas Hearne in the early eighteenth century. This has disappeared and the well as it is today is the result of a restoration in 1874. It is also claimed to be the inspiration for the Teacle Well in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  - treacle here means, as in the "Treacle Bible", balm or healing.

 

The Holy Well in Binsey churchyard

Image: Wikipedia

Solemn Evensong with the Ordinariate

Yesterday evening I attended the second of the Solemn Evensongs held at Blackfriars by the Oxford Ordinariate group. As last time this was well attended, the congregation including Ordinariate members, other relatively recent converts like myself, cradle Catholics and some who are still within the Church of England.

The service was to celebrate the feast of St Fridewide, and the form of service now has the Vatican recognitio, rather than using the version from the US Book of Common Order - thus the suffrage for The Queen was in its proper place.

The music was provided by The Newman Consort, the officiant was Mgr. Andrew Burnham and the preacher Dom Aidan Bellenger OSB, Abbot of Downside.

The collect was translated from the Sarum Missal as published in Antwerp in 1527, just before all the trouble began, and a worthy reminder of patrimony:

Almighty and eternal God, source of truth and lover of virginity, grant us, we beseech thee, that the merits of St Frideswide, thy virgin so pleasing to thee, may be as a commendation of us to thess whose life by its chastity gave to thee such satisfaction. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and regneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Afterwards there was Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and with those two superb twelfth century hymns indicative of thec Benedictine, indeed Cluniac, spirituality of the age - Peter Abelard's O what their joy and their glory must be and Bernard of Cluny's Jerusalem the golden - and both translated by the incomparable, and Anglican, J.M.Neale.

This was an opportunity for the Anglican patrimony in the use of traditional language and choral music to be made available to the wider Catholic Church.

I have to say that I genuinely prefer the structure of Vespers to Evensong, which of course merges Vespers and Compline, and miss the antiphons to the psalms and canticles, but the combined effect of words, music and ceremonial was very conducive to prayerful reflection.

I am in such matters inclined to the view that patrimony is more about the way things are done rather than the specific forms of Anglican liturgy - that has, after all, been debatable territory since very early in the Oxford Movement - but that is in no way to fault what was offered last night.

Afterwards there was a reception in the Aula at Blackfriars and an opportunity to catch up with friends old and new, and the prospect of another such Evensong next term.

Hymn to St Frideswide

St Frideswide
Fourteenth century glass in Christ Church Cathedral

Image: Lawrence Lew OP on Flickriver

After Mass at the Oratory this evening we had Benediction in honour of St Fridewide and the opportunity once again to sing one of the more remarkable examples of English hymnography in her honour. I understand the hymn originates at her shrine church, now Christ Church cathedral. The hymn does recount the life of the saint - my favourite verse is no.3 - nor can one fault its sentiments, and I would be loath to see its use abandoned, but great poetry, to be frank, it is not.

It is sung to Handel's March from Judas Maccabeus - Hail the conquering hero comes - and also used for Thine be the Glory.

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight;
Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.
Child of royal parents, courted by a king,
Sought a crown of glory, spurned a wedding ring.

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight;
Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.

Powerful and peaceful, vowed to God alone,
Frideswide chose a heavenly, not an earthly throne.
Prayer and meditation raised her soul above
All this world's attraction; Jesus held herlove.

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight;
Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.

Algar of Leicester planned to do her wrong,
Sent his men to seize her, Frideswide's faith was strong -
In an instant blinded then his sight restored,
They knew both the wrath and mercy of the Lord.

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight;
Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.

Wonders of healing Frideswide's prayers obtained -
Crooked limbs were straightened, speech the dumb regained.
Through her intercession may the grace be ours
For God's use to offer all our gifts and powers

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight;
Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.

Light filled the city as she passed away
Journeyed through death's shadow into endless day,
There we hope to join her, by the truth set free,
Where we have our treasure, there our hearts shall be.

Frideswide our patron, clear our clouded sight; Help dissolve our darkness, bring us God's own light.

Church of St Frideswide Oxford

Whilst I was churchwarden at St Thomas the Martyr here in Oxford the church was linked in a single benefice with the church of St Frideswide in the Botley Road. As today is the feast of St Frideswide and I recently found this drawing of the proposed design I thought I would post about it.

St Frideswide's originated in the remarkable ministry of the great Canon Thomas Chamberlain as vicar of St Thomas the Martyr from 1842 until 1892. Concerned that the Nonconformists might establish a foothold in the community that had been built on Osney Island in the western part of his parish he built a mission church which was replaced, largely I believe at his expense and indeed impoverishment, by St Frideswide's, and a separate parish established.

The church as it stands was designed by S.S. Teulon (1812-73) and built between 1870 and 1872.There are biographies of this interesting, if not particularly well-known, architect here and here. Presumably following his death the Oxford architect Harry Drinkwater (1844-95), of whom there is a biography here, built the vicarage including the connecting corridor which links it to the church and is a feature of interest and character.

In 1878 Drinkwater produced this design to complete the church with an impressive tower. I was given to understand that the reason this was not carried out were concerns about the weight involved given the position of the church close to the Thames. This is borne out in the picture below from the floods in 2007. Nevertheless this is another instance where one very much wishes it had been possible to complete the building as designed.

Harry Drinkwater's design for St Frideswide's 1878

Image:http://archiseek.com/2009/1878-st-frideswide-osney-oxfordshire/

St Fridewide's during the summer floods of 2007.

Image: Daily Mail

The church is handsome, and solemn in a rather severe way both inside and out - not so much beautiful as substantial.

Inside the church is a wooden door from the only other nineteenth century church dedicated to St Frideswide. The church, in London, was bombed and destroyed in the Second World War, but the door, carved by Alice Liddell, Alice of Alice in Wonderland, with the story of St Frideswide, was rescued and found a home in her other church.

Celebrating St Frideswide on October 19th

The feast of St Frideswide, patroness of Oxford, falls on Wednesday 19 October.

St Frideswide
Fourteenth century glass in Christ Church Cathedral

Image: Lawrence Lew OP on Flickriver

The Mass at the Oratory at 6 pm will be followed by Benediction, and the annual opportunity to sing one of the more remarkable examples of English hymnography in her honour - but never mind the words, enjoy the strains of Handel's March from Judas Maccabeus

At 7.30pm the Oxford Ordinariate will have Solemn Evensong & Benediction at Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford. Choral music from the Anglican tradition will be sung by the Newman Consort and the Preacher will be the Abbot of Downside, the Rt Revd Dom Aidan Bellenger OSB. Refreshments will be provided afterwards.

This service, the second in a series, is an opportunity for the Oxford Ordinariate Group to welcome fellow Catholics, Anglicans and all who are seeking to discern God’s will in their lives.

St Frideswide hides in the woods from the unwelcome advances of Algar of Leicester -
a detail from the 1269 shrine base preserved in Christ Church Cathedral.

Image: Sacred Destinations

St Frideswide

Today is the Feast, indeed here in Oxford, the local Solemnity, of St Frideswide, the patron of the City and University.

Today historians would be much more positive about her and her life than the story told of Canon Prof Claude Jenkins preaching as follows on St Frideswide's day in the 1930s - I give the sermon in its entirity - "St Frideswide. She did n't exist."

That is less than fair to the woman who, in many ways, is indeed the foundress of Oxford. Her shrine base has in recent years been restored and re-erected in what is now thought to have been its original place in her shrine chapel in what is now the cathedral, the handsome fourteenth century Latin Chapel:

Image by Jeren C on Flickr

Her relics are still within the cathedral, though now mixed with the bones of the wife of the sixteenth century exiled Italian protestant academic Peter Martyr - the bones were mixed after 1558 to prevent profanation of either set. Today I assume archaeological testing could easily distinguish eighth and sixteenth century bones.

St Frideswide's present resting place in Oxford Cathedral

Image by g33kygirly on Flickr

The legendary life of St Fridewide with accompanying notes can be found recounted here.

John Blair's immensely readable and learned Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire provides an excellent history not only of what is now the county in the period but an introduction to many aspects of Anglo-Saxon life in general. He not only provides the context for St Fridewide's life and legend, but also the fascinating point that such was Fridewide's perveived power that until Edward I no King of England appears to have entered the walled city of Oxford for fear of suffering the fate of Algar of Leicester. Thus the twelfth century royal palace of Beaumont was outside the northern walls, occupying the site of Beaumont St and the Ashmolean Museum.

Br. Laurence Lew O.P. has taken some excellent photographs of surviving medieval glass showing St Frideswide:

14th-century glass in the Latin chapel of Oxford Cathedral

Br Laurence writes:

" Saint Frideswide (c. 650 – October 19, 727) was (according to legend) daughter of King Didan and Safrida. She founded a church near Oxford, but Prince Alfgar of Mercia decided to marry her. She refused his advances, hiding from him in a tub in the forest. When she returned to Oxford, Alfgar besieged her until he was struck blind. She then prayed to St Margaret of Antioch and St Catherine of Alexandria. The two saints appeared to Frideswide and told her to strike her staff against the ground. When she did so, a well sprang up. This well (now known as the Treacle Well, located in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Binsey just outside Oxford) cured Alfgar's blindness.This explains why this panel is attended by panels of Ss Margaret and Catherine."

Treacle, of course, means balm or healing in this context - as in the so-called "Treacle Bible" which renders Is ther balm in Gilead as "Is there treacle in Gilead." It is this well which is the inspiration for the Treacle Well in the Dormouse's story at the Mad Hatter's Tea party in "Alice in Wonderland"

16th-century glass from Balliol College chapel of the patroness of Oxford.