St. Frideswide

Feast day 19 October

Frideswide was born around 680 to Dida of Eynsham, a village near to modern-day Oxford, a sub-king of the over-lordship of Mercia. Little is known of her early life, but a story, attribute to Robert of Cricklade the then prior of Oxford says she was the intended victim of seduction by Aethelbald of Mercia. She escaped his attentions by fleeing into a forest retreat at Binsey and then onto Oxford. Aethelbald was temporarily blinded, but it is said he was restored to sight at Bamton by her intercession.

This whole area of the western Thames valley had only recently been evangelised by Birnus, an early bishop of Winchester. Taking the Christian faith to heart Dida endowed Minster churches both in Eynsham and Bamton. Frideswide, following her fathers lead, became a firm follower of Christ and was made the first abbess of the Oxford double monastery and around these the early town of Oxford was situated.

Frideswide died in 727 and was buried in her monastery and it soon became a place of pilgrimage. In the early twelfth century the site was refounded as a house by Austin Canons. Her cult was strengthened in the early fifteenth century when she was formally adopted as patron by Oxford University and her shrine was solemnly visited twice a year.

During the reformation Cardinal Wolsey suppressed Frideswide' s monastery to provide revenues for his Cardinal College, (now Christ Church College) which he built on the same site.

In modern times part of her shrine has been reconstructed from remains found in an ancient well discovered at Christ Church and to this day it still attracts pilgrims who remember the holy woman that brought the love of Jesus to what was then still a largely pagan land.

John Hayward