Talk:Frithuswith

Prologue

The legend of frideswide has it she talked her father into giving her land outside the city gate (berkshire.com), and, at catholic.org, it's when 'Prince Algar of a neighbouring kingdom asked for her hand in marriage that she fled to Thomwry Wood in Birnsey' (modern day Binsey?). She founded St. Mary’s Convent in Oxford and is patroness of the university. It also says her relics are extant.

'Official Bus Tour' Guides have it that it likely to have been Binsey Abbey or around the current St Fridewide's church and point vaguely in the direction past the railway bridge as the bus sets off from the Railway Station.

ChristChurch do have a slab, which they now cover up, following a debate as to the relics' whereabouts, the college approach appears to be that; they are in the shrine of her chapel and that should be the focus of attention.

Changed content to state that the exact whereabouts of her church and her remains is debated.Alf 2 July 2005 20:07 (UTC)

Currently the prologue refers to Prince Ælfgar of Mercia. His name was linked to a prince Ælfgar who lived several hundred years after Frideswide, so I unlinked that. But I note that many Net sources, including the Catholic Encylopedia, refer to the prince as 'Algar'. So I think that someone with some knowledge might well clarify this if possible. Alpheus 01:55, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Expansion

This article could benefit from expansion and cross checking with ODNB entry mervyn 16:51, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

-- temporary extract here:

Frithuswith [St Frithuswith, Frideswide] (d. 727), abbess of Oxford, was venerated as the local saint of Oxford by at least the tenth century; her relics there are mentioned in the late Old English list of resting places and in a charter of 1004 (AS chart., S 909). Traditions believed locally in the early twelfth century were recorded, apparently independently, by William of Malmesbury in summary form and in an anonymous life (life A) at greater length. Life A makes Frithuswith the daughter of Didan, king of Oxford, and his wife, Sefrida, and names her nurse as Ælfgifu. Didan founds a nunnery at Oxford for his daughter and twelve other noble maidens, and endows it with ‘the estates and villages of St. Mary and a third part of the city of Oxford’ (Blair, ‘St Frideswide reconsidered’, 75). Pursued by the lecherous King Algar of Leicester, Frithuswith flees Oxford with two of her nuns and is miraculously transported up-river to Bampton, where she hides ‘in a wood called Binsey’ and performs miracles (ibid., 76). Algar tries to enter Oxford but is struck blind, leaving Frithuswith free to return home and live out her life as abbess. Binsey (a mile north-west of Oxford) is not near Bampton, and the inclusion of miracle stories located at both places suggests separate traditions which life A conflates. Later in the twelfth century, the Oxford scholar and Augustinian prior Master Robert of Cricklade (d. 1174) reworked the story (as life B) and ironed out the confusion by adding a chapter bringing Frithuswith from Bampton to Binsey (‘Thornbiri’), where she stays briefly and where a well (still in Binsey churchyard and still a place of veneration) appears in response to her prayers.

Embedded in these hagiographical fantasies may be genuine memories of the upper Thames region in the seventh and eighth centuries. Archaeology proves that Oxford, Bampton, and Binsey are Anglo-Saxon religious sites, and traffic up and down the Thames between them is consistent with other evidence for social and economic organization at the time. Frithuswith can probably be accepted as that characteristic late seventh-century figure, the king's daughter who became abbess of a royal minster: better-documented examples include Ælfflæd (d. 714) and Eadburh (d. 751).

Life A records Frithuswith's death on 19 October 727, later observed as her feast day, and says that she was buried in St Mary's Church in Oxford, on the south side; life B adds that the church was burnt down during the massacre of Danes in 1002 and enlarged around the grave by Æthelred II. This minster was reformed as an Augustinian priory c.1120, and after a miraculous rediscovery of the relics they were elevated in 1180; in 1289 they were moved into a new shrine, fragments of which survive. In 1562 the bones were mixed with those of Catherine, wife of the protestant reformer Peter Martyr, and reburied in the priory church, by then Oxford Cathedral.

... Sources

J. Blair, ‘St Frideswide reconsidered’, Oxoniensia, 52 (1987), 71–127 [incl. edns of life A, life B, and the translation narrative] · J. Blair, ed., ‘St Frideswide's monastery at Oxford: archaeological and architectural studies’, Oxoniensia, 53 (1988), 1–275; pubd separately (1988) · H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Functions of a twelfth-century shrine: the miracles of St Frideswide’, Studies in medieval history presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (1985), 193–206 · J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (1994), 52–4, 181–3 · VCH Oxfordshire, 4.70–71 · F. M. Stenton, ‘St Frideswide and her times’, Preparatory to ‘Anglo-Saxon England’: being the collected papers of Frank Merry Stenton, ed. D. M. Stenton (1970), 224–33 · Acta sanctorum: October, 8 (Brussels, 1853), 533–90 · Ann. mon., vol. 4 · AS chart., S 909

Christ Church

I've attempted to remove the ambiguity which exists between the pre-reformation priory that became 'the house'/Oxford Cathedral, and the earlier abbey of which Frideswide may have been head. This is important due to the link to this page that has been added to the Osney Abbey article's mention of the priory. Ought I to create a page for the medeival priory rather than anything else? --JoeKennedy1979 21:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)