Arilda of Oldbury
Saint Arilda | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Martyr | |
| Born | unknown possibly Gloucestershire or Wales |
| Died | probably 5th-century Oldbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church; Anglican Communion |
| Major shrine | St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester (destroyed) |
| Feast | 20 July |
| Patronage | Oldbury-on-Severn and Oldbury-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire |
Saint Arilda, or Arild, was an obscure female saint from Oldbury-on-Severn in the English county of Gloucestershire. She probably lived in the 5th- or 6th-century and may have been of either Anglo-Saxon or Welsh origin.
Arilda was a virgin martyr who, according to John Leland, was slain by a youth named Municus when she refused to have sex with him.
Two churches in Gloucestershire are dedicated to Arilda, one at Oldbury-on-Severn near her traditional home, a second ("St Arild's Church") at Oldbury-on-the-Hill. Both places were called "Aldberie" at the time of the Domesday Book, suggesting that their names may be derived from the saint.
Leland claims that Arilda lived in Kington, a hamlet in the parish of Oldbury-on-Severn, where there is a holy well bearing Arilda's name. The waters from the well are said to run red with her blood, though a more prosaic explanation is the presence of a red algae of the Hildenbrandia genus.[1]
There was a shrine to Arilda at St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, which is now Gloucester Cathedral, but it was destroyed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Notes
- ^ "Saint Arilda". www.arilda.org. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
References
- G. Jones, "Authority, Challenge and Identity in three Gloucestershire Saints' Cults", Authority and Community in the Middle Ages (ed. Donald Mowbray, Ian P. Wei, Rhiannon Purdie), 1999, ISBN 0-7509-1867-5, pp. 124–127
- Julian M. Luxford, "The art and architecture of English Benedictine monasteries, 1300–1540: a patronage history", Boydell Press, 2005, ISBN 1-84383-153-8, p. 134
- Alan Thacker, Richard Sharpe, "Local saints and local churches in the early medieval West", Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-820394-2, p. 509
- David Verey, Gloucestershire: the Vale and the Forest of Dean, The Buildings of England edited by Nikolaus Pevsner, 2nd ed. (1976) ISBN 0-14-071041-8, p. 314
- David Verey, Gloucestershire: the Cotswolds, The Buildings of England edited by Nikolaus Pevsner, 2nd ed. (1979) ISBN 0-14-071040-X, p. 351
