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- Saint Frideswide (3)
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Frideswide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Ælfgar 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 (located in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Binsey just outside Oxford, and identified by some as Lewis Carroll's model for the Treacle Well in Alice in Wonderland) cured Alfgar's blindness. As Alfgar lived several hundred years later, it is clear that this myth was not contemporary.
St Frideswide's Priory, a medieval Augustinian house which became Christ Church, Oxford following the dissolution of the monasteries is claimed to be the site of her abbey and relics, although this is under debate.
Frideswide is the patron saint of Oxford.[1] Her feast day is October 19. In art, she is depicted holding the pastoral staff of an abbess, a fountain springing up near her and an ox at her feet. The fountain probably represents the holy well at Binsey. She appears in medieval stained glass and in Pre-Raphaelite stained glass by Edward Burne-Jones in Christ's Church Cathedral, Oxford, in the chapel where her shrine is also located.
She is also known as Friðuswiþ (Frithuswith), Frevisse or Fris. In Old English, "Friðe" or Frith means "peace", and "swiþ" means "strength".
- ^ St. Frideswide. Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
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