Feast day of Saxon patron saint of Oxford is October 19
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2039
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=273
The university system was founded by church leaders, who from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the early modern period formed the intellectual class in Europe.
The oldest university in the English-speaking world is Oxford, which was founded as early as 1096. Oxford was founded largely around an abbey and church dedicated to St. Frideswide, an Anglo-Saxon princess, nun and hermitess who died on October 19, 727 AD. Since then, October 19 has been commemorated in her honor, especially at Oxford, where she is the patron saint.
The story of St. Frideswide shows a syncretic blending of pagan and Christian ideas, and her legend and legacy is a fascinating tale for parents who want to teach their children about their roots.
Frideswide’s name was Friðuswiþ, meaning “strong peace” in Anglo-Saxon. According to her legend, her royal father gave her a plot of land where she founded a convent on the site of what is now Christ Church College, Oxford. Frideswide was saved from the advances of a Mercian aristocrat, Ælfgar, Earl of Leicester, by fleeing Oxford. A mysterious white-robed stranger, who was said to be a disguised angel, led Frideswide to a place of refuge, where a holy well appeared near a pig-sty she made into a chapel. Ælfgar, continuing his pursuit of her, was struck blind, but, chastened, was cured by Frideswide with water from the well. The well, which later became the site of pilgrimages, was a Christianized pagan site: holy wells, sacred to the Celts and others, exist across Europe. Another miracle she was said to have performed was the curing of a leprous man. While Frideswide became popular in Oxford, with her legend putting the town on the map, her refuge place in the Berkshire forest also became a pilgrimage site, Fritha’s Home, which is now the village of Frilsham, site of a St. Frideswide parish church. Her relics were placed in what is now Christ Church Cathedral, a site so important that it is the seat of the Oxford diocese.
Like many early British saints, St. Frideswide was also beloved in Europe, her cult brought to the mainland by the large number of Anglo-Saxon missionaries who evangelized among the Germanic-speaking barbarians. One mission to the Franks established her cult in the French region of Artois, where she is called St. Frevisse, and another holy well there is claimed as the site of her refuge.
In pre-literate days, symbolic artistic representations were important for teaching people, which is the reason why Gothic churches especially are so ornate. St. Frideswide is shown with her holy well and an ox — the symbol of Oxford. The famous Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones made the stained glass window of St. Frideswide found in Christ Church Cathedral. The Burne-Jones window was designed in league with William Morris, the great folkish nationalist.
As her legends show, Frideswide lived in a period which James C. Russell and other scholars have classified as “dual faith,” with pagan and Christian elements both effecting the folk faith of the English people. Frideswide’s own father Didan (Dydda), who donated the land for her convent, is believed to have been buried in a pagan tomb close to the famous heathen Uffington White Horse monument, a gigantic image carved into the chalk of a Berkshire hill. Showing that syncretism was not unique to the Christians, the site is as much as 3,000 years old, far predating the Germanic heathenism Didan may have practiced. Similarly, the esoteric (as opposed to strictly factual) basis of Frideswide’s tale is shown in such details as the fact that Earl Ælfgar, her suitor, would not have had such a title, “Earl” coming to England as a rank with the Danes, hundreds of years afterwards. But legends are not meant to be history; instead they teach us lessons about ourselves.
So powerful are legends that they have serious “real world” repercussions, and St. Frideswide is no exception. Apart from the fact that her myth gave rise to one of the oldest universities in the world and helped lay the foundation of the Western intellectual tradition, her cult had political significance. Invading Danes targeted this symbol of English culture and pillaged the convent in 1002. Because of one version of her legend, English Kings feared the curse of blindness, and so none of them visited Oxford for centuries; Henry III (reigned from 1216 to 1272) finally broke the “curse.” The veneration of relics was one of the sore points of the Reformation, and Henry VIII was responsible for undermining some of her cult. Shortly afterwards her relics were desecrated by Protestant extremists.
The cult of St. Frideswide was re-born in the 1800s as a result of the Anglo-Saxon revival which swept England in the wake of Queen Victoria’s marriage to a German, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. England’s establishment, and the artists, historians and others they patronized began to look outside of the old historiography which focused on the Greco-Roman world and Britain’s tenuous links to that legacy. Alfred the Great was one of the historical figures to enjoy a new vogue, as was St. Frideswide. The Christmas tree was another re-addition to English folk-life as a result of this revival. In this period the so-called Oxford Movement, which counted a Christ Church alumnus among its leading theoreticians, gained influence in the state Church of England. The Oxford Movement emphasized a reawakening of the church to its traditional foundations in the Medieval and Anglo-Saxon faith, and so St. Frideswide, along with a host of other early saints, gained renewed interest in religious circles.
The priory of St. Frideswide formed the basis of Christ Church, one of the largest and most prestigious constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. Counted among the Christ Church alumni are thirteen British prime ministers. So too were the Elizabethans, poet-warrior Sir Philip Sidney and thinker Richard Hakluyt. Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll was a Christ Church man (Frideswide’s well appeared in his tale as the Treacle Well) as was philosopher John Locke, whose ideas were to impact the American Revolution. The Wesley brothers, evangelist John and hymnist Charles (“Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”), whose religious influence laid the foundation of much of the American national character, were also schooled there, as was William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania.
Christ Church is also to be seen in the Harry Potter films.