SAINT FRIDESWIDE OF OXFORD, ABBESS AND VIRGIN (+735)

By Fr. Cyprian Astley (Orthodox Church of the Gauls) 

Our Venerable Mother Frideswide was a Mercian princess, the daughter of Didian (or Dida) of Eynsham, whose lands included the upper reaches of the River Thames. Her father, a sub-king under the Mercian overlordship, endowed minster churches at Bampton and Oxford.

Frideswide took a vow of perpetual virginity, but Algar, a local prince, (or, in some accounts, Aethelbald of Mercia) could not believe that she would not marry him. Desiring to fulfil her vow, she fled into hiding at Binsey (near the current Oxford), where she remained for three years as Algar continued to search for her. Then Algar was struck blind. When he renounced his desire to marry her, his sight was restored at Bampton upon Frideswide's intercession.

Eventually, Frideswide was appointed the first abbess of Saint Mary's double monastery at Oxford, where she peacefully lived out the balance of her life. The convent flourished, becoming the site of Christ Church and her name was not forgotten as the town of Oxford arose around the abbey.

Most of the early records of the monastery were destroyed in a fire set in 1002 while Scandinavians were inside the church in the attempted massacres triggered by the notorious decree of Ethelred II. The existence of her shrine is formally attested by 'On the Resting Places of the Saints' in Die Heiligen Englands in the 11th century.

In 1180 in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury and King Henry II of England, her remains were translated to a new shrine in the monastery church. A yet greater shrine was built nine years later.  Countless pilgrims visited her relics. Twice a year Oxford University held a solemn feast in her honour at which the faithful came to venerate her holy relics.

Then in 1525 Cardinal Wolsey suppressed Saint Frideswide's monastery. Two decades later the monastery church became the new cathedral of Oxford. In 1538, the shrine containing St Frideswide's holy relics was desecrated and destroyed by the impious Protestant reformers, and the stones were used in other buildings in 1538. Happily the relics survived.

Part of her shrine has been reconstructed from pieces found in a well at Christ Church, where her relics are marked with four elegant candlesticks in Christ Church.

In iconography St Frideswide is a crowned abbess with an ox near her. Sometimes she is shown being rowed down the Thames by an angel with her two sisters. Frideswide is the patroness of Oxford and Oxford University.

Through her heavenly intercessions, may Christ our God have mercy upon us and save us!