Treffynnon

Life of St. Winifred

Known in Welsh as Gwenfrewy, Winifred is the best known of the Welsh female saints. She lived and died in the seventh century. At the site of her martydom, a well sprang out. To this day this is the centre of a renowned pilgrimage.

The Life of St. Winifred: The Vita S. Wenefrede from BL Lansdowne MS 436.
Introduced, edited, and translated by James Ryan Gregory.
Medieval Feminist Forum 51
Subsidia Series, Volume 4, 2016
Medieval Texts in Translation 2
Copyright © 2016 James Ryan Gregory

ABSTRACT:

St. Winifred
Martyrdom of St. Winifred, by the Fastolf Master. Hours of William Porter; France, Rouen, ca. 1420-25. Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.105, f. 73 (detail).

Known in Welsh as Gwenfrewy, Winifred is the best known of the Welsh female saints. She lived and died in the seventh century, and her legend survives in multiple written accounts from the High and Late Middle Ages. According to her written  vitae, Winifred lived in northeastern Wales in the first half of the seventh century. The daughter of a wealthy man named Tyfid, she decided to devote her life wholly to God soon after a male saint, Beuno, built a church on her father’s property and began to preach there. The vitae report that a local prince named Caradog one day approached Winifred at home and, moved by her beauty, propositioned her on the spot. She of course refused his advances and fled toward Beuno’s church, but her angry suitor caught up with and beheaded her. The site of her martyrdom, Holywell (Welsh, Treffynnon), received its name from the healing fountain that erupted where her head—or, alternately, her blood—had struck the ground.

The market town of Holywell takes its name from the St Winefride’s Well, a holy well surrounded by a chapel. The well has been known since at least the Roman period. It has been a site of Christian pilgrimage since about 660. The well is one of the Seven Wonders of Wales and the town bills itself as The Lourdes of Wales. Many pilgrims from all over the world continue to visit Holywell and the Well even today.

The three earliest accounts are in Latin: two date to the twelfth century and one dates to the early fourteenth. The edition and translation provided here is of the latest of Winifred’s three Latin vitae – that preserved in British Library MS Lansdowne 436, a manuscript of the very early fourteenth century. Probably the work of a single redactor, the Lansdowne 436 legendary contains vitae for a total of forty-three different saints arranged in roughly historical chronological order, including the
Life of St. Winifred.

VISIT:

St. Winefride’s Well, Holywell

Treffynnon in Wales - map

 

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