Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 137 (2019), 231–242
St Arild of Oldbury
By RICHARD COATES
St Arild or Arilda1 or Arildis is an obscure martyred female saint of the Anglo-Saxon era, commemorated only in the dedications of the Gloucestershire churches at Oldbury-on-the-Hill (as Arild) and Oldbury-on-Severn (in the latinized form Arilda). Francis Bond credited her with being one of only three Anglo-Saxon female royal martyrs with churches named after them, the others being Osyth (at St Osyth, Essex) and Alkelda (at Middleham and Giggleswick, N. Yorks.).2 Her life, or legend, is associated with Oldbury-on-Severn, where she was presumably buried: perhaps at the site of the prominent hilltop church overlooking the Severn which bears her name, but there is no definite evidence for this. Her remains were translated to St Peter’s abbey, Gloucester, at an unknown date, reputedly after the Conquest, perhaps at the behest of the first Norman abbot Serlo, and perhaps at the gift of the Conqueror’s queen Matilda, who held Thornbury manor within which Oldbury-on- Severn was situated.3 She formerly had a niche in the reredos of the altar of the Lady Chapel at Gloucester, identifiable by a mason’s scratched inscription which can still clearly be seen (Fig. 1).4 The statue in the niche has been lost along with her bones, which were gathered up with others and reinterred at the Dissolution in a side-chapel of the crypt, then moved again in the early 20th century to a common grave in the precincts of what was now the cathedral.5 She is commemorated in two place-names: in St Arild’s Well at Kyneton near Thornbury, close to Oldbury-on-Severn,6 and in St Arild’s Road, a residential street-name in Didmarton, the village next to Oldbury-on-the-Hill and sharing a parish with it. Oldbury-on-the-Hill has no named streets of its own to celebrate her.7
1. Mistakenly Avilda in R. Atkyns, The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire (2nd edn, 1768), I, 617. 2. F. Bond, Dedications and Patron Saints of English Churches (1914), 80. He might also have considered the very doubtful St Wite at Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset: A.D. Mills, The Place-Names of Dorset, IV (2010), 438–9. The Mercian queen and martyr Osthryth has no dedications. 3. G. Jones, ‘Authority, challenge and identity in three Gloucestershire saints’ cults’, in D. Mowbray, R. Purdie and I. P. Wei (eds), Authority and Community in the Middle Ages (1999), 124. 4. R.H.D. Short, ‘Graffiti on the reredos of the Lady Chapel of Gloucester Cathedral’,Trans. BGAS 67 (1946−8), 35−6; J. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda of Oldbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire’, Source (new series) 5 (1998), online at people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/ns5/ns5jb1.htm (accessed Sept. 2017). For more on the saint, see also J. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda: who is she?’, Confraternity of St James Bulletin 78 (2002), 26–8; J. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda of Oldbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire’, ibid. 103 (2008), 30–3. 5. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda’ (1998). Despite this, she rarely gets a mention in historical or touristic material about the cathedral. 6. T.G. Hulse and W. Maddox, ‘St Arild’s hymn’, Source (new series) 5 (1998), online at people.bath.ac.uk/ liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/ns5/ns5tgh1.htm (accessed Sept. 2017). See below on Kyneton, and NB Arild in this name, not Arilda. 7. Some popular websites say incorrectly that the Oldbury-on-Severn church is the only one in the world dedicated to this saint; others, correctly, that it is the only (regularly) active one. 232 RICHARD COATES
Jane Bradshaw (whose words I adapt) notes that she is commemorated in what Bradshaw’s informant, Joan Williams, librarian of Hereford cathedral, identified8 as a late 13th-century hand on the third flyleaf of a book which had belonged to Thomas Bredon, abbot of Gloucester 1224–8.9 This book passed into the care of the cathedral after the Dissolution, where it is now in the Chained Library. The material in it includes (i) an undated medieval Latin ‘hymn’ (strictly, an oratio rythmica or verse prayer),10 and (ii) a collect (here, a short prayer requesting her intercession) for her feast in which she is addressed and referred to as Arildis (‘In Arildis memoria’). Arildis seems to be a spelling of the attested Latin nominative, vocative and genitive case-forms particular to the liturgy of Gloucester abbey, even through to the 15th century. St Arild also appears, also as Arildis, with a feast day on 20 July, in additions made at St Guthlac’s priory, Hereford, to liturgical kalendars from its mother abbey at Gloucester. She is noted in Francis Wormald’s accompanying text as virgin and martyr.11 There is also a not much more informative entry in English additions to a Martyrology of Usuard.12 Verse 14 of an anonymous poem about the foundation of Gloucester abbey, printed as the second item in the appendix to Thomas Hearne’s edition of a mid to late 14th-century manuscript of the Chronicle of Robert ‘of Gloucester’, is devoted to her, in the spelling Arilde.13 The Bodleian manuscript referred to in footnote 11 also contains a litany mentioning Arildis (‘Sancta Arildis ora’). This is a significant puzzle, since the manuscript is thought to originate in French Flanders c.1450, but the book was commissioned for Gloucester abbey and the text is founded on the Gloucester liturgy.14 Other possible evidence for her cult is discussed as follows: (1) by Brown,15 and by Mynors and Thomson:16 a discarded leaf intended for a July kalendar, bound into Hereford Cathedral Library, MS P.VI.1 (before 1200, from St Guthlac’s priory, Hereford, a cell of Gloucester), which serves to establish that Arild’s feast day (sancte Arildis) was shared with St Margaret of Antioch, 20 July (but 19 July in the discarded manuscript, in error). (2) by Rushforth:17 reassembled medieval window glass in the east window of the Lady Chapel at Gloucester abbey (ar[ild?]is). Graham Jones (forthcoming) notes that 20 July was also given as her feast day in the Additions in Rychard Whytford’s Martiloge (martyrology) printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526: ‘In englonde at
8. Letter to Jane Bradshaw, 29 July 1993. 9. Hereford Cathedral Library, MS O.i.2; see L.E.G. Brown, ‘On some Gloucestershire manuscripts now in Hereford cathedral library’, Trans. BGAS 27 (1904), 193, 208–9; R.A.B. Mynors and R.M. Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (1993), 3–5; Hulse and Maddox, ‘St Arild’s hymn’. The book is inscribed ‘L’b’ Thom’ de Bred’ Abb’is Glouc’’: B. Cottle, ‘Cults of the saints in medieval Bristol and Gloucestershire’, Trans. BGAS 106 (1988), 8. 10. Brown, ‘Glos. manuscripts’, 208, n. 1. 11. F. Wormald (ed.), English Benedictine Kalendars after 1100, vol. 2: Ely–St Neots (1946), 41–2 and 50, edited from the pre-1200 Oxford, Jesus College MS 10, ff. 1–6v., collated with two 15th-cent. MSS of the same kalendars: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.99, and Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. liturg. f. 1 [S.C. 15807], ff. 4–9v. See also J.M. Luxford, ‘Art and ideology on the eve of the Reformation: the monument of Osric and the Benedictines of Gloucester’, Trans. BGAS 120 (2002), 202, n. 64. 12. Wormald, Kalendars, 42, citing British Library [BL], Royal MS 2 A. XIII, f. 18v. 13. T. Hearne (ed.), Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle (repr. 1810), II, 582. The verse is also printed in S. Baring- Gould and J. Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints, I (1907), 169, and quoted from there by Cottle, ‘Cults of the saints’, 8. 14. N.J. Morgan, English Monastic Litanies of the Saints, I (2011), 29; I, column 2: line 145. I am indebted to Michael Hare for drawing this mention to my attention. 15. Brown, ‘Glos. manuscripts’, 197−8. 16. Mynors and Thomson, Catalogue, 103. 17. G.M. Rushforth, ‘The glass of the east window of the Lady Chapel in Gloucester Cathedral’, Trans. BGAS 43 (1921), 209. ST ARILD OF OLDBURY 233 glocester the feest of saynt Aryld a virgyn and martyr’.18 Jones also notes that the circumstances of the martyrdoms of Arild and Margaret have some suspicious similarities, suggesting the possibility of merged traditions. The Bollandists, the compilers of the Acta sanctorum, represented by De Buck (1883),19 know nothing of her life but a little more of her death, or at least the tradition of it. De Buck follows the historian and topographer John Leland, who visited Gloucester abbey in the course of his travels c.1540 and recorded a tradition of Arilda, probably from a now lost Life. The 14th-century poem published by Hearne mentions ‘hir Legion’, presumably meaning ‘her legend (or legendary)’, and a manuscript of that must be what Leland drew on. Leland states that St Arilda had been martyred at ‘Kington’ or ‘Kinton’ [i.e. Kyneton] by Thornbury and eventually, after the Conquest, translated to Gloucester. She had been killed by Muncius, a ‘tiraunt’ who cut off her head when she resisted his advances.20 This is the only surviving source for what actually happened to Arild and why, the cause of her status as martyr. Leland follows the Robert ‘of Gloucester’ manuscript in mentioning ‘many’ unspecified miracles wrought in her name. Ralph Bigland noted that the chapel at Falfield, itself formerly in the north-eastern corner of Thornbury parish, was known locally in his day (1750s–80s) by the name of St Tyrrel.21 In the absence of a known saint of that name, it seems pretty clear that this must be another, slightly disguised, echo of Arild’s name, heard as ‘Sain tArild’, much as other saints have occasionally had the
18. G. Jones, ‘St Arilda: cult, landscape and community’ (forthcoming). See also F. Procter and E.S. Dewick (eds), The martiloge in Englysshe [of Rychard Whytford] after the vse of the chirch of Salisbury and as it is redde in Syon with addicyons (1893), xviii, 114; Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives of the British Saints, 169. 19. V. De Buck, ‘De S. Arilda’, Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, tomus XIII (1883), 450–1. [In Latin]. 20. L. Toulmin Smith (ed.), The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1538–1543 (1907−13), II, 60; V, 156. See also J. Latimer, ‘Leland in Gloucestershire’, Trans. BGAS 14 (1889−90), 238, 240. 21. B. Frith (ed.), Bigland’s Gloucestershire Collections, Part 3 (1992), 1295. 22. Parochia S[an]c[t]i Olavi al[ias] St Toolyes (1594, in unpublished Feet of Fines in The National Archives). 23. As regards the
Leland uses both on separate occasions (references above). Smith says that Thornbury was ancient demesne, i.e. land held personally by the king at the time of Domesday Book. Lindley and Cottle do not distinguish the two places,26 and allocate the well to Kington, the larger hamlet. In terms of modern geography, this is reasonable, but on the basis of the second mention in Leland’s account,27 taken at face value, it is historically inaccurate. I follow this evidence, which is corroborated in the poem attached to the Chronicle of Robert ‘of Gloucester’, in ascribing the place of martyrdom to Kyneton, though there is no room for certainty, and it does not really make much difference, given the proximity of the places to each other and to the well; recall also note 24, which allows the possibility that both places were originally one and the same. The primacy of Kyneton (as ‘Kineton’) as the candidate for the place of martyrdom was also accepted by Brown.28 Regarding the well, Bradshaw says: ‘a local tradition that the water runs red with her blood is well-founded, as the stones in the well’s outflow are stained red, not with the iron associated with chalybeate springs, but with a freshwater alga rejoicing in the name of Hilde[n, RC]brandia rivularis’.29 The behaviour of this alga, turning red oxidized flint pink when taken out of water, could suggest supernatural or magical properties.30 The bulk of the rest of this note is about the saint’s name. It has been suggested either that it is Anglo-Saxon,31 or either Anglo-Saxon or Welsh.32 Arilda is the normal Latin version of it, and Arildis an alternative, found relatively late, in Gloucester records as noted above. Most likely Arild represents *Earnhild, a two-element name meaning ‘eagle’ + ‘battle’.33 This name is not recorded from Anglo-Saxon times, but it would be by no means untypical, either in its vocabulary or in its structure, which is simply the concatenation of two culturally significant name elements. The name as a whole should not be thought of as meaning ‘battle of eagles’ or anything like that. Earn is a fairly rare first element seen in the male namesEarnwig (e.g. a mid 11th-century moneyer at Hereford and Shrewsbury)34 and Earnwulf (e.g. a 10th-century suffragan of York ‘witnessing’ a forged Worcester cathedral charter).35 Hild is a frequent second element seen in female names such as Burghild (early 9th-century sister or daughter of king Cenwulf of Mercia) and Æðelhild (e.g. an abbess in Lincolnshire c.700). This two-element structure is typical of Anglo-Saxon high-status names in all centuries. The first element is more likely to beearn than the rarer eard ‘(native) land’, firstly because there are only 37 recorded instances ofEard -, 33 of
is still distinguished on the gravestone of Robert Knapp (1935) at Oldbury-on-Severn, and marginally, only in Kyneton Quarr, on the latest Ordnance Survey revision at the scale of 1: 25,000. Kington appears in two 19th-cent. inscriptions in the churchyard (Screen, in 1865; Tayler, in 1894): online at places. wishful-thinking.org.uk/GLS/OldburyonSevern/MIs.html (accessed Oct. 2017). 26. E.S. Lindley, ‘St Arild of Thornbury’, Trans. BGAS 70 (1951), 152; Cottle, ‘Cults of the saints’, 8−9. 27. Toulmin Smith (ed.), Leland’s Itinerary, V, 156. 28. Brown, ‘Glos. manuscripts’, 193. 29. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda’ (1998). 30. cf. D. Jacques, ‘Mesolithic settlement near Stonehenge: excavations at Blick Mead, Vespasian’s Camp, Amesbury’, Wilts. Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag. 107 (2014), 7–27, on widely publicized recent theorizing about the role of this phenomenon in the Mesolithic origins of Stonehenge. 31. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda’ (1998); Hulse and Maddox, ‘St Arild’s hymn’. 32. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda’ (1998) hints at the latter possibility: ‘perhaps even before the Anglo-Saxon invasions’. 33. As is usual in historical linguistics, * indicates a form which is not actually attested, but which is regularly formed and can be confidently postulated as a plausible name- or word-form. ** indicates a purely hypothetical form, one suggested for the sake of the argument. <> enclose letters of the written alphabet, and [] enclose representations of speech sounds in the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association. 34. F. Colman, Money Talks: Reconstructing Old English (1992), 94. 35. ‘Electronic Sawyer’ (www.esawyer.org.uk), S401. ST ARILD OF OLDBURY 235 which are of Eardwulf (compare the more varied 82 of Earn-, 48 of which are of Earnwig); and secondly, from the phonetic point of view, because we might expect the
36. A. Campbell, Old English Grammar (1959), 190−1; R.M. Hogg, A Grammar of Old English, Vol. I: Phonology (1992), 297. 37. ‘Electronic Sawyer’, S1462a. 38. The numerical data and the individuals mentioned in this paragraph can be checked online at the ‘Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England’ [PASE] website (pase.cch.kcl.ac.uk/index.html). After completing the first draft of this article, I found that John Blair has anticipated my suggestion ofEarnhild (with a question mark): J. Blair, ‘A handlist of Anglo-Saxon saints’, in A. Thacker and R. Sharpe (eds), Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (2002), 512. Arild is not, however, consistent with the Æthelhild conjectured by Jones, ‘Authority, challenge and identity’, 125. 39. P.C. Bartrum, A Welsh Classical Dictionary (1993), 18, s.v. Anna of Gwent. 40. D. Nash Ford, ‘St Afrella alias Arilda’ (2001), online at www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/afrellgt. html (accessed Sept. 2017). 41. J. van Hecke et al., ‘Vita S. Maglorii episcopi’, Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, tomus X (1869) [In Latin], 782. On the MSS, see J-C. Poulin, ‘Sources hagiographiques de la Gaule, II: Les dossiers de S. Magloire de Dol et de S. Malo d’Alet (province de Bretagne)’, Francia 17.1 (1990), 159–209; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Maglorius [St Maglorius]. It is occasionally asserted that the Latin form (and origin) of this name is Aurelia. As an etymology, this cannot be justified on the basis of the known spellings. It would have been possible for one to be adopted as an equivalent of the other. 42. i.e. the one whose grave inscriptions are analysed in J. Adnams (ed.), The Churchyard Book of Oldbury-on- Severn (2009). 43. S. Zimmer, pers. comm. suggests that the base form may be a prophylactic name, i.e. one to ward off evil, perhaps from the ancestor of Welsh afar ‘sorrow, grief’ + the ancestor of the suffix-yll ; cf. S. Zimmer, ‘Die altkymrischen Frauennamen. Ein erster Einblick’, in J.F. Eska, R.G. Gruffydd and N. Jacobs (eds), Hispano-Gallo-Brittonica (1995), 319–35 at §14.1. 44. K.H. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain (1953), 432−3. 236 RICHARD COATES and there may be Continental influence in the appearance of the name-formAbrelda . But the
45. Any attempt to connect the Welsh name with Latin Aprilis ‘April’, as occasionally suggested in non- specialist works, runs into too many difficulties to deal with here. 46. Anna’s father was ‘a court official of the king of Gwent’ (Bartrum,Welsh Classical Dictionary, 13), which does not entail that he was Welsh. Amon, coincidentally or otherwise, was known as Amon Ddu ‘the Black’ or ‘the Dark’. 47. This etymological suggestion was first made tentatively by Jones (1996: 215).Mund- is rare in first position, but common in second (see PASE, mentioned in footnote 38). The few recorded instances in first position are late Anglo-Saxon. But the element was used alone as a name, or with final-a , from the earliest times. 48. This Muncius is not to be confused with a supposed father of the Church mentioned in a work of saints’ lives once attributed to St Jerome (BL, MS IB.5946, f. 118v., dated to 1482 in its extant form); see monasticmatrix.osu.edu/figurae/st-muncius-jerome-das-buch-der-heiligen-altv%C3%A4ter-vitas- patrum, (accessed Oct. 2017). 49. Bradshaw, ‘St Arilda’ (1998). 50. Cottle, ‘Cults of the saints’, 8. 51. Smith, Place-Names of Glos. III, 8, 28. ST ARILD OF OLDBURY 237 but seemingly to St Arilda time out of mind. It survived the assault on chantries and free chapels in Edward VI’s reign presumably because, as noted in the survey of 1548 carried out to ascertain the value of such chapels, the building was one ‘where they vse [= ‘go about their business’] in eu[er]y poynt as in a p[ar]ishe Church’.52 It was eventually created a new parish, but only in 1863; Thornbury and Oldbury are now, since 2002, reunited in the same benefice. On the other hand, I have found no reference to the dedication at Oldbury-on-the-Hill before 1742.53 Other sources of the identical dedications are unlikely. The name of Oldbury-on-the-Hill is recorded as early as the 10th century,54 two centuries before the earliest record of Oldbury-on- Severn (although that does not of course prove that it was founded earlier). Both places have an ‘old bury’ or massive earthwork (Old English byrig, dative case form of burg). At Oldbury-on-the-Hill there are ancient earthworks marked on current Ordnance Survey maps just east of the church, and a Bury Hill just east of their location, whilst there is a major prehistoric earthwork (known as Oldbury Camp or locally The Toot) north of the village centre at Oldbury-on-Severn, and St Arilda’s church, south of the village, itself occupies a site with earlier earthworks.55 So the probability of a transfer of the name from Oldbury-on-Severn, along with the saint’s cult, is very low, although the possibility is not disprovable. Jones suggests summer pasturage on the Cotswolds as a possible reason for such a duplication,56 but no evidence of a droving road is known. In a later article, Jones weighs the possibility that the two Oldburys constituted a single economic unit.57 Commentators are understandably vague about when Arild lived. De Buck cautiously concluded that her cult already existed in the 10th century.58 Since she was presumably Christian, since her name suggests that she was English (whether by blood or by adopted culture), and since her assailant’s name was also English, it is reasonable to assume that she was a woman of status who lived among the Hwicce in the unlettered early period of their Christianity, say between the mid 7th century and the end of the 8th, as also suggested by Jones.59 That seems more plausible than the earlier, even pre-English, dates which have figured in previously published guesswork.60
POSTSCRIPT
St Arild is absent from Butler’s Lives of the Saints,61 but gets a brief mention in Farmer’s Oxford Dictionary of Saints,62 where she is mistakenly equated with Yorkshire’s Alkeld(a) and, even so, is allocated to ‘Kingston-by-Thornbury’ [sic], perhaps mistakenly for one of the two Thornburys in Yorkshire (in Maltby and Bradford, West Riding). A condensed version of her story as transmitted up till now appears in Gruber (2017), who entertains both the possibility of Celtic antecedents and
52. J. Maclean, ‘Chantry certificates, Gloucestershire’,Trans. BGAS 8 (1883−4), 264. 53. J. Ecton, Thesaurus Rerum Ecclesiasticarum (1742), 198. Some popular websites suggest that the place- name Oldbury itself may derive from the saint’s name. This is nonsense, and flies in the face of all the documentary evidence, for which see Smith, Place-Names of Glos. III, 8, 28. 54. ‘Electronic Sawyer’, S786; Smith, Place-Names of Glos. III, 28. 55. J.H. Bettey, ‘The impact of historic and religious changes on the parish churches of Avon’, Avon Past 12 (1987), 10, and as noted above. 56. Jones, ‘Authority, challenge and identity’, 125. 57. Jones, ‘St Arilda: cult, landscape and community’. 58. De Buck, ‘De S. Arilda’, 451. 59. Jones, ‘Authority, challenge and identity’, 125. 60. e.g. in the version of her Wikipedia entry current on the day of completing this note (3 Oct. 2017). 61. H.J. Thurston and D. Attwater (eds), Butler’s Lives of the Saints (2nd edn, 1956). 62. D.H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (5th edn, 2011), 28−9. 238 RICHARD COATES the transmission of the story from a Continental source. He reflects on her timeless relevance but asserts, mystifyingly, that she is presently revered as a patron of the victims of sexual violence, and apparently uses transcendent knowledge to state how she is conventionally depicted.63 She should not be confused with a male 12th-century Scandinavian St Arild (occasionally referred to by the more frequent name Arvid), who is venerated locally in a chapel of the church at Brunnby, Skåne, Sweden.64 His death by fire and/or drowning is associated with a seaside place called simplyArild in that parish.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful for information and advice used in preparing this article from: Jane Bradshaw, Michael Hare, Graham Jones, Patrick Sims-Williams, Jan van der Lely and Stefan Zimmer, and for the assistance of the indefatigable Inter-Library Loans service. I am especially indebted to Michael Hare for corrections regarding manuscript sources, and for drawing my attention to a further medieval mention of Arildis. Unbeknown to each other, Graham Jones and I had both been working on this saint, and at several points in this article I have drawn on a draft of forthcoming work which he generously made available to me, and followed up some references in it. There is some overlap between our finished products, but his article is wider ranging than mine and he covers, for example, aspects of St Arild’s historical and hagiographical contexts which are not touched on here.
APPENDIX
The documentary and other evidence for St Arild
1. Church and chapel dedications at Oldbury-on-Severn, Falfield and Oldbury-on-the-Hill; a cult centre at St Peter’s abbey, Gloucester; a tradition and a well dedication at Kyneton near Oldbury-on-Severn (none of these definitively datable).
2. Discarded kalendar fragment: Hereford Cathedral Library, MS P.vi.1 (content various; uncertain date, ?c.1200 if the binding is original)
i. xiiii. S ancte Margarite virginis et martyris, et sancte Arildis virginis et martyris.65
3. Additions to a Martyrology of Usuard: BL, Royal MS 2 A. XIII (13th-century)
In britannia in ecclesia Sancti Petri de Glocestrie Sancte Arildis virginis et martiris.
63. M. Gruber, ‘Arilda’, Getsemany 294 (June 2017), online at www.getsemany.cz/node/3431 (accessed Dec. 2017): [translated from Czech] ‘Uncertain origin and unlocatability in time make Arilda something of a symbolic figure. She is revered as a patron of the victims of sexual violence, which is regrettably very topical at all times. She is portrayed quite generally as a girl with her head veiled and a cross in her hand.’. 64. P.E. Odden (ed.), ‘Den hellige Arild av Arildsläge’ (2007−10), compilation of articles from Katolskt Magasin, online at www.katolsk.no/biografier/historisk/arild (accessed Oct. 2017). 65. As read by Brown, ‘Glos. manuscripts’, 207. ST ARILD OF OLDBURY 239
4. The Bredon flyleaf material: Hereford Cathedral Library, MS O.i.2 (Gregory on Ezekiel; late 13th-century):
In Arildis memoria Plaude mater ecclesia Nos ad eius preconia Vocum demus officia.
Hec se Christo dedicauit, In quo trinum hostem strauit, Hec se prorsus abnegauit, Et cum Deo ambulauit.
Virgo prudens, sponsa Christi, Per quem mundo illusisti, Et decorem induisti, Jam amicta lumine Carne munda, mente pura, Certans contra carnis iura, Nunquam sponso caritura In celesti culmine.
Gentem finesque Gloucestrie Illustrant tue reliquie; Succurre nostre miserie Ut per te uiuamus in requie.
O Arildis, O huius cenobii Aduocatrix, et spes solatii, Ad te mater clamamus filii, Fac nos consortes materni gaudii.
Christo tuo pro nobis loquere, Fac in eius odore currere, Fac nos sponsum tuum agnoscere, In quem delectant angeli prospicere. Amen.
Deus, qui uirginitatem beate Arildis dignitate martyrii decorasti, quique locum istum sacris eiusdem reliquiis illustrasti; precibus ipsius da nobis indulgentiam, et loco isti perpetuam securitatem, per dominum.66 This oratio was freely translated between 1960 and 1984 for use as a feast-day hymn at Oldbury-on-Severn, with the collect, as follows:
O Mother Church, today proclaim The honour of St Arild’s name. And grant that we may have a share
66. As read by Brown, ibid. 208−9. 240 RICHARD COATES
In that great sound of praise and prayer.
With flesh unstained and pure of mind, Untouched by sin of humankind, Your mind was turned to Christ above, On him alone you fixed your love.
She gave her life to Christ below And in his strength she smote the foe. Three times she fought the power of sin And walked with Christ made pure within.
O bride of Christ, O virgin wise, The world was worthless in your eyes. You now in heaven›s eternal light Are clothed in robes of glory bright.
O maid whose bones in Gloucester rest, By whom all Gloucester folk are blest, Help us in sorrow here below, And then the joys of heaven bestow.
O Arild, of this holy place The guardian, and our hope of grace, O Mother, hear your children›s prayer, That we the peace of Heaven may share.
Pray now for us to Christ your Lord, Whom by the angels is adored, That we at last with you may come To greet Him in our heavenly home.
O God, you have adorned the virginity of St Arild with the high dignity of martyrdom, and you have made this place holy by her death: by her prayers grant us forgiveness, and to this place perpetual safety, through Christ our Lord. Amen. The singing of the hymn on feast days dates from the rectorship of the Revd Norman Stocks (1960–84). It is sung to Bartholomäus Crasselius’s tune now known as ‘Winchester New’. It was translated at Stocks’ request by the late Rhoda Warren, a teacher at a now defunct private school (Westwing, at Kyneton House). Wendy Maddox has supplied a more literal translation, printed in Hulse and Maddox, ‘St Arilda’s hymn’. Jane Bradshaw informs me that the original Latin is occasionally sung, to the early plainchant ‘Jesu corona virginum’, once attributed to St Ambrose, and dating from at least the 8th century. 5. Benedictine kalendar entry from St Peter’s abbey, Gloucester, Jesus College Oxford, MS 10 (13th-/14th-century additions to a MS of 1170–1200), and two other MSS (see footnote 11):
Sancte Arildis ST ARILD OF OLDBURY 241
(identified by Wormald as the patroness only of Oldbury-on-the-Hill, which is true in a purely parochial sense, since Oldbury-on-Severn was a chapelry of Thornbury).
6. Chronicle of Robert ‘of Gloucester’, version A: BL, MS Harl. 201 (14th-century, but the language of this appendix material is markedly younger):
The wonderfull workes, wrought by power Divine, Be not hid, ne palliat, but flourish daylie. Witness hereof is Arilde that blessed Virgin, Which martyrized at Kinton, nigh Thornebury, Hither was translated, & in this Monastery Comprised, & did Miracles many one, As whosoe list to looke may finde in hir Legion.
(Hearne’s transcription from BL, MS Harl. 201).
Thes wonderfull workes wrought by power divine Be not hid nor palliat, but flourish daylie. Witness hereof is Arilde, that blessed Virgine, Which martyrized at Kinton, nigh Thornbury, Hither was translated, and in this monastery Comprised, and did miracles many one, As who so list to looke may find in her legion.
(Baring-Gould and Fisher’s slightly differing transcription, apparently purporting to be taken from Hearne).
These lines do not appear in William A. Wright’s edition of Robert’s Chronicle. A similar text from BL, MS Harl. 537 is printed anonymously in The British Magazine 21 (1842), 377–381, at p. 380, the history represented in the lines being dated in the margin in such a way as to imply that Arild’s translation took place c.1100. This text evidently reached its final form well after the Dissolution, which is referred to at the end. Thomas Hearne attributes this doggerel to the last abbot of Gloucester,67 William Malverne (alias Parker).68
7. The Gloucester abbey window glass inscription (late medieval): ar[ild?]is as read by Rushforth,69 which I cannot verify. Rushforth also claimed to be able to read Arild[is] on a glass fragment in a different window in the Lady Chapel, ‘the second window from the east on the north side, tracery quatrefoil on the left’, although Cottle could not make it out.70
8. The litany in the Gloucester liturgy in Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. liturg. ff. 134v.–141v., at f. 139v. (c.1450): Sancta Arildis ora
67. Hearne (ed.), Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle, 585. 68. See also M. Hare, The Two Anglo-Saxon Minsters of Gloucester (1993), 11. 69. Rushforth, ‘Glass of the east window’, 209, and pl. IV, light 5. 70. Cottle, ‘Cults of the saints’, 9. 242 RICHARD COATES
9. The Gloucester abbey mason’s mark (late 15th-century):71
10. Rychard Whytford’s Martiloge (1526): In englonde at glocester the feest of saynt Aryld a virgyn and martyr from Wynkyn de Worde’s printing, f. 80v.72 11. John Leland’s account (c.1540):
Sancta Arilda virgin, martyred at Kington by Thornebury, translated to this monastary, had done many miracles.73
Ex inscriptionibus in occidentali parte Glocester Churche … Saynt Arild Virgin, martired at Kinton, ny to Thornberye, by one Muncius a tiraunt, who cut of hir heade becawse she would not consent to lye withe hym. She was translatyd to this monasterye, and hathe done great miracles.74
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A short sermon, a reflection on St Arild’s life, by Brian Torode (2009), can be read online.75 His article ‘Pilgrimages in Gloucestershire’ (2014) has a section covering some of the ground of the present article.76
71. Short, ‘Graffiti’, 35. 72. Accessed online (Dec. 2017) through Oxford University Text Archive (ota.ox.ac.uk/tcp/headers/A07/ A07131.html), p. 163; see also Procter and Dewick (eds), The martiloge in Englysshe’, 114. 73. Toulmin-Smith (ed.), Leland’s Itinerary, II, 60. 74. Ibid. V, 156. 75. btsarnia.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/sermon-for-st-arild-by-brian-torode/?iframe=true&theme_ preview =true/amp/ (accessed Sept. 2017). 76. btsarnia.org/2014/05/29/pilgrimage-from-what-is-now-gloucestershire-during-the-middle-ages/ (accessed Sept. 2017).