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SAINT SWITHUN. by R. N. QUIRK. '"THERE Are Two Things Which Many of Us Can Just Remember •*• About St

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SAINT SWITHUN. by R. N. QUIRK. ' SAINT SWITHUN. BY R. N. QUIRK. '"THERE are two things which many of us can just remember •*• about St. Swithun, both recorded in verse : St. Swithun's day if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain : St. Swithun's day, if thou be fair, for forty days 'twill rain na mair. So we beware of rain upon the 15th of July—the anniversary of the day in the year 971, 986 years ago, when St. Swithun's bones were translated by Bishop Ethelwold into the church from his tomb outside the Old Minster. The second verse speaks of the bridge which Swithun built over the Itchen outside the east gate : Seym Swithan his bushopricke to al goodnesse drough The towne also of Wynchestre he amended inough Ffor he lette the stronge bruge withoute the est gate arere And fond thereto lym and ston and workmen that there were. We may remember too that his shrine, and its various successors, became one of the most famous objects of pilgrimage in England, at which were wrought miracles and cures innumerable. His is certainly a strange case, for we find that, of the records which survive about him, by far the greatest bulk— and the bulk is very great—concern the miracles which took place at his shrine. Facts, and even tales, about his actual life are scanty. Going back to the sources, one naturally looks first at the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, and this has the single entry : " 861. This year died St, Swithun the bishop." From this we learn that he died when Alfred the Great, king from 871 to 900, was a boy of twelve (or a little older if, as some say, Swithun died in 862 or 863). One of his greatest claims to fame is having been Alfred's tutor as a child. This is only recorded by the monastic chronicler Rudborne, but it may well be true. Alfred seems to have been sent as a small boy to Rome, where the Pope anointed him, and it has been conjectured that he was in Swithun's charge. Alfred as we know seems to have combined, with his genius as a political and military leader, a love for learning and the arts. If indeed Swithun contributed to the forging of Alfred's character, England owes him much—for, as Sir Winston Churchill says in his new History of the English- Speaking Peoples, the Saxons at this time " very nearly succumbed completely to the Danish inroads. That they did not was due— as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due —to the sudden apparition in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history "—namely Alfred. WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL RECORD Swithun had certainly had experience of tutoring princes. One of the main facts about him, recorded in one of the fullest accounts of his life (by Gotzelinus, an eleventh century writer, a source probably used by the great medieval historian William of Malmesbury), is that the strong king Egbert (802-839) gave Swithun the task of instructing his son Ethelwulf (Alfred's father) in the written word and in sacred morals. He succeeded so well that the prince attained the rank of sub-deacon, from which he was released by the Pope on becoming king. Swithun is said to have been born a native of Winchester, to have been ordained by Bishop Helmstan, perhaps in 827, and to have been a canon or monk of the Old Minster, where he perhaps rose to be provost or prior. It was not until Helmstan's death in 852 that he succeeded him as Bishop of Winchester, being consecrated by Archbishop Ceolnoth of Canterbury. But he had been in the confidence of King Egbert and, when his old pupil Ethelwulf succeeded his father in 839, Swithun seems to have become one of his chief counsellors. William of Malmesbury says that Swithun's education of the king gave an example of Plato's adage that " happy is a country where philosophers are kings, or kings philosophise ". He says that Bishop Swithun advised the king on things celestial, and Bishop Alstan of Sherborne on politics, finance and warfare. King Ethelwulf is sometimes credited with having instituted the system of tithes and, although this is not correct for the country as a whole, Swithun was associated with the gift, as his name appears on the relevant charter. As with many of our bishops, much of Swithun's fame rests on building work which he carried out, but Swithun has also the, perhaps rarer, attribution of humility and kindness. One well-known story is that he was not only zealous for the repair and rebuilding of damaged churches, and generous in his contri- butions, but that whenever a church was to be consecrated he always journeyed thither on foot, refusing to go on horseback, and going at night so as to avoid notice. Another story is that, when he had caused to be built, with stone arches, the bridge at the east gate of the city, a poor woman passing by with a basket of eggs was jostled by the crowd and the eggs were broken. The Bishop, who was standing there, took pity on her and, making the sign of the cross, the eggs came together again. Apart from the bridge, the Bishop also fortified the monastery of the Old Minster against the Danes. At his death, Swithun's humility was shown again by his instructions that he should be buried neither within the church, nor in the cemetery of the monks to the east or south, but in a humble place before the doorway on the west side of the Old Minster. William of Malmesbury says that he wished to be SAINT SWITHUN buried outside the church in an unworthy place, where the grave would be trampled on by every passer-by, and rained upon from the eaves. This saying is sometimes thought to have been the origin of the story of " rain upon St. Swithun's day ", but this seems hardly likely. * * * * * A hundred and ten years have passed and we are in 971, the year of St. Swithun's translation. Much has happened since his death, and times are greatly changed. Edgar is king, Ethelwold has been bishop since 963 ; king and bishop, led by Arch- bishop Dunstan—in this time when England is for once enjoying a period of peace from the Viking invasions—are engaged in the great work of monastic reform and have started on the rebuilding and reconstruction of the Old Minster. The newly founded New Minster hard by is famous for its Saints, Judoc and Grimbald. And, although the Old Minster enshrines the bones of Saint Birinus, the apostle of Wessex, and other holy men, something is lacking to provide a culmination for Ethelwold's great work. The holy Swithun, not yet a saint, still lay outside the church. If ever his tomb had been such that the passers-by could tread on it, or even as Wulfstan's poem suggests had been for a time unknown, it was in Ethelwold's day, both prominent, and probably imposing. It seems to have been a four-sided stone structure standing above the burial place, with a roof slab in which six iron rings were fixed. It was outside the west door of the Old Minster, and beside it stood a stone cross. Further to the west from the tomb and cross was a, probably detached, tower dedicated to St. Martin. This may have been on the far side of a western courtyard outside the Old Minster. These details can be extracted from the two, very lengthy, accounts of the miracles of St. Swithun which are contained in two approximately contemporary documents, the poem of the Cantor Wulfstan, and the prose account of the monk Lantfred. (It is the beginning of Wulfstan's poem, containing the descrip- tion of Ethelwold's building work on the Old Minster, which was the subject of an article in last year's " Record ".) Both accounts, as far as the miracles are concerned, are very closely parallel. The first miracles described are the signs by which Swithun shows that he wishes his body to be translated into the church. In the first miracle, Swithun appears in a vision to a smith, whom he commands to go to Eadzinus, one of the canons whom Ethelwold had expelled from the Old Minster and replaced by monks. The smith was to tell Eadzinus to tell Ethelwold that Swithun wished to be taken from his tomb and translated into the church. As proof that this command is WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL RECORD genuine, Swithun says that the smith will find that he can easily pull away one of the six iron rings fixed into the stone cover of the tomb. These commands are duly carried out. In the next miracle, a hunchbacked priest is bidden to lie down between the tomb and the stone cross. When he wakes up he finds, as Swithun predicted, that he is no longer a hunchback. In the third vision, a man wandering by the river outside the town encounters two women looking like furies (described as " mulieres Aethiopisses " or " Euminides "), with snakes in their hair. He rushes from them and falls into the river, from which he is taken up paralysed. His friends advise that he should visit the shrine of St. Judoc at the New Minster. But Swithun then appears and bids him, rather, to seek recovery like the hunchback by lying down beside his tomb outside the Old Minster.
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