Saint Winifred of Holywell

The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia names two sources for her life: a manuscript in the British Museum said to be the work of Elerius, a British monk of her own time, and a manuscript life in the Bodleian Library, generally believed to have been compiled about 1130 by Robert, prior of Shrewsbury. ¹ The encyclopedia's companion article on Holywell says two twelfth-century documents, printed by the Bollandists, give the history of the well and the earliest record of its cures. ²

The encyclopedia tells her story as history. ¹ The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales calls it "the Legend of St Winefride," and adds that it "is well documented." ³ What follows is that story, in the words of the sources that tell it.

The encyclopedia gives her birth at Holywell about 600. ¹ Her father, whom it calls Thevit, held three manors in what is now Flintshire, and her mother, Wenlo, was a sister of Saint Beuno; the bishops' conference gives the names as Tyfid and Gwenlo, and calls her father a local prince. ¹³ Beuno, the encyclopedia says, came looking for a site for a monastery, built a chapel in the hollow below her father's land, then called the "Dry Hollow," and preached there. ¹ The Holywell article gives the old name as Sechnant, the "Dry Valley." ²

She was one of his most attentive listeners. ¹ At fifteen, the encyclopedia says, she had given herself to devotion and austerity, spending whole nights in the church, and with her parents' consent was preparing to consecrate herself to God. ¹ It adds that before the conquest of Wales she was known as Guenevra, and afterward by the English form Winefride. ¹

Caradoc came to ask for her hand. The encyclopedia calls him the son of a neighboring prince, Alen; the Holywell article, the son of an Armorican prince; the bishops' conference, a chieftain from Hawarden. ¹²³ He found her alone, her parents having gone early to Mass, and when he learned she meant to leave the world for God, the encyclopedia says, he pressed her the harder and began to threaten her. ¹ She ran from the house toward the church, where Beuno was saying Mass. ¹³

Caradoc caught her on the slope above the present well and struck off her head with his sword. ¹³ Where the head came to rest, a spring rose. ¹³ The Holywell article dates the killing to about 634, the bishops' conference and Exaudi to around 630. ²³⁴

Beuno came out of the church, by the encyclopedia's account, carried the head to the body, covered both with his cloak, and went back to finish the Mass; then he prayed beside her and had the cloak taken away. ¹ She rose "as if awakening from a deep slumber," with no sign of what had happened but a thin white circle round her neck. ¹ The bishops' conference has Beuno set the head back on the body and pray that she be restored, and calls the white scar a witness to her martyrdom. ³ Of Caradoc, the encyclopedia says he fell dead on the spot, "the popular belief being that the ground opened and swallowed him"; the bishops' conference says he sank to the ground and was never seen again. ¹³

She took vows of virginity and poverty, and a convent was built on her father's land where she became abbess of a community of young women, with a chapel over the well. ¹ Before Beuno left Holywell, the encyclopedia says, tradition has him sitting on a stone in the outer pool and promising "that whosoever on that spot should thrice ask for a benefit from God in the name of St. Winefride would obtain the grace he asked if it was for the good of his soul." ¹

After Beuno's death she moved inland, in the encyclopedia's telling partly because Holywell was no longer safe from the Saxons, and came to Gwytherin near the source of the Elwy. ¹ Saint Elwy, or Elerius, welcomed her there, and she lived first under the abbess of the nuns she found and then, when that abbess died, as abbess herself. ¹ The bishops' conference says she died there some 22 years later. ³ The encyclopedia dates her death to 660. ¹

The bishops' conference says the chapel and well at Holywell are believed to be the oldest continually visited pilgrim site in Britain. ³ The twelfth-century records already list cures of paralysis, gout, melancholy, cancer and much else, and deliverance from evil spirits. ² In 1240 David, son of Llewellyn, gave the church and well to the monks of Basingwerk Abbey, who kept them until the dissolution in 1537. ² The chapel over the spring dates from the late fifteenth century, and the encyclopedia credits it partly to Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of King Henry VII. ²³

Pilgrims kept coming after the Reformation. ²³ Thomas Goldwell, the exiled Bishop of St Asaph, obtained from Rome the confirmation of indulgences that Pope Martin V had granted to pilgrims, and in the seventeenth century, the encyclopedia says, pilgrims still came in spite of the penal laws. ² Among them was the Jesuit martyr Edward Oldcorne. The Holywell article says he was cured there of a gangrene in the roof of his mouth; the National Catholic Register says he went in 1601 to pray for a cure for throat cancer, and was healed. ²⁵ The bishops' conference notes that the crypt was not destroyed at the Reformation. ³

The encyclopedia describes the water as pale blue and so clear that a pin could be seen on the bottom of the basin, seven feet down. ² The red stains on the stones, it says, "Catholic tradition loves to regard as the blood of the martyr," while naturalists put them down to a moss. ² Pilgrims still bathe in the outer pool, the bishops' conference says, seeking healing. ³

In November 2023 the bishops of England and Wales made the shrine a national shrine, Exaudi reported. ⁴ Bishop Peter Brignall of Wrexham, whose diocese administers it, said that he wanted it to be a place of consolation for those who, like her, have suffered violence, "particularly women." ⁴ By healing, he said, he meant "being made 'whole' rather than being 'cured'." ⁴

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Winifred, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴ The encyclopedia says that "countless wonders and favours" have been obtained through her intercession, and the bishops' conference speaks of records of cures going back hundreds of years. ¹³

Saint Winifred's feast is November 3. The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia says that "her chief feast is observed on 3 Nov., the other feast held in midsummer being that of her martyrdom." ¹ No other source used for this page prints a date. ²³⁴

Her story is about a young woman who said no and was killed for it. ¹³ That is the part a bishop of Wrexham chose to speak to in 2023, when he asked that the shrine become a place for women who have suffered violence. ⁴ He did not promise them a cure; he spoke of being made whole. ⁴

The sources are not agreed on how much of the story happened as told, and the bishops' own word for it is legend. ¹³ What is not in doubt is the spring, and the people who have come to it for some fourteen centuries. ²³

They came when it was dangerous. The crypt was left standing at the Reformation, and in the time of the penal laws Catholics, among them a priest who would later die for his faith, still came to pray there. ²³⁵

After the story ends she lived for years as a nun and an abbess, first under another abbess and then in charge herself. ¹³ That part of her life is the quietest in the sources.