St Winifred (or Winifride, Gwenfrewi, Guinevere, etc…) was born in Holywell, Flintshire in Wales some time around 600AD.

She was the daughter of a Welsh nobleman, known with equal multiplicity as Thevit, Trevith or Tyfid ap Eiludd, and his wife Wenlo, a sister of St Beuno.

Details of her life are inevitably vague after all these centuries, and mainly derive from two manuscripts, one the work of a monk called Elerius (St Elwy), said to be her contemporary, and the other being a 12th century account by the prior of Shrewsbury.

With a saint for an uncle, it is perhaps no surprise that Winifred fell under his influence, and at the age of 15 would listen to him preaching in a hollow nearby.

She soon gave herself to a life of devotion, with her parents’ consent, and was renowned for both her virtue and her learning.

Smart

Being beautiful as well as smart, Winifred was known in the area and soon caught the attention of Caradoc of Hawarden, a chieftain and son of a prince, who resolved to take her as his wife.

The story runs that he found her alone one day and pressed his suit, with her chaste refusal only serving to fuel his ardour. Eventually this turned into threats, and she fled to church.

Caradoc’s inflamed state persisted, and driven mad by his frustration he drew his sword and killed her by slicing off her head. One story tells that her head then rolled down the hill they were on and a spring sprang forth where it came to a rest.

Meanwhile news had got out and St Beuno brought her head back to her body and covered them with a cloak – when he removed it, she was restored to life, albeit with a ring mark round her neck.

Meanwhile Beuno cursed Caradoc, who was swallowed up by the earth. (The real Caradoc apparently was killed in revenge by her brother Owain, suggesting that these events may have had some basis in fact.)

Poverty

Winifred is then said to have lived on in poverty and chastity, becoming abbess of a convent built on her father’s land; the spring meanwhile became a sacred well, where a chapel was built.

Winifred remained there until the death of Beuno, and went on her own pilgrimage into the mountains around Snowdon. At Gwytherin she met Elerius, and eventually became abbess, performing further miracles until her death some time around 660.

Winifred’s relics were taken to Shrewsbury, where a shrine lasted until Henry VIII’s time (it is featured in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael novel, A Morbid Taste for Bones); other relics went to Rome and were returned to Holywell and Shrewsbury in the 19th century.

Her well was a place of pilgrimage and said to have healed people of leprosy and other conditions.

Winifred is remembered on 3 November and is patron of incest victims and Shrewsbury.

Another well is named after her near Oswestry, said to have sprung up when her body rested there on the way to interment. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote an unfinished play called St Winifred’s Well.

Other ‘W’ saints

• St Wilfred of York (or Ripon) – 634-709 – was son of a Northumbrian nobleman. He was nearly killed by pagans in Sussex and later returned to convert many of them, and found Selsey Abbey. His memorial day is 12 October.
• St Wenceslaus is the king of Bohemia remembered by the Christmas carol and was murdered by his brother Boleslaus at the door of a church in 929. He is remembered on 28 September and is patron of brewers as well as the Czech Republic.

Mention St Vitus today and one word alone comes to mind: dance. Living a life which came to a short and nasty end, however, the saint himself had little time for dancing, and that was left to his followers centuries later.

Not a great deal is recorded about this early saint other than legend. He is said to have been born in the late second century in Sicily around 291, the son of a pagan senator called Hylas.

According to different accounts, he was either seven or twelve when his tutor Modestus and nurse Crescentia converted him to Christianity – at a time when the emperor Diocletian was persecuting Christians ruthlessly.

Vitus’ story is a classic one of father-and-son strife. Perhaps keen to appease the administration, his father sought to nip Vitus’ conversion in the bud, and resorted first to kindness and then to scourging the boy and his companions in an attempt to make them return to paganism – to no avail.

Lamed

One story even says that the soldiers commanded to torture Vitus had their hands miraculously lamed. The trio fled by boat to Lucania (southern Italy) and from there, ironically, Vitus was taken to Rome to help drive out a demon from Diocletian’s son – suggesting he had some reputation for this skill.

At Rome, Vitus duly healed the emperor’s son, but because of his refusal to sacrifice to the pagan gods afterwards, he and his companions were again tortured.

The enraged Diocletian had them thrown to the lions, but the animals are said to have cowered at their feet. The emperor’s next move was to throw them into boiling oil – some accounts say this brought their death, but others say they prayed and remained unharmed, but ultimately died on the rack.

At the moment they died, a storm is said to have destroyed a number of pagan temples. The year was 303.

Another account says that Vitus and his friends survived Diocletian’s tortures and were take back to Lucania by an angel before they died, though this appears to be a conflation with the death of three other martyrs in that area.

Either way, veneration of them spread across the region, with miracles attributed to them. A shrine to him in Rome is known to have existed in the 5th century, one in France in the 8th, and his relics were taken to Germany in the 9th, where veneration spread through Westphalia.

Dance

It is in Germany that the tales of St Vitus dance began, too: in the 16th century, people danced before his statue on his feast day of 15 June so enthusiastically that for some it became a mania.

Today the name St Vitus’ dance is associated both with epilepsy and the nervous disorder chorea. It is also in Germany that Vitus became known as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers – see the previous article on this series about St Pantaleon.

Vitus’ symbol is the rooster, a poor creature apparently thrown into the boiling oil with him as a sacrifice; by extension, he has become the patron against oversleeping. Vitus is also patron of actors and comedians, against storms and dog bites, of the Czech Republic (St Vitus’ Cathedral is in Prague), and of course of dancing.

Other ‘V’ Saints

• St Valentine (d269) was a priest and physician in Rome who was beaten and beheaded – a far cry from the celebrations of love his name is remembered for, which are believed to stem from a Christianisation of a Roman fertility festival in February. As well as lovers, he is patron of beekeepers and against fainting.
• St Veronica is only known for one thing: wiping Christ’s face with a cloth as he fell on the way to Golgotha. The cloth was supposedly imprinted with his image, and many mediaeval cloths were claimed to be the original relic. Her feast is 12 July and she is patron of laundry workers and photographers.

The history of St Ursula, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “rests on ten lines, and these are open to question” – but the subsequent legend “would fill more than a hundred pages”.

The ten lines in question form a Latin inscription in stone, attributed to Clematius and still existing today in the choir of the Church of St Ursula at Cologne in Germany.

Experts have declared that the stone dates back to the fourth or fifth century. The interpretation of the inscription has been much debated, but tells at least of the nobleman Clematius’ rebuilding of a ruined basilica on his own land in the city of Cologne, and he did so because he was prompted by visions to honour a number of virgins who has been martyred there.

Souls

The inscription entirely fails to name, date or number these poor souls, however, and Ursula herself only appears in documents dating from five centuries later.

Those later documents mention varying numbers of ‘virgins of Cologne’, from five to eight to eleven. Another document names them in the thousands, and days they were persecuted by the Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian.

One tradition states that they came from the east, encouraged by a veiled reference to the Orient in Clematius’ inscription; another says they came from Great Britain.

By the tenth century, the group was universally referred to as “the eleven thousand virgins”, and always accompanying the name of Ursula.

The figure is widely agreed to have resulted from someone mistranscribing some Latin many centuries ago (reading “11 thousand” instead of “11 martyrs”), but the following story has stuck.

The legend tells that Ursula was the daughter of the king of Cornwall and was betrothed to the governor of Brittany, perhaps in the fourth century (her death is said to have been in 383).

Sail

She set sail to join him accompanied by 11,000 virgin handmaidens (clearly a huge fleet was needed – even the Titanic only held 2,220 people).

They became caught up in a storm which miraculously brought them to Gaul in only a single day, and Ursula was moved my this to set out on a pilgrimage to Rome and beyond before going to marry her fiancé.

At Rome, an otherwise unrecorded Pope by the name of Cyriacus was persuaded to join her. When they arrived at Cologne, they encountered the Huns who were laying siege to the city, and were massacred.

They were buried there, supposedly in the basilica that Clematius later repaired. A tradition dating back to the 16th century also says that St Mary Axe, a lost church in the city of London where the ‘Gherkin’ skyscraper now stands, was also named after Ursula and the virgins, and contained the axe that the Huns used to kill them.

Although so little, if anything, is known of Ursula, her name has inspired people down the ages since. In the 15th century, Columbus names the Virgin Islands after her. In 1520, Magellan also named a cape after the virgins.

Hildegard of Bingen wrote songs honouring Ursula and her handmaidens. In 1535, St Angela Merici founded the Order of Ursulines, dedicated to the education of young women, the first of its kind and still going today. Many similar congregations have been formed since.

Ursula’s memorial is 21 October, though she was removed from the universal calendar of saints by the Pope in 1969. As well as patron of young women, and students in general, she is still celebrated in Cologne and at the University of Paris.

Other ‘U’ Saints

• St Ulrich (890-973) was a Swiss nobleman and later bishop who built many churches. He was the first saint to be canonised by a Pope, and is patron against fever, dizziness, mice and moles (feast 4 July).
  

Thomas Becket (the spurious ‘à’ was added long after he died) was born in London on 21 December, probably in 1118. His parents were Normans (though one legend says his mother was a Muslim) and therefore among the upper classes of Britain at the time. His upbringing was appropriately comfortable, and he learned to ride and hunt and joust like others of his class. As a child he was educated at Merton Abbey, and later abroad in Paris and Bologna. An early account says he was “slim of growth and pale of hue, with dark hair… winning in his conversation… but slightly stuttering”.

In his early twenties, Becket caught the eye of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was entrusted with missions to Rome, in due course becoming an archdeacon, known as ‘Thomas of London’. When the new king Henry II took the throne in 1154, a new Lord Chancellor was required, and at Theobald’s recommendation Becket was given the role – one of the most powerful in the country.

Thus began what was initially a great and famous friendship. Becket fostered the king’s young son, who is said to have been closer to Becket than to his real father. At this time Becket and the king were said to have hunted and even done battle together and been ‘of one heart and mind’.

On the death of Theobald in 1161, however, everything changed. Henry sought more control over the Church, and wanted to appoint Thomas as successor to the archbishopric. Becket was extremely reluctant to serve two masters, but was persuaded to the role in 1162. He had warned Henry before that if he were appointed he would inevitably need to oppose the king in some matters – and this soon became true.

Becket transformed himself after the appointment, from a hedonistic courtier to a monastic prelate. He resigned the chancellorship, beginning a series of affronts to Henry. He fought for the Church’s exemption from civil authority, and won Henry’s anger. A dispute over money sent Becket into voluntary exile to France, where he then quarrelled with the Pope, though also almost persuaded him to excommunicate Henry.

In 1170, a tentative reconciliation occurred and Becket came back to England, but continued to harangue the king. In December, Henry supposedly cried his famous words – “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” or similar – and four French knights interpreted this as an order. They murdered Becket, as immortalised in T S Eliot’s play, in Canterbury Cathedral itself. Henry did great penance, and Becket was canonised only three years later.

Many miracles were said to have been worked at his shrine, though it was later destroyed by Henry VIII (who allegedly summoned Becket’s bones to trial for high treason). A skeleton was found in 1888 which is believed to be the saint’s. Becket’s memorial is 29 December and he is remembered as patron of secular clergy, Exeter College in Oxford, and Portsmouth.

Other ‘T’ saints

• Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was a Spanish mystic and major figure of the Reformation. Her feast is 15 October and she is patron of headaches, laceworkers and people ridiculed for their piety
• Thomas the Apostle (died c72) was ‘Doubting Thomas’ and said to be a twin. He is remembered on 3 July and is patron of architects, India and people in doubt.