Weather it Rain or Whether it Won't Tales of St. Swithun
by Lady Scholastica Joycors
A STANDING JOKE WORLDWIDE is the English preoccupation with the weather. So how did it come to pass that the English summer should be determined by a long dead Anglo-Saxon Bishop known as St. Swithin?
Saint Swithun was born in Kingdom of Wessex (an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in the South-West and the precursor to the unified Kingdom of England) and educated in Winchester, the Kingdom’s capital. and was ordained priest by Helmstan. King Egbert appointed him as tutor of his son, Æthelwulf (Alfred the Great), and considered Swithun one of his chief friends. In 852, Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated Swithun as bishop of Winchester, it is suspected that this appointment was made at the King Æthelwulf request.
In his new office he was known for his piety and his zeal in building new churches or restoring old ones. At his request Æthelwulf gave a tenth of the lands of Wessex to the Church as documented on ancient parchments with their signatures. William of Malmesbury adds that Bishop Ealhstan of Sherbornewas was considered Æthelwulf's minister for temporal matters, but it was Swithun who he conferred with as minister for spiritual matters.
Among the few things we know about Swithun is that he made his diocesan journeys on foot and when he gave a banquet he invited the poor and not the rich. Swithun won the affection of his folk among whom he labored for the better part of a decade. He was famous for building bridges, churches and planting apple trees. Patterning himself after Christ Jesus, he gave gifts to the poor and needy. Only one miracle is attributed to Swithin while he was alive. An old lady's eggs had been maliciously smashed by workmen building a church. Swithin picked the broken eggs up and, it is said, they miraculously became whole again.
Bishop Swithun died on 2 July 862 and according to William of Malmesbury that on his dieing bed left instructions that his body should be buried outside the church by the north wall of the Old Winchester Cathedral, ubi et pedibus praetereuntium et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxius [where it might be subject to the feet of passers-by and to the raindrops pouring from on high].His body lay there peacefully for about a century.
On 15 July 971 when the monastic reform movement had been established and religion was once again at the forefront, Æthelwold of Winchester, the current Bishop of Winchester, and Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, decreed that Swithun was to be the patron saint of the restored Cathedral at Winchester where an impressive shrine was built for him. Swithun’s body was removed from its simple grave and interred. However, the removal was also accompanied by ferocious and violent rain storms that lasted 40 days and 40 nights and is said to indicate the saint's displeasure at being moved, and thus this well know piece of verse came about:
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 no more.
When Swithun's remains were transferred to the cathedral, many people claimed miraculous cures. The common folk regarded this as proof he had indeed been a saint. One such miracle was his appearance to Queen Œlfgifa (or Emma as she is also known), mother of Edward the Confessor. This was on the night before her ‘ordeal’, a trial for her supposed adultery with Aelfwine, former Bishop of Winchester, which involved walking across hot blades at Winchester Cathedral. St Swithun supposedly told Queen Œlfgifa “I am Saint Swithun whom you have invoked; fear not, the fire shall do you no hurt.” The following day, the Queen was able to walk barefoot across the blades completely unharmed. The miraculous work of Saint Swithun, and of course, her innocence.
A typical Medieval cult grew up around him. Swithun's tomb became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in England. Pieces of his body were borrowed for other shrines, his head going to Canterbury and an arm to Peterborough Abbey. In Aelfric's Lives of Saints it states people would travel to the site in hopes of miracles and dozens of them are listed from healing broken bones to eyes being replaced and illness being cured. A short tunnel (the Holy Hole) allowed them to crawl right under his shrine, as close as possible to his miraculous healing powers.
Swithun's body was moved into yet another Winchester church in the following century. It remained in this final home until the Reformation. The cult of St Swithun and his shrine came to an abrupt end during the Reformation, when King Henry VIII seized control of the Catholic Church in England, and declared himself head of the Church of England. They considered it idolatry to bow and pray at such shrines and unnecessary anyhow, because Christians are free to go directly to God through Christ.
On 21 September 1538, under cover of darkness at 3am in the morning, the king’s commissioners smashed it apart, and stole all the valuables. Three years later, a workman stopped up the Holy Hole. Nothing remains of his once great shrine today, but you can see a modern memorial that marks the spot.
15 July is when the feast of St. Swithun occurs still to this day. The emblems of St. Swithin refer to the legend of the forty days' rain (raindrops) and the apples from the trees he planted. Oddly enough apple-growers hope for a good soaking or christening from the saint on this day. This is because they believe that the 'saints are watering the crops.' If they fail to do so, the apple-crop will be a poor one. Furthermore, no apple should picked or eaten before July 15th. The other side of the superstition is that apple-growers believe all apples still growing at St Swithin's day will ripen fully.
Whether you choose to believe that this simple home grown saint caused it to rain because he didn't like being moved indoors or that he is simply christening the apples doesn't matter, because even to this day the weather forecasters still watch to see if the weather is going to be balmy or clear. In fact the Royal Meteorological Society believes that there is a grain of truth in the myth, as weather often locks into a pattern in high summer, only changing when autumn begins to rear its head from the end of August.
So what is the weather going to be this year? It will be a mixed picture of sunshine and showers and will continue as such for the foreseeable future, with warm sunshine punctuated by storms and showers. In other words pretty much like every other summer.
Bibliography
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-st-swithins-day-history-origin-legend-predicting-40-days-rain-1510973
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-st-swithins-day-history-origin-legend-predicting-40-days-rain-1510973
Skeat, W. W. (1881). Aelfric's Lives of Saints. London: Oxfore University Press.
©2018 MyLinda Butterworth (scholastica.ppa at gmail.com) This article first appeared in The Yeoman: July 2018
Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.
Comments