SWITHUN, Sτ, bishop of Winchester from 852 to 862. The name of St Swithun, patron saint of Winchester cathedral from the 10th to the 16th century, is scarcely to be found in any contemporary document. His death is entered in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 861; and his signature is appended to several charters in Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus. Of these charters three belong to 833, 838, and some year between 860 and 862. In the first the saint signs as “Swithunus presbyter regis Egberti,” in the second as “Swithunus diaconus,” and in the third as “Swithunus episcopus.” Hence if the second charter be genuine the first must be spurious, and is so marked in Kemble.
More than a hundred years later, when Dunstan and Ethelwold of Winchester were inaugurating their church reform and supplanting the secular canons of the degenerate English foundations by monks, St Swithun was adopted as patron of the restored church at Winchester, formerly dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. His body was taken up from its almost forgotten grave outside the old monastery and transplanted to Ethelwold’s new basilica on 15th July 971. Numerous miracles preceded and followed this translation. “We have seen,” saysone contemporary writer, “the precincts of the monastery so thronged with crowds of ailing folk that a traveller could scarcely make his way to the shrine; and yet, after some days, so numerous were the cures that even within the church itself there were scarcely five sick people to be seen.” Another writer, likewise a contemporary, claims to the saint’s credit two hundred cures in the short space of ten days....
The revival of St Swithun’s fame gave rise to a mass of legendary literature, from which it can only be deduced that towards the end of the 10th century very little was known concerning his career. The so-called Vitae Swithuni of Lantfred and Wulstan, written about this time, hardly contain the very smallest kernel of biographical fact; and all that has in later years passed for authentic detail of St Swithun’s life is extracted from a biography, ascribed with much probability to Gotzelin, a monk who came over to England with Hermann, bishop of Salisbury from 1058 to 1078. From this writer, who has perhaps preserved some fragments of genuine tradition, we learn that St Swithun was born in the reign of Egbert, and was ordained priest by Helmstan, bishop of Winchester (838-c. 852). His fame reached the king’s ears, who appointed him tutor of his son Adulphus (Ethelwulf) and numbered him amongst his chief friends. Under Ethelwulf he was appointed bishop of Winchester, to which see he was consecrated by Archbishop Ceolnoth. In his new office he was remarkable for his piety and his zeal in building new churches or restoring old ones. At his request Ethelwulf gave the tenth of his royal lands to the church. His humility was such that he made his diocesan journeys on foot; and when he gave a banquet he invited the poor aud not the rich. He built near the eastern gate of his cathedral city a bridge whose stone arches were so strongly constructed that in Gotzelin’s time they seemed a work “non leviter ruiturus.” He died 2d July 862, and gave orders that he was not to be buried within the church but outside in “a vile and unworthy place.”
William of Malmesbury adds that, as Bishop Alhstan of Sherborne was Ethelwulf’s minister for temporal, so St Swithun was for spiritual matters. The same chronicler uses a remarkable phrase in recording the bishop’s prayer that his burial might be “ubi et pedibus praetereuntium et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxius.” This expression has been taken as indicating that the well-known weather myth contained in the doggrel lines—
St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain;
St Swithin’s day if thou be fair For forty days ’twill rain na mair—
had already, in the 12th century, crystallized round the name of St Swithun; but it is doubtful if the passage lends itself by any straining to this interpretation. Mr Raine has suggested that the legend is derived from the tremendous downpour of rain that occurred, according to the Durham chroniclers, on St Swithun’s day, 1315 (Hist. Dunelm., pp. xiii. 96-7). Another theory, more plausible, but historically worthless, traces it to a heavy shower by which, on the day of his translation, the saint marked his displeasure towards those who were removing his remains. This story, however, cannot be traced farther back than some two or three centuries at the outside, and is at variance with the 10th-century writers, who are all agreed that the translation took place in accordance with the saint’s desire as expressed by vision. More probable is Mr Earle’s suggestion that in the legend as now current we have the survival of some pagan or possibly prehistoric day of augury, which has sheltered itself and preserved its vitality under the protection of an ecclesiastical saint. This view is supported by the fact adduced in Notes and Queries (1st ser., xii. p. 137) that in France St Médard (June 8) and St Gervase and St Protais (June 19) are accredited with an influence on the weather almost identical with that attributed to St Swithun in England. Mr Parker professes to detect a shower of rain as the symbol of St Swithun in the clog almanacs (of Queen Elizabeth’s time), but Mr Earle doubts the resemblance. Of other stories connected with St Swithun the two most famous are those of the Winchester egg-woman and Queen Emma’s ordeal. The former is be found in Gotzelin’s life (c. 1100), the latter in Rudborne’s Historia Major
(15th century),—a work which is also responsible for the not improbable legend that this prelate accompanied Alfred on his visit to Rome in 856.
The so-called lives of St Swithun written by Wulstan, Lantfred, and perhaps others towards the end of the 10th century may be found in Bollandus’s Acta Sanctorum (July), i. 321-327; Mabillon’s Acta SS. o. B., vi. 70, &c., vii. 628, &c.; and Earle’s Life and Times of St Swithun, 59, &c. See also william of Malmesbury, Gest. Reg., i. 150, and De Gest. Pont., 160 , 167, 179; Florence of Worcester, i. 168; Rudborne ap. wharton’s Anglia Sacra, i. 287; Hardy's Cat. of MSS., i. 513-17; Brand's Popular Antiquities', Chambers’s Book of Days. Ethelwulf’s Tithe Charters, nearly all of which refer to St Swithun in the body of the text, may be studied in Haddon and Stubbs’s Councils, iii. 636-45; a comparison of the charter on page 642 with Gotzelin’s life (ap. Earle, 69) and william of Malmesbury (Gest. Reg., 150; De Gest. Pont., 160) seems to show that these charters, even if forgeries, date back at least to the 11th century, as well as the story of his being Ethelwulf’s “altor et ductor.”
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