Where is st winifreds

Winifred made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was greatly influenced by the order of monastic life there. The common ascetic practice in Wales at the time was the eremitic life. At the synod, all agreed that the safety of the coenobitic life she led was preferable to the solitary life. Thus, after seven years in Abeluyc, Winifred decided to go out and help establish other coenobitic communities. It is said that two hermits she approached with the idea, Sts. Diheufyr and Sadwrn, were not interested in what seemed to them an innovation.

It was not until she reached Gwytherin that she was welcomed by her mother's cousin, St. Here, Winifred was presented to his mother, St. Tenoi, and together they established a double monastery in the village. Tenoi as abbess there. Recently a fragment of an eighth-century reliquary from Gwytherin, the Arch Gwenfrewi Winifred's Casket , was found, witnessing her status as a recognized saint almost from the moment of her death, the earliest such surviving evidence for any Welsh saint.

Veneration of the saint was mainly limited to Wales until the late eleventh, early twelfth century, when it began spreading throughout the British Isles. Other wells have been recorded as dedicated to her, including one in Dublin, Ireland. In Her relics were translated to an ornate shrine in Shrewsbury, while her original tomb was retained at Gwytherin and a fragment at Holywell.

The spring that had broken forth in Holywell on the site where her severed head fell is still active; the temperature of the water never changes, summer or winter, and the supply remains constant regardless of drought or flood in the locality. It is so clear that the pebbles at the bottom are distinctly seen to be stained as though with blood.

It is lined with fragrant moss, the Jungermannia oplevoides. Holy springs are still a strong tradition in Orthodox countries—among them are the spring of St. Athanasius on Mt. Athos, the spring of St. Theodora of Vasta in Peloponnesus, and the many holy springs connected with saints and the Mother of God in Russia. History shows that there were also many holy springs in Britain during its pre-schism period, but the miraculous spring of St.

Winifred is now one of a kind there. The healing pool at Holywell, Wales. Photo by Jeffrey L. Thomas, Werburgh's Abbey, Chester. In , the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Llewelyn, once more in control of this area in Wales, gave the holy well and church to the newly-established Basingwerk Abbey; and the Cistercian monks cared for the well and its pilgrims until the Reformation. Winifred's fame, and with it the fame of the Well, continued to spread throughout the middle ages, but little is factually recorded about the pilgrimage.

By , her feast had become a major solemnity throughout Wales and England. Kings could be found among her pilgrims. Henry V came in Richard III maintained a priest at the Well. But it was during the reign of the Welsh Henry VII that devotion reached its pinnacle, with the building of the present well-shrine under the patronage of Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort. Such glory was short lived, though the Well's fame was never eclipsed.

The Reformation swept away shrines and pilgrimages; but no attempt ever quite succeeded in destroying devotion to St. Winifred at her Well. Through all the years of religious persecution, pilgrims, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, continued to visit Holywell. It became the centre of Catholic resistance. James II and his queen visited the Well in , to pray for an heir. But James was exiled, and the persecution renewed. Through these long years, Holywell and its pilgrims were served by the Jesuits.

It was here, years after her death, that Prior Robert and seven monks are reported to have travelled to take away the bones of Gwenfrewi to Shrewsbury in the s so as to attract pilgrims to their newly founded abbey. There was a reliquary box at Gwytherin called the Arch Gwenfrewi, drawn at the chapel site by Edward Lhuyd in The feeling inside I hope will echo something of the beauty felt outside and all around this sacred site.

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