As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.

Home / People / Saint Winifred

Historical person

Saint Winifred

635–680

Saint Winifred, or Winefride, is a Welsh saint whose cult became especially important from the twelfth century. According to legend, a rejected suitor decapitated her near Holywell, a spring appeared at the site and Saint Beuno restored her to life. She later became a nun and abbess at Gwytherin. The historical basis of the story is uncertain, but her well and relic cult became major centres of pilgrimage in Wales and at Shrewsbury.

Saint Winifred was born in Tegeingl and died in Gwytherin. The historical importance of Saint Winifred also reflects the institutional and political setting of religious authority, where doctrine, patronage and public power were often closely connected.

Ellis Peters makes the cult and relics of Saint Winifred a continuing presence in the Cadfael series. A Morbid Taste for Bones is built around the 1137 expedition from Shrewsbury to Gwytherin to obtain her remains, turning a historical translation of relics into the mystery that introduces Cadfael. In The Pilgrim of Hate, pilgrims gather at Shrewsbury for Winifred’s feast and shrine, so devotion to the saint creates the crowd in which Cadfael’s investigation unfolds. The Holy Thief again makes her relics materially important when flood, theft and murder threaten the abbey’s sacred possessions. Winifred does not act as a conventional character in these novels; her posthumous cult shapes movement, authority and conflict.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Saint Winifred (1 series)

Chronicles of Brother Cadfael in Order

by Ellis Peters 19 books 4.5(42,288)

The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael follow a former soldier and crusader who has become the herbalist of Shrewsbury Abbey. Between 1137 and 1145, Cadfael investigates deaths, disappearances and disputed identities while working within the rhythms of Benedictine life and the law of medieval England. The twenty novels unfold…

All books in this series