Frideswide, Abbess of Oxford
19 October -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Religious, page 494
Born in about the year 680, Frideswide was the daughter of a
Mercian king who built and endowed a double monastery of
which she became the first abbess. She was buried in her
monastery, which became the nucleus of the nascent town of
Oxford. Her cult was strengthened by her being formally
adopted as the patron of
Oxford University in the
early fifteenth century. However, in the sixteenth century,
Cardinal Wolsey suppressed Frideswide's monastery to provide
revenues for his Cardinal College (now
Christ Church),
built on the same site. More recently, part of the shrine
has been reconstructed from remains discovered in a well at
Christ Church, a reminder of the abbess around whose
monastery grew the city and university of Oxford.