St. Swithun of Winchester, Bishop and Wonderworker

Who was St. Swithun?

St. Swithun, often spelled Swithin, was bishop of Winchester in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 852 until his death on July 2, 862. He advised King Egbert and his son King Ethelwulf, cared for the poor of his city, and asked to be buried in the open air among his people. A hundred years later his tomb became one of the great healing shrines of England, and his feast on July 15 gave the English language St. Swithin's Day.

We know strikingly little about his life. Writing around the year 1000, the monk Ælfric admitted as much:

neither have we found in books how the bishop lived in this world, before he departed to Christ. Such was their carelessness who knew him in life that they would not write down his works and conversation for future generations who knew not his power; but God hath nevertheless brought his life to light by manifest miracles and wondrous signs.

The life of St. Swithun

Counselor of kings

Swithun appears in a handful of 9th-century charters as a priest of Winchester. The Catholic Encyclopedia names him as one of the two trusted counselors of Egbert, king of the West Saxons, who probably gave him charge of the education of his son Ethelwulf. When Ethelwulf became king, he had Swithun chosen bishop of Winchester, and Archbishop Ceolnoth of Canterbury seems to have consecrated him on October 30, 852. Later writers often called him a Benedictine monk and even prior of Winchester, but there is no evidence for either.

The bridge over the Itchen

His one documented building work is a stone bridge at Winchester's east gate over the River Itchen, remembered in a 10th-century poem. In his day Viking raiders sacked nearby Southampton and, in 860, Winchester itself, and a bridge and strong gate mattered.

A grave under the rain

Dying in 862, he asked to be buried outside the north wall of his cathedral, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "where passers-by should pass over his grave and raindrops from the eaves drop upon it." The bishop who had served the poor wanted to lie where the poor walked.

The miracles of St. Swithun

The eggs on the bridge (traditional). The one miracle told of his lifetime comes from a Life written around 1100 and usually credited to Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. Workmen on the bridge jostled an old woman and smashed the eggs she was carrying to market, and Swithun made the sign of the cross over the basket and every egg was whole again.

The translation of 971 (reported). In the 960s, Ælfric says, Swithun appeared in a vision to a smith and told him to send word to Bishop Ethelwold that his grave should be opened. Healings began at the tomb. On July 15, 971, with the support of King Edgar, Ethelwold and his monks raised the body and carried it into the Old Minster. The monk Lantfred, who lived at Winchester at the time, wrote up the cures within a few years, and Ælfric retold them:

Within ten days two hundred men were healed, and so many within twelve months that no man could count them.

The churchyard, he adds, "lay filled with crippled folk." These are reported miracles: careful contemporary accounts from the time before formal canonization, when the public translation of relics by the bishop was itself the Church's recognition of a saint.

St. Swithin's Day and the rain

English folklore puts it in a rhyme:

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 nae mair.

The later legend explains it this way: Swithun was so unhappy at being moved indoors, away from the rain of his chosen grave, that he sent forty days of rain. That story is traditional and late. France tells the same of rain on St. Médard's day, June 8, and other countries of other feasts, so the proverb is older weather lore that settled on his feast. Rain on his day was said to be St. Swithun "christening the apples," which were not to be eaten before it.

Symbols of St. Swithun in art

In art St. Swithun is a bishop with miter and crozier, often holding a book of the Gospels, as in the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, where he wears no miter at all but has a tonsure and halo. Later images add his own signs: a basket of eggs, sometimes broken, for the bridge miracle; a bridge behind him; and, in modern prints, raindrops or rain clouds for St. Swithin's Day. In English parish churches dedicated to him, look for a bishop with eggs at his feet. Orthodox icons painted in recent years show him as a holy hierarch in a bishop's omophorion, blessing and holding the Gospels.

Feast day and where he is honored

We keep his feast on July 15, the anniversary of the translation. His relics were moved again in 1093 into the new Norman cathedral, and in the early 1200s Bishop Godfrey de Lucy built the retrochoir so that pilgrims could gather around the shrine. Henry VIII's commissioners destroyed it in 1538 and the relics were scattered. A memorial shrine set up in 1962, for the 1,100th anniversary of his death, marks the spot today, and the Orthodox also come there to pray to him as a holy hierarch and wonderworker.

Pieces of his relics had traveled far before then. His head was taken to Canterbury, and in the 12th century an arm went to Stavanger in Norway, whose cathedral is still dedicated to him. Fifty-eight ancient English churches bear his name. Find more July saints on our feast days page.

Prayer to St. Swithun

There is no well-known traditional prayer to St. Swithun in common use. In the Catholic liturgy his feast uses the prayers of the Common of Pastors for a bishop. We can simply ask his help in our own words, as the sick of Winchester did at his grave: let us ask St. Swithun, the bishop who wanted to lie under the rain with the poor, to pray for the sick, for travelers on the roads he guarded, and for the Church in England and Norway that still honors him.