Cover image featuring an 18th-century print depicting St. Winefred's Well.

As a follow-up to our 2025 saint’s-life generating Advent Calendar game, we hear an actual medieval saint’s life and discuss how we get some of our saintly terminology. You’ll also find out where you can get a downloadable version of the Advent Calendar game!

Today’s Texts:

  • “Life of St. Winefred.” Lives of the Cambro British Saints, of the Fifth and Immediate Succeeding Centuries, from Ancient Welsh & Latin MSS. in the British Museum and Elsewhere, with English Translations, an Explanatory Notes, edited and translated by W. J. Rees, Welsh MSS. Society, 1853, pp. 515-529. Google Books.
  • “The Miracles of St. Winifred’s Well.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 1762, 13 Oct. 1894, p. 829. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20230146
  • The Rule of St. Benedict. Translated by D. Oswald Hunter Blair, 2nd ed., Sands & Co,m 1907. Google Books.

References:

  • Dendle, Peter. “Lupines, Manganese, and Devil-Sickness: An Anglo-Saxon Medical Response to Epilepsy.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 75, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 91-101. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44445557
  • Head, Thomas. “Hagiography.” Reprinted from ORB: the On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies, 1999. Hagiography Society, 2013, www.hagiographysociety.org/?page_id=678
  • Keune, Jon. “Comparative vs. Hagiology: Two Variant Approaches to the Field.” Religious Studies, vol. 10, no. 10, 14 Oct. 2019, p. 575. MDPI, doi.org/10.3390/rel10100575
  • Stumpe, Lynne Heidi. “Display and Veneration of Holy Relics at St Winefriede’s Well and Stonyhurst.” Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 22, Dec. 2009, pp. 63-81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41417138

Music credit: “Ton y botel (Ebenezer).” Performed by the Wilkes-Barre Quartet, Victor, 1922. United States Library of Congress.

Image: Engraving from circa 1790 depicting St. Winefred’s Well. Wikimedia Commons.