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.

Ellis Peters’s A Morbid Taste for Bones fictionalises the removal of Winifred’s relics to Shrewsbury and makes the saint a continuing spiritual presence throughout the Brother Cadfael series. The novels affectionately preserve both Welsh attachment to her and monastic competition for relics. Winifred’s legend also appears in medieval and modern retellings, but it should be understood as hagiography rather than documented biography.

Ellis Peters’s The Pilgrim of Hate places Saint Winifred within a narrative shaped by crime, espionage and covert power, social change and the pressures of ordinary life, and military command and battlefield decision-making. Ellis Peters’s The Holy Thief places Saint Winifred within a narrative shaped by crime, espionage and covert power, social change and the pressures of ordinary life, and religion, belief and institutional authority.

Series

Series featuring Saint Winifred (1 series)

Chronicles of Brother Cadfael in Order

by Ellis Peters 19 books 4.5

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