Deploying Writing and Craft in the Twelfth-Century Cult of St Frideswide
Anyone arriving to Oxford by train will pass through Frideswide Square. Visitors will quickly learn that Frideswide was an early English princess and abbess who became the patron saint of the city and university in the later Middle Ages. They are less likely to learn how this woman became a figurehead uniting Oxford’s town and exclusively male gown. The answer lies in a series of twelfth-century mishaps: a mismanaged foundation of a religious community, a Sicilian book-hunting expedition gone wrong, and an assassination. These seemingly unrelated threads come together in the journeys of a writer and regular canon, Robert of Cricklade, and his efforts to recreate a pilgrimage cult to an early English saint at St Frideswide’s Priory, an Augustinian community founded around 1120 out of the remnants of earlier foundations.
Please register by filling out this form before November 7th, if you would like to attend Dr. Dunning's seminar. The meeting will be held on ZOOM only. If you have any questions or concerns, please write to Heidi Hansen.
