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| St Candida and Holy Cross Church, Whitchurch Canonicorum |
At the village of Whitchurch Canonicorum in
south west Dorset, set in a valley about a mile from the sea, is a unique
English example of a local saint’s cult. It epitomizes the religious culture of
the early Middle Ages and is still a place of pilgrimage.
Even the village’s name gives
clues to its link to the saint: broadly translated it means the ‘white church
that belongs to the canons’. However, ‘white church’ could be a play on words
related to this saint whose relics are still stored in a lead lined coffin in
the church’s north transept.
The
saint is known as St Whyte, St Wite, St Witta or St Candida,1 all
alluding to the colour white. The church is dedicated to St Candida and Holy
Cross and is the only non-urban church in England that retains the original
medieval shrine and relics of the saint to which it was dedicated.2 Only
Westminster Abbey’s shrine to St Edward the Confessor shares this status. How
this saint’s relics survived the wholesale destruction of saints’ tombs and cults
effected during the English Reformation is not known.
Little
is known about St Wite although evidence from 1900 when the tomb -marked in
Latin with ‘Here rest the remains of St Wite’ - was opened for church repairs
indicates that St Wite was a small woman aged around forty, probably a West
Saxon who may have been killed during a Viking raid in 831 at nearby Charmouth.3
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| St Candida/Wite's tomb is above a foramina |
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers three versions of the saint’s
identity: A West Saxon woman; a Welsh saint whose relics were given to the
church by King Athelstan (d. 939); and a monk, a martyred companion of the
missionary St Boniface, whose remains were translated from Germany back to
Dorset.4 Locally, there is speculation that Wite was a virgin hermit
or anchoress and her hermitage was close to the current site of the church,
which was built on the site of a previous church in the late twelfth century.5
The site is recorded as being
given by King Alfred (d. 899) to his youngest son Ethelwald in 881 with the
Anglo-Saxon name of Hwitancircian (Whitechurch) which indicates that it was
already established as a place of worship.
Although Whyte or Wite was the
church’s original dedication, it changed to Candida, occasionally varied with
White, sometime between 1200 and the early sixteenth century. During the
fifteenth century, the dedication of Holy Cross was added.6
No
Vitae (Life) was written about St
Wite or has survived, but her relics are mentioned in much later writings of
William Worcester (fifteenth century) and the Jesuit John Gerard (sixteenth
century)7 indicating that the cult continued long after her death.
Locally, the church became
known as the ‘Cathedral of the (Marshwood) Vale’. Pilgrims travelled to
Whitchurch by tracks and paths to visit the Purbeck marble-topped tomb placed
on a stone base (foramina) with three oval openings into which afflicted body
parts were inserted for healing.8
These pious visitors made an
important contribution to the local economy and sustained a nearby hostelry,
the Shave Cross Inn built in the fourteenth century. After leaving the shrine,
pilgrims could travel to the saint’s well at nearby Morcombelake which
reputedly cured eye conditions. In late 2017, this author found that pilgrims
still visit the tomb to place messages of hope, thanks and prayer into the oval
openings, thus continuing a tradition that has lasted a millennium.
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| Pilgrim's messages in foramina |
The
cult of St Wite/Candida was just one of several hundred, possibly as many as
one thousand, saints’ cults to be found in England from the seventh century
onwards to the early Tudor period of the sixteenth century. It is an
exceptional example of a local cult that would probably have been erased by the
English Reformation which obliterated all others except that of the monarchs’
preferred cult of St Edward the Confessor whose shrine area became the royal
mausoleum from Henry III onwards.9
It was one of several cults
that existed in the south and south-west of England including St Aldhelm
(Malmesbury), St Birinus (Dorchester/Winchester), SS Grimbald, Hedde and Swithun
(Winchester), St Edward the Martyr (Shaftesbury), St Piran (Cornwall), St
Sidwell (Exeter), St Petrock (Bodmin), St Cuthburga (Wimborne), St Edith
(Wilton), St Melor (Amesbury), SS Augustine and Dunstan (Canterbury).
The
Dorset cult shared characteristics with the other cults. Pilgrims came to the
saint’s tomb to seek intercession with God, both by prayer and physically
touching the tomb. Physical access to the tomb was common, unlike modern times.
Pilgrimage was an important aspect of religious practices as well as being
economically beneficial to the church and its surrounding community.
It is highly probable that the
saint’s feast day of 1 June was included in the regional church calendar of
festivals and commemoration, and that prayers and liturgy had regular reference
to St Whyte/Candida. However, unlike many other saints, there does not appear
to have been any hagiographic Vitae
written. This may be the reason that there are so many stories about who the
saint may have been. Even the gender of Whyte/Candida is still under question,
although it seems highly likely from the evidence of the tomb that the saint
was female.
References
1.
Farmer, David Hugh.
Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 447.
2. Ibid.
3. Syer, S. G. The Cathedral of the Vale, revised edition. Bridport: Creeds
the Printers, 2005, 21.
4.
Farmer, op.cit.,
447.
5. Syer,
op. cit., 21
6. Ibid., 5
7. Farmer, op. cit., 447.
8. Syer, op. cit., 21.
9. Tavinor, Michael. Shrines
of the Saints in England and Wales. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2016, 25.
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