St Candida – a unique local saint with relics

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

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.

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.

Saints relics found in Surrey church

If you think that all relics of English saints were destroyed during the English Reformation during Henry VIII’s reign or the English Civil War and subsequent Commonwealth of the mid 17^th century, think again.

It is well-known that the relics of St Edward the Confessor remained in place in his Westminster Abbey shrine. Somehow, the relics of the ninth century St Wite can still be found at Whitchurch Canonicorum, near Bridport in west Dorset.

At the weekend, I also found that since the 1920s, there has been a collection of four major English relics and numerous locket reliquaries in Roman Catholic church dedicated to St Edward the Confessor at Sutton Green, near Guildford in Surrey. And it’s a story which has mystery attached.

The tale is told in the church's booklet: "the four major relics were found behind panelling at Sutton Place in a room thought to have been used by priests. There were in a small iron-bound trunk covered with embossed leather. The very faded parchment labels identified them as the bones of St William of York, St Cuthbert Mayne, Blessed Robert Sutton and Fr Henry Garnet." (p.9) No date is given for their discovery.

Reliquary with St William of York's shoulder blade

Sutton Place is a large private estate, once owned by J. Paul Getty, and portrayed in the recent film, All the Money in the World. It was the site of a royal hunting lodge as far back as the late Anglo-Saxon period when it is believed to have been used by King Edward, who became known later as ‘the Confessor’.

Only St William of York's relic (a shoulder blade) may have been at Sutton Place by the early Tudor era. He died in 1154. His cult had little support outside the archdiocese of York and it is of interest how this relic made its way south to Surrey.

Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, Sir Richard Weston was a senior courtier to Henry VIII and was granted the Sutton Place estate by the king who made a state visit there in 1533. Despite his son Sir Francis being beheaded for a relationship with Anne Boleyn, he retained his place as a close adviser to the king including the appointment to meet Henry’s fourth wife Anne of Cleves on her arrival from Germany in 1539. He died in 1542 and was succeeded by his six-year-old grandson Henry.

The other major relics came later:

-       St Cuthbert Mayne was a Catholic priest martyred at Exeter in Cornwall in 1577. He was canonised in 1970;

-       Blessed Robert Sutton was another priest martyred at Stafford in 1588. He was beatified in 1987;
-       Fr Henry Garnet was a Jesuit executed in London in 1606 for his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot

St Edward the Confessor bust with relic (R) and other relics and lockets

It is speculation but Dorothy Arundell (a Catholic family) married Sir Henry Weston in 1559 and may have been given the relic of Cuthbert Mayne's skull, which had been rescued by the Arundell family, before her death in 1592. The assumption must be that the other relics were added by other members of the Weston family and hidden by them or priests in the early 17th century during the Catholic ‘penal’ period.

There is also "small relic" of St Edward the Confessor that was given to Hamilton Walter and Aida Harriet Yeats [no, I don't know who they were] by Pope Leo XIII when they married in 1893. A relative later gave it to the church. Its provenance must be questionable. The bust reliquary was made by Duncan Brown in 1998.

As well as the relic lockets, a Book of Hours and other items, there is a cambric (fabric) wrist frill that may (or may not) have been worn by St Thomas More, chancellor to Henry VIII but beheaded at the Tower of London in 1535 for treason (and defying King Henry).

I wonder how many other relics of medieval saints survived destruction like those of St William of York and SS Edward the Confessor and Wite (also known as St Candida). I haven’t been able to find a register or catalogue. Any advice welcomed.

Source:

Brian Taylor, A Closer Look at St Edward’s Sutton Park (Margate: Nordic Press, 2014).

Link to radio interview on PR

Here’s the link to my contribution on (Australian) ABC Radio’s ‘Overnights with Rod Quinn’ broadcast on 6th May:

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/overnights/the-world-of-pr/8502508

It was a discussion of public relations, followed by listener questions. There were some rather odd questions, but what do you expect at 4.30am in the morning. The podcast lasts around 45 minutes.

Latest PR history research focuses on post-WWII dictatorships

Our latest public relations history research article is now available free on Public Relations Review for 50 days.

Co-written with Natalia Rodríguez-Salcedo of Universidad di Navarra, Pamplona, it focuses on the evolution of public relations in European dictatorships from 1945 to 1990. If you thought that PR only developed in pluralist, democratic nations, you can think again!

Here's the link, and please pass it on: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UyJA1Ik9WQNbf

There's no registration, just click on the link and open the file.

Fake news in the 15th century

Donald Trump’s problems with ‘fake news’ aren’t new. In February 1472, Edward IV of England issued a statement that “many vagabonds, and ungodly and ill-disposed persons … run through the same our land sowing seeds of discord and division in making and telling of tidings, false lying and tales.”

The solution was that “you will in all haste certify us theoreof” (i.e., turn them in). Edward had regained the throne from Henry VI in the previous year, a period of “great tempests, divisions and troubles” in the first round of the Wars of the Roses. [Source: The Coventry Leet Book, p.373]

Orphan migrants in 1960s Australia

I was born and raised in Australia, going to school from 1956 to 1969 which was a prime period of immigration from western Europe. It’s only recently that it has dawned on me that some youngsters at school with me were of the supposed orphan generation, now being investigated: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39099778

I spent most of my infant and primary education at Boronia Park public school in suburban Sydney. It was probably typical of most schools in Australia as among us were children whose families had emigrated from the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and Hungary. Some of these children were alone.

Close to the school was the well-respected Sir Moses Montefiore home (known unfortunately to locals as the “Jews’ home”) which in the early 1960s had lone youngsters who had come to Sydney as Displaced Persons from Europe. They came to classes for a term or two and then moved on without a farewell. We weren’t told what happened to them – had they rejoined their family or found foster parents? Had they been adopted? Where had they gone? I assume that all was well for them, and no rumours have arisen.

The one boy whose circumstances worried me later was a Scottish lad. We were told that he had come to Sydney to live with his aunt and uncle, which may have been a convenient euphemism for adoptive parents. He was so angry and upset all the time – a schoolyard fight waiting to happen. John told us regularly that he hated Australia, hated living here and loathed his “family”. To this day, I wonder whether he was cruelly uprooted from his home, which may have been Glasgow, and literally shipped half around the world. At least he wasn’t enclosed in one of the residential schools now being investigated.

Australia opened its arms to the world and gave a new life to many. However, to be a migrant child with a non-British name and very limited English was a tough introduction. Nicknames abounded, amusing to those who set them but hard on the recipient. Being white, of British stock and possessing a “normal” name was to be superior. One Norwegian lad named Rune really copped it at primary school as no-one had ever heard his first name before. He’d be greeted with chants of “Roo-nee, Roo-nee” until we found he was quite OK after all. However, if a migrant student was good at sport then acceptance was immediate - he or she was wanted on your team.

This was a time when corporal punishment of boys seemed to be the norm, especially in secondary school when disciplinary issues where addressed with six whacks of the cane across the palm of your outstretched hand. There was also more handling of students than is allowed now. Almost all my teachers were kindly and helpful; they wanted us to succeed but in the two high schools I attended there were always a couple of male teachers who revelled in use of the cane.

During my mid-teens, when I was mixing through sailing or rugby with boys from schools run by Marist or Christian Brothers, it seemed that the state school disciplinary regime was relatively gentle. According to them, caning, detention and harsh sport exercise were their norm.

By the late 1960s, harsh discipline was fading away and the sheer number of fellow students who were from migrant backgrounds had changed the playground situation. But I wonder what happened to some of those children and had they been safe, after all.

Free expression punished in Turkey

We take freedom of expression on political matters to be a right. There must be a tempering of this to avoid extremes but it’s generally accepted in liberal democracies. The signing of a petition to criticise government(s) is part of that free expression.

However, in Turkey, an academic colleague and friend was dismissed by her university on Tuesday for being one of several hundred people who supported a petition criticising the Erdogan government’s treatment of the Kurds. This was signed well before the ‘coup’ of July 15 last year.

Her working life in Turkey has ended, as she told me: “I am blocked from all universities and public institutions in Turkey, plus no private companies hire expelled professors because no one wants to deal with Erdogan. We are now persona non grata in our own country. Unfortunately I don't have a future in Turkey anymore.”

She was not alone in being dismissed from their university. As I have other good friends in Turkey, I don’t want this to be perceived as an attack on all Turks but it’s deeply concerning that something as basic as a dissenting voice is punished so harshly. My colleague is well known to many academic friends but I haven’t named her for fear of worsening her situation.