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Early medieval female Christian saint
Arilda
, or
Arild
, was a female
saint
from
Oldbury-on-Severn
in the
English
county of
Gloucestershire
. She probably lived in the 5th- or 6th-century and may have been of either
Anglo-Saxon
or
Welsh
origin.
Arilda was a virgin martyr who, according to
John Leland
, was slain by a youth named Municus when she refused to have sex with him.
Two churches in Gloucestershire are dedicated to Arilda, one at Oldbury-on-Severn near her traditional home, a second (
St Arild's Church
) at
Oldbury-on-the-Hill
. Both places were called "Aldberie" at the time of the
Domesday Book
in 1086, suggesting that their names may be derived from the saint.
Leland claims that Arilda lived in Kington, a hamlet in the parish of Oldbury-on-Severn, where there is a
holy well
bearing Arilda's name. The waters from the well are said to run red with her blood, though a more prosaic explanation is the presence of a red alga of the genus
Hildenbrandia
.
[1]
There was a shrine to Arilda at
St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester
, which is now
Gloucester Cathedral
, but it was destroyed after the
Dissolution of the Monasteries
.
Notes
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- G. Jones, "Authority, Challenge and Identity in three Gloucestershire Saints' Cults",
Authority and Community in the Middle Ages
(ed. Donald Mowbray, Ian P. Wei, Rhiannon Purdie), 1999,
ISBN
0-7509-1867-5
, pp. 124?127
- Julian M. Luxford, "The art and architecture of English Benedictine monasteries, 1300?1540: a patronage history", Boydell Press, 2005,
ISBN
1-84383-153-8
, p. 134
- Alan Thacker,
Richard Sharpe
, "Local saints and local churches in the early medieval West",
Oxford University Press
, 2002,
ISBN
0-19-820394-2
, p. 509
- David Verey
,
Gloucestershire: the Vale and the Forest of Dean
, The Buildings of England edited by
Nikolaus Pevsner
, 2nd ed. (1976)
ISBN
0-14-071041-8
, p. 314
- David Verey,
Gloucestershire: the Cotswolds
, The Buildings of England edited by
Nikolaus Pevsner
, 2nd ed. (1979)
ISBN
0-14-071040-X
, p. 351
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British / Welsh
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East Anglian
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East Saxon
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Frisian,
Frankish
and Old Saxon
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Irish and Scottish
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Kentish
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Mercian
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Northumbrian
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Roman
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South Saxon
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West Saxon
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Unclear origin
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