15th July ~ St Swithun, Bishop of Winchester (A.D.862)

"St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain St Swithin’s day if thou be fair For forty days will rain na mair”

Swithun was born in Wessex at the end of the eighth century or beginning of the ninth, and passed his youth in the study of grammar, philosophy and the Holy Scriptures at the Old Monastery in Winchester, of which, however, he was probably never a member. Being ordained priest, his learning, piety and prudence moved Egbert, King of the West Saxons, to make him his chaplain, under which title the saint subscribed a charter granted to the abbey of Croyland in 833. That prince also committed to his care the education of his son Ethelwulf, and made use of his counsels in the government of his kingdom.

On the death of Egbert, Ethelwulf succeeded, and he governed his kingdom by the prudent advice of Aelfstan, Bishop of Sherborne, in temporal affairs, and of St Swithun in ecclesiastical matters, especially those which concerned his own soul. Bearing always the greatest reverence to Swithun, he procured him, upon the death of Helmstan, to be chosen bishop of Winchester, to which see he was consecrated by Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 852. William of Malmesbury says that this good bishop was a treasury of all virtues, and those in which he took most delight were humility and charity to the poor; in the discharge of his episcopal functions he omitted nothing belonging to a true pastor. He built several churches and repaired others; and when he had to dedicate any church, he used to go barefoot to the place. He died on July 2, 862, and at his own request was buried in the churchyard, where his grave might be trodden by passers-by and the rain fall upon it.

But his feast is observed in the dioceses of Portsmouth and Southwark on July 15, on which date, over a hundred years after, his bones were taken up and translated into the church, which legend says was done in accordance with a vision of the saint granted to a poor labourer. Malmesbury affirms that a great number of miraculous cures of all kinds were wrought on this occasion. In the reign of William the Conqueror, Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester, laid the foundation of a new cathedral church, and on July 15, 1093, the shrine of St Swithun was translated from the old to the new church. Swithun is still in the memory of the English people by reason of the superstition that if it rains on his feast-day it will rain for forty days after, and the opposite. Many ingenious attempts have been made to explain this belief, but no one of them is convincing. Other saints elsewhere have the same story attaching to their day, for example, SS. Gervase and Protase, and St Medard in France and St Cewydd in Wales.

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints