St. Swithun

One day in the latter half of the ninth century, a poor young woman on her way to market dropped her basket of eggs – shattering all of them

She knelt beside the broken mess and began to weep.

As luck – or divine timing – would have it, the local bishop happened to be out for his morning stroll and witnessed the entire incident. Moved by compassion, he approached the young woman and tried to console her.

She wasn’t having it.

Without the eggs, she had nothing to sell at market. Nothing to sell meant no money to sustain her family. And no money to sustain her family meant the usual chain of events: degradation, illness, and eventually death. In that context, soothing words from a bishop didn’t carry much weight.

The bishop, undeterred, offered a prayer on her behalf. When he finished and the woman opened her eyes, she glanced into her basket—and gasped. The eggs were whole again, as if they’d never been broken.

“Wot’s all this, then?” she said, blinking.

“It is a sign of God’s grace and compassion,” the bishop replied. “I am but His –

“God fixed me eggs, did he?”

“All things are possible with God,” the bishop began, but the young woman wasn’t done.

“All-powerful God? All-knowing God? I work meself to death eight days a week, and when He finally drops a miracle – it’s fixin’ me eggs? What about a floor for me hut? What about clothes for me young’uns? What about -”

It is perhaps unnecessary to record the full text of the woman’s spirited complaint, but let it be said that it was both linguistically inventive and theologically challenging.

The bishop in question was St. Swithun, who died on this date in the year 862. His feast day is celebrated today in Norway (though England prefers to remember him on July 15, and spell his name “St. Swithin”).

He was the Bishop of Winchester and a royal counselor to Kings Egbert and Aethelwulf. (Yes – the very skullcap of the good bishop.)

As for the rest of his biography, history offers us next to nothing. We know he died. That’s about it. Which is why I bring him up.

Someone really ought to invent a life for the guy.

Maybe he was raised by honey badgers. Maybe he was kidnapped by cross-dressing pirates. Maybe he met three witches in a forest and they hailed him as the Thane of Cawdor. Maybe he fell hopelessly in love with the red-headed daughter of a rival landowner, and they had a tempestuous affair before she died tragically and he took holy orders in her memory. Maybe he had webbed toes and spoke fluent owl.

Who knows? No one.

So go ahead: make up a St. Swithun you can live with.