SWITHUN (or SwITHIN), ST. (d. 862), bishop of Win chester and patron saint of Winchester Cathedral from the loth to the 16th century. He is scarcely mentioned in any document of his own time. His death is entered in the Anglo-Saxon Chron icle under the year 861; and his signature is appended to several charters in Kemble's Codex diplomaticus. Of these charters three belong to 833, 838, 86o-862. In the first the saint signs as "Swithunus presbyter regis Egberti," in the second as "Swithunus diaconus," and in the third as "Swithunus episcopus." Hence if the second charter be genuine the first must be spurious, and is so marked in Kemble. More than a hundred years later, when Dunstan and Ethelwold of Winchester were inaugurating their church reform, St. Swithun was adopted as patron of the restored church at Winchester, formerly dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. His body was transferred from its almost forgotten grave to Ethelwold's new basilica on July 15, 971, and according to contemporary writers, miracles accompanied the translation.
The revival of St. Swithun's fame gave rise to a mass of legend ary literature. The so-called Vitae Swithuni of Lantfred and Wulstan, written about A.D. hardly contain any germ of biographical fact ; and the earliest detailed authority is a biog raphy ascribed to Gotzelin (fl. 1058-78). From this writer, who has perhaps preserved some fragments of genuine tradition, we learn that St. Swithun was appointed bishop of Winchester under Aethelwulf. At his request Aethelwulf gave the tenth of his royal lands to the Church. He died on July 2, 862, saying that he was not to be buried within the church but outside in "a vile and unworthy place."
William of Malmesbury adds that, as Bishop Alhstan of Sher borne was Aethelwulf's minister for temporal, so St. Swithun was for spiritual matters. The same chronicler uses a remarkable phrase in recording the bishop's prayer that his burial might be "ubi et pedibus praetereuntium et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxius." This expression has been taken as indicating that the well-known weather myth contained in the doggrel lines— 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 'twill rain na mair had already, in the 12th century, crystallized round the name of St. Swithun; but it is doubtful if the passage lends itself by any straining to this interpretation.
The so-called lives of St. Swithun written by Wulstan, Lantfred, and perhaps others towards the end of the loth century may be found in the Bollandist Acta sanctorum (July), i. 321-327; Mabillon's Acta SS. 0. B. vi. 7o, etc., vii. 628, etc.; and J. Earle's Life and Times of St. Swithun, 59, etc. See also William of Malmesbury, Gest. reg. i. 15o, and De gest. pont. 16o, 167, 179; Florence of Worcester, i68 ; T. Rudborne ap. Wharton's Anglia sacra, i. 287 ; T. D. Hardy's Cat. of mss. i. 513-517; J. Brand's Popular Antiquities; R. Chambers's Book of Days: Ethelwulf's Tithe Charters, nearly all of which refer to St. Swithun in the body of the text, may be studied in Haddon and Stubbs's Councils, iii.