The Feast Day of St Emerenciana (also known as St Emerentiana) is celebrated by the Catholic Church on 23 January.
Emerenciana was a foster sister of St Agnes and was stoned to death when she was found praying at Agnes’s tomb. She is often represented holding stones and lilies and is the patron saint of stomach problems and colic.
A prayer for St Emerenciana’s feast day: ‘Let blessed Emerenciana, thy virgin and martyr, win for us pardon for thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, for both by her chastity and by her confession of thy power, she ever pleaseth thee well.’
Sherborne can claim not only a former chapel dedicated to the saint, but her feast day is mentioned in the Sherborne Missal and the Catholic Church of Sacred Heart & St Aldhelm has a statue of her.
Why Sherborne should have any particular connection to St Emerenciana is not known, but she was a popular saint in Mediaeval Europe.
St Emerenciana’s chapel
St Emerenciana’s chapel at Nethercombe in Sherborne appears to be the only religious building in the country dedicated to her memory.
The chapel stood on land belonging to the Bishops of Sarum and is mentioned by the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) in his Itinerary. Leland records a visit he made to Sherborne about the year 1542 when he saw a ‘Paroche Chirch’ of St Emerenciana, which he described as being ‘of old tyme’ and ‘now faullen clene downe’.
Today, the chapel is redundant and forms part of the Sherborne International site bequeathed to Sherborne School in 1988 by Louisa and Charlie Bow.
The Sherborne Missal
The feast day of St Emerenciana was an important enough date in the Sherborne calendar for it to be mentioned in the Sherborne Missal. The Sherborne Missal, which dates from about 1400, was the work of John Sifrewas (a Dominican friar) and John Whas (a Benedictine monk and local boy) and would have been used on the high altar in Sherborne Abbey on special occasions.
The Sherborne Missal is now held at the British Library (Add MS 74236), a digitised copy of which can be viewed on the British Library’s Universal Viewer.
Statue of St Emerenciana
On display inside the Catholic Church of Sacred Heart & St Aldhelm in Sherborne a statue of St Emerenciana, holding her trademark stones and lilies, can be seen set high on the north wall. The statue was a gift from Belgium to the Sisters of the Religious of Christian Instruction who had arrived in Sherborne in 1891. Although it is unlikely that the saint’s historic connection to the town was known when the gift was made it is fitting that her presence is still felt in the town where her feast day was previously celebrated.
Further reading:
Janet Backhouse, The Sherborne Missal (1999)
Joseph Fowler, Medieval Sherborne (1951)
J.H.P. Gibb, The Book of Sherborne (1981)
Digitised copy the Sherborne Missal (British Library’s Universal Viewer)
Sherborne Missal (Wikipedia)
List entry for St Emerenciana’s chapel, Coombe (Historic England)
Listed Building record MDO14994 – Emerenciana (Nethercombe Farm), Coombe, Sherborne (Dorset Heritage Explorer)
For further information please contact the School Archivist
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