# Holy wells

*Clootie wells; *fontes sancti**

**Known today as.** Springs dedicated to saints, many of them sacred long before Christianity, visited for cures.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Pilgrims drank and bathed, walked sunwise round the well, and left pins, coins, or strips of cloth tied to a nearby tree, the illness said to fade as the rag rotted.

## What does modern science say?

Many wells are still visited; the rag trees of Scotland and Ireland are hung with cloth to this day.

## What lore surrounds it?

St. Winefride’s Well at Holywell in Wales has drawn pilgrims since the Middle Ages and was visited through the Reformation, when most shrines were suppressed.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia lists among the oils of saints “the water that flows from the wells near their burial places,” and reports Kaufmann's excavations of 1905-8 in the Libyan desert, which showed that the famous flasks of St. Menas, long thought to hold lamp-oil, “contained water from a holy well near the shrine of St. Menas, and were given as remembrances to the pilgrims.” Of holy wells generally it concedes “that these hallowed spots and things have occasioned many legends; that popular credulity was in some cases the principal cause of their celebrity; that here and there instances of fraud can be adduced,” while holding that “if superstition there be, it is only material.”

## Sources

- Rattue, J. (1995). *The Living Stream: Holy Wells in Historical Context*. Woodbridge: Boydell.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Oil of Saints.” newadvent.org/cathen/11228d.htm
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Superstition.” newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm

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*Holy wells.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/holy-wells

Historical description, not medical advice.