Joyce (name) - Name's Origin: Saint Joyce (Judoc)

Name's Origin: Saint Joyce (Judoc)

• Saint Joyce (600 – 668) – Breton prince and hermit, the son of a Juthael, king of Brittany. After his death, his body was claimed to be incorrupt, his beard and hair were trimmed from time to time by his followers (as was claimed for Saint Cuthbert). In 902, while the new minster at Winchester was being built, there arrived some refugees from Saint-Josse who brought with them the relics of their founder. Saint Grimbald enshrined them in the new church. Consequently feasts of Josse were prominently kept at Winchester; His popularity in England may be deduced from the frequent Christian name Joyce (for both men and women) and from the use of his name in oaths by the Wife of Bath in Chancer's Canterbury Tales ("by God and by Seint Joce"). Through the discovery of a rival set of relics at Saint-Josse in 977 the cult of Josse also spread from Northern France to Flanders (where he is sometimes called Joost), Germany, Alsace, Switzerland, and Austria, where he is represented on the mausoleum of Maximilian in Innsbruck.