Oswald

Oswald, king of Northumbria, was a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon ruler whose brief reign and death in battle made him one of the principal royal saints of early medieval Britain. He was the son of Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, and of Acha, a sister of Edwin of Deira; through that parentage he inherited claims to both of the northern kingdoms that together formed Northumbria. When Æthelfrith was defeated and killed by Rædwald of East Anglia in 616, Oswald, still young, fled with his brothers into exile among the Irish and the Scots of Dál Riata. He spent some seventeen years in that exile. There he received Christian baptism and was formed in the monastic Christianity of Iona, the Columban foundation off the western coast of Scotland. Contemporary writers do not record a precise place or year of birth; later estimates around the opening of the seventh century rest on Bede’s statement that Oswald died in the thirty-eighth year of his age.

After the death of King Edwin in 633 and a period of devastation under Cadwallon of Gwynedd, Oswald returned to Northumbria with a modest war-band. Bede relates that before battle he erected a wooden cross at a place afterward called Heavenfield, near Hexham, and called on his soldiers to kneel and pray. Cadwallon was killed and his army routed. Oswald then ruled a reunited Northumbria for eight years and was counted by Bede among the overlords who held wide authority in Britain. He sent to Iona for a bishop; after an unsuccessful first mission, Aidan was consecrated and established his see on Lindisfarne. Oswald granted the island to the church, accompanied Aidan on preaching journeys, and, because Aidan at first knew little English, interpreted for him. Near-contemporary narrative presents Oswald as a model of royal piety and almsgiving. Bede tells that at an Easter feast the king broke up a silver dish and had it, with the food it contained, given to poor people at the gate; Aidan took the king’s right hand and blessed it.

Oswald contracted a marriage alliance with the West Saxons: he stood sponsor at the baptism of King Cynegils of Wessex and married Cynegils’s daughter, whose own name is not recorded in the earliest sources. He is credited with a son, Œthelwald, who later ruled Deira. In 642 Oswald was defeated and killed by the Mercian king Penda at the battle of Maserfield, a site traditionally identified with Oswestry in Shropshire. His body was dismembered. Later accounts hold that his head and arms were displayed on stakes; the arms were taken to Bamburgh and the head to Lindisfarne. In the following generation his niece Osthryth translated bodily remains to Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire. The head was eventually placed in the coffin of Saint Cuthbert and is associated with Durham Cathedral. Miracles were reported at the place of his death and at his relics, and his cult spread through England and into Ireland and the Continent, especially in German-speaking lands.

Oswald’s feast day is 5 August, the traditional date of his death. He was venerated as a martyr because he died in battle against a pagan king while himself a Christian ruler. His cult required no formal papal canonization in the later medieval sense; it arose by popular and episcopal recognition in the seventh century and was accepted throughout the Western church. He became a patron of Northumbria and of Christian kingship, and in later centuries of places such as Oswestry and the Swiss town of Zug. Churches and dedications in his name are found across England and in parts of Europe. Historians depend chiefly on Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, written in the early eighth century, together with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and later hagiographical lives, for the outline of his career. Many details of his inner life, the name of his wife, and the exact circumstances of his birth remain unknown.