Acta Sanctorum, March I (1643–1668 ed.) — translated from the Latin.

¹ LICHFIELD IN ENGLAND.

² Historical commentary.

³ Among the queens more illustrious for sanctity, there shone in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy Saint Etheldreda [Audrey], daughter of Anna king of the East Angles, who gave forth a memorable example of chastity for all ages. For she was twice married, and yet, a stranger to all embrace of man, kept her virginity dedicated to God unviolated. Of this virgin queen the venerable Bede writes excellently in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapters 19 and following; and we shall treat of her more fully in this work on the 23rd of June, her birthday. On this day, 4 March, is kept Saint Owin, her familiar and steward of her house, whose virtues the same Bede commends in book 4, chapter 3. His elogium is also inserted in the Life of Saint Chad, illustrated by us on the 2nd of March. We here repeat the chief things which are there related more fully in chapter 2, page 146.

⁴ Saint Owin, then, was the first of the servants and prince of the household of Saint Etheldreda; and when she, after the death of her first husband, was given in marriage to Egfrid king of the Northumbrians, he came with the queen from the province of the East Angles to York, the seat of the kings of the Northumbrians. Who afterwards, as the same Bede writes, when with the increasing fervour of faith he purposed to renounce the world, did not do it sluggishly; but so stripped himself of worldly things that, leaving all that he had, clad only in a simple habit, and bearing an axe and a hatchet in his hand, he came to the monastery of the most reverend father Chad, which is called Lastingham, situated in the northern part of the diocese of York, on the confines of the districts of Ryedale and Pickering, and distant two miles from the German Ocean. But why he came to Saint Chad with an axe and a hatchet, Bede explains thus: “For,” says he, “he signified thereby that he was entering the monastery not for ease, as some do, but for labour; which he also showed in deed. For the less he was sufficient for the meditation of the Scriptures, the more zeal he gave to the work of his hands.”

⁵ When then Saint Chad was made bishop of the Mercians and Lindisfari — no, and of the Middle Angles — and resided in their city Lichfield, which was his episcopal see: “he had,” says Bede, “a dwelling made for himself not far from the church, more retired, in which he was custom more secretly with a few — that is, seven or eight brethren — as often as he was free from the labour and ministry of the word, to pray and read.” Here Saint Owin, held the eighth among the brethren with the bishop in the aforementioned dwelling for his reverence of devotion, when they were within at leisure for reading, himself wrought without at whatever work seemed needful. Now Owin was a monk of great merit, leaving the world with a pure intention of heavenly reward, and worthy in all things to whom the Lord should specially reveal his secrets; worthy that they should give faith to him telling.

⁶ Now it happened one day that in the aforementioned dwelling Bishop Chad chanced to tarry with the brother Owin only, the rest of the companions having gone to the church for an opportune reason, and the bishop alone in the oratory of the place giving himself to reading or prayer; then Owin heard suddenly — as he afterwards related — a most sweet voice of singers rejoicing descending from heaven even to the earth. Which voice he said he first heard from the east-south-east, that is from the height of the winter’s rising, and then little by little it drew near to him, until it came even to the roof of the oratory in which the bishop was; which entering, filled it wholly and compassed it round about. But he, while he anxiously bent his mind upon the things which he heard, heard again, after the space as it were of half an hour, the same song of gladness ascend from the roof of the same oratory, and return by the same way it had come to the heavens with ineffable sweetness.

⁷ And when he remained a while as it were amazed, and sought with careful mind what these things might be, the bishop opened the window of the oratory, and making a sound with his hand, as he was often custom, commanded whoever was without to come in to him. He entered in haste, to whom the prelate said: “Go quickly to the church, and cause those seven brethren to come here, and be you here with them also.” And when they had come, he first admonished them that they should keep the virtue of love and peace one toward another and toward all the faithful; and that they should follow with unwearied instance the institutions of regular discipline which they had either learned from him or seen in him or found in the deeds or words of the fathers that went before. Then he added that the day of his own death was now at hand. ‘For,’ says he, “that lovable guest who used to visit our brethren, has deigned to come to me also today, and to call me out of this world; therefore, returning to the church, tell the brethren to commend my departure to the Lord with prayers; and let them remember to anticipate their own departure also, whose hour is uncertain, with vigils, prayers and good works.”

⁸ And when he had spoken these and many such things, and they, having received his blessing, were now very sorrowful, that man returned alone who had heard the heavenly song; and prostrating himself upon the ground, said: “I beseech you, father, may I ask something?” “Ask,” says he, “what you will.” And he: “I beseech you,” says he, “tell what was that song of them that rejoiced, which I heard coming from the heavens upon this oratory, and after a time returning to the heavens?” He answered: “If you have heard the voices of the song, and have known the heavenly companies coming down, I command you in the name of the Lord not to tell it to any man before my death. In truth they were the spirits of angels, who came to call me to the heavenly rewards which I ever loved and desired; and after seven days they promised to return and to take me with them.” Which indeed, as had been foretold him, was fulfilled in deed. Thus far Bede.

⁹ What was afterwards done by Saint Owin lies hid. He may have remained at Lichfield with the other seven monks in the time of the succeeding bishops Winfrid and Sexwulf; he may have withdrawn to the monastery of Adbearne [Bardney], which in the province of Lindsey, or Lincoln, Saint Chad built by the gift of King Wulfhere, in which, Bede adds, “there remain to this day the vestiges of the regular life instituted by him” — to the year 730. Lastly, he may have returned into Northumbria and holily passed the rest of his life in his first monastery of Lastingham; so that when he died is likewise unknown.

¹⁰ Trithemius, in his book Of Illustrious Men of the Order of Saint Benedict, lib. 3, cap. 118, has this elogium of him, and calls him Osvinus: “Osvinus,” says he, “monk and disciple of the blessed bishop Chad, a man of great merit and a zealous lover of the regular institution, an East Anglian by nation; when he was a cleric with Queen Etheldreda, and held in great esteem, despising all things he came to Saint Chad dwelling in the monastery which is called Lastingham; in which profiting much, he began to shine with great virtues. He flourished in the year of the Lord — for ’the seventh’ read — 680, as he had said in the preceding chapter of Saint Chad, whom we have said died in the year 685 at his Life.” But Saint Owin was not a cleric of Queen Etheldreda, but, as we said from Bede, the first of the servants and prince of her household — whom the Greeks would have called Oeconomus [steward] and the Franks of that century Major-domus.

¹¹ Arnoldus Wion, citing Trithemius, records him in the Appendix to the Benedictine Martyrology in these words: “Saint Osvinus, monk of Lastingham under Saint Chad the abbot, shone with great virtues.” There is inscribed in the English Martyrology of the first edition, on the 29th of July, the commemoration of the blessed Owen the confessor, of Lichfield in Staffordshire, with a larger elogium taken from Bede. Ferrarius in his General Catalogue, on the authority of the said Martyrology, has this: “In England, of the blessed Odoenus the confessor”; and asserts in his Notes that he lived about the year 689. On the 4th of March the commemoration of the blessed Owin the monk of Lichfield in England is recorded by Edward Maihew in the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict, by Menardus in the Benedictine Martyrology, and by Bucelinus likewise in the Benedictine Menology, and both Bucelinus and Maihew describe more at large from Bede. Lastly, Jerome Porter in the Flowers of the Lives of the more illustrious saints of England, Scotland and Ireland published the Life of Saint Owin in English on the 4th of March. Which Flowers being cited, the saint is set forth in the English Martyrology of the second edition on the same 4th of March; and it is added that a temple was dedicated in honour of this saint, bearing his name, in the city of Gloucester upon the river Severn, situate in the kingdom of the West Saxons. For the rest, whether Saint Chad lived according to the rule of Saint Benedict, and did not rather retain the manner of living of Saint Aidan and the rule of Saint Columba the abbot, we have inquired at his Life §9, which it is not needful here to repeat.

OF SAINT BASIN [follows in the original].