Here begins the letter sent to the lord Henry, treating of the genealogy of Saint Oswald, king and glorious martyr, from his origin.

¹ To the venerable lord and father in Christ, Henry, formerly sub-prior of Durham, his own Reginald wishes him the head of his second name cut off, and that he may hold what remains of it in happier times.

² To renew things grown old, to gather and unite things scattered, to bind into one sheaf the handfuls of many, is the work of prudent zeal, of a wise mind, of learned eloquence. We can presume to nothing of the kind, nor can we country-bred cloister-dwellers lay claim to the refinements of urbanity. For we have never touched the colours of rhetoric; we have not dipped our pens in the studies of Mount Parnassus’s discipline, nor moistened the lips of our ignorant mind from the flowing veins of the Castalian spring; but in the favour of the Lord Jesus we have pressed the clusters of souls, and marvelled at grapes yellowing with the ripeness of age, from whose lower shoots we have drawn out budding sycamores, and gathered certain dry twigs to kindle the fire of our poor zeal. And if anyone should carp at the composition of this little work with a spiteful tooth, his envy is a small venomous viper, like the one that once fastened on the hand of Paul at his labour; and so we shake off into the fire it kindles the venom of such viperous envy, for the file of another’s malice can never corrode the humble hand of an innocent conscience. For only the spark of devotion calls us; no arrogance of ambition inflames us with its urging — only the command of your kindly pleasure, not the profit of anyone’s shameless flattery. We have judged it better to satisfy our devotion than to spare the spite of rivals. For your affection, once pledged though only in word, grows day by day to its increase; the word given is strengthened in truth, and the resolve is rooted in the consolation of a perfect hope. Since therefore faith is in the word and the hundredfold fruit of hope is in the promise, the manifold offering of charity cannot fail the test of the most constant practice. Heartened by these consolations of kindness, we promise you more of ourselves than we think fit to commit to common pens. In us, then, faith does not waver, hope does not stray, and the spark of love flashes in its warmth; for faith is rooted in growth, hope is brought forth into effect, and love is delighted in a gentle fruit — a fruit that rejoices in the work, is leafy in consolation, flowers in the sweetness of charity, and ripens in the devoted long-suffering of a ready faith. Your charity, indeed, is long-suffering and not fickle, steadfast in kindness and unbending, shining with the fruitfulness of a pious work, not painted over with a veneer of colour nor outwardly daubing the lips of those who speak with you with the brass-bright pigment of flattery; but what it gladly begins it faithfully unfolds, and what it asserts in word it completes in the work’s deed. For such an offspring of works flows from the nature of sweetness inborn in us; your hand would never so readily unfold each of these in deed, unless the mind of inward sweetness possessed their offspring rooted in you by a natural privilege of worth. For as the root of a noble stock readily puts forth a shoot, so the mind begotten of a twofold generosity produces, without expenditure of labour, the pattern of an illustrious purpose by the free grace of the virtues. Rightly, therefore, is the parentage of so great a man as King Oswald inquired into — he whose glory of birth seems the very image of virtue and the prerogative of signal grace. For it befits the mind of a virtuous king to seek specially the origin of royal dignity. And if it be impossible to compare with him in the pomp of illustrious blood, yet it is possible to be rendered comparable by the holy example of imitation. For surely where the mind does not differ in the emulation of a like imitation, there the comparison worthily agrees, acceptable by the signal grace of nobility. For the nobility of a generous bloodline in God’s sight proves to be a work of consummate virtue. And yet it was not your devotion’s urgency that first discovered how to seek his glory; rather, the king’s own gratuitous clemency anticipated us by the marks of his benevolence. For on his birthday he preferred us to the rest of our brethren for the ministry and example of his guidance. For on the day on which he bowed his venerable head to the sword for Christ, like a gentle lamb, on that same day he distributed to you the sword of the purest judgement of examination, into your hands, by a provident dispensation, among his people. On the day on which he gave up his head to the executioner’s blows, on that day he set you over many kingdoms and tribes of souls. On that very day King Oswald exalted the royal man over his own; under the season of that light the glorious pilgrim fell for his own people; for as you towered from your shoulders upward over the whole company of the brethren’s college, so by the hidden providence of God you were found worthy to be preferred in the empire of power over the various orders of ruling authorities. Therefore by these utterances of sweetness King Oswald, coming before you, summoned you to the ministry of his royal stewardship, and entrusted to you the guidance of his church by the enjoined office of service; and that you might be made a lamp of teaching upon the candlestick of the church of Durham, he raised you from beneath the bushel of innocent humility above the orderings of the regular discipline. From that point you have already passed through three further degrees under his leadership as forerunner, but in all these you have not yet found a steadfastly enduring station. For Oswald first created you sublime in the church; Saint Cuthbert consecrated you steward in the island; Paul instructed you as master of the household in the tentmaker’s art; and last, the bishop of Durham chose you as leader in the notary’s art. And so, in the beginning of the king’s virtue you obtained grace through the bounty of ecclesiastical rule and government; in the next, the work and providence of stewardship through the management of the house and the diligent care of guests; in the third station, skill in true architecture and knowledge of husbandry through the effective training of an able mind; and in the fourth, the eloquence and experience of doctrine through the manifold character and figure of scriptural exercise. And this alone remains: that, blessed Oswald providing, the sharing in that former rule be renewed through fullness of power — the care of stewardship into the working of every kind of execution in husbandry and architecture, into the rule and ordering of souls to be cherished and exhorted heavenward — and the writer’s pen into the record of teaching and preaching. Moreover, in running through the texts of various histories we have gleaned, and since we knew the desire of your heart for the glory of Saint Oswald, we have gathered as briefly as we could the facts of his genealogy, nobility and descent. All these we have bound into a little handbook and set at the head of our work. For it is fitting to begin at the head, from whose opening is seen to flow all that is found done in the rest of the body; and he will be able the more easily to understand the remainder who has deigned to unravel these first by reading. For he who comes to know the origin of that glorious king will be able without error to discern, observe and weigh the course of this work, the prodigies of his virtue, the great deeds of his nobility, and the miracles of his renowned piety.

The chapters of the book that follows #

¹ On the noble stock of this glorious king and martyr, and on his life and conduct and end, and on those things handed down and attested by truthful men.

² From which stock of the English Saint Oswald’s mother sprang, and from which kings’ issue she was born, and where she received the faith with Saint Oswald and his brothers.

³ From which royal line he took his wife, and how he received the maiden’s father from the font of baptism, and gave Saint Birinus the seat of his bishopric.

⁴ On Æthelwald, son of the most holy King Oswald: what he did, where he reigned, and how much of his father’s kingdom he held.

⁵ Who converted Saint Edwin and at what time, and how Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne long governed the see of York.

⁶ Which kings are removed from the roll of Christian kings, and how and by whom they were slain, and how Saint Oswald conquered, and on Saint Edwin and his wife and sons.

⁷ On the benefits and piety of Æthelwald, Saint Oswald’s son, and likewise on his ferocity and his persecution of his own kin.

⁸ That it should not offend the reader’s mind to hear that Saint Oswald sprang in part from pagan stock: a fragrant flower sprouting from a thorn-bush.

⁹ On the kings who reigned before and after Saint Oswald, and how they killed one another, and how his persecutors perished, and against whom he raised the cross.

¹⁰ On the plenty of his times and the pestilence that followed in Saint Oswald’s day, and how, angels appearing to him, both the people and he himself were delivered from death for his merits.

¹¹ Which wife the renowned King Oswald took, and with what end she departed, and how greatly he loved the honour of purity.

¹² Where the place is where Saint Oswald fell in death, and how he drove Penda into Armonia, that is, Wales, and how he had earlier wrested from him the kingdom he had seized.

¹³ By what miracles Saint Oswald’s head was lifted from the ground, and where it was afterwards kept for a long time.

¹⁴ How and where King Penda cut off Saint Oswald while he was undefended, and where that place is in which he slew him.

¹⁵ How King Oswy was warned in a vision concerning Saint Oswald’s arms, and how he was instructed therein from heaven.

¹⁶ On the dress and appearance of the man who stood by him in the vision.

¹⁷ How a very great bird carried off Saint Oswald’s arm from the stake, and how the dead tree grew green at its touch, and how swift a vengeance comes upon anyone who takes anything from it.

¹⁸ How a living spring burst from the hardest flint where, by God’s providence, the hand with the arm of Saint Oswald fell to the ground.

¹⁹ Why no royal son succeeded Saint Oswald, but the kingdom passed rather to Saint Oswald’s brother.

²⁰ How Saint Oswald’s brother and son flourished in piety, and how faithful they proved, and to what pursuits they devoted themselves.

²¹ From which stock holy King Ceolwulf sprang, and how long he reigned; and on the desolation of the church of Lindisfarne and its vengeance, and how Ceolwulf made the monks drink beer.

²² In what year that king became a monk, and what he suffered in the kingdom, and in what year he departed, and which English kings then became monks.

²³ On the deeds of King Æthelfrith, Saint Oswald’s father, and on the death of his uncle Theobald.

²⁴ What Saint Augustine foretold to the Britons who resisted the faith, and how God fulfilled it through the tyranny of King Æthelfrith.

²⁵ How King Æthelfrith, meeting the Britons, inflicted boundless slaughter, sparing neither monk nor Christian.

²⁶ How fierce and pitiless he was towards his own household, and from which kings’ stock he drew the origin of his royal birth.

²⁷ What sons he had, and how Saint Edwin was made a fugitive for a long time through fear of him.

²⁸ How much King Æthelfrith offered King Rædwald for the murder of King Edwin, but the king was turned from his purpose by the queen’s counsels.

²⁹ How and where Edwin overtook King Æthelfrith, and where he was killed.

³⁰ At what time and for how long Edwin, Saint Oswald’s uncle, reigned, and on his deeds and sons, and by whom he was slain.

³¹ How the offspring of King Æthelfrith lived in exile throughout King Edwin’s time, and how a good part of them there received the faith.

³² On King Eanfrith and Osric, who reigned after the death of the holy King Edwin and divided the kingdom of the Northumbrians in two.

³³ How those kings forsook the faith and were deservedly forsaken by God.

³⁴ With what and how swift a vengeance God allowed the apostate kings to be destroyed and blotted out.

³⁵ On Cædwalla, king of the Britons, who was an apostate, whom Saint Oswald destroyed.

³⁶ How greatly Saint Oswald increased in the kingdom and enlarged the bounds of his realm.

³⁷ How greatly Saint Oswald was revered in the time of his reign and held in awe by all.

³⁸ How Saint Oswald came into the southern parts and raised the king of the Saxons from the font of baptism.

³⁹ In what year of the Lord’s Incarnation Saint Oswald was born, and how chronicles of differing reckonings may be found in him.

⁴⁰ In what year the blessed King Oswald suffered martyrdom, and on the time of his exile, and also on the differing reckoning of his age.

⁴¹ On King Oswy, Saint Oswald’s brother, who succeeded him, and how much he endured.

⁴² How Saint Columba appeared to the holy King Oswald and bade him advance against his enemies.

⁴³ Where the blessed Oswald’s body was buried, and how through the keepers’ carelessness nearly all his bones were stolen from Bardney, and how many remained there, and what power of virtue they have miraculously retained to this day against the misery of fevers.

⁴⁴ What a fragrance of sweetness flowed from the relics of the martyr Saint Oswald.

⁴⁵ On the brief prologue to another work: how the writer conceived the undertaking of this account of Saint Oswald, and laid the first foundations of the work for the praise and glory of the victorious king and martyr Oswald.

⁴⁶ On the other little book published in honour of the glorious king and martyr Oswald, on the noble stock of that renowned king and on his life and conduct, his fortune and end, and on the burial of his relics.

⁴⁷ On the arms of Saint Oswald, his hands incorrupt, which Queen Bebbe took up, and how she laid them in the royal city.

⁴⁸ On the right arm stolen at Bamburgh and transferred to the church of Saint Peter at Burgh, but exalted with great honour among the local people.

Book Two #

¹ How Saint Oswald’s venerable head was carried to Saint Cuthbert’s tomb by his own revelation, and how it was taken from Bamburgh and wondrously placed in the holy bishop’s tomb.

² On the form of the blessed Oswald and the comeliness of his beauty, on his aspect and figure, as it is found in the old books of the English tongue — which we have translated into Latin word for word as best we could.

³ On the character and form of the venerable head of the king and martyr Oswald: how it was shaped, how it was wounded in battle, and how precious a portion is laid in blessed Cuthbert’s tomb.

⁴ The figurative significance of these same things: how they may be mystically referred to allegory, and how, theologically, they wondrously and plainly fore-signify the heavenly mysteries.

⁵ On the character and form of the arm of the holy king and martyr Oswald, and on the wholeness and incorruption of that sacred right hand.

⁶ On understanding the mystery of these things figuratively: how the features observed in the renowned king and martyr’s arm may most fittingly be applied under a figure to his own marvellous works, signs and wonders.

⁷ On a sufficiently reliable argument by which we may discover without error the year of the Lord’s Incarnation together with Saint Cuthbert’s passing, and likewise find the year of Saint Oswald’s deposition.

⁸ On the difference between the years of Saint Oswald and Saint Cuthbert, and how Saint Oswald’s head was not kept hidden in the earth so long, but was honoured much earlier.

Book III #

¹ On the book of the life and miracles of the holy and most glorious king and martyr Oswald, as contained in the ecclesiastical book of the English nation published by the blessed Bede.

² How a certain man was cured of a pain in the arm by the wood of the cross which he had raised against the barbarians.

³ How the king gave to the bishop whom he had obtained from the Scots an episcopal seat on the island of Lindisfarne, and how he served as interpreter of the heavenly word.

⁴ On the religion and piety of King Oswald, and how, according to Bishop Aidan’s prayer, his right hand remains gloriously incorrupt even now.

⁵ How, in the place of his slaying, amid frequent miracles of healing, a certain traveller’s beast was cured, and then a paralysed girl was healed.

⁶ How dust from the place of his slaying availed against fire.

⁷ How a light sent from heaven stood all night over his relics at Bardney.

⁸ How demoniacs were cured by the dust in which the washing-water of his relics had been poured.

⁹ How a little boy was cured at his tomb of a most grievous fever.

¹⁰ How he ended his life amid the words of prayer, praying for the souls of his army.

¹¹ How in Ireland a certain scholar was recalled from the point of death by his relics.

¹² How the birthday of Saint Oswald, king and martyr, was commanded from heaven to be celebrated.

Here begins the little book written in honour of Saint Oswald.

Chapter One: On the noble stock of this glorious king and martyr, and on his life and conduct and end, and on the burial of his relics, and on those things handed down and attested by truthful men #

¹ It is a pleasure to dig up the treasures of the heavenly deposit, in which we may learn how the fragrances of heavenly spices bubble up as they flow forth. Let us dig, then, with the zeal of piety, and as quickly as we can reach with discerning nostrils the fragrance of the knowledge of the truth. And let us take the beginning of our truthful discourse from no other than our Oswald, as we may glean it from separate little leaves and manifold histories. For our Oswald flowers like the palm of virtue, is fragrant like the rose of sweetness, and shines like a gem of transparent and peerless brightness. The palm of virtue is his through the crown of martyrdom by triumph; the rose of sweetness through the reddening stream of his own blood by the sacrifice of his sacred passion; the gem of peerless brightness is plain to all through the example of his generous nobility. For our Oswald descended from royal seed, as the stem of his nobility sufficiently shows. For he sprang from that generous stock from which the whole fountainhead of England flowed. In the year 547 from the Lord’s Incarnation — and in the ninety-eighth year from the coming of the English into England, when Horsa and Hengest came in three ships — Ida, the first king of the English, began to reign in the province of the Northumbrians, from whom the whole first origin of the kings of that province began. For this Ida had come that same year, with his father Eoppa as his companion, with forty ships to Flamborough; and advancing from there, and afterwards occupying the northern parts, he reigned there first for twelve years. This Ida built the royal vill of Bamburgh, and surrounded it first with a hedge and afterwards with a wall; and he had six sons by the queen, whose names are these: Adda, Æthelric, Theodric, Æthric, Theotri, Osmer. But he had six others by a concubine, whose names historical authority has recorded: Ogg, Alric, Ecca, Osbald, Scor and Steotheri. When Ida died, Ælle succeeded in the kingdom of the Deirans; but Adda, Ida’s son, received only the kingdom of the Bernicians. Now this King Ælle did not descend from the seed of Ida, yet Ælle also originally flowed from Woden, from whom Ida drew his origin. So Ælle reigned in Deira after Ida’s death, while Adda succeeded his father Ida. The kingdom of the Deirans of old ran from the river Humber to the channel where the Tyne begins; the kingdom of the Bernicians extended its bound and compass from the Tyne’s starting-point as far as the Scottish Water, which in the language of the Scots is called the Forth. But whatever lay between the rivers Tyne and Tees was then a sheer desert waste, and therefore served no one’s dominion, and so was the lair and habitation of wild and untamed beasts alone. Adda reigned eight years in Bernicia; after him Clappa one year; after him Hussa seven years; after him Fridwulf seven years, Theodoric seven, Æthelric four. To these succeeded as eighth king Æthelfrith, son of Æthelric son of Ida, holding the kingdom in Bernicia twenty-four years — who first, in the fruit of his seed, found the eighth beatitude, and afterwards received in the throne of the divine predestination the prize of eternal reward among the twenty-four elders by the palm of martyrdom. For this Æthelfrith, king of the Bernicians, married Acca the daughter of Ælle king of the Deirans, from whom he begot the heavenly pledge who bore Oswald, king and martyr. And so he had seven sons — Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswy, Oslac, Oswudu, Osaf, Offa — of whom the first two, Eanfrith and Oswald, were by King Ælle’s daughter, while the rest came from concubines. But that we may know the blessed Oswald’s forebears more deeply, let us now weave the line of his genealogy in a fuller yet briefer discourse. His father, then, was Æthelfrith king of the Bernicians, who succeeded King Æthelric, Ida’s second son.

Chapter Two: From which stock of the English Saint Oswald’s mother sprang, and from which kings’ issue she was born, and where she received the faith with Saint Oswald and his brothers #

¹ But since we have now said what he had in common with the rest, let us next set down what is particular to him among them. The most illustrious King Oswald was begotten of royal seed on both parents’ sides. For his mother Acca, queen of the Bernicians, was the daughter of Ælle king of the Deirans, whose lineage drew its origin from this genealogy. In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 560, King Ælle began to reign in the province of the Northumbrians and, after King Ida, was the first to possess the kingdom of the Deirans. He begot Edwin, king and martyr, whom he left behind as surviving heir of the kingdom; and Acca his daughter, that same Edwin’s sister, he begot by the same wife. But that we may see more deeply the nobility of the holy martyr Oswald’s stock, let us examine the very origin of his dignity somewhat more subtly. His father Ælle drew his origin thus, as we shall show below in a brief account of the descent. From such a line Saint Oswald’s mother was begotten, who was named Acca. Now this Ælle was her father — he at whom Saint Gregory hinted when he said of the name: “That king is well named Ælle,” he said, “because in those parts Alleluia must be sung in praise of the Creator.” He died when thirty years were completed, and left behind his son Edwin — Acca’s brother — as surviving heir of the kingdom. Now Æthelfrith, Saint Oswald’s father, king of the Bernicians, although he had the sister of Edwin king of the Deirans as his wife, yet covetous of glory drove him from the kingdom and reigned some while in his place. Edwin, an exile at the court of King Rædwald, received from him the benefit of much honour. At last, relying on Rædwald’s counsel and the help of a countless host, he gathered an army; and Rædwald, slaying King Æthelfrith, restored Edwin to the kingdom of the Deirans, which King Edwin ordered in seventeen years of reigning; and afterwards, crowned with martyrdom, he brought his life’s course to its end, and so received from the Lord the victory of the heavenly palm. He, so long as he lived, first obtained the restored rule of both the kingdom of the Deirans and that of the Bernicians. For when Æthelfrith had been slain, his sons together with their mother took flight, and lay hidden in Scotland through the whole reign of Edwin their uncle. There Oswald, a youth of good disposition, received his pious mother’s teaching and turned the doctrine of the faith to the laver. For whatever goodness he could hear from the discipline of the Scots, he held beforehand as an example of religious living. There in the time of his pilgrimage he both perfectly learned the language of the Scots, and strengthened by the instruction of that believing people the teachings of the faith which he had earlier received from his Christian mother; and purified by the laver of sacred baptism, he renounced the guilt of his former life by a perfect forsaking. But when his uncle King Edwin had been killed by Cædwalla king of the Britons and Penda king of the Mercians, Eanfrith, the firstborn of King Æthelfrith, returned from the exile of the Scots, and held his father’s kingdom of the Bernicians — but for one year only. When he was slain after that year, Saint Oswald, second among the sons, succeeded him; and he subjected to himself the dominion not only of the Bernicians and Deirans but also of the Picts and the Scots, and joined Deira and Bernicia into the union of one kingdom. These kingdoms he held all his days; and with the rude peoples round about subdued, while Aidan preached the word of God, he stood for many days as interpreter in the tongues he had learned before.

Chapter Three: From which royal line he took his wife, and how he received the maiden’s father from the font of baptism, and gave Saint Birinus the seat of his bishopric #

¹ The blessed Oswald therefore, as he drew his origin from a most noble stock, so also joined to himself a wife of noble lineage. For to come to his line: Ceolric king of the West Saxons reigned six years, Ceolwulf twenty-four; after these came the brother of them both, Cynegisl. This Cynegisl was received from baptism by Oswald king of the Northumbrians — whose daughter that same Oswald was to marry. Cynegisl had three brothers who were kings of the West Saxons; and they gave to King Oswald, for the nobility of his stock, the daughter of their brother, King Cynegisl. For the glorious King Oswald was unwilling to take the daughter of an unbelieving rich man, noble king though he was, unless he might first — by God’s disposing and his own diligent warning — rescue her father, whose daughter he was to take, from the yoke of the devil, to win him for the Lord. So the maiden’s father, yielding to the counsels of the blessed Oswald and to the word of Saint Birinus’s preaching, was baptised by that same Birinus in King Oswald’s presence, and was raised from the waters of baptism by Oswald himself. So it came to pass, in a very beautiful sight, that Oswald stood godfather in Christ to the maiden’s father, and that he whose daughter he had begot for himself in Christ a little son. This Birinus, a holy man, the venerable Pope Honorius had sent into the parts of England to preach the word of faith; it was he who baptised this King Cynegisl while King Oswald stood by. So the two kings, Cynegisl and Oswald, gave Saint Birinus Dorchester for the seat of his bishopric; and there, when churches had been built, he was buried, and after many years, when Chad was exercising the bishopric, he was translated to Venta, that is Winchester, and placed in the church of Saint Peter. Oswald indeed, when he had reigned nine years — the year of the apostate kings being reckoned in — was slain by the vigorous Penda in a heavy battle fought at Maserfelth, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, on the fifth day of August. So it is said: “The field of Maserfelth was white with the bones of saints.” So Oswald, dying, had his brother Oswy as heir of the kingdom — he who slew Penda king of the Mercians after he had reigned thirty years. Peada the son of Penda succeeded him, but prevailed to hold the kingdom for a very little while; for Oswy, having overthrown him, held the kingdom of the Mercians three years; but afterwards Wulfhere the son of Peada strove against King Oswy, and at last won the kingdom of his fathers, that is, of the Mercians.

Chapter Eight: That it should not offend the reader’s mind to hear that Saint Oswald openly sprang from pagan stock — a fragrant flower sprouting from a thorn-bush #

¹ So far, then, our discourse on the generous stock of the holy King Oswald has run its course, and it has made the nobility of his birth clear enough to us in its exposition. In these matters let our less polished discourse not displease, since the thread of historical narrative asks for nothing but the bare simplicity of the letter. And let it not offend the reader’s mind that the first beginning of his genealogy was drawn from a pagan people. For the bramble-bush hemmed in by the rough growth of thorns is at times adorned with the glory of a rose’s fragrant sweetness. And the grain that is sown without blemish is not brought forth to the fallow field without a covering of chaff. Nor is the purest oil drawn off by the straining press unless it is first separated and drawn out from the foulest lees. Even so, even so our Oswald is drawn forth from the thorn-bush of the pagan race like a flowering rose, is begotten from the chaff of abject uncleanness like the whitest wheat, and is strained from the lees of reprobate seed like a wine of sweet-flowing purity. It should breed no wonder, then, if by the grace of God’s working a vessel of election is made by being separated off from reprobate forebears. But to recall other examples of the same kind: Abraham, chosen from Ur of the Chaldees, obtained the land of heavenly reward by the gift of divine promise. Moses was raised out of the dark filth of the Egyptians as a herald of virtue. Lot also was alone chosen out of the cities of Sodom by a special mercy. Nor is it a far-fetched example that our Oswald was brought out of the fires of vice and the iron furnace of iniquity like gold tried in the fire — that out of a reprobate pagan way of life he was raised up as a leader, herald and minister of a holy one, and that out of the craftiness of a united malice and perversity, which is hidden wickedness, he was joined to Christ by the grace of faith to the praise of preaching and confession, the divine pledge of the gift furrowing beneath from heaven. And he possesses a gift of glory with God greater in proportion as he cannot be said to have drawn the pattern of Christian imitation from his forefathers. For what turns aside from evil into the imitation of good is more precious and more excellent than the rest, since it inflames, provokes and instructs others who follow it by the imitable emulation of its goodness.

Chapter Nine: On the kings who reigned before and after Saint Oswald, and how they killed one another, how his persecutors perished, and against whom he raised the cross #

¹ Let us touch here on some beginning from the time of Saint Oswald’s father, according to the faithful histories, and bind into a little handbook what pertains to this work concerning the kings who followed. After Saint Augustine came into England, Saint Oswald’s father King Æthelfrith defeated Brocmail at Leicester, where the monks of whom Saint Bede writes were slain. Afterwards Cadfan, reigning this side of the Humber, brought up Edwin, Saint Oswald’s brother-in-law, together with his own son Cædwalla; then, when both were reigning, King Edwin defeated Cædwalla and drove him into Armonia. At last Cædwalla, returning with many troops, first defeated Penda king of the Mercians and allied him to himself — and by him afterwards were slain Saint Edwin, and King Eanfrith, Saint Oswald’s firstborn brother who had been his predecessor in the kingdom, and King Osric, Edwin’s nephew and successor. And Penda king of the Mercians slew Saint Oswald; but Oswy, Saint Oswald’s brother, slew Penda. This Cædwalla of whom we have spoken, when he had reigned forty-eight years, is buried at the gate of London beside the church of Saint Martin, in a bronze image upon a bronze horse. At last Cadwallader reigned in his stead — he whom Saint Bede calls Cædwalla — who was the son of Cædwalla and of Penda’s sister. Then, when a most savage pestilence came, he fled into Armonia to King Alan, nephew of Solomon; while the English, coming from Germany, possessed the lands emptied by the plague. And King Cadwallader went to Rome, never to return. From then on Britain utterly lost both name and kingdom. Now this same Cædwalla was a pagan king; it was against his army and himself that Saint Oswald raised the standard of the cross and conquered.

Chapter Ten: On the plenty of his times and the pestilence that followed in Saint Oswald’s day, and how, angels appearing to him, both the people and he himself were delivered from death for his merits #

¹ Since, then, we have learned that many of God’s miracles shone forth in Christ’s holy martyr Oswald in the several places of the land, let us write down one renowned miracle concerning him; what we read was done while he was still dwelling in this present life, we shall set forth more plainly in what follows. While the most blessed King Oswald held the kingdom, the grace of faith began to flower effectively under the days of his rule through many marks of virtue. For on account of the merits of his renowned holiness God’s mercy enlarged the bounds of his kingdom more abundantly; the land subject to him, endowed with the light of faith, shone bright. So the wealth of all things increased for all his subjects, and a wondrous bounty of goodness flowed out in the richer fruits of every crop. Poverty in those days was almost unknown within the bounds of the English, because his land was exceedingly wealthy, abounding beyond number in the thousandfold fruits of the husbandmen. He himself would not suffer any believer to be publicly poor, for the hunger of the poor whom he knew he took care to relieve most richly, whether by most wealthy estates or by most generous gifts. When therefore he thus bestowed the work of love upon his subjects by God’s grace, it came about by God’s dispensation that he chose to test the faith of the newly-believing by scourges. A very grievous pestilence being therefore sent upon the land of the English on every side, very many perished in the most savage destruction, while many for the merit of their faith ascended to the heavenly kingdoms. When the holy king saw the judgement of divine retribution hanging over the people subject to him, he began to be often anxious with tears, and with most complaining cries and groans to ascribe this scourge of God chiefly to his own sins: “It is I who have sinned,” he said; “I have done wickedly; these who are sheep, what have they deserved? Against me, Lord, and against my house let the sword of your vengeance be turned, if my wickedness or that of my people has earned this.” As he persisted long in prayers and tears, it suddenly came about by God’s dispensation that the pestilence seized the king himself, to chastise him by the same affliction and make him better. For the divine dispensation willed to cleanse the vessel of his election pure from every stain of earthly living, lest any guilt of vanity or worldly exaltation should remain unpunished in his body or his breast. The most pious king, then, seized by the bitter pain of sickness, grew wholly pale and began to stiffen through his whole body. And afflicted for many days with most grievous pains, he began to torture himself with a double grief and to sweat under a twofold labour of anguish. For he grieved in mind that he saw the nobler men of the kingdom departing in miserable haste, and he was saddened in unspeakable faint-heartedness that he was compelled by every weakness of the body to exceed his strength. An icy tremor ran through his bones, and an almost intolerable burning devoured his inner parts. Brought thus to the last extremity, he began to pant as one now at the point of death, feverish and failing. And calling to himself certain of his familiars and friends, he began to disclose everything to them, and foretold that the day of his departure hung over him from the exceeding anguish of his pain. The cry of all of them, with hands clapped together, is raised to the stars; and with tears flowing abundantly down their faces the whole royal hall is filled with the shrill groans of desolation. At last, the holy bishops and priests taking counsel and unceasingly imploring God’s mercy, the Eucharist of the Lord’s holy body is brought, and the holy king is most devoutly fortified by the Lord’s sacraments. Then, with almost all the strength of his spirit failing and his soul scarce subsisting, as was thought, in a gasping breast, he began to raise the lights of his eyes to heaven, and at times to move his lips from the very depths as though conversing with certain persons. For his inward eyes, as he was afterwards wont to relate to the holy bishops, had been so unveiled, together with his bodily ones, from every phantasm, that he clearly beheld certain angelic spirits standing by in a glorious vision. Of their number three had descended, drawing near to him, and comforting him, refreshed him with manifold sweetness. At last they spoke, beginning thus: “Oswald,” they said, “most chosen king of God, fear the horror of death no longer; for you are reckoned our fellow in heaven, and when the term of your life is completed you will be joined to our company. Yet you shall not die at this time, nor be struck further by the bitterness of this pestilence. For Christ, pitying the straits of your desolation, has for your holy prayers freed and delivered all the English people from the plague of this destruction, and has graciously added so many years to your life. And indeed he has ordained that you shall end in martyrdom, and has committed to us, from now on, the guardianship of you both living and dying.” And they appointed for him the day and hour of his martyrdom, and declared that they would then meet him at that time. Their faces shone beyond the sun’s most splendid brightness, and the king could not describe their form in words for the dignity of their wondrous glory. When these things were done, the citizens of heaven betook themselves to the secrets of the heavenly throne and presented themselves to the sight of God. And the holy king at once, on hearing these things, grew strong; nor did any misery of destruction venture during the whole time of his life to trouble the bounds of the English further. From that time he showed himself in all things more amended before God and men, and awaited the end of his life with joy. He rose above all the vanities of his past life in devotion of mind, and took care continually and daily to redeem his former negligences by alms and tears. These things we have translated from a most ancient English account, and have chosen to set forth henceforth more clearly for Latin ears.

Chapter Eleven: Which wife the renowned King Oswald took, and with what end she departed, and how greatly he loved the honour of purity #

¹ And because the holy king, chastised by God’s scourges, took care diligently to amend whatever he had previously exceeded in anything, it came to pass that after this glory of the vision he separated his wife Cyniburga, King Cynegisl’s daughter, from the fellowship of one bed, and thereafter preserved the purity of unstained chastity. Yet he had earlier begotten offspring by her — the one son whom alone he possessed on earth. She indeed, admonished by his wondrous manner of life, began to amend herself both in manners and in works. At last, through the agency and urging of Ostrith, queen of the Mercians — King Oswy’s daughter, whose husband was King Æthelred — she was made a nun and was brought to fulfilment in a holy end. It was also by this queen’s diligence — she who was Saint Oswald’s brother’s daughter — that the bones of Saint Oswald, once found, were placed upon a cart and translated to the church of Bardney.

Chapter Twelve: Where the place is where Saint Oswald fell in death, and how he drove Penda into Armonia, and how he had earlier wrested from him the kingdom he had seized #

¹ The field, then, in which Saint Oswald was killed is called Maserfelth. This place borders on the bounds of Welsh Armonia — for a very great part of Wales was once called Armonia. It lies about seven miles from the city of Shrewsbury towards that same Wales, and the territory itself falls under the rule of the abbot of that town. In the depth of that field a church, which is called the White Church, is founded in Saint Oswald’s honour. Not far from it a never-failing spring rises, which the dwellers of that people call Saint Oswald’s Well; and on the bank of the little spring a very great tree is seen to be rooted, beneath the shade of whose crown nearly all the spring’s beauty seems to be covered. For not far from there, where the tree now grows, Saint Oswald’s head with his hands was fixed for a whole year upon stakes, some of which remain in that land even now. For Saint Oswald had subdued the kingdom of the Mercians to himself, and had compelled the pagan King Penda to take flight into Armonia in Wales. And there, having gathered to himself many companies of pagans, he met the Christian king in the place we have spoken of with his deadly band and slew him. So it is read that the brethren of Bardney were unwilling to receive the holy body, because, although they knew him to be holy, yet since he had been born of another province and had taken the kingdom over them, they pursued him even in death with their ancient hatreds.

Chapter Thirteen: By what miracles Saint Oswald’s head was raised from the ground, and where it was afterwards kept for a long time #

¹ Now when Saint Oswald’s head had been buried for some time in the cemetery of Lindisfarne, God’s grace began to declare the great deeds of his holiness and to make plain the marks of his virtue. For very often in the cemetery, over the tomb where the venerable head rested, a light sent from heaven shone out — at times like a lamp, at times like some white shape, yet not like a candle, set upon the tomb, now gleaming like a sheet. To those watching from afar it so appeared; but to those who came near it soon began to vanish. Many times indeed it seemed to rise like a pyramid in the manner of fire, sometimes to glimmer like a burning torch, sometimes to pour down from above in the fashion of driven snow; but when heat or touch was applied, it was at once dissolved and withdrawn. And when this had been sufficiently acknowledged by the king’s royal kinsfolk and often attested by the island’s inhabitants, that venerable head was lifted from the tomb by the kinsfolk of the royal seed, and honourably placed for very many years in the royal city of Bamburgh. But when the offspring of that time departed by the brief course of death, the grace of faith began to grow lukewarm from its fervour, and so they rendered less service of devotion to the blessed martyr. And so, the holy martyr ordaining it, Christ left that place destitute of so great a pledge, and caused the most sacred relics of his king to be transferred to other places.

Chapter Fourteen: How, and where, King Penda cut off King Saint Oswald while he was undefended, and where that place is in which he slew him #

¹ The eternal gifts of Christ are the magnificent and active wonders of God’s saints, in whom he is preached as wonderful because he works great things wondrously in them; their memory neither the length of time buries, nor the ashes of oblivion wear away, nor the paint of long ages overlays. This he has been wont to make known to all in his holy martyr Oswald, both for the glory of his own reward and that the memory of his holiness may be preached more widely to many. Among these it is deservedly extolled that which is daily renewed in his wonders from the deeds of bygone time, even in our own days. For the field in which the glorious martyr fell, lying on the adjoining borders of the English and the Welsh, still continually displays the holy man’s merits by new prodigies and miracles. For in the place of his slaughter a church is built in honour of his name, which is called “the White Church” by the dwellers of the country. In that place he underwent martyrdom, beheaded, and his venerable head together with his sacred and incorrupt hands was fixed upon stakes for a whole year in mockery and reproach. For he had compelled the pagan King Penda to seek flight in the parts of Wales, and so, dwelling there in safety, he had dismissed from him the army which he had. While Saint Oswald therefore dwelt there in security, fearing no adversity to come upon him, Penda suddenly came upon him with a pagan army, and strove to forestall the holy king with death in war. But the man of God, who until then had been praiseworthy for the excellence of his soldiery, refused to take the counsel of flight, lest he should seem a man unskilled in drawing up a line of battle. For it seemed shameful to him to be found conquered and disgraced at the last, who until then had seemed to all strenuous in war and victorious in the field. So calling together a very small band of soldiers, he began to commit himself to Christ, and freely willed to die for the Lord’s honour and the faith of the cross, and for the salvation and deliverance of his Christian people. For he knew that for the passion of his death the blessedness of eternal life would be granted him, as the angel had promised him in the vision, and that for a temporal punishment he would be enriched in the heavens with the eternal crown of glory. And so he went forth the more confidently to the contest of battle, because he saw that by the Lord’s clemency he was being summoned to the crown of martyrdom. Penda therefore, having gathered a not inconsiderable band of pagans, came suddenly upon the field of contest, and together with the holy and most Christian king slaughtered a numerous people of the Christian faith. That field, which won the right to be consecrated by the holy king’s most sacred blood, has kept the name Maserfelth until now. This place stands less than half a mile from the dyke of King Offa, which divides England from northern Wales, a full seven miles from Shrewsbury, and about sixteen miles from the abbey of Wenlock towards the southern quarter. That dyke King Offa had once made; fenced by its defence, he dwelt more securely from his Welsh enemies. For in his time there was perpetual strife between him and the Welsh, and he could in no way escape their assaults or ambushes except by this protection. From sea, then, to sea he girdled nearly all his land towards Wales, and established that dyke to be the boundary of both lands.

Chapter Fifteen: How King Oswy was warned in a vision concerning Saint Oswald’s arm, and how he was instructed therein from heaven #

¹ When the term of the circling year came round, a certain one stood by Oswy, Oswald’s brother, in a vision, and thus beginning, said: “Go,” he said, “with all speed, and seek out by visiting them the regions in which your holy brother Oswald suffered martyrdom for Christ. For Christ’s clemency deems it unworthy that his head, already crowned by God, should remain fixed longer upon a stake; and his providence has resolved to honour his arms with his hands. Until now indeed Christ has not permitted the birds of heaven to touch them or to wound them by defiling, nor has he granted that the burning heat of summer or the horror of cold should be able to cast them down from their first and natural beauty. For even the Creator’s elements serve his sacred limbs, since neither does the dog-days’ heat presume to scorch them, nor do the blasts of the winds dare to stiffen them, nor does the devouring cold know how to seize them, nor the moth of corruption to invade and grip them. Therefore hasten there in haste, and praise God by honouring your brother’s flesh. And this shall be a sign to you: when you arrive there, you will marvel that the right hand with the arm has been torn away from its place upon the stake; but do not be troubled at that, for you will find them not far from there in living waters, where by his merits a perennial spring will by then already have begun to flow from the hardest flint. Yet this will come to pass before your presence reaches there, for it still stands upon the stake, but it is shortly to be laid in the spring.” Saying this, that hero vanished; but the king strove in haste to accomplish the work laid upon him.

Chapter Sixteen: On the dress and appearance of the man who stood by him in the vision #

¹ That man was white in his clothing, ruddy and red in face, composed in bearing and tall with a moderate dignity; and a flashing brightness came forth from his aspect, so that the king could scarce fasten his gaze upon the face of the one who spoke. These things the king afterwards related to those who spoke with him, and declared that the blessed one had been of wondrous sweetness and delight. It was perhaps some spirit from above the heavens, who had come sent by God to the ministry of such an office. For often, God so ordaining, such things come to pass which the recesses of the human conscience cannot detect. The knowledge of them belongs to God’s providence alone.

Chapter Seventeen: How a very great bird carried off Saint Oswald’s arm from the stake, and how the dead tree grew green at its touch, and how swift a vengeance comes upon anyone who takes anything from it #

¹ The king therefore, warned by the divine oracle, hastened to reach the place, and burned with anxiety to see with bodily eyes what he had beheld in mind. Arriving there, he took down the holy head, wholly unharmed, with the left arm and hand from the stakes; but he groaned somewhat in grief at the absence of the right hand with its arm. Yet remembering the oracle, he could not doubt the certainty of what was to come, since the divine disposition knows how to elude deceit, and not to deceive anyone by deceiving. Then, by the wondrous disposition of God — that the oracle’s vision might accord with the event itself — before King Oswy’s arrival a very great bird appeared, of a size never before seen in those parts, which took the right hand with the arm from the stake and flew with reverence, bearing so precious a prey, to a tree in a neighbouring place. That bird was, as was thought, of the raven kind; but by reason of its great beak and talons it seemed formed to the likeness of an eagle; otherwise it could never have lifted so great a portion of prey, unless the bird had been most excellent in both strength and body. The tree itself is an ash, which stands about half a furlong’s length from the place of that martyrdom. For the course of a single arrow’s flight fairly measures the interval between the two places, which it covers in traversing about half a furlong’s space. But the ash at that time was ancient, and appeared to all beholders squalid and unlovely, with falling leaves and boughs withering with age and decay. For it showed neither beauty nor grace nor the serene delight of foliage nor the richness of leaves, but had so far wasted with age and fallen away from almost all its strength of greenness that it was withered in leaf, foliage and bark. And while it sought the repose of rest in the bosom of that tree among the thickets of foliage, it happened that taking leaves by turns it coursed about among the branches on either side. The boughs indeed, which had dried up with age, under the mass of so great a body gave way beneath it, bending now rigidly now otherwise. For while each bough bent away to make room on the side, the aged dryness, not bearing such things, made it groan with murmuring at every limb, and crack with a shrill nodding. But by God’s wondrous power, never from the time that bird had settled on it did either length of years alter that tree, or the severity of winter cast it down, or the leaf gnawed by age afflict it, or whitening foliage blight it. Even to this day its crown is clothed with rich and verdant leaf, its abundance of foliage spreads wide and far, and the surface of its bark is seen whole and preserved. Let no one doubt that this came to pass by the holy martyr’s merits, since the flourishing ancient tree commends the traces and tokens of that right hand’s incorruption. From that same time, then, the tree began to flower and put forth leaves, nor did it ever afterwards fail from the pleasantness of its greenness and beauty. Indeed, as the inhabitants of the region assert, never after that time have any seen that tree growing or declining for the worse; but it ever perseveres in the same state, nor could it fall away from the beauty it had first received at that moment. Nor has anyone until now been able to tear or pluck anything from its foliage or leaves with impunity, without at once receiving the due penalty of vengeance for his rashness. And so even to this day it is presumed to be harmed by no one, since all hold it for proven that it would not go unexpiated without a swift and most heavy punishment. And that tree is named Saint Oswald’s Ash by all the people of the land, nor is there anyone of so fierce a heart who presumes to tear a bough or leaf from it or carry it from there. Yet many sick folk flock there, and by the blessed martyr’s merits are wont to obtain the aid of health, whether by the tree’s shade or by the touch or taste of its leaf or foliage.

Chapter Eighteen: How a living spring burst from the hardest flint where, by God’s providence, the hand with the arm of Saint Oswald fell to the ground #

¹ While the bird lingered somewhere in the tree’s branches with the plunder of so great a treasure, it came about by God’s disposing that the bird could no longer sustain the mass of that burden. The prey slipped from its beak and fell, and the sacred right hand with the arm dropped down upon the hardness of rough flint. Then, by God’s wondrous power, at the touch of the falling sacred arm a most limpid and perennial spring burst forth from the hardest rock. For perhaps Christ’s clemency was unwilling that the most sacred limbs of the holy martyr should endure the rigour of any hardness in their fall, and therefore decreed that they should be received not in rocky roughness but rather in the softness of gentler water. Nothing indeed is harder than stony rigour, but neither is there anything more delicate or softer than the liquor of water. He chose, therefore, to receive his most sacred limbs in softness, whose spirit he had placed in heavenly sweetness and the repose of rest. By reason of this event, then, the very place where the ash had stood was stony and most rough with exceeding hardness — and even yet in some part it so persists — but by God’s ineffable power a living spring arose in that very stony hardness, which as it were never ceases to flow continually, a perpetual vein of most limpid and lasting water. King Oswy therefore, warned by the divine power of the oracle, came to this spring, and as he had learned in the vision by night, so afterwards he found it fulfilled by God’s wondrous disposition. From those very waters he lifted the arm with the hand, and, as had been commanded him in the vision, carried away with him from there the most holy head with the arms and hands. Even to this day God’s wondrous power works there, and by Saint Oswald’s merits health is granted there to the sick, the demoniac who comes is freed, and manifold sickness is expiated by a draught of the sacred water.

Chapter Nineteen: Why no royal son succeeded Saint Oswald, but the kingdom passed rather to Saint Oswald’s brother #

¹ Relying, then, on manifold examination of the histories, we perceive plainly enough that Saint Oswald’s son, when his father died, was still bound within the weakness of boyhood; for since we have proved above by historical truth that Saint Oswald was king for no more than eight years, and that he, already flourishing in his kingdom, came into Wessex and received from the laver the king whose daughter he was to take as wife, it is clearly established that he begot no son before the times of his reign, since earlier he had contracted no marital bond with a spouse. Far be it from the hearts of the faithful that anyone should think he had touched the company of any concubine. For such things did not befit his sacred limbs, whose sacred heart’s chambers the manifold gifts of the Holy Spirit inhabited, overflowing in purifying grace. So it can be perceived clearly enough that the offspring which he begot in the time of his reign cannot have been a son more than seven years old. For so long a time they could enjoy the marriage bed, but they could not have drawn it out beyond the limits of that span. Now then it is clear that the son born to him could have been seven years old — and although he might have been younger by some degree, he could in no way have been older. When therefore, his holy father being dead, he could have been a boy of no more than seven years, it is certain that a boy of so tender an age neither ought to have obtained, nor could have sustained or undertaken, the governance of his father’s kingdom. We judge therefore that his uncle, who was already of mature age, succeeded his brother and possessed the empire of the kingdom by hereditary right. Nor is it strange if Saint Oswald’s son, when he had grown more vigorous with the increase of age, strove to contend against his uncle for the kingdom. For we seldom see anyone willing to have an equal sharer with himself upon the kingdom’s height, and far more rarely anyone abandoning the due rights of empire if in any way he may aspire to the glory of that seat. Let no one marvel, then, if he sought in desire what he saw to belong to him of right by the law’s dictation.

Chapter Twenty: On Saint Oswald’s brother and son — how they flourished in piety, and how faithful they proved, and to what pursuits they devoted themselves #

Chapter Twenty-One: From which stock holy King Ceolwulf sprang, and how long he reigned; and on the desolation of the church of Lindisfarne and its vengeance, and how Saint Ceolwulf made the monks drink beer #

¹ It must further be known that the blessed King Ceolwulf indeed descended from the same stock as was of the first generation, yet not from the same stem from which King Oswald drew his lineal origin. For this Ceolwulf was of the stem of Ida, the first king of the Northumbrians, but he is found to have drawn his descent not from Ida’s son King Æthelric, from whom the most glorious kings Oswald and Oswy descended, but from Æthelric’s brother named Ogga. For Ceolwulf was the son of Cutha, whose father was Cuthwine, whose father was Leodwald, whose father was Ecgwald, whose father was Aldhelm, whose father was Ogga, whose father was King Ida. For Ida had twelve sons, from whom sprang the kings of Northumbria: Adda, Æthelric, Theodric, Edric, Theuderi, Osmer, Alric, Ecca, Oswald, Scor, Sceotheri, Ogga — from whose progeny the brothers Coenred and Ceolwulf, both kings, came forth. Ceolwulf began to reign after his brother in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 729, in the fifth year of the pontificate of Ethelwald, when the eleven years of King Osric, son of King Aldfrith, had been completed in the kingdom of the Northumbrians. And since he was steeped in liberal studies, Bede, commending his diligence in reading and hearing the scriptures, wrote to him the history of the English nation. In the fourteenth year of Bishop Ethelwald’s pontificate, and the tenth of his own reign, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 735 — the third year after Saint Bede’s falling asleep — that same King Ceolwulf was made a monk in the church of Lindisfarne. In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 793 — the hundred and seventh year from the passing of the father Cuthbert, and the eleventh of Bishop Higbald’s pontificate, which is the fifth year of the empire of that most impious King Æthelred — the pagans came from the northern quarter with a naval host into Britain, on the seventh day before the Ides of June, to the church of Lindisfarne, and laid waste everything with miserable plundering. But in the circling year, Saint Cuthbert avenging, their leader perished at Jarrow; and not long after, their ships were dashed and shattered by the force of the tempest and perished. Eighteen years after Bishop Ecgberht, Ecgred received the bishopric, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1331. When he afterwards died, Ecgred the bishop, raised to the episcopate in the twenty-second year of the reign of King Eanred, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 884, translated from the island of Lindisfarne to Norham — which of old was called Ubbanford — a certain church made long ago by the blessed Aidan in the time of King Saint Oswald. A church having been built there in honour of Saints Peter and Paul, he translated there the body of Saint Cuthbert and the body of Saint Ceolwulf the king, and dedicated the church in their name. After the course of many years his head was translated to Durham, and was venerably laid in the church of Saint Cuthbert, whom he had always loved, together with the relics of other saints. His body afterwards translated there, it is said to have been made illustrious by many miracles among the inhabitants of that vill or place. It was by the agency of this king, when he had become a monk, that licence was given to the monks of the church of Lindisfarne to drink wine or beer; for before that they had been wont to drink nothing but milk or water, according to the ancient tradition of Saint Aidan.

Chapter Twenty-Six: How fierce and pitiless he was towards his own household, and from which kings’ stock he drew the origin of his royal birth #

¹ And since he knew not how to spare even religious men, he appeared also fierce and unbending in many things towards all his neighbours and those bound to him by the bond of friendship and the covenant of marriage. And so he not only drove Ælle king of the Deirans, whose daughter he had married, from the kingdom, but, afflicting him with various calamities and expelling him from many dwelling-places, at last deprived him both of life and kingdom. For he sought nothing but the glory of praise and honour, and how he might extend more widely the fame of his power. This indeed he learned to practise in pagan fashion, and he deemed it glorious to have frequented only the industrious feats of war and the magnificent exploits of military exercise. He was of the most noble stock of Ida, first king of the Northumbrians, who gloriously held that kingdom and left it to his successors, his sons and descendants, to possess by hereditary right. But to reach his origin, let us touch on something of it briefly here. In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 547 Ida began to reign, from whom the whole lineage of the kings of the Northumbrians survives in this order. King Ida held the kingdom twelve years; Adda, Ida’s son, succeeded him in the kingdom and reigned eight years. After him Æthelric, another son of Ida, seven years; and subsequently Theodoric, Ida’s third son, held the primacy of the kingdom in his place for another seven years. But since, by the decay of time and the length of a longer life, the succession of the kingdom could no longer continue in Ida’s sons, the hereditary right of the kingdom now descended to others, yet to kinsmen of the same stock. And so this Æthelfrith of whom we speak, begotten the son of Ida’s second son — that is, the son of Æthelric — now that Ida’s sons had failed, received the kingdom of royal right as his grandson in their stead. Æthelfrith was therefore the son of King Æthelric, who was Ida’s second son by birth, begotten of the queen-wife; for Ida had other sons by a concubine, who could not excel in so great a dignity. And so he is proved to have been the grandson of the most strenuous King Ida, since it is proved by historical truth and the line of descent that he was begotten the son of Ida’s son, who is called Æthelric. From so noble a stock, then, sprang King Æthelfrith, who was Saint Oswald’s father.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: What sons he had, and how Edwin was made a fugitive for a long time through fear of him #

¹ Inquiring therefore into the whole line of that stem from the root, let us proceed from him to his sons the heirs, and so reach the sharers of the kingdom. This King Æthelfrith, then, was the son of King Æthelric, the second son of King Ida, and presided over the kingdom of the Bernicians for twenty-four years; and he begot these seven sons: Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswy, Oslac, Oswudu, Oslaf, Offa. But because, being a pagan, he was wont to perform the customary rites to idols, he held no fixed ordering of marriage. Yet he had joined to himself in matrimony King Ælle’s daughter; but, covetous of praise and ignorant of religious faith, he slew her father with the drawn sword, and did not cease to persecute her brother Edwin long in exile. So that young man sought the hiding-places of flight wherever he could within the bounds of the English, since, his father having been slain by his own son-in-law, he foresaw that nowhere would he be safe wherever Æthelfrith’s power might reach. His father therefore having been slain, he fled for refuge to Rædwald, noble by birth, the son of Tytil, whose father was Uffa, from whom the kings of the East Saxons are named; and there he rested under the protection of the king of the East Saxons.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: In what year of the Lord’s Incarnation Saint Oswald was born, and how chronicles of differing reckonings may be found in him #

¹ Now that all the handfuls of the histories have been gathered into the heap of one body, it is fitting to turn the pen to the years of Saint Oswald’s age, and to describe step by step the course of his life. The Lord’s most invincible athlete, then, Christ’s glorious martyr Oswald, was born in the year 604 from the Lord’s Incarnation, and he strove by the help of the divine working to fulfil the sixfold number of evangelical faith and imitation. That year was the hundred and fifty-seventh from the coming of the English into Britain. For it was fitting that he should take the hundredfold fruit of eternal blessedness from his own stock, who had already received in the number fifty the signification of eternal rest, which he would obtain by the gift of the Holy Spirit for his merits. It was also the seventh year from the coming of Saint Augustine into England. For in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 596, Saint Gregory the pope sent Saint Augustine the teacher with forty monks, to preach the word of God to the English nation. Those teachers came into Britain the following year, that is, the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 597, which was the hundred and fiftieth year from the coming of the English into Britain. Saint Oswald indeed was illustrious with the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, who received from the Lord the fiftieth gift of remission, and merited to receive the crown of eternal felicity, which is signified by the hundredth number. And that year, from the very origin of the world, was the four thousandth and ninety-eighth, and the nineteenth year — and this by the sacrament of signification and by merit. For in the fourfold breadth of the whole world he deserved to be honoured with the likeness of angelic dignity, because he who fulfilled the precepts of the decalogue had the eighth beatitude, and this with the set purpose that he might be joined to the ninefold fellowship of the angels. It was also the thousand eight hundred and seventy-fourth year from the coming of the Britons.

Chapter Forty: In what year the blessed King Oswald suffered martyrdom, and on the time of his exile, and also on the differing reckoning of his age #

¹ But let us now come to the line of his father, and in like manner examine the number of his years. As we have been able to learn from the histories, then, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 604 King Æthelfrith begot Saint Oswald by Queen Acca — a year which shone as the twelfth of his reign. For the seed which he had sown in the good ground was by God’s ordinance to be reckoned in the twelvefold number of the apostles, by the merit of heavenly grace. Now Æthelfrith had begun to reign four years before the coming of Saint Augustine, and Saint Oswald was a youth of twelve years when King Edwin and Rædwald slew his father. Thus at twelve years old he was an exile from his homeland with all his stock throughout the whole time of King Edwin’s reign, which lasted seventeen full years. But when Edwin had been made the sword’s prey by Penda king of the Mercians and Cædwalla king of the Britons, he returned, now a Christian, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, and remained in his native soil, beloved by all, for the one year in which his brother held the kingdom. When his brother had been slain by Cædwalla, Saint Oswald was chosen king by the election and authority of the nobles and the bishops, and was set in the kingdom in place of his dead brother. This royal empire he received, endowed with sceptre-bearing power, in the thirty-first year of his age, and in the thirty-eighth year of his life, made a martyr, he happily exchanged it for the glory and crown of the heavenly kingdom. In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 642, then, Saint Oswald, the most victorious king, received martyrdom — which was the hundred and ninety-ninth year from the coming of the English into Britain; and the four thousandth and ninety-eighth and fifty-seventh year from the beginning of the world. From the time when the Britons had obtained the island of England, it was the thousand nine hundred and sixteenth year; and since Saint Augustine had come into England, the forty-fifth year was now running at this year of Saint Oswald’s passion.

Chapter Forty-One: On King Oswy, Saint Oswald’s brother, who succeeded him — how much he endured #

¹ Meanwhile, Saint Oswald having now been translated to the heavens, his brother Oswy, a youth of about thirty years, received the seat of the earthly kingdom in his stead, and ruled it for twenty-eight years most laboriously. For he was the more heavily attacked by that pagan nation of the Mercians which had slain his brother, and also by his own son Alhfrith, and by his nephew — that is, his brother’s son — Æthelwald. He began to reign in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 643.

Chapter Forty-Two: How Saint Columba appeared to the holy King Oswald and bade him advance against his enemies #

¹ The blessed King Oswald, when he was encamped in battle array against Cædwalla king of the Britons, on a certain day, sleeping in his tent upon a pillow, saw Saint Columba in a vision, shining with angelic form, whose lofty stature seemed to touch the clouds with its crown. That blessed man, revealing his own name to the king, stood in the midst of the camp and protected that same camp — except for one small extremity of it — with his shining robe, and uttered these words of assurance: “The following night, march out from the camp to battle; for this time the Lord has granted me that your enemies be turned to flight, and that your foe Cædwalla be delivered into your hands, and that after the battle you return victorious and reign without difficulty.” After these words the king, awaking, assembled his council and recounted this vision. At which all being converted, the whole people promised that after the return from battle they would believe and receive baptism; for until that time all that Saxony had been darkened by the shades of paganism and ignorance, except King Oswald with the twelve men who had been baptised with him while in exile among the Scots. What more? On the following night, King Oswald, as he had been taught in the vision, marched out from the camp to battle with a much smaller army against numerous thousands; to whom the Lord, as had been promised him, granted a happy and easy victory. And King Cædwalla being slain, he returned victorious after the battle, and was afterwards ordained by God emperor of all Britain. He who declared that he had heard this same vision from the mouth of King Oswald himself related this account without hesitation.

Chapter Forty-Three: Where the blessed Oswald’s body was buried, and how through the keepers’ carelessness nearly all his bones were stolen from Bardney, and how many remained there, and what efficacy of power they have miraculously possessed until now against the misery of fevers #

¹ It would be over-long and superfluous to describe all the virtues of Saint Oswald — over-long because they are many, and superfluous because they have been most fully described elsewhere and by others. So we have commended to posterity in this work nothing else than what we have learned had not yet been written, or what we have ascertained from truthful witnesses to have been performed by him of late. But since we have as yet said almost nothing about his body, let us now add a few things concerning it. A column of light hanging from heaven shone all night long in honour upon his most sacred body — which cut off the lividness of spite by crushing the spiteful, and by the grace of devotion inflamed the minds of many towards the veneration of his relics. So those rivals who the day before had refused them, recognising such a sign, sought them the more earnestly the next day; and they buried his body in the monastery called Bardney with the greatest honour, and raised two stone crosses on either side of the sarcophagus, reaching at the places of the head and the feet. But after a long time, the fame of his holiness became known to foreign peoples, while negligence and torpor crept over the native keepers of so great a treasure. And so barbarians, succeeding in turn, partly carried off his bones by pious theft, and scattered them through innumerable regions, both of nations beyond the sea and of English lands, and exalted him to the glory of the greatest veneration. Three bones of that sacred body remain in that monastery, which are yet of small size. That so great a virtue inheres in them is taught by many experiences: that no fever-stricken person who has drunk with the faith of devotion the waters in which they have been washed fails to be restored to perfect health within three days. Very many bear witness to this who have seen these things, and innumerable sick from various regions who have been cured by such medicine. And deservedly does he free the languid from such a plague, who while living exercised the glory of this same prefiguring virtue. For he refreshed the chilling limbs of the poor with wealth and garments, and reckoned the burning of pain to be his own, both in the poor and in the affluent rich. For no one in his kingdom, so long as he lived, could be sick or unjustly oppressed whose excess of desolation he did not believe to be his own, and whose welfare he did not most dutifully consult as place and time allowed. For he was made all things to all men, as Paul says, and therefore for the salvation of those subject to him — as Christ for the redemption of all — he suffered martyrdom, reddened in his own blood.

Chapter Forty-Four: What a fragrance of sweetness flowed from the relics of the martyr Saint Oswald #

¹ In the province of the Mercians there is a royal city called Gloucester, sufficiently wealthy in the days of the noble kings of England and famous for its dignities, which in the course of time was kept no less renowned, exalted by the patronage of the blessed martyr Oswald. For a church founded there of old in his veneration and memory was honoured, endowed by the liberality of kings and princes, and nobly enriched by their possessions and munificence. So it was the more vehemently magnified by the inhabitants and the more attentively loved on account of the innumerable miracles performed by the precious martyr, as the mother and mistress of their city. For in it not the least part of the blessed martyr’s relics — the left arm also, with part of his hair — had been honourably laid up in ancient times; and these, in the reign of the most noble King Henry the First, while Thomas the Second presided as metropolitan of the province of York, were at his devout solicitation translated by that same pontiff with due reverence from the little chest where they had been before into the casket in which they are now venerated. In that translation we perceived so great a fragrance of wondrous odour that the breath of so great a sweetness could not be fully expressed by any wise man’s eloquence. For that pleasantness of odour was heavenly, as I judge, not human; and so long as it refreshed us with ineffable delight, forgetful of temporal cares and pleasures we were delighted with a wondrous inward affection and cordial sweetness I know not what, as though inebriated with heavenly joys. We abounded the more richly in tasting the affluence of this honey-flowing nectar, in describing whose efficacy of sweetness mind and hand fail.

Book Two #

Here begins the brief prologue to the following work.

Chapter Forty-Five: How the writer conceived the undertaking of this account of Saint Oswald, and laid the Christian foundations of the work for the praise and glory of the victorious king and martyr Oswald #

¹ When I was sitting silent by myself in the stillness of quiet, and raising myself above myself to the contemplation of the Lord’s secrets after the measure of my wonted poverty, suddenly the observance of the order and the approach of the regular round gave me cause and matter to draw near to my brethren for converse, and to bend the swift flight of my mind from the highest things to the lowest. For the eagle, while it is borne aloft through the upper air, in a moment glides down to the lower regions to capture a carcase. When therefore I was applying the efforts of my mind not so much to jests as to serious relations, it suddenly happened that I fixed in tenacious memory a miracle lately performed by the blessed Oswald. Meanwhile brother P., who sat beside me, was adding something yet more wonderful to it. Perhaps the same spirit had touched the instruments of his voice with the finger of his power who had raised the very marrow of my purpose to the level of the same intention by animating it. So I felt such breathings of a fervent spirit proceed from his mouth that I might well have believed his lips were being moved by the spirit’s teaching. His discourse rested upon truth; its beginning was set upon heavenly edification, the tenor of its utterance upon God’s glory and its counsel upon the virtue of Saint Oswald to be commended, and its foundation upon the blessedness of eternity. Pondering all these things within myself, I applied the zeal of diligence to his commendable beginning, and gave the secrecy of a hearing to so fervent a purpose, lending to God’s discourse a mind labouring for understanding, hoping for Saint Oswald’s patronage to be present, since we, though unworthy, may receive the aid of reward from his blessedness. We have therefore set ourselves to write out the page of this present leaf for the declaring of that king and martyr’s glory, adding certain of his recent and previously unknown miracles. But since to everyone who has the purpose of piety there comes of God’s aid a reward unforeseen, Christ had sent to us a certain stranger-monk from foreign regions, who related to us and to the rest of the brethren new miracles of the same king and martyr with truthful discourse. All these things which brother P. had told us before, this man confirmed; he stated the places and times in which they had been done, and added to them certain things which he himself had seen with his own eyes; and he anxiously deplored that they had been written down in the monastery of Bardney in shapeless blots and mutilated in rude script, since he declared that the sense of the composition re-echoed among them the barbarism of its distinction. Soon therefore our pen undertook to pour into another vessel at his command the miracle which brother H. had directed, and joined to these, omitting nothing, what brother P. had related; and at the end he decreed that what that brother asserted with oaths he had seen should be subscribed. When these had been composed, it pleased my mind to set at the head of the book, in the preface of the discourse, the things concerning Saint Oswald’s head which I had learned from the lord of Rievaulx, and at once to weave on from there the first threads of this account of his arm’s incorruption. For as the members follow the head, so after the beginning made with his head the miracles shall be disposed in those that follow. Therefore whoever reads this, let him not waste away with the envy of spite against us, nor sharpen the poisoned darts of a venomous tooth in reproof of us, since it is not the insolence of pride that impels me to describe these things, but the devotion of brotherly love that pours them forth in payment of a debt. But if anyone persists in such zeal, let him know that the sword of the deceitful tongue which is aimed, flashing, at the head of his humbler servant is sharpened to King Oswald’s injury on the whetstone of iniquity. Yet the sword which severed the pious martyr’s head by piercing it shall tread down and destroy our reprover, where the blessed King Oswald has entered to intercede for us and to reign with Christ; and our pure spirit shall fly up to the heavens by his prevailing merits.

Chapter Forty-Six: On the other little book published in honour of the glorious king and martyr Oswald, on the noble stock of that renowned king and on his life and conduct, his fortune and end, and on the burial of his relics #

Chapter Forty-Seven: On the arms of Saint Oswald and his incorrupt hands, which Queen Bebbe took up, and how she laid them in the royal city #

¹ At last, not long after, the holiness of the blessed Oswald became known to many far and wide, which the frequency of signs declared daily by new indications of virtue. For the column which the whole night through shone from the brow of the upper air upon the beloved canopy of his sacred body in the bosom of the province of Lindsey fittingly expressed the greatness of his holiness by proclaiming it. We understand the honourable majesty of his head through the revelation of the heavenly oracle. The uninjured incorruption of his arms proclaims the renowned works of his piety. So, as we have learned was ascertained by the ancients, we believe his head to have been buried in the cemetery of Lindisfarne — which we gather from the history’s testimony to have been torn from the stake by his brother Oswy, who also succeeded him in the kingdom. And Queen Bebbe took up his arms, and enclosed them in a silver chest, together with the sacred hands — bones and sinews, flesh whole and incorrupt and veins most entire — in the city of Bamburgh. That city was of royal dignity in those days, and drew its name from that queen’s name for the sake of her renowned memory. For so the queen’s name deserved to be perpetuated, while the city, called by her name, endures in perpetuity. These hands with the arms of Saint Oswald were kept for a long time in the church of Saint Peter, and were held at Bamburgh in the glory of the greatest veneration.

Chapter Forty-Eight: On the right arm stolen at Bamburgh and translated to the church of Saint Peter at Burgh, but exalted with great honour among the local people #

¹ But since the unstable state of the world declines like a turning wheel, and from prosperous events at times ignoble outcomes give birth to sinister results, that city, which once shone glorious for the pomp of its nobility, has in these last days become from a freeborn and free mistress a servant and handmaid under tribute. And as the worship of that honour perished, so also the honourable name of its ancient dignity declined; and she who had then been mistress of the cities of Britain has now exchanged the sabbath of her ancient praise for the lamentable reproach of desolation, her festal days of ancient worship for a sparsely inhabited hut, and has transformed the joy of her honour almost into nothing. In like manner, as the city’s glory failed and perished, so the worship of tender religion failed and disappeared, and there was scarce so much as one who venerated Saint Oswald’s relics or showed them the diligence of a keeper. When this was learned, a certain monk of the monastery of Burgh, which was once called Medeshamstede, who had come into those parts, conceiving a spirit of boldness, did not fear to bring forth a theft of sacrilege in due season. He therefore long explored the ways in and out of the church that was at Bamburgh; but at last, opportunity being given, he drew the right arm out of the chest and secretly carried it off with him, and placed it in his own church with honour and glory. And he chose rather to be the sacrilegious plunderer of such a theft than, as the dishonest accuser of his own conscience, to lack so great a treasure. For he would have grieved all the days of his life if, when such an occasion was given, he had not performed the piety of the crime by stealing the holy martyr’s relics. From these things therefore he acquired for himself, as best he could, the praise of glory at the risk of guilt; he repaid to his church a crown of honour at the price of his own infamy; and by striving he obtained for the holy martyr the offering of perpetual veneration. For already the church is lifted up among the English by the frequent solemnities of service for Saint Oswald’s honour, and the chief offerings of devotions and the dues of oblations daily increase and grow in it among the faithful.

Chapter Forty-Nine: How Saint Oswald’s venerable head was carried to Saint Cuthbert’s tomb by his own revelation, and how it was stolen from Bamburgh and wondrously placed in the holy bishop’s tomb #

¹ But the remaining portion of his sacred body ought not to lie hidden longer without the title of due honour. What had been left by men to neglect or carelessness, Christ ordained should be more wondrously exalted. And so, many years after Saint Oswald’s burial, the venerable confessor of the Lord, Cuthbert, after a long time’s passing, appeared to a certain aged man who was devoted to him in services about his sacred body, and thus beginning, said: “Go,” he said, “to Bamburgh, and bring me the head of Saint Oswald, which is kept there too negligently in the church, that it may be laid with me in one shrine in the treasury of my body. For the followers of King Oswy who came after him unjustly wrested it from Lindisfarne, my monastery, and carried it off with them in sacrilege. For all those are dead who despoiled my church of such a treasure and emptied it, and who profaned my sanctuary with the sacrilege of such a robbery. For what God had committed to my keeping by entrusting it to me when buried in my cemetery, and had joined to me in the custody of devotion, man’s violence ought not to have separated from me.” Encouraged confidently by these and like words, that man began from that time, sedulous and anxious, to watch the doors of the church at Bamburgh; but though many times elapsed, he could never find by searching an opportunity suited to his will. Then, after an interval of time, Saint Oswald’s birthday came round, and he himself hastened there with the rest of the crowds of people. Yet on that same night and solemn day he could accomplish nothing, because the folk of the multitude, amazed on every side at the two-faced head kept in view, watched everything. For the people, unskilled in religion, held that venerable head in careless neglect: they had the custom of exposing it publicly before all, wrapped in a cloth, upon the altar, outside all custody of a chest. Beholding this, the man’s heart burned within him at the sight; and at the thought of Saint Cuthbert’s command and of the irreverence of his own delay, the blush of rebuked shame flamed up in his heart. On the following night Saint Cuthbert again stood by him in a vision, and encouraging him declared: “Tomorrow your will shall be fulfilled, and the power to do what I commanded shall be granted you, I obtaining it; only remember to do this when the time comes, whatever counsel you find inspired by me in your heart.” In the morning therefore, when the ministries of the mass had been completed in the church, the man sustained himself in long expectation, and expecting God’s mercy he waited. And not long after, it happened that all went outside, and they left scarce anyone remaining in the church. Finally the priest who remained, being about to go somewhere, committed the care of everything to the sacristan of that monastery alone. Then the man was anxious, his spirit fretting within him for anguish of grief, since whithersoever he went with hesitating and tottering step, he always found that sacristan going before or following upon his path. Going this way through the church’s vestibules, he found him following, to his sorrow; going that way through the side-chambers of the basilica, the baffled searcher ever judged him the complaining companion of his scrutiny. Turning therefore with his whole heart to blessed Cuthbert, he accomplished without delay what he himself had conceived in his mind at his dictation. He purposely left his belt with his gloves beneath the church seat, and so going outside, he went further afield about the cemetery bounds to saddle his horse. But when he had looked back eagerly at that clerk following him afar off from behind, he bade his servant go off somewhere as though on some business, and calling the clerk to him said: “Come now, friend,” he said, “for charity’s sake hold this horse of mine, and suffer me to return a little way to the church. For the belt with which I must be girded, and the gloves with which I must guard my hands from cold and the uncleanness of dirt, I left behind in the monastery, my mind wavering and my diligence failing.” But he, since he could not refuse, held the horse by the reins and suffered him the more willingly to go where he wished. For he did not perceive the man’s cunning, nor did he think that skill of another cause had lain hid under such a covering. That man, going in haste to the altar’s summit, embraced that venerable head and bursting into tears and kisses placed it for himself in the bosom of his other arm beneath his armpit. For by such a pattern of craft he desired to lie hid from his keeper, destroying the matter’s order; and coming forth from the church he held out before him the belt and gloves, by which he drove away from the mind of the suspicious keeper the ambivalence of evil doubt. The keeper attending him, and thinking that nothing untoward had occurred, the man took his leave and departed; and the clerk, before looking into the church, shut the door behind him with the little bolt of a bolt. Coming at last with so great a pledge of sanctuary to Saint Cuthbert’s tomb — as the elders were wont to relate — the pious confessor’s sepulchre, with a stirring sounding within, seemed to open of its own accord without the touch of any hand, and to have shut itself in spontaneous fashion with the head placed within it. These things, as we heard them from our father the lord of Rievaulx, so we have touched upon them in writing with a running pen.

Chapter Fifty: On the form of the blessed Oswald and the comeliness of his beauty, on his aspect and figure, as it is found in the old books of the English tongue — which we have translated into Latin word for word as best we could #

¹ To perpetuate the memory of the blessed Oswald’s royal virtue, to draw out the knowledge of him, and to make known his holiness, both gives fruit to posterity, stirs up devotion in men of today, and raises the edifice of hope in the oppressed. Weighing all these things, we have chosen to describe something in his honour rather than, wasting away in idleness, to keep silent and conceal what is profitable to posterity. The venerable King Oswald, then, Christ’s noble martyr, as truthful antiquity bears witness, is marked out with these beauties of feature as far as concerns his face. He was, indeed, tall in stature, yellow-haired with a golden head of hair, conspicuous for his radiant grey eyes, of long face, with a very thin beard, somewhat long of face with a fair face, round about the glory of his face with lordly fullness; composed with a well-formed chin, pleasant with moderately small lips and a distilling sweetness of love, and resplendent in nose with a middling fullness of strength consonant with the likeness of the rest of his face. His hands and arms were at once of great length and full strength, of a daring spirit and a breast both fierce and robust, yet softened by a compassion of mind that was easily moved. In his shoulders there stood out a fullness of thick density, which, as they say, is wont to be a sign of strength; while about the loins he ran slender, with lordly shins descending from the knee into immeasurable length. Robert, a well-born man of the hospital which is at York, related that he had found these things thus described in old English books; and their kind of composition runs also in the modern tongue’s measure in rhythmical metre.

Chapter Fifty-One: On the character and form of the venerable head of the king and martyr Oswald — how it was shaped, how it was wounded in battle, and how precious a portion is laid in blessed Cuthbert’s tomb #

¹ The most pious King Oswald seems to have foreshown in the body what while living he ceased not to practise in the mind with unceasing work. So it is fitting to turn the pen back a little, and to touch briefly on the character of that most sacred head. The head of the glorious king and Christ’s martyr Oswald is honourably placed beside the head of the venerable bishop Cuthbert, at its side in that same father’s tomb; and its character is most certainly proved to be such as follows. Its whole spherical roundness is as it were inexplicable, and a wondrous sweetness of odour suffuses it; it is of a glassy colour, gleaming on all sides with a ruddy golden hue which seems to exceed the colour of wax and to accord the more with the likeness of gold, for the grace of its exceeding beauty and the shining mirror of its splendour. The shape of that spherical composition seems to be of broad and oblong dimension, extending from the brow to the back of the head; in the figure of a smooth rounded helm it rises and falls with the curvature of a semicircle of even roundness. The thickness of its size seems to be no small one. For it is of no immense mass so much as of great size, since in the holder’s hands it proves lighter by its weight than it appeared to beholders’ eyes to be ponderous in bulk, judging by its magnitude. In the hinge of the crown it seems to spread to a certain width — though a great thickness seems rather to produce this than that a naturally spherical circle should fashion it by swerving from its own true course. The brow, rather high, stands out more broadly; and the nose descends with a measured straightness, neither seeming to rise too sharply nor to extend too low with the spreading of an open breadth. A rather long face seems to draw out the cheeks with a certain pattern, which is proved well enough to display the beauty of manly glory. The chin, pleasingly composed with a rounded form, is crossed — that is, ornamented — and adorned; by the pleasing curvature of nature the artificer it is bent slightly upward in the middle, and again, the bone gradually raising itself by spreading out, reaches even to the lips of the mouth itself. Both gums are wholly entire, beautiful with a white and pleasing aspect; and they shine with a full complement of teeth in their original order of position. For the molar teeth are in them, which stand two-headed on either side and which for the benefit of food naturally stood forth broader than the rest. The canine teeth also are in the foremost place, which tear the food, and also the sharp points which mince what has been torn. So it is seen that nothing of the full complement of teeth is lacking, since the wholeness of them all is had more fully in the gums themselves without any diminution of a part. Moreover, on one side of the venerable head itself, a lateral wound seems to disclose the entrance of a certain opening, which the hostile sword made in the battle where he fell, and which gapes open in the skull of the sacred head enough to admit three fingers. For the skull of the head was so cut away by the devouring sword that the opening seemed to have been abraded by the stroke or cutting edge of a very sharp razor. Yet no other lesion from the blow of the shattering dart seems to have been made, nor is any crack whatever seen to appear in the whole sacred head besides that opening which stands out where the particle of the skull was thus cut away. Furthermore, beneath the head, the bones of the throat’s joints, knit to one another in the solid structure of the neck, appear somewhat further down — which all plainly retain the bones of the neck entire and bind together the inmost parts of the throat-bones unshaken before all beholders. For the magnitude of the extended neck stretches to so immense a depth of length that it seems to possess entire two joinings of the spinal knobs springing from it — which joinings of the knobs physicians call spondyles, which form the beginning of the spine descending through the middle of the back. These adhere so solidly and naturally within the sacred skull of the head that they cannot be torn away or moved at all even by a stronger contact; and they contain towards the most sacred head as much of the anterior bones of the throat descending below the chin as those two spondyles hold of the neck’s structures behind. So it is perceived that the blow of the striking sword did not sink in aslant, the cruel spearman striking obliquely, but rather passed through in a straight line on a direct course with the wielder’s force. This treasure of the sacred head is wrapped in a purple bag, oblong to an immeasurable degree, and so is honourably placed beside the head of the venerable bishop Cuthbert. Its cloth is seen to be of reddish purple, strengthened by a texture of thicker solidity, so that it seems to resound in the folder’s hand with a crackling murmur for the grace of its solid texture. It is varied by a texture worked with spots of another kind of colour, so that by such artful workmanship no small appearance of beauty is produced for beholders. And the little bag itself, which stretches out most of all in lengthwise extension, once the holy head has been placed in it, is afterwards wholly folded round it with wrappings, and so is gathered up into the likeness of a piled heap, a kind of mound.

Chapter Fifty-Five: A sufficiently reliable argument by which we may discover without error the year of the Lord’s Incarnation together with Saint Cuthbert’s passing, and likewise find the year of Saint Oswald’s deposition #

¹ Having unrolled the histories of deeds done, we learn how long a series of time intervenes between Saint Oswald and blessed Cuthbert, if we will search out more subtly the things that are true. For the venerable confessor of the Lord, Cuthbert, was the fourth bishop of Lindisfarne after Aidan; but the blessed Oswald summoned Aidan from Scotland in the days of his reign for the grace of preaching. Aidan therefore sat first in the island of Lindisfarne seventeen years, Finan ten, Colman three, Tuda four, Eata three, and the venerable Cuthbert two. The sum of all their years, up to the blessed Cuthbert’s deposition, is found to have been thirty-nine years. And that we may know what year of the Incarnation it then was, the authority of the regular computation will prove it thus. For the present year is the one thousand one hundred and sixty-fifth from the time of the Incarnation, which is also the four hundred and eightieth year from the blessed Cuthbert’s deposition. From the years of the Lord’s Incarnation, then, we subtract one thousand five hundred, and find only seven hundred remaining. Likewise we withdraw from the seven hundred years of the Lord’s Incarnation the eighty years which had remained from the time of the blessed Cuthbert’s deposition, and we now see that no more than six hundred and twenty years remain of the Incarnation’s time. To these six hundred and twenty years, then, we add the sixty-five years which we had in the first number of the Lord’s Incarnation, that the whole number may be made complete — from whose united sum we find six hundred and seventy-five years constructed. So the year of the blessed Cuthbert’s deposition was the six hundred and seventy-fifth of the Lord’s Incarnation, as this sure authority of the years has proved. But since we seek the blessed Oswald’s birth-year, we subtract thirty-nine years from these six hundred and seventy-five years of the Lord’s Incarnation which were at blessed Cuthbert’s deposition, and we now prove that no more than six hundred and thirty-six remain. This was the first year of holy Aidan’s episcopate in the island of Lindisfarne — which seat Saint Oswald gave to blessed Aidan in the second year of his reign, in which year also he summoned him from the island of Scotland called Iona to preach the faith to the people subject to him.

Chapter Fifty-Six: On the difference between the years of Saint Oswald and blessed Cuthbert, and how Saint Oswald’s head was not kept hidden in the earth so long, but was honoured much earlier #

¹ The disciple of the Christian faith, then — the new lamp of God’s word, the hierarch of evangelical preaching — Oswald, a faithful and catholic king, received the governance of the kingdom in the thirty-first year of his age; and having suffered martyrdom in his thirty-ninth, he died, slain by Penda king of the Mercians. Now the thirty-first year of his age is the six hundred and thirty-fifth year of the Lord’s Incarnation. In the second year of his reign he gave to Aidan the seat of the bishopric in the island of Lindisfarne. In the six hundred and thirty-fifth year of the Lord’s Incarnation, then — which is the hundred and eighty-eighth year from the coming of the English into Britain, and the thirty-ninth from the coming of the blessed Augustine, in the second year of Saint Oswald’s rule — the episcopal seat first began to be in the same island. And Saint Oswald, when eight years of Saint Aidan’s episcopate had been completed — Aidan afterwards holding the pontificate nine years — departed this life in that same six hundred and forty-fourth year of the Lord’s Incarnation. In the six hundred and forty-fourth year, therefore, Saint Oswald’s head was buried in the cemetery of Lindisfarne. Aidan died at last in the six hundred and fifty-third year of that same Incarnation. And the blessed Bishop Cuthbert died in the six hundred and seventy-fifth year of the Lord’s Incarnation, twenty-two years having passed after Aidan’s death. So thirty-one years are had between the passings of blessed Oswald and Saint Cuthbert, as these reckonings of the years seem to declare. Vainly therefore do some suppose that the head of Saint Oswald lay buried in the cemetery of Lindisfarne for all that time, until the days of the captivity in which Saint Cuthbert’s body was carried from the island — since that venerable head would have been desirable to many plunderers of pious theft on account of the renown of his miracles made known among the nations. For if the negligence of those in charge had left it so long a time in the bosom of the earth beneath a cheap turf, an easy access would have been afforded to those seeking it in their desire. So we approve the better what was set down before; and knowing Saint Oswald’s virtues everywhere through the fame that published them, we acknowledge that it was taken away from Lindisfarne by Oswy’s successors, but that it was afterwards restored to blessed Cuthbert, as has been said before, we gather. And what is said in the book On the State of the Church — that they brought Saint Oswald’s head and Saint Aidan’s bones, packing them with Saint Cuthbert’s body, away from the island — does not conflict with this, nor does it disturb the history. For there it only recounts in enumeration the sacred relics which they carried off with Saint Cuthbert; it does not treat in any passage how these had been gathered before, or by whom they had been brought there. So Saint Oswald was born of a Christian mother, Acca, Saint King Edwin’s sister, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 604; and he obtained the kingdom in the six hundred and thirty-fourth year of the same. And in the six hundred and forty-fourth year of that same Incarnation, while for Christ’s name he was saying, “God, have mercy on their souls,” he was struck on the head.

Book Three #

¹ [Arnold does not print this section because “it is entirely taken from Bede’s account of St. Oswald and his miracles” (1882, pg. 385). The following is from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England (Book 3, Chapter 9-13). Based on Arnold’s words, I believe this is what Book Three would have contained.]

Chapter Nine: 642 A.D. #

¹ Oswald, the devout and Christian king of the Northumbrians, ruled for nine years. This includes the year that was considered cursed due to the brutal cruelty of the British king and the reckless apostasy of the English rulers. As mentioned earlier, it has been agreed by all that the names and memory of those who abandoned the faith should be erased from the record of Christian kings, and no year should be counted toward their reign.

² After this period, Oswald was slain in a great battle by the same pagan nation and the same pagan king of the Mercians who had previously killed his predecessor, Edwin. This battle took place at a site called Maserfelth in the English tongue. Oswald was thirty-eight years old when he died, on the fifth day of August.

³ Oswald’s deep faith in God and his extraordinary devotion have been proven by miracles even after his death. In the very place where he was slain by the pagans while fighting for his people, both the sick and cattle are still frequently healed to this day. Because of this, many people took soil from the spot where his body fell and, after mixing it with water, used it to bring relief to their ailing friends.

⁴ This practice became so widespread that, over time, the earth was carried away little by little, leaving a hole as deep as a man’s height. It is no wonder that the sick should be healed in the place where he died, for in his lifetime, he never ceased to care for the poor and the sick, generously giving alms and offering assistance to those in need.

⁵ Many miracles are said to have taken place there or through the soil taken from the site, but we will recount just two, which we have received from our elders.

⁶ Not long after Oswald’s death, a man was travelling on horseback near the site when, suddenly, his horse fell ill. The animal stopped, lowered its head, and began foaming at the mouth. As its suffering grew worse, it collapsed to the ground. The rider dismounted, removed the saddle, and waited to see whether his horse would recover or perish.

⁷ For a long time, the beast writhed in extreme agony, but in its struggles, it happened to roll onto the very spot where the great king had died. Instantly, its pain subsided, and it ceased its frantic kicking. Then, as if simply recovering from exhaustion, it rolled from side to side, and, rising to its feet fully healed, it began eagerly grazing on the fresh grass.

⁸ The rider, a man of keen understanding, observed this and concluded that there must be something remarkable about the holiness of the place where his horse had been healed. He carefully marked the spot.

⁹ After this, he mounted his horse once more and continued his journey to the inn where he planned to stay. Upon his arrival, he found that the landlord’s niece had long suffered from paralysis. As the members of the household lamented her affliction in his presence, he recounted the story of how his horse had been miraculously healed at that sacred place.

¹⁰ Without delay, they placed the girl in a wagon, carried her to the site, and laid her down upon it. At first, she fell into a deep sleep, but when she awoke, she discovered that she had been completely healed. Overcome with joy, she called for water, washed her face, arranged her hair, and tied a kerchief around her head. Then, in perfect health, she walked home on her own, accompanied by those who had brought her.

Chapter Ten: 642 A.D. #

¹ Around the same time, another traveller, said to be a Briton, happened to pass by the battlefield where the great battle had taken place. As he walked, he noticed a particular patch of ground that was greener and more vibrant than the rest of the field. Perceiving with wisdom that such unusual fertility must be due to the presence of someone of extraordinary holiness who had perished there, he decided to take some of the soil.

² He gathered a portion of the earth from that spot, wrapped it carefully in a linen cloth, and continued on his journey, believing—correctly—that it would serve as a remedy for the sick. That evening, he arrived at a village and entered a house where the villagers were gathered, feasting at supper.

³ Welcomed by the owners of the house, the traveller sat down to join them at the feast, hanging the cloth containing the sacred dust on a post in the wall. The meal continued late into the night, and the guests drank deeply.

⁴ In the centre of the room, a great fire burned, and as the flames crackled, sparks shot up and caught the roof. Since the house was built of wattles and thatch, the fire spread rapidly, engulfing the entire structure in moments. Panic and confusion filled the room as the guests fled outside, but despite their efforts, the house was beyond saving and was soon reduced to ashes.

⁵ Yet, amid the destruction, one thing remained untouched—the post on which the cloth with the sacred dust had been hung. Though everything around it had burned, it stood intact, unscathed by the flames. When the people saw this miracle, they were astonished. Upon enquiring further, they learned that the dust had been taken from the place where King Oswald’s blood had been shed.

⁶ As news of this wonder spread, more and more people began travelling to that sacred site, seeking and receiving healing both for themselves and for their loved ones.

Chapter Eleven: 679-697 A.D. #

¹ Among the many wonders, we must not fail to recount the miracles and signs from Heaven that occurred when King Oswald’s bones were discovered and solemnly transferred to the church where they are now enshrined. This was accomplished through the devoted efforts of Osthryth, Queen of the Mercians, the daughter of his brother Oswy, who succeeded him as king, as will be related later.

² In the province of Lindsey, there was a renowned monastery called Beardaneu, which Queen Osthryth and her husband, King Ethelred, deeply loved and honoured, bestowing many gifts upon it. It was her wish to lay the sacred bones of her uncle Oswald to rest in this monastery.

³ However, when the wagon carrying his bones arrived at the monastery in the evening, the monks refused to receive them. Though they acknowledged his holiness, they still harboured an ancient resentment against him, as he had been a ruler from another province who had once held sovereignty over them. Even in death, their old grievances prevented them from welcoming his remains.

⁴ That night, since the monks refused to accept the relics, the bones remained outside, sheltered only by a large tent spread over the wagon that carried them. Yet Heaven itself revealed how much reverence they were due, for throughout the night, a radiant pillar of light stretched from the wagon up to the heavens, visible across nearly the entire province of Lindsey.

⁵ At dawn, the monks who had rejected the relics the previous day were overcome with awe and remorse. Recognizing the divine sign, they now earnestly prayed that the sacred remains of this beloved servant of God might be laid to rest among them.

⁶ With great reverence, they washed the bones and placed them in a specially prepared shrine, setting it with due honour inside the church. To ensure a lasting memorial of Oswald’s royal and saintly character, they suspended his banner of gold and purple above the tomb.

⁷ The water used to cleanse the relics was then poured out in a corner of the monastery’s cemetery. From that time onward, the very earth that had received the holy water was imbued with divine grace, possessing the power to drive out demons from those who were possessed.

⁸ After the queen had remained for some time in that monastery, a certain venerable abbess named Ethelhild, who is still living, came to visit her. Ethelhild was the sister of the holy men Ethelwin and Aldwin—the former was a bishop in the province of Lindsey, while the latter was abbot of the monastery of Peartaneu, near which Ethelhild’s own monastery was located. During their conversation, the discussion turned to Oswald, and the abbess mentioned that she, too, had seen a light over his relics that night, stretching up to heaven. The queen then added that even the dust from the pavement where the water used to wash his bones had been poured out had already healed many sick people. Upon hearing this, the abbess asked for some of that miraculous dust. When it was given to her, she wrapped it in a cloth, placed it in a casket, and took it back home.

⁹ Some time later, while she was in her monastery, a guest arrived who was often suddenly and severely tormented by an unclean spirit during the night. After being hospitably received, he went to bed after supper but was soon seized by the Devil. He began to cry out, grind his teeth, foam at the mouth, and writhe in violent convulsions. No one was able to restrain or bind him, so a servant ran to the abbess’s quarters, knocked at the door, and informed her of the situation. The abbess immediately opened the monastery door and, accompanied by one of the nuns, went to the men’s quarters, where she summoned a priest and asked him to come with her to the afflicted man. Upon arriving, they found many people present who had struggled in vain to hold him down and stop his violent thrashing. The priest performed exorcisms and did everything he could to calm the unfortunate man’s madness, but despite his efforts, he could not prevail. When no hope remained of relieving him, the abbess suddenly remembered the dust and immediately instructed her handmaiden to fetch the casket in which it was kept.

¹⁰ As soon as the handmaiden arrived with the casket, as she had been instructed, and was entering the hall where the possessed man was writhing in torment, he suddenly became silent. He laid his head down as if falling asleep and stretched out his limbs in rest. “Silence fell upon all, and intently they gazed,” anxiously waiting to see what would happen. After about an hour, the man who had been tormented sat up, drew a deep sigh, and said, “Now I am whole, for I am restored to my senses.” They eagerly asked how this had come to pass, and he replied, “As soon as that maiden approached the hall with the casket she carried, all the evil spirits that tormented me departed and vanished from sight.” The abbess then gave him a little of the dust, and after the priest had prayed, he spent the night in great peace. From that moment on, he was never again disturbed at night or troubled in any way by his former affliction.

Chapter Twelve #

¹ Some time later, there was a young boy in the monastery who had long suffered from a severe fever. One day, as he anxiously awaited the hour when his fit was due to strike, one of the brothers came to him and said, “Shall I tell you how you may be cured of this sickness, my son? Rise, go into the church, and sit close to Oswald’s tomb. Remain there quietly and do not leave or stir from the spot until the time has passed when the fever would have seized you. Then I will come and fetch you.” The boy followed his advice, and as he sat by the saint’s tomb, the disease dared not afflict him but fled in such fear that it never troubled him again—not that day, nor the next, nor ever after.

² The brother who told me this added that, at the time of our conversation, the young man who had been healed as a boy was still living in the monastery. Nor should we be surprised that the prayers of a king who now reigns with our Lord are powerful before Him, for even while ruling his earthly kingdom, Oswald was always more devoted to prayer and labouring for what is eternal. Indeed, it is said that he often remained in prayer from the hour of morning thanksgiving until daylight, and that, due to his constant habit of praying or giving thanks to God, he would always sit with his hands resting on his knees, palms turned upward. It is also widely affirmed and has become a proverb that he died in prayer, for when he was surrounded by the weapons of his enemies and knew that death was near, he prayed for the souls of his army. So it is proverbially said: “Lord, have mercy on their souls,” said Oswald as he fell to the ground.

³ Oswald’s bones were later transferred to the monastery we have mentioned and buried there. However, the king who slew him ordered that his head, hands, and arms be cut from his body and set upon stakes. The following year, his successor, King Oswy, arrived there with his army, took them down, and buried his head in the cemetery of the church at Lindisfarne, while his hands and arms were laid to rest in his royal city.

Chapter Thirteen #

¹ Nor was the fame of the renowned Oswald confined to Britain; rather, it spread like rays of healing light even beyond the sea, reaching Germany and Ireland. For the most reverend prelate Acca often recounted that when he and his bishop, Wilfrid, were on their journey to Rome and stayed for some time with Wilbrord, the holy archbishop of the Frisians, he frequently heard him speak of the wonders that had been performed in that region through the relics of that most venerable king. He also related that in Ireland, where he had once lived as a priest, a stranger, and a pilgrim for the love of the eternal homeland, the fame of Oswald’s holiness was already widely known across the island. Among the many miracles he described, one in particular seemed worthy of being recorded in this history.

² “At the time,” he said, “of the plague that caused such widespread devastation in Britain and Ireland, a certain scholar of the Scottish race was among those struck by the disease. He was well-versed in letters but had shown little concern for his eternal salvation. As he saw death approaching, he began to tremble with fear, dreading that as soon as he died, he would be cast into the prison of Hell for his sins. He called me, for I was nearby, and in his weakness, trembling and sighing, he made his lament to me in a sorrowful voice, saying: “You see how my bodily suffering increases, and that I am now at the point of death. I have no doubt that once my body dies, my soul will be immediately seized and condemned to eternal death, cast into the torments of Hell. For a long time, despite all my reading of the divine books, I have allowed myself to be ensnared by sin instead of keeping God’s commandments. But I have resolved that, if Divine Mercy grants me a new lease on life, I will amend my sinful ways and dedicate both my mind and my life entirely to obedience to God’s will. However, I know that I have no merits of my own to obtain an extension of life, nor can I hope for it unless God, in His mercy, chooses to forgive me—wretched and unworthy of pardon as I am—through the intercession of those who have faithfully served Him. We have heard, and it is widely reported, that there was a king among your people of remarkable holiness, named Oswald, whose faith and virtue have been made famous even after his death through many miracles. I beg you, if you have any relics of his, to bring them to me, that perhaps the Lord, through his merits, may have mercy on me.” I answered, “I do indeed have a fragment of the stake on which his head was set up by the pagans after he was slain. If you believe with a steadfast heart, Divine Mercy may, through the merits of so great a man, grant you both a longer life on earth and the grace to enter eternal life.” He immediately declared his full faith in this. Then I blessed some water, placed a splinter of the oak into it, and gave it to the sick man to drink. He immediately felt relief, recovered from his illness, and lived for many years afterward. Having completely turned to God in both heart and action, wherever he went, he spoke of the goodness of his merciful Creator and the honour of His faithful servant.”