St. Oswald of Northumbria

Oswald of Northumbria is one of the most celebrated early medieval kings of England, and one of the least certain in his biographical details. The exact year of his birth is not recorded in the surviving sources; Bede, writing in the early eighth century, placed his reign in the 630s, which has led most modern scholars to suggest he was born sometime in the early seventh century. He was the son of King Æthelfrith of Bernicia, one of the two northern English kingdoms that would later be united as Northumbria. After his father's defeat and death in 616, the young Oswald was forced into exile, and the details of those years are largely unknown.

While in exile, Oswald is said to have been converted to Christianity among the Irish. The tradition recorded by Bede holds that he received the faith at Iona or in the Irish-speaking regions of Scotland, which gave him close ties to the Celtic Christian world. This background would shape his entire reign. When he returned to Northumbria in 634, he came as a Christian king determined to bring his people into the faith, and he sought spiritual guidance from the monastery of Iona rather than from the Roman-aligned church of southern England.

Oswald's military and political importance was established almost immediately. According to Bede, on the eve of the Battle of Heavenfield against the pagan Welsh king Cadwallon of Gwynedd, Oswald is said to have set up a wooden cross and, with his small force, prayed and fought until victory was won. The battle, traditionally dated to 634, is treated by Bede as a turning point for the English church, since it cleared the way for Oswald to invite the Irish monk Aidan to establish a monastery and episcopal see on Lindisfarne. From Lindisfarne, Aidan and his successors evangelized much of northern England, and Oswald supported this mission by granting land and by acting as interpreter, since he himself understood the Irish language.

The actual dates of Oswald's reign are difficult to pin down, but Bede presents him as king for only about eight years before his death. In 642 he was killed at the Battle of Maserfield, traditionally identified with Oswestry in Shropshire, fighting against the pagan king Penda of Mercia. Bede records the gruesome detail that Oswald's body was dismembered and that his arms remained incorrupt. His head was eventually translated to Durham, where it became one of the most important relics of medieval northern England, and his death was treated almost at once as martyrdom.

Oswald's feast is kept on February 29 in the Roman calendar, a date preserved in the Roman Martyrology and observed by some local calendars as well. Because the day occurs only in leap years, in many places his memorial is transferred to February 28 in non-leap years. The date of August 5 is traditionally associated with the anniversary of his death and the translation of his relics, but it is not the principal feast. Oswald is venerated as a king and confessor rather than a formal martyr, though the manner of his death and the miracles reported at his tomb gave him a quasi-martyr's reputation. He is remembered as patron of Northumbria, of soldiers, and of those who work for peace, and his short reign is often treated as a high point of early Northumbrian Christianity.