2022-10-08
47 分钟This is medieval death trip for Friday, October 7, 2022.
Episode 96 concerning the relics and grave of King Oswald.
Hello and welcome to medieval death trip, the show where we explore the wit and weirdness of medieval texts.
I'm your host, Patrick Lane.
In our last regular episode, we heard about how the welsh prince Llywelyn and his brother David both lost their heads.
Well, turnabout is fair play.
And so in this episode, an english king will lose his Llywelyn and Davids heads were put on display for political purposes by King Edward I.
Todays head was likewise initially taken as a trophy of war, but found an extended life as a holy relic.
This is the head of King Oswald of Northumbria, separated from his body around the year 642, though actually were kind of going to spend more time with Oswalds grave than with his body parts.
Our account today of the wonders worked by Oswald's remains and substances adjacent to them comes from the venerable bede, a monk at the twin abbeys of Monk Wearmouth and Jarrow in the late 7th to early 8th centuries, who has been called the father of english history for his book Historia Ecclesiastica gentes Anglorum, or the ecclesiastical history of the english people.
While this book is ostensibly about the development of the church in England, it necessarily covers a lot of politics as well, and is thus one of our most valuable sources for early anglo saxon history.
And our story today comes from it.
Unlike William of Malmesbury, who seems never to have heard an anecdote he wasn't ready to copy into his work, Bede tends to stick to the main thread of events.
As a historian, it's not accurate to say that accounts of wonders or miracles are rare in Bede.
He certainly does include them when he's writing about saints, and his church history contains a fair amount of hagiography.
But he does seem somewhat more reserved, I would say, in presenting the miraculous compared to some of our later medieval chroniclers.
Nonetheless, this little run of Oswald miracles we're going to hear is about as good an example of a mirabilia catalogue as we get in the historia ecclesiastica.
And in telling Oswald's story, Bede might also be indulging himself a bit out of partisan zealous.
Bede is a northumbrian and Oswald stands out as a patriotic northumbrian hero, so that might explain him reveling in these proofs of Oswalds sanctity and specialness.
Oswald had died only about 90 years before Bede is writing about him.