Our author begins with a long account of Archbishop Oda, Oswald's uncle. He tells us that Oda's father was said to have been 'one of those Danes who came over in the army of the fleet with Huba and Hinwar'. We learn from other sources that Ingwar and Ubba were the chieftains whose three sisters had woven the mysterious Raven banner which foretold victory or defeat; they had landed in England in 866, and were defeated after their invasion of Devonshire in 878. That Oda was of Danish descent we may readily believe; the name of his kinsman Oskytel, the archbishop of York, bears this out. The energy and adaptability of these fierce Norsemen is strikingly illustrated by the fact that less than eighty years after the Peace of Wedmore the two primatial sees were filled by men of Danish blood. We may accept the character given to Oda by Oswald's biographer, and regard him as a strong, brave, and prudent man. He was known after his death as 'Oda se goda' Oda the Good, a title which St Dunstan himself is said to have bestowed upon him. He must share with the saintly Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester the merit of preparing the way for the great monastic revival. Oda, we are told by Oswald's biographer, had received the monastic habit from the newly reformed monastery of Fleury; and as the English movement of reform under Dunstan and Ethelwold at Glastonbury was the fruit of Ælfheah's pious zeal, so the stimulus which it afterwards derived from foreign sources was partly the result of Oda's sending Oswald to be a monk at Fleury.
After having devoted the first section of his work to Archbishop Oda, the writer comes at length to his proper subject.[1] In highly rhetorical language, which serves to disguise his real lack of information, he tells us of Oswald's pious boyhood, his education under his uncle's supervision, and his rapid progress in sacred studies. Oda endowed him with a considerable fortune, which he employed in the purchase of a monastery at Winchester. He was of an -exceedingly attractive character, and his abilities and wealth surrounded him with friends. After the fashion of the times, he arrayed himself in silk and fared sumptuously every day, but his heart was not at ease. 'In those days', says our author, 'there were no men of monastic life in England, and no rules of that holy institute. There were clerks of religion and dignity, who yet gave the treasures which they eagerly acquired not to the honour of the church, but to their wives. Among such dwelt this pious youth as Lot in Sodom.'
We must not exaggerate the import of such a statement as this. The first part of it we know to be not strictly true; for Bishop
- ↑ Historians of York, i. 410.
