Ælfheah, who was himself a monk of devoted life, had ruled at Winchester from about 934 to 951; and though it is possible that Oswald did not go there till after his death, when he was succeeded by Ælfsige, of whom no good has been recorded, yet by that time Dunstan had been building up Glastonbury for some ten years and making it a true model of Benedictine life. But all this was half a century before the date at which our author was writing; and a tradition had begun to grow up to the effect that there were no monks in England, and that such monasteries as had not been wholly destroyed by the Danes were served by careless clerks whose iniquities called to heaven for vengeance. Such speedy forgetfulness of the recent past is no isolated phenomenon: it is indeed characteristic of great movements of reform.
We must pause to note here a misconception which arose a hundred years later, and still confuses the story of Oswald's early days. Eadmer, in re-writing his Life, says that Oswald became a canon at Winchester, and was soon made dean in spite of his youthfulness. 'Regular among irregulars,' he tells us, Oswald sought in vain to mend the morals of his colleagues, and at last left them in despair.[1] We need not press the anachronism of the use of the word 'canon', which does not seem to occur in any document of English origin, either Latin or Saxon, before the year 1000. It is enough to point out that the anonymous biographer, whose work he had before him, says nothing about Oswald's association with the cathedral church at Winchester, still less of his becoming its dean. What we are told is that out of the wealth with which his uncle Oda supplied him 'he bought for himself a monastery situated at Winchester, paying no inconsiderable price (sibi monasterium quod est in Wintonia, positum acquisivit, donando digno pretio).[2] Such a proceeding is in harmony with what we know of the times, though by Eadmer's day it had happily become almost inconceivable. There were two great monasteries or minsters in Winchester—the Old Minster, which was the cathedral church, and the New Minster founded by King Alfred and his son King Edward. We have no ground for supposing that what Oswald purchased was the headship of either of these great foundations, still less that it was merely a stall in the cathedral minster. There were other churches in Winchester, such as the two which chance to be mentioned in connexion with Bishop Ælfheah in the earliest Life of St Dunstan.[3] Probably it was one of these smaller monasteria that was the scene of Oswald's earliest ministrations.
- ↑ Historians of York, ii. 6.
- ↑ Ibid. i. 410f.
- ↑ Memorials, pp. 14f.
