St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence.
Hayward, Paul Antony
ed. Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt, Studies in the Early
History of Britain: The Makers of England 2 (London and New York:
Leicester University Press, 1996). xvii + 365 pp.; 12 plates; 22
figures. ISBN 0-7185-0003-2. 49.95 [pounds sterling].
St Oswald, bishop of Worcester from 961 until 992 and archbishop of
York from 972, was the youngest of the great triumvirate of late
Anglo-Saxon monastic reformers, and thus the last to be commemorated in
our own time with a millennial conference. He should not be
disappointed, for in this case last is certainly not least. The
conference, held at Worcester in 1992 under the auspices of the
Cathedral and the University of Birmingham, was a tremendous success,
warmly remembered by many who attended, not least the present reviewer;
while the proceedings, published here, have produced a volume every bit
as distinguished as its predecessors -- Bishop/Ethelwold: His Career and
Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke (1988), and St Dunstan. His Life, Times and
Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsey et al. (1992). Special praise is due to the
editors and to Leicester University Press for the quality of their work:
there are remarkably few misprints for a volume of its length; the
figures are attractive and concise.
The papers themselves range across Oswald's career, the
Continental inspirations and nature of his reforms; the limitations of
the relevant sources; the social, topographical, administrative and
economic structures in which he operated; and the roles of saints'
cults, manuscript art, music and liturgy in the religious communities
founded or reformed by him. The survival of seventy-four leases issued
in his capacity as bishop of Worcester permits insights, unparalleled
for the period, into his lordship over his tenants and familia, and
several contributors take up the questions they raise.
As in the volumes for AEthelwold and Dunstan, most of the papers
tend towards revisionism, deconstructing the evidence, the man and the
achievement. Michael Lapidge unpacks Byrhtferth's Life of Oswald as
a hagiographical pastiche owing more to the author's ideals and
idiosyncrasies than to direct knowledge of the saint himself. Julia
Barrow argues for the tentative conversion of Worcester Priory into a
genuine `monastic' community, and Richard Gameson that manuscript
production continued in an inconsistent fashion, much as before,
implying that Oswald never imposed a `house style'. Patrick Wormald
disposes of the liberty of Oswaldslow, exposing it as a fabrication of
Bishop Wulfstan II and the post-Conquest community. John Nightingale
shows that Fleury, Oswald's Continental alma mater, was a
commanding source of legitimation because it claimed St Benedict's
relics rather than because of its actual record of reform. Donald
Bullough questions Oswald's asceticism, while Alan Thacker argues
that he used saints' cults as I vehicles of propaganda'.
Andrew Wareham reveals how the bishop's career profited from the
support of his family and how he rewarded them in return. Christopher
Dyer, perhaps most strikingly of all, reminds us that Oswald presided
over the systematic exploitation of the ten thousand or so peasants in
the diocese of Worcester. If the personality of the man remains elusive,
an image emerges, nevertheless, of 2 grand and somewhat worldly prelate,
wont to process about the Midlands from one extravagant festivity to the
next with a mighty band of armed retainers in tow.
