Join me today to meet the manly saint who was J. R. R. Tolkien’s model for the king who returned to save his people, Aragorn.
Name: Oswald Whiteblade
Life: 604 - 642 AD
Status: Saint
Feast: August 5
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Oswald Whiteblade appeared to be leading his men to certain death.
The pagan king Cadwallon had usurped the kingdom once ruled by Oswald’s father. Perhaps few in Northumbria even remembered the day that, as news of her husband’s death reached her, Oswald’s mother had fled North to Ireland. Now Cadwallon seemed an unstoppable force. He had killed kings and would-be kings who had tried to rise against him.
Up North in Ireland, Oswald had learned to fight. What is more, he had found a reason to fight. And now he was here, at the head of a small but dedicated army of his companions, taking the fight to Cadwallon. Even though his army was by far the smaller, Oswald Whiteblade was fighting an offensive campaign, controlling intelligence to keep Cadwallon unsure of his location, and stalking the powerful army of the pagan king.
Centuries later, the actions of young Saint Oswald would inspire J. R. R. Tolkien when he was trying to bring to life the character of Aragorn, the true king of Gondor and the leader of the men of the West. For example, Aragorn is a ranger who learns to fight and track and heal in the North. And it’s because Aragorn is wandering outside his rightful home of Gondor that Aragorn learns the deep history of his own people from the elves.
For Oswald, the North was Ireland. He trained with Irish princes who taught him to fight in a way that was a little different from that of his own Saxon people. The Irish retained the ancient European habit of raiding, which guaranteed that at least once a year they would ride out to harass nearby enemy tribes - mostly the Picts. Oswald learned to fight in the Irish style as a fast moving raider, throwing spears from horseback or fighting on foot with a sword and spear. He would have learned to fight with the small Irish buckler as well as the large shield used by his people. It was in these raids that he got his nom de guerre, Oswald of the bright arm, or as it is usually translated, Oswald Whiteblade.
But when Oswald went North, he didn’t just learn to be a warrior. He came to understand that England had once been different - before the arrival of Saxons such as he was. His mother placed her sons in the island monastery of Iona, founded by the Irish prince who had become a saint, Columba. There Oswald learned that once England had been a Christian province of the fallen Roman Empire. At that time, England had been peaceful, orderly, almost unimaginably civilized. Oswald learned that then his people, the Saxons, had come to raid and conquer, and eventually Rome had been unable to defend the faraway province of Britain, and the legions had sailed away. The shadow of paganism had once again fallen on England. But maybe, just maybe, when the right king arose, things could begin to change back and England could become a Christian nation once again.
As he studied and trained, Oswald must have heard of all the men who stood against Cadwallon and had failed. His own brothers were among them. So when Oswald decided the time was right and returned to reclaim his father’s kingdom, no one had much confidence in the young man. Only a few of his Irish companions and a handful of Saxons answered the call of the dashing young prince with his fine moustache and gold embroidered purple cloak.
But Oswald was something that Cadwallon had not expected. Oswald’s raiding tactics kept Cadwallon on the back foot, unable to find Oswald’s nimble force. Probably Cadwallon wondered what Oswald was waiting for, and perhaps Oswald’s own men wondered the same thing. I doubt that Oswald could have said much more than that he would know the moment when it came.
One night, when Oswald’s little band had been stalking Cadwallon for some time the men settled into their camp for the night. The Saxon historian and saint Bede tells us that the location was a place called Heavensfield, though I should note that Max Adams, in his new biography of Saint Oswald, makes a strong case that this occurred elsewhere. Wherever he was, exactly, as Oswald slept, he had a dream.
In the dream he was coming into his own camp, where his men were sleeping, but now he saw it as it really was. Saint Columba was standing there among them, a vast and towering figure, with the top of his head almost lost in the clouds. Oswald looked down, and saw that Saint Columba’s billowing cloak enfolded his camp, that without knowing it his men were wrapped in the saint’s protection.
The saint told him that this was the moment to fight.
When Oswald woke up, he did something that had become unusual since the days of Rome. First, Oswald had his men dig a hole and build a large wooden cross. Oswald himself held it steady as they planted it.
Then Oswald knelt and led his men in prayer. The poet and author Samuel J. Stephens recasts Oswald’s prayer into modern poetry in the old Saxon alliterative style in his poem, Heavensfield:
“Let us kneel to the Almighty, Living Lord,
Beseeching his mercy maintain our hearts
Against this merciless enemy force.
He knows how we have taken up our arms
Justly against these unjust mercenaries
For the safety of family and household,
Against the diminishment of our nation.”
Oswald wasn’t speaking in poetry, of course, but Stephens’ words capture what he did say, making it very clear that, like Constantine three centuries before, he was fighting under the sign of God.
And then Oswald won. Stephens tells the tale of Oswald’s men emerging from the mist after planting the cross, with Oswald holding the cross of a sword in his hand:
When Cadwalla had awakened, encamped
To the west where Oswald was hidden,
His heart was full blithe with hardened strength
Until the apparition of Oswald on the hill—
A mountain it seemed now in morning mist,
As the king clave to the cross, kneeling.
Then upon advancing, the advantage was his
In numbers against the Northumbrian band,
But king came upon him, cross in his palm,
Of pommeled sharp silver
Oswald’s smaller force smashed into Cadwallon’s army, scattering it and killing Cadwallon himself.
Oswald was 30 years old, and now at last he was a king. There had been many kings of Northumbria, but Oswald was determined not to be just another warlord. And that is the other reason why Oswald inspired Tolkien’s character of Aragorn. Oswald knew of the deep past of England that most had forgotten. He decided to become the bridge between England’s past and the future he imagined.
That was why, even as he grew his kingdom through conquest and assimilation until it reached to the Humber river in the South, Oswald worked to restore the Christian kingdom of England that had been. And to accomplish that, he sent messengers to the monks of Iona requesting their help.
The first thing was to send a bishop. According to Bede, Iona first sent an older and established bishop. He was dour and demanding, and his expedition was a disaster. He returned to Iona, and when the monks there had a general assembly he reported that the English could not be helped. But one young priest listened to his report and very gently said that he thought he would have done things differently. Asked if he could do better, he said he thought he could. And then he laid out his approach, an approach based on mercy and gentleness. By the time he finished talking, his brothers realized that they didn’t just want to take his advice. They had found their envoy.
The young man’s name was Aidan, which meant ‘flame’, and indeed it was his destiny to stir the embers of English Christianity until they burned again. Even before he had learned the language of the English, Aidan was consecrated bishop and sent South.
So young Bishop Aidan arrived at Bamburgh on the North East Coast of England, Oswald’s capital city. Together, Oswald and Aidan worked to restore the England that had been. Oswald, for his part, had spent so long in Ireland that he was happy to translate Aidan’s words, but it didn’t take Aidan long to fit in on his own, and soon Aidan was on the road, criss-crossing the land, bringing the good news. As a constant traveller, and a bishop no less, Aidan was expected to ride, but he preferred to go on foot. He liked to fall in with the ordinary people trudging along the roads, and talk to them about Jesus.
Meanwhile, Oswald’s kingdom grew, and he married a princess of Wessex. With the marriage, the king her father converted to Christianity.
For the years of Oswald’s reign, Aidan’s church and Oswald’s state seemed to be moving in harmony, creating a little golden age of order and peace. One story from that time captures the moment. It was Easter, and bishop Aidan had paused in his travels to join the king as the men broke their Lenten fast. The servants were bringing out silver trays covered in food when Oswald got a message. An unexpected number of poor people had come to Bamburgh to beg at Easter, perhaps spurred by a raid or fire or drought. And so instead of eating, the king and the bishop took the trays of fine food and brought them out to feed the poor. When the food was gone, the king told his men to hack up the trays into pieces of silver that could be given to the poor to rebuild their lives.
Aidan was very rarely still. But for those moments when he was, Oswald gave him a little bit of land not so far from Bamburgh. It was not an island, exactly, but when the tide was high it was cut off from the mainland. The place was called Lindisfarne. Aidan founded a monastery there.
There’s a prayer attributed to Aidan, though I haven’t been able to find any evidence that it was actually his. I think it may come from Bede’s vivid description of the half-island of Lindisfarne, cut off twice a day by the tide.
Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.
In the centuries to come, as England endured dark ages and the raids of a new generation of pagans from the Nordic countries, Lindisfarne would remain a beacon of light.
For now, Oswald and Aidan were transforming the North of England into something that had not existed since the Roman legions sailed away. Their little golden age had lasted for eight years. But in the South, a power was growing, and a king by the name of Penda was massing a pagan army. Oswald went out to meet Penda at Maserfield, and there was a great battle. Oswald and his men fought hard, even killing Penda’s brother, but in the end it was Penda who was victorious.
Oswald had probably been wounded by the time his enemies hacked their way through his bodyguards. He knew he would soon be dead, but as he fought the godly king prayed for the souls of the men who had died for him, and for his Christian kingdom. And then someone struck Oswald a mighty blow, likely with an axe because it split his skull open. And he died.
Penda was victorious. In the way of the Northern pagans, Penda decided to desecrate Oswald’s soul and complicate his afterlife by desecrating his body. He put Oswald’s head on a pole and cut his body into pieces. For Penda, and for many pagans, Oswald and his mission had failed. Pagans thought that a king ruled in part through his luck, the ability to make things work out. Oswald’s luck had obviously come to an end at Maserfield. And the dream of a Christian England had collapsed along with the martyr king. The poet Stephens captures the pagan point of view.
Now Northumbria, after nine full years [Stephens is echoing Bede who counts Oswald as rightful king one year early],
Withdrew again from God, returned to ungiving idols,
Its peoples impatient, its princes scornful,
Warding their wards as wicked heathens,
Worshiping wild beasts, Woden’s savage might,
Embracing the earth in ignorance and want
Well, that was the pagan take. Christians, however, see things differently. For us, death is not the end. It’s pointless to attack a saint’s body, or any Christian’s body - no amount of damage will pose any difficulty to God when He resurrects us. And so the way that people responded to Saint Oswald’s grizzly death would be a test of how effectively Oswald had evangelized his people. Would they remember him as a failed king whose luck had run out? Or as a martyr whom God had called to die for Him?
As it turned out, Saint Oswald was not above putting his thumb on the scale. After the battle in which Oswald had died, after his relatives had gathered what they could from what was left of his body, a man was riding through the now empty field where the battle had taken place. The rider’s horse was sick, and coming out into the field the sickness reached its worst stage. The horse fell down and began to thrash about in agony. The man realized it would soon die. But then the horse rolled over and suddenly its symptoms went away. It got up, completely cured. The man looked at the patch of ground where the horse had been cured. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he set up a little marker in that area.
It was Saint Oswald’s first miracle, and it’s hard not to imagine that the saint is winking at us a little bit. Horses have often been associated with kings, but that was especially true among the Saxons. If he wanted to show that defeat at the hands of Penda had left him undiminished, King Oswald could hardly have chosen a better candidate for his first miracle.
The man whose horse was healed stopped at an inn nearby where he told the strange story of what had happened to him before he rode on. As it happened, the niece of the innkeeper had been paralyzed. She convinced her family to carry her out so that she could sleep where the rider had marked the spot. When she woke up, she found she could stand, and she walked home. Word soon spread, and someone remembered what made that spot special. It was where King Oswald Whiteblade had died, praying for his people. Locals began to come and gather the earth to keep it as a relic. The historian Bede says that by his time, the area where Oswald died looked like a crater because so many people had come to take a bit of dirt away with them. His memory grew and grew.
For the next nine years, Bishop Aidan, would continue his ministry in the now fractured area Oswald had once ruled. Some of the local kings and lords were good, but they were not like Oswald. Even so, Aidan kept travelling the land, building up the church. By now the land had many monasteries and churches. The flame that Aidan had brought to England would prove impossible to put out. As for Aidan himself, he was still on the move on the day that he died, when he put his hand against one of the churches he had built and leaned in for a few seconds’ rest. One of the monks found his body there, slumped against the church, still holding it up as he had done through his long career.
Saint Oswald did not have a very long reign. And yet for centuries the English have remembered him. When Oswald was king there was no friction between the church and the crown. For those few years, the two saints Aidan and Oswald held back the darkness and even pushed out against it. And so Oswald is not only a manly saint but a model of a good king, one who has helped generations of Englishmen including Tolkien to understand kingship at its best. For eight years, the kingdom of Saint Oswald offered a glimpse, or perhaps a distant echo, of the kingdom of God.
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