Oswiu’s Bad Luck

I've been reading Marilyn Dunn's The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and just thinking about King Oswiu's bad luck after the Synod of Whitby. He is celebrated by Bede and the Church of England ever after for choosing to accept the authority of Rome over the independent tradition of Iona, the mother house of the Irish...

St Oswald and the Sussex Plague

Modified from the vault for St Oswald's Day: Happy St. Oswald's Day! It has been a while since I wrote but I can't miss the feast of St. Oswald. What little time I have had for medieval topics this summer has been focused on the plague, so this brings to mind the unique place King...

The Bone Thief: Stealing St Oswald

[I didn't intend to be gone this long. I hope someone is still out there!] Its been years since I've taken much time to read novels. I'm embarrassed to say how few I've read in the last couple years, but the Bone Thief finally was a temptation too great. How could I resist a novel...

Captivated by the Cross

I've been captivated by this image since I found it earlier this week. It was taken by David W Coigach and posted at deviantART. Taken at Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway  (Southwest Scotland), this imagery seems so right for Heavenfield  with the ravens circling overhead. Ok, so I'll admit heavenfield didn't have a stone cross, which...

Bishop Wilfrid and the Sussex Famine

When I was working on my Kalamazoo presentation last spring, I was looking for references to famines or malnutrition. Bede's History is pretty pitiful in this regard. He only records two famines, one before the arrival of the English and the second when Bishop Wilfrid first came to Sussex. As we will see below, this...

The Makers of Scotland

Tim Clarkson, The Makers of Scotland: Picts, Romans, Gaels and Vikings. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2012. 224 pg. In his third book, Tim Clarkson takes on the first thousand years of recorded Scottish history. It's a huge task, but Tim was more than up to the challenge. I really enjoyed it. I tend to focus so...