Plague Tales: Willibrord’s relic

I thought I would celebrate the feast day with a plague story related to King Oswald of Northumbria who died on this day, August 5, 642. For those of you not familiar with King Oswald his reign is flanked by two remarkable events. His reign began effectively on the eve of battle in a battle...

St Oswald Hagiography & Literature

This post is a run down of existing hagiography and literature on St Oswald. I'm really concerned here more with literature than history. The works listed on the indented bullet under each work lists the known sources or influences in that work. I may also list a few key translations or secondary works on these...

My Old Website

Much to my surprise, AOL pulled the rug out form under my feet and abruptly ended their support of member webpages. I shouldn't be surprised since I haven't been an actual subscriber for a while now, but still, my AOL email is still active. I wonder for how long? They also apparently ended service for...

King Oswald’s Female Fans

A comment on The Naked Philologist on why women (and girls) like medieval heroes quite a while ago, here, reminded me that women have always been attracted to some early medieval heroes. I left a comment on her blog that King Oswald has always been promoted by women, and I thought I would expand upon...

LKM: Deira

Its not too difficult to do little known kingdoms. Its possible to seem comprehensive when you don't have a lot of information. I could keep to those practically forgotten kingdoms, but I think a regional approach is more fair. So there is no dancing around it, Deira is one of the two giants of the...

Verse Hagiography

I've been thinking about devotional materials a lot lately. The history of devotional practices doesn't seem to be very well explored for the early medieval period. There is devotional material to study but it is largely overlooked. Verse hagiography is considered for devotional purposes, while prose hagiography is for historical or liturgical purposes. Sometimes these...