[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$fgfjhg1d37gzv":3,"$fy6oulildcg5h":12},{"slug":4,"title":5,"subtitle":6,"excerpt":7,"coverUrl":8,"publishedAt":9,"contentHtml":10,"substackUrl":11},"two-men-one-date-oswin-of-deira-and","Two men, one date: Oswin of Deira and Bernard of Clairvaux","This week in history: 20 August","A Northumbrian king gets handed over to his cousin’s men at Gilling in 651. Five hundred years later, an abbot dies in a valley in Champagne. They’ve got more to do with each other than you’d think.I ","https:\u002F\u002Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\u002Fpublic\u002Fimages\u002F703a9079-42d8-48ca-827f-1144c664dd31_6000x4000.jpeg","2026-08-23T23:29:37.000Z","\u003Cp>\u003Cem>A Northumbrian king gets handed over to his cousin’s men at Gilling in 651. Five hundred years later, an abbot dies in a valley in Champagne. They’ve got more to do with each other than you’d think.\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>I had two notes sitting side-by-side this week. At first I thought they were unrelated but for the date: a seventh-century murdered king and a twelfth-century abbot. If you follow them both forward though, they really form a good argument.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>20 August 651: a king is handed over at Gilling\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>King Oswin’s father Osric was killed by Cadwallon of Gwynedd in 634, and the boy was taken south to Wessex. He came back in 642 to a Northumbria that had been split in two: Deira in the south was his, Bernicia in the north belonged to his cousin Oswiu.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cfigure>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg\">\u003Cpicture>\u003Csource type=\"image\u002Fwebp\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg 424w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg 848w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg 1272w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg 1456w\">\u003C\u002Fsource>\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!n_DP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7005cc49-bda2-45de-94bc-9a77c2d2f952_960x1447.jpeg\" alt=\"Icon of St Oswine, shown crowned and holding a martyr's palm.\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fpicture>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cfigcaption>Icon of St Oswine\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\u003Cp>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Bede liked him, and says so plainly:\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cblockquote>\u003Cp>“…he governed the province of the Deiri seven years in very great prosperity, and was himself beloved by all men.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fblockquote>\u003Cp>And a little further on:\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cblockquote>\u003Cp>“King Oswin was of a goodly countenance, and tall of stature, pleasant in discourse, and courteous in behaviour; and bountiful to all, gentle and simple alike.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fblockquote>\u003Cp>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Character-wise, Bede says everyone thinks he was a great guy and a great king. Singled out is Oswin’s humility, which unfortunately catches up with him in the end.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>In 651 Oswiu declared war on him. The aim was to hold Deira and Bernicia under one crown the way their kinsman Oswald had. King Oswin raised an army, but saw that he was vastly outnumbered. Rather than his men die in a battle they couldn’t win, he dissolved the army and rode to Gilling to the estate of a man called Hunwald, a friend he had given the land to.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Hunwald handed Oswin over to his enemies… he was killed there on Oswiu’s orders on 20 August 651.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Bede more or less stops there, but with one other detail that reveals how the murder was taken at the time: Oswiu’s wife Eanflæd made her husband found a monastery at Gilling as penance. Eanflæd was both men’s kinswoman, so this was a family matter on both sides of the marriage. Do you think it was just her feeling penance needed to be made, or maybe it was an overall view of the people?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>The shrine that made him a saint (again)\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>He was venerated as a martyr very early on, and he’d been kept as one since the eighth century. But the cult most people would actually have run into was rebuilt four hundred years after he died, and rebuilt somewhere Bede never mentions.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Bede only says Oswin was killed at Gilling. It’s only the priory at Tynemouth that claims the rest. They say the king’s body was carried north to the cliff above the mouth of the Tyne. The location was lost over time and years of Danish raids, until a vision to a monk named Edmund revealed the grave in 1065. After that the cult was put back together piece by piece. The relics were moved twice. A new shrine went up at Tynemouth in 1110, on the anniversary of his death. And a \u003Cem>Life\u003C\u002Fem>, full of miracles, was written by a monk of St Albans, the abbey Tynemouth answered to. Both of them were Benedictine houses, and both were richly endowed.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cfigure>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg\">\u003Cpicture>\u003Csource type=\"image\u002Fwebp\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg 424w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg 848w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg 1272w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg 1456w\">\u003C\u002Fsource>\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!cZlm!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e8118-ad64-494c-a280-b00f7f997abd_960x720.jpeg\" alt=\"The ruins of Tynemouth Priory standing on the headland above the mouth of the Tyne.\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fpicture>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cfigcaption>Tynemouth Priory. Photo Glen Bowman, CC BY 2.0\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\u003Cp>I wouldn’t throw the Tynemouth tradition out entirely, but it’s worth being honest about what it says underneath. A priory with a cliff-top site and a mother house a long way south had every reason in the world to want a royal martyr of its own, and the grave conveniently turns up in the generation right before the Normans reorganised the northern church. Personally, I would assume there’s a fair amount of twelfth-century self-interest in this story.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>That matters for the second half of this piece, because the abbey paying for that \u003Cem>Life\u003C\u002Fem> was St Albans, one of the richest Benedictine houses in England.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>20 August 1153: an abbot dies at Clairvaux\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cfigure>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg\">\u003Cpicture>\u003Csource type=\"image\u002Fwebp\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg 424w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg 848w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg 1272w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg 1456w\">\u003C\u002Fsource>\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!2bMr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f02900d-3737-412f-b64e-32144ba42413_552x645.jpeg\" alt=\"Illuminated initial B showing Bernard of Clairvaux in a monk's habit, holding a book and an abbot's crozier.\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fpicture>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cfigcaption>Bernard in a historiated initial B\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\u003Cp>Bernard of Clairvaux was twenty-five when he was handed twelve monks and a wooded valley in Champagne. He stayed abbot of that same house for thirty-eight years, and spent them selling one idea to anybody who’d listen.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>He didn’t invent the Cistercians; the order began at Cîteaux in 1098. Bernard joined in 1113, when it was still small and struggling; he spent his life trying to change how monasticism looked throughout Latin Christendom, including northern England.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>The idea was simple enough: the Rule of St Benedict, read literally. Three centuries of endowments had made monasticism rich and gilded, with rent rolls, jewelled reliquaries and long hours of choir instead of work. He wanted it back to how he thought it was meant to be, and that came with two conditions.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Land nobody else wanted.\u003C\u002Fstrong> The statutes required sites far from settlement, so the white monks took ground no one was farming: thorn scrub, wooded gorge, marsh, high moor. The Fountains monks spent their first winter under an elm, in a valley their own chronicler called fitter for wild beasts than men.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Your own hands doing your own work.\u003C\u002Fstrong> Choir monks back out in the fields at harvest instead of living off tenants. To make that arithmetic work they took in lay brothers, illiterate men bound by vows who did the clearing, ditching, ploughing and herding.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Put the two readings of the same Rule side by side and you can see what he was recruiting for. The Benedictines, the black monks, had been endowed for centuries: wealthy abbeys, land worked by tenants, richly furnished churches, and a lot of the day given over to an elaborate liturgy. St Mary’s York was one of these, and so was St Albans. The Cistercians, the white monks, wore undyed wool, took remote sites, built plain churches, cut back the choir and did real labour. Plus something genuinely new: every house tied to its mother house, visited yearly, and answerable to an annual General Chapter. That constitution is why the order could grow this fast and still hold together.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>1132, the hinge year\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>In 1128 there was only one Cistercian house in England: Waverley in Surrey. Four years later, two more start up in Yorkshire, months apart. Bernard founded one himself while the other came to him.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Rievaulx was sent.\u003C\u002Fstrong> He sent twelve monks from Clairvaux into a narrow wooded valley in Ryedale, on land given by Walter Espec. Their abbot was William, the monk who’d been writing Bernard’s letters for him.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cfigure>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg\">\u003Cpicture>\u003Csource type=\"image\u002Fwebp\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg 424w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg 848w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg 1272w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg 1456w\">\u003C\u002Fsource>\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!jDgC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9343f54f-a2d5-431d-bff1-1ccdfd8d5d57_1280x960.jpeg\" alt=\"The roofless nave and presbytery of Rievaulx Abbey standing in its wooded valley in Ryedale.\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fpicture>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cfigcaption>Rievaulx Abbey. Photo Tilman2007 \u002F Dr. Volkmar Rudolf, CC BY-SA 4.0 \u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Fountains converted.\u003C\u002Fstrong> Thirteen Benedictine monks walked out of St Mary’s York, wintered in a rocky valley, and wrote to Bernard asking how they should live. He answered, and Fountains became Cistercian.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cfigure>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg\">\u003Cpicture>\u003Csource type=\"image\u002Fwebp\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg 424w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg 848w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg 1272w, https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg 1456w\">\u003C\u002Fsource>\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fsubstackcdn.com\u002Fimage\u002Ffetch\u002F$s_!gV-y!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\u002Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffdf305c7-921f-4a68-8c75-5a34e8410d51_1280x960.jpeg\" alt=\"The ruined church and tower of Fountains Abbey seen across open grass.\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fpicture>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cfigcaption>Fountains Abbey. Photo Klaus with K, CC BY-SA 3.0\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\u003Cp>Then the Cistercian movement grew. Between Rievaulx and Fountains, those two Yorkshire houses founded eight more: Melrose, Newminster, Rufford, Louth Park, Kirkstead, Warden, Revesby and Woburn. And that “worthless” land? It turned out to be excellent for sheep. Worked from outlying granges, those moors made the Cistercians the biggest wool producers in England.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>By the time Bernard of Clairvaux died on 20 August 1153 there were fifty-two Cistercian houses in England and Wales, and he’d never set foot in any of them. So how do you found houses in a country you never visit? You write. He wrote to Henry I about the monks he was sending north, and to the Archbishop of York about the ones who’d run off. Land, protection and permission, all of it asked for from a valley in Champagne. More than five hundred of those letters survive.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>What one has to do with the other\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>Put the dates next to each other. In 1110 the monks of Tynemouth raise a new shrine over the bones of a seventh-century king, on his anniversary, and their mother house at St Albans produces a \u003Cem>Life\u003C\u002Fem> stuffed with miracles. Twenty-two years later, and not very far down that same coast, thirteen monks walk out of St Mary’s York because of what Benedictine had come to mean.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Those two things are closer together than they look. A royal martyr’s shrine means offerings, pilgrims, precious metal, feast-day liturgy, and a reputation that pulls in endowments. Basically, a saint’s shrine meant money… a royal saint’s shrine meant big money. That’s what the Benedictine model had turned into and had been since Bede’s time. What Bernard objected to was that whole machinery, and his statutes stripped it out: remote sites where no pilgrim was going to turn up, plain churches, no jewelled reliquaries, less choir and more work.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>So on 20 August you get both halves of it. King Oswin is the kind of saint the black monks needed; Bernard of Clairvaux is the man with the white monks saying that all isn’t how it’s supposed to be.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>And here’s the part I can’t get past. The Cistercians took land nobody wanted precisely so they couldn’t get rich off it, and within a generation the Yorkshire houses were the biggest wool producers in the country. Whatever Bernard set the order up to get away from, it caught up with them anyway, out on the moors, through the lay brothers, while he was still alive. Fountains and Rievaulx are both ruins now. Henry VIII’s Dissolution took Rievaulx in 1538 and Fountains in 1539. At the time of its dissolution, Fountains was the richest Cistercian house in England.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>St Oswin is still venerated. He’s the patron saint of the betrayed, and he’s in the Roman Martyrology, recognised universally but celebrated locally: historically at Tynemouth, Durham and St Albans, and today mostly at Tynemouth, where his shrine stood. He was killed by a Christian king over land, which makes him an odd sort of martyr, and a twelfth-century preacher knew it and said so. A martyr, he wrote, “if not for the faith of Christ, at least for the justice of Christ.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch3>So, one question. Do you buy Tynemouth’s claim on the body, or was the 1065 vision just a priory getting itself a royal saint? Let me know what you think in the comments!\u003C\u002Fh3>\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fmegloveshistory.substack.com\u002Fp\u002Ftwo-men-one-date-oswin-of-deira-and\u002Fcomments\">\u003Cspan>Leave a comment\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fmegloveshistory.substack.com\u002Fsubscribe?\">\u003Cspan>Subscribe now\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fmegloveshistory.substack.com\u002Fp\u002Ftwo-men-one-date-oswin-of-deira-and?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share\">\u003Cspan>Share\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Chr \u002F>\u003Ch2>Sources\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Oswin of Deira\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Bede, \u003Cem>Ecclesiastical History of the English People\u003C\u002Fem>, III.14.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>\u003Cem>Vita Oswini regis\u003C\u002Fem>, the St Albans \u003Cem>Life of Oswine\u003C\u002Fem>.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>\u003Cem>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography\u003C\u002Fem>, s.v. Oswine.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003C\u002Ful>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>\u003Cem>The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux\u003C\u002Fem>, trans. Bruno Scott James.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>\u003Cem>Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains\u003C\u002Fem>, ed. J. R. Walbran.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Walter Daniel, \u003Cem>The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx\u003C\u002Fem>.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, \u003Cem>Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales\u003C\u002Fem>.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Janet Burton, \u003Cem>The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215\u003C\u002Fem>.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003C\u002Ful>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Images\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Icon of St Oswine — Wikimedia Commons, public domain.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Tynemouth Priory — photograph by Glen Bowman, \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcreativecommons.org\u002Flicenses\u002Fby\u002F2.0\u002F\">CC BY 2.0\u003C\u002Fa>, via Wikimedia Commons.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Historiated initial B, Bernard of Clairvaux — source to confirm.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Rievaulx Abbey — photograph by Tilman2007 \u002F Dr. Volkmar Rudolf, \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcreativecommons.org\u002Flicenses\u002Fby-sa\u002F4.0\u002F\">CC BY-SA 4.0\u003C\u002Fa>, via Wikimedia Commons.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Fountains Abbey — photograph by Klaus with K, \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcreativecommons.org\u002Flicenses\u002Fby-sa\u002F3.0\u002F\">CC BY-SA 3.0\u003C\u002Fa>, via Wikimedia Commons.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Cp>Spring Evening in Yorkshire — Illiya Vjestica, Unsplash\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003C\u002Ful>","https:\u002F\u002Fmegloveshistory.substack.com\u002Fp\u002Ftwo-men-one-date-oswin-of-deira-and",{"persons":13,"places":14,"events":15,"institutions":16,"groups":17,"titles":18,"houses":19,"sources":20,"artifacts":21,"librarySections":22},2709,7446,1661,1781,1942,129,107,98,3,6596]