Tea at Trianon: St. Oda, Son of a Viking

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

St. Oda, Son of a Viking

From A Clerk of Oxford:

Today is the feast of St Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died on 2 June 958. Oda has perhaps the most exciting family background of any Anglo-Saxon churchman (possibly of any archbishop of Canterbury ever): Oda's father was a Danish Viking, who came to England in c.865 as part of the so-called 'Great Heathen Army' led by Ivar the Boneless and Ubbe, the men whom medieval legend called the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. This Viking army raided and conquered large parts of England in a series of devastating campaigns, until eventually making peace and settling down in the north and east of England, in the area which later became known as the Danelaw. Oda's father seems to have settled in East Anglia.

Now, the name 'Great Heathen Army' may have alerted you to the fact that these Vikings were not Christians - but Oda became a Christian (his hagiographers say he did this in childhood, in the face of his father's fierce opposition, supposedly), entered the church, became a royal adviser, and in 941 was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. A meteoric rise for the son of a pagan Viking! As Archbishop of Canterbury, Oda seems to have made a special effort to support the church in his native East Anglia, perhaps to repair some of the damage his ancestors had done there. Other members of his family also became prominent churchmen, most notably his nephew, the great monastic reformer St Oswald of Worcester.

Although we have various contemporary sources for Oda's career, the first stand-alone Life of Oda wasn't written until after the Norman Conquest; it was composed at Canterbury shortly before 1100 by the monk and historian Eadmer, as part of his effort to rescue various Anglo-Saxon archbishops from obscurity. He based his Life largely on the work of Byrhtferth, writing a century earlier at Ramsey Abbey, which had been founded by Oda's nephew St Oswald. Here's a very nice-looking manuscript of Eadmer's Life (BL Harley 624, f.121), produced at Canterbury during the author's lifetime...(Read more.)