Oda of Canterbury

This article is about the Archbishop of Canterbury. For the Scottish princess, see Saint Oda.

Oda
Archbishop of Canterbury
Province	Canterbury
Diocese	Diocese of Canterbury
See	Archbishop of Canterbury
Appointed	941
Reign ended	958
Predecessor	Wulfhelm
Successor	Ælfsige
Other posts	Bishop of Ramsbury
Orders
Consecration	between 909 and 927
Personal details
Born	unknown
Died	2 June 958
Sainthood
Feast day	4 July
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church[1] Eastern Orthodox Church
Attributes	Archbishop holding a chalice

Oda (or Odo;^[1] died 958), called the Good or the Severe, was a 10th-century Archbishop of Canterbury in England.

Early career

Oda's parents were Danish, and he may have been born in East Anglia.^[2] His father was said to have been a Dane that came to England in 865, together with the Viking army of Ubbe and Ivar, and presumably settled in East Anglia.^[3] Oda's nephew Oswald of Worcester later became Archbishop of York.

In Byrtferth's Life of Saint Oswald, Oda is said to have joined the household of a pious nobleman (miles) called Æthelhelm, whom he accompanied to Rome on pilgrimage. While on pilgrimage, Oda healed the nobleman's illness.^[4][5] Other stories, such as those by the 12th century, William of Malmesbury, have Oda fighting under Edward the Elder then becoming a priest.^[3] Some sources state that he became a monk at Fleury-sur-Loire in France.^[3][6]

Bishop of Ramsbury (c. 927–941)

Whatever his upbringing, Oda was consecrated Bishop of Ramsbury sometime between 909 and 927.^[7] He is first seen witnessing charters in 928.^[8] He was said to have fought alongside King Æthelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.^[4][9] It was at this battle that Oda is said to have miraculously provided a sword to the king when the king's own sword slipped out of its scabbard. A Ramsey chronicle records that in the 1170s, the sword was still preserved in the royal treasury, although the chronicler carefully states the story "as is said" rather than as fact.^[10] He arranged a truce between Olaf III Guthfrithson, king of Dublin and York, and Edmund I, king of England.^[3] While he was bishop of Ramsbury, Æthelstan sent him to France to arrange the return of King Louis IV of France to the throne of France. Louis had been in exile in England for a number of years.^[11]

Archbishop of Canterbury (941–958)

In 941 Oda was named Archbishop of Canterbury.^[12] He helped King Edmund with his legislation.^[3] He was present, along with Archbishop Wulfstan of York, at council held by Edmund that proclaimed the first of Edmund's law codes.^[13] The council met at London, over Easter around 945 or 946.^[14] He also settled a dispute over the Five Boroughs with his counterpart at York, Wulfstan.^[4]

Odo also made constitutions, or rules, for his clergy. His Constitutions of Oda are the first surviving constitutions of a tenth century English ecclesiastical reformer.^[15] Oda reworked some statutes from 786 to form his updated code, and one item that was dropped were any clauses dealing with paganism.^[16] Other items covered were relations between laymen and the clergy, the duties of bishops, the need for the laity to make canonical marriages, how to observe fasts, and the need for tithes to be given by the laity.^[17] The work is extant in just one surviving manuscript, British Museum Cotton Vespasian A XIV, folios 175v to 177v. This is an 11th century copy done for Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York.^[18]

At the death of King Eadred of England in 955, Oda was one of the recipients of a bequest, in his case a large amount of gold.^[19] He was probably behind the reestablishment of a bishopric at Elmham, as the line of bishops in that see starts with Eadwulf of Elmham in 956.^[20] He crowned King Eadwig in 956, but in late 957 Oda joined Eadwig's rival and brother Edgar who had been proclaimed king of the Mercians in 957, while Eadwig continued to rule Wessex. In early 958 Oda annulled the marriage of Eadwig and his wife Ælfgifu, who were too closely related.^[21]

Oda was a supporter of Dunstan's monastic reforms,^[22] and was a reforming agent in the church along with Cenwald the Bishop of Worcester and Ælfheah the Bishop of Winchester. He also built extensively, and re-roofed the cathedral after raising the walls higher.^[3] In 948, Oda took Saint Wilfrid's relics from Ripon.^[23] Frithegod's verse Life of Wilfrid has a preface that was written by Oda, in which the archbishop claimed that he rescued the relics from Ripon, which he described as "decayed" and "thorn-covered".^[24] He also acquired the relics of St Ouen, and Frithegod also wrote, at Oda's behest, a verse life of that saint, which has been lost.^[4] He was also an active in reorganizing the diocesan structure of his province, as the sees of Elmham and Lindsey were reformed during his archbishopric.^[17]

Oda was known by contemporaries as "The Good"^[4] and also became known as Severus "The Severe".^[25]

The archbishop died on 2 June 958^[12] and is regarded as a saint, with a feast day of 4 July.^[26] Other dates were also commemorated, including 2 June or 29 May. After his death, legendary tales ascribed to him miracles, including one where the Eucharist dripped with blood. Another was the miraculous repair of a sword.^[1]

Citations

1. ^ ^{a b c} Farmer Oxford Dictionary of Saints p. 393
2. ^ Brooks Early History of the Church of Canterbury p. 222-224
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Cubitt and Costambeys "Oda (d. 958)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
4. ^ ^{a b c d e} Lapidge "Oda" Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England
5. ^ Byrhtferth, Life of Saint Oswald, ed. Raine, pp. 404–5.
6. ^ Stenton Anglo-Saxon England p. 448
7. ^ Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 220
8. ^ S 400 (AD 928); "Oda 1." PASE.
9. ^ Delaney Dictionary of Saints p. 464
10. ^ Clanchy From Memory to Written Record p. 40
11. ^ Stenton Anglo-Saxon England p. 347
12. ^ ^{a b} Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 214
13. ^ Wormald Making of English Law p. 310
14. ^ Wormald Making of English Law pp. 440–441
15. ^ Stafford Unification and Conquest p. 9-10
16. ^ Blair Church in Anglo-Saxon Society p. 481 footnote 252
17. ^ ^{a b} Darlington "Ecclesiastical Reform" The English Historical Review p. 386
18. ^ Schoebe "Chapters of Archbishop Oda" Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research pp. 75–83
19. ^ Fletcher Bloodfeud p. 24
20. ^ Stenton Anglo-Saxon England p. 437
21. ^ Stafford Unification and Conquest p. 48-49
22. ^ Darlington "Ecclesiastical Reform" The English Historical Review p. 387
23. ^ Blair Church in Anglo-Saxon Society p. 314
24. ^ Brooks Early History of the Church of Canterbury p. 53
25. ^ In Michael Drayton's poem Poly-Olbion (Song 24), he is described as "Odo the Severe".
26. ^ Walsh A New Dictionary of Saints p. 454-455

References

Primary sources

• Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of St Oswald, ed. J. Raine, Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops. Rolls Series 71. 3 vols: vol 1. London, 1879: 399–475.

Secondary sources

• Blair, John P. (2005). The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-921117-5. 
• Brooks, Nicholas (1984). The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066. London: Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-7185-0041-5. 
• Clanchy, C. T. (1993). From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Second Edition ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-631-16857-7. 
• Cubitt, Catherine and Marios Costambeys (2004). "Oda (d. 958)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20541. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20541. Retrieved 7 November 2007.  Subscription or UK public library membership required
• Darlington, R. R. (1936). "Ecclesiastical Reform in the Late Old English Period". The English Historical Review 51 (203): 385–428. doi:10.1093/ehr/LI.CCIII.385. JSTOR 553127. 
• Delaney, John P. (1980). Dictionary of Saints (Second ed.). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-13594-7. 
• Farmer, David Hugh (2004). Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Fifth ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860949-0. 
• Fletcher, R. A. (2003). Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516136-X. 
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third Edition, revised ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 
• Lapidge, Michael (2001). "Oda". In Lapidge, Michael; Blair, John; Keynes, Simon; Scragg, Donald. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 339–340. ISBN 978-0-631-22492-1. 
• "Oda 1". Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE). http://www.pase.ac.uk/pdb?dosp=VIEW_RECORDS&st=PERSON_NAME&value=14338&level=1&lbl=Oda. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
• Schoebe, G. (May 1962). "The Chapters of Archbishop Oda (942/6) and the Canons of the Legatine Councils of 786". Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xxxv (91): 75–83. 
• Stafford, Pauline (1989). Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-7131-6532-4. 
• Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England (Third ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5. 
• Walsh, Michael J. (2007). A New Dictionary of Saints: East and West. London: Burns & Oats. ISBN 0-8601-2438-X. 
• Wormald, Patrick (1999). The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-22740-7. 

External links

• Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England: Oda
• Opera Omnia by Migne Patrologia Latina with analytical indexes

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Aethelstan	Bishop of Ramsbury c. 925–941	Succeeded by Ælfric
Preceded by Wulfhelm	Archbishop of Canterbury 941–958	Succeeded by Ælfsige

Persondata
Name	Oda
Alternative names	Odo
Short description	Bishop of Ramsbury; Archbishop of Canterbury
Date of birth
Place of birth	East Anglia
Date of death	28 June 958
Place of death	Canterbury, Kent