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St. Oswald - Patron Saint of Thornton Steward
There is evidence of Christians living in the North back to Roman time, while after the departure of the Romans in 410 the British kingdoms were nominally Christian.
The Anglo-Saxon Invaders who enlarged their foothold soon afterwards were pagan, and organised Christian religion probably disappeared in their areas. However one British kingdom, Elmet in the Leeds area, survived until around 620, which suggests there may have been Christians hereabouts.
Oswald crowned as a king from a 13th century manuscript
When in 625 the Kentish Christian princess Ethelburga came north to marry the Northumbrian King Edwin she brought as her chaplain Bishop Pau1inus, one of the Roman colleagues of St. Augustine. King Edwin himself was baptised on Easter Day 627 in York, to be followed by many of his people. However five years later, with his death in battle, and the return of his widow and her chaplain to Kent, the Roman mission collapsed. Only James the Deacon was left in Northumbria, probably at Catterick - his presence is remembered at our sister Oswald church at Hauxwell.
Into this dire situation came Oswald, a Northumbrian prince who had been exiled in Dalriada (Argyllshire), and there, among the followers of St Columba, had been converted to Christ. He regained the kingdom at the battle of Heavenfield, near Hexham, raising a cross among his small force prior to the battle against a vastly superior enemy. Victorious he sent back to Iona for missionaries, who led by St Aidan, set up their base on Lindisfarne (Holy Island), off the Northumbrian coast, and in sight of Oswald' s capital at Bamburgh.
Oswald was a committed Christian who took an active part in the evangelism of his people by translating Aidan’s Irish into English as he preached. He spent so much time in prayer that his habitual posture while sitting daily in his judgment hall, was to have his hands on his knees, palms upwards, in a prayer posture familiar today. One day, when sitting down to feast, Aidan being his guest, Oswald's steward told him there were beggars seeking food at the palace gate. Oswald not only handed over the meal to them, but instructed (there being no coinage in circulation) that the silver dish be broken up and distributed. Aidan was so impressed that he prayed that that arm of Oswald should never decay. Tradition has it that it remained incorrupt, and is reported by an eye-witness as being such, many centuries later, when it was preserved in Peterborough cathedral.
After his death miraculous healings occurred in connection with a fragment of the cross from the Heavenfield battlefield, from the ground on which Oswald had been killed in battle at Oswestry, and from contact with his bones. Some of these relics are revered in northern Italy and Austria to this day.
As it was Aidan and his followers who were principally responsible for establishing the Christian faith in almost all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (apart from Kent) the church in England, and we their twentieth century descendants, owe a great debt to Oswald who initiated their mission.