CONCERNING SAINT OWINUS, MONK, AT LICHFIELD IN ENGLAND,
TOWARD THE END OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Owinus, Monk, at Lichfield in England (Saint)
[1] Among the more illustrious Queens for holiness, Saint Etheldreda shone forth in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy -- the daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles, who produced a memorable example of chastity for every age. For she was married twice and yet, free from all marital embrace, [The Acts of Saint Etheldreda the Queen and of Saint Owinus as related by the Venerable Bede,] preserved her virginity dedicated to God inviolate. Of this Virgin Queen, the Venerable Bede writes magnificently in Book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History, Chapters 19 and 20, and we shall treat more fully in this work at the twenty-third of June, the day of her birthday. On this day, the fourth of March, Saint Owinus is celebrated, her close associate and steward of her household, whose virtues the same Bede extols in Book 4, Chapter 3. His eulogy is inserted in the Life of Saint Ceadda, which we illustrated on the second of March. We here repeat the chief points that are more fully reported in the same work, Chapter 2, page 146.
[2] Saint Owinus was therefore the first of the servants and head of the household of Saint Etheldreda. Saint Owinus, from the Steward of Saint Etheldreda, When after the death of her first husband she had been given in marriage to Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, he came with the Queen from the province of the East Angles to York, the seat of the Kings of Northumbria. Afterwards, as the same Bede writes, when with the growing fervor of faith he resolved to renounce the world, he did not do this half-heartedly, but so thoroughly did he strip himself of worldly goods that, leaving behind
all that he had, clad only in a simple habit and carrying an axe and hatchet in his hand, a monk of Lastingham: he came to the monastery of the most reverend Father Ceadda, which is called Lastingham, situated in the northern part of the Duchy of York, on the borders of the territories of Ryedale and Pickering, and at the same latitude distant from the German Ocean. But Bede explains why he came to Saint Ceadda with an axe and hatchet: "For," he says, "he signified that he was entering the monastery not for idleness, as some do, but for labor, which he also demonstrated by his deeds. He labors diligently: For the less he was able to devote himself to the meditation of the Scriptures, the more he applied himself to manual work."
[3] When Saint Ceadda had then been made Bishop of the Mercians, the Lindsey folk, and indeed the Middle Angles, and was residing at Lichfield, their episcopal city, Bede says: "He had made for himself a dwelling not far removed from the church, He dwells at Lichfield under Saint Ceadda the Bishop, in which he was accustomed to pray and read in greater seclusion with a few -- that is, seven or eight Brethren -- whenever he had leisure from the labor and ministry of the Word." Here Saint Owinus, counted as the eighth among the Brethren along with the Bishop in the aforesaid dwelling out of reverence for his devotion, while the others within were occupied with reading, himself worked outside at whatever appeared needful. "Owinus was indeed a monk of great merit, who out of pure intention of heavenly reward had left the world, and was in all respects worthy of one to whom the Lord should specially reveal his secrets, worthy of one to whose account when narrating it men should give credence."
[4] It happened one day that in the aforesaid dwelling Bishop Ceadda chanced to be present with only Brother Owinus, the other companions having gone to the church for a fitting reason, he hears a heavenly canticle descending to Saint Ceadda, and the Bishop alone in the oratory of the place was devoting himself to reading or prayer; then Owinus suddenly heard, as he afterwards related, a voice of those singing and rejoicing most sweetly descending from heaven to earth. This voice, he said, he first heard from the east-southeast, that is from the direction of the winter sunrise, and then it gradually drew nearer to him until it reached the very roof of the oratory in which the Bishop was; and entering it, it filled the whole place and surrounded it on every side. But while he, and again ascending to the heavens: attentive and anxious, directed his mind to what he was hearing, after the space of about half an hour he heard the same canticle of joy ascend again from the roof of the same oratory and return to the heavens by the same way it had come, with ineffable sweetness.
[5] When he remained for some time as if stunned and was searching with keen mind what these things might be, the Bishop opened the window of the oratory and, making a sound with his hand He receives together with the other monks the last admonitions of Saint Ceadda as he was often accustomed to do, commanded anyone who might be outside to come in to him. He entered at once, and the Bishop said to him: "Go quickly to the church and bring these seven Brethren here, and you yourself come along as well." When they had come, he first admonished them to preserve the virtue of mutual love and peace toward one another and toward all the faithful; and also to follow with untiring persistence the practices of the regular discipline that they had either learned from him or seen in him or found in the deeds or sayings of the preceding Fathers. Then he added that the day of his death was now very near at hand. "For that beloved guest," he said, "who was accustomed to visit our Brethren has today deigned to come to me also and to call me from this world; therefore, returning to the Church, tell the Brethren that they should commend my departure to the Lord with their prayers, and that they should remember to prepare for their own departure, whose hour is uncertain, with vigils, prayers, and good works."
[6] When he had spoken these and many more such things, and they, having received his blessing, now stood deeply saddened, the one who had heard the heavenly song returned alone; and prostrating himself on the ground, he said: "I beg you, Father, may I ask something?" "Ask," he said, "whatever you wish." And he said: "I beg you, tell me what was that canticle of rejoicing He understands from the Angels that the day of death was made known that I heard coming from the heavens upon this oratory, and after a time returning to the heavens?" He replied: "If you heard the voices of the canticle and knew of the coming of the heavenly hosts, I command you in the name of the Lord not to tell this to anyone before my death. But truly they were the spirits of Angels, who came to call me to the heavenly rewards that I have always loved and desired, and they promised to return after seven days and to take me with them." Which indeed, as had been foretold to him, was accomplished in fact. So far Bede.
[7] What Saint Owinus did afterwards lies hidden. He may have remained at Lichfield during the time of the successors Winfrid and Sexwulf as Bishops; he may have retired to the monastery of Barrow, The remaining Acts and place of death are unknown, which Bede attests that Saint Ceadda built in the province of Lindsey, or Lincolnshire, from a donation of King Wulfhere, in which, he adds, "to this day" -- around the year 730 -- "the traces of the regular life instituted by him remain." Finally, he may have returned to Northumbria and passed the rest of his life holily in his first monastery of Lastingham; but when he died is likewise unknown.
[8] He is praised by Trithemius. Trithemius, in his work on the illustrious men of the Order of Saint Benedict, Book 3, Chapter 118, gives this eulogy of him and calls him Osuinus: "Osuinus," he says, "a monk and disciple of Blessed Ceadda the Bishop, a man of great merit and a zealous lover of regular discipline, an East Angle by nation; when he was a cleric in the service of Queen Etheldred and was held in great esteem, despising all things, he came to Saint Ceadda dwelling in the monastery called Lastingham, in which, making great progress, he began to shine with great virtues. He flourished in the year of the Lord 600." Indeed, one should read 680, as Trithemius had said in the preceding chapter concerning Saint Ceadda, whom we said died in the year 672 in his Life. Furthermore, Saint Owinus was not a cleric of Queen Etheldreda but, as we said from Bede, the first of her servants and head of her household. The Greeks would have called him an Oeconomus, and the Franks of that century a Major-domo.
[9] Arnold Wion, citing Trithemius, records him in the Appendix to the Benedictine Martyrology with these words: "Saint Osuinus, monk of Lastingham under Saint Ceadda the Abbot, shone with great virtues." Inscribed in the Martyrologies on the twenty-ninth of July. In the English Martyrology of the first edition, a Commemoration of Blessed Owen the Confessor is inscribed at the twenty-ninth of July: "At Lichfield in the County of Stafford," with a longer eulogy taken from Bede. Ferrarius, in his General Catalogue, on the authority of the said Martyrology, has: The third and fourth of March. "In England, of Blessed Odoën the Confessor," and asserts in his Notes that he lived around the year 689. But on the third of March, Edward Maihew in his Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict, Menard in his Benedictine Martyrology, and Bucelinus in the likewise Benedictine Menology record the Commemoration of Blessed Owinus the Monk at Lichfield in England; and both Bucelinus and Maihew transcribe many details from Bede. Finally, Jerome Porter, in his Flowers of the More Illustrious Lives of the Saints of England, Scotland, and Ireland, published the Life of Saint Owinus in English at the fourth of March. With these Flowers cited, in the English Martyrology of the second edition the Saint is raised to the same fourth of March, and it is added that a church in his name was dedicated in his honor in the city of Gloucester, He has a church at Gloucester, situated on the River Severn in the kingdom of the West Saxons. Moreover, whether Saint Ceadda lived according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, and not rather retained the way of life of Saint Aidan and the rule of Abbot Saint Columba, we investigated in his Life, Section 2, which it is not necessary to repeat here.