Oswiu of Northumbria

Oswiu was king of Northumbria from 654 to 670 and decided at the Synod of Whitby which form of Christianity England would follow. He was a son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and was raised in exile among the Irish of Dál Riata, where he was baptised in the Ionan tradition; that upbringing shaped the argument he would later have to settle. He became king of Bernicia in 642 after his brother Oswald was killed by Penda of Mercia, and spent years unable to master either Deira to his south or Penda to his west. In 655 he destroyed Penda at the Winwaed, which broke Mercian power for a generation and ended organised English paganism as a political force. The dispute that defines him was about the date of Easter. The Ionan church he had grown up in calculated it differently from Rome, and his wife Eanflæd, raised in Kent, kept a different calendar from his own household, so that the court fasted and feasted at cross purposes. At Whitby in 664 he heard both cases and ruled for Rome, reportedly because Peter held the keys of heaven and Columba did not. The decision brought the English church into step with the continent, and the Ionan clergy withdrew. He was the last Northumbrian king to hold any real overlordship in Britain. He founded the abbey at Whitby under Hild, where the synod was held, and his daughter Ælfflæd later ruled it. He also arranged the mission that sent English clergy to convert the Mercians. Bede, writing sixty years later, is the source for nearly everything known about him, and Bede approved of the Whitby decision, which is worth bearing in mind.

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