Oswald of Northumbria |Oswald of Northumbria| A 12th-century
painting of St Oswald in Durham Cathedral |Died||5 August
641/642| |Honored in||Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion,
Eastern Orthodox Church| |Major shrine||Bardney Abbey,
Lincolnshire, England; relics later translated to St Oswald's
Priory, Gloucester, England | Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith
of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile;
after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald
brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira once
again under a single ruler, and promoted the spread of
Christianity in Northumbria. He was given a strongly positive
assessment by the historian Bede, writing a little less than a
century after Oswald's death, who regarded Oswald as a saintly
king; it is also Bede who is the main source for present-day
historical knowledge of Oswald. After eight years of rule, in
which he was the most powerful ruler in Britain, Oswald was
killed in the Battle of Maserfield. Backgrou