Saint Éadwine of Northumbria
Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate two great holy men of Northern England. The first of them is Éadwine [or Edwin], who was king of Northumbria from 616 to 633 – at first heathen, and then thanks to the efforts of his wife Saint Æþelburg and her personal chaplain Archbishop Saint Paulinus, a convert to Christianity. Among Éadwine’s six children, Éanflæd, who chose the life of a nun, would also attain to sainthood. Éadwine himself earned his crown in a different way – he was killed in battle against the heathen Penda of Mercia and the self-interested Cadwallon ap Cadfan.
Éadwine was born around 586, the eldest son of Ælle of Deira (whose name and country prompted Pope Gregory Dialogos to a series of witty Latin wordplays on the English prior to sending the mission among them). When Ælle died, the Bernician king Æþelfríð (Éadwine’s brother-in-law, and father of Saint Óswald and Óswíu) annexed Deira and forced Éadwine into exile at the age of three. Éadwine may or may not have spent his youth in Gwynedd as later hagiographers (like Geoffrey of Monmouth) have claimed. But what is known is that as a young man he settled in Mercia, and forged an alliance with Ceorl King by wedding his daughter Cwénburg: they had two children together, Ósfríð and Éadfríð. Ultimately, he allied himself also with Rædwald, king of the East Angles. Saint Bede relates that Æþelfríð attempted with bribes and threats to induce Rædwald to have Éadwine murdered, but Rædwald’s wife told him that betraying a friend for gold would be níþing in the extreme, and thus shamed him into keeping Éadwine safe. Together with East Anglian help, Éadwine led a here back into his homeland.
A great battle occurred on the banks of the River Idle, in which Æþelfríð’s army was routed and Æþelfríð himself slain. Rædwald’s son Rægenhere, too, fell in the battle. But Rædwald and Éadwine held the day, and made a mighty thrust northward into Bernicia. Óswald and Óswíu fled into Dál Riata and Ireland, respectively. Éadwine was thus able to wrest control over the entire North and unite the two subkingdoms again into the whole of Northumbria – though he still swore fealty to the friend who had made this sige possible: Rædwald. In his early reign as king, Éadwine embarked on multiple wars of conquest against his neighbours. He attacked the British kingdom of Elfed, slaying its king Ceredig ap Gwallog, and adding its lands to his own. He attacked Rheged and forced the king of that land to flee southward into Powys, in Wales. Éadwine’s heres also hunted the eldest son of Æþelfríð, Éanfríð, throughout Allt Clud and Gododdin. Even at the time of his baptism, Éadwine was still ruthlessly harrying the Britons west of him. He conquered the Isle of Man and Anglesey, defeated the armies of Gwynedd in battle and lay siege to Puffin Island, forcing his old rival Cadwallon to flee to his southern kinfolk in Brittany on the Continent. Such were the extent of his conquests that he was considered to be brytenwealda: the High King of England.
At some point, Éadwine put aside Cwénburg. This left some very ill feeling toward him in Mercia – perhaps earning him Penda’s deadly enmity. However, this freed Éadwine to wed Saint Æþelburg: a politically advantageous match which put Northumbria on friendly terms with Christian and Frankish-aligned Kent. As for Æþelburg herself, the match was very much to her liking, and not just for political reasons. Even so, Éadwine had a strong tendency to dissemble over religious matters. There is indication that he had accepted baptism in the Celtic tradition during the invasion of Rheged, but then relapsed into heathenry. The Pope sent letters to both Éadwine and Æþelburg urging the former to accept Christ and the latter essentially to get a move on in converting her groom. But, as we see, Éadwine defers this decision again and again.
About a year after Éadwine’s marriage to Æþelburg, Cwichelm of Wessex – an ally of the Mercians – sent an envoy named Éomer to Northumbria. His ostensible purpose was to speak frith between Wessex and Northumbria, but his true bidding from Cwichelm was to kill Éadwine by stealth. Cwichelm both feared Northumbria’s growing power and was alarmed and dismayed by Éadwine’s political ‘pivot’ from Mercia to Kent. When Éomer reached Éadwine’s court, on the day that the Christians in the Roman rite were celebrating the feast of Pascha, he put forward his hand to shake it as a gesture of friendship, and Éadwine obliged him. But then Éomer put his hand into his cloak and brandished a knife with a poisoned edge. One of Éadwine’s þegnas, a man named Lilla, saw the glimmer of the blade – and rushed to set his own body between Éomer and the king. Éomer ran Lilla through with the blade, whose point still managed to wound Éadwine. Another þegn named Forðhere came forward to wrest the knife from Éomer, but he too was cut down before Éomer could be quelled.
Æþelburg Queen, already in her last trimester of pregnancy, on the shock of seeing this brawl at once went into labour. Her life and the life of the child being in grave danger, it seems that Saint Paulinus lent his assistance to them both in prayer and in more practical ways. Éadwine King had good reason to thank Paulinus that both his wife and his newborn daughter Éanflæd lived through the night, though he was then still weak from the poison on Éomer’s blade, and gave his assent to Paulinus to have his daughter baptised in Christ, along with twelve other members of his household.
Éadwine, moved to wrath, waited until his wound had healed, but swiftly thereafter moved against Cwichelm and his father Cynegils. Though his army was smaller than the West Saxon one, he won the Battle of Win Hill against them. They held the high ground and trusted in Christ, and thus were delivered the victory. However, in spite of his promise of conversion to Saint Paulinus, Éadwine still would not be baptised straight away. Instead, he conferred with his þegnas, among whom was the goði Coifi.
Coifi himself was particularly desirous to hear what Saint Paulinus had to say about the Christian troth, as he had long grew jaded with the heathen trow which he had professed his whole life. And so Éadwine arranged it, and Coifi sat listening to Paulinus’s teaching for a long time – and when he had done, Coifi blessed the Christian faith and spoke thus to his king:
I have long realised that there is nothing in what we worshipped, for the more diligently I sought after truth in our religion, the less I found. I now publicly confess that this teaching clearly reveals truths that will afford us the blessings of life, health and æternal happiness. Therefore, Your Majesty, I submit that the temples and altars that we have dedicated to no advantage be immediately burned.Éadwine submitted to his friend Coifi’s counsel, and Coifi took it upon himself to order the destruction of the heathen hof. To this purpose Éadwine gave Coifi a stallion, a sword and a spear – for hitherto it had been banned for a goði to bear weapons, or to ride anything other than a mare. When the crowds saw him, they thought that Coifi had gone mad. But Coifi went up to the hof and cast the spear into it (weapons not being allowed inside hallowed ground). Seeing that Coifi was unharmed after breaking the taboo, the crowd burned the hof to the ground. According to Saint Bede, the site of this hof was at Goodmanham, which makes sense etymologically. (The ‘good’ in Goodmanham derives from the same root as goði, which is the word for a heathen priest.)
Éadwine was thereafter baptised by Saint Paulinus, along with all his þegnas and a great number of the common folk of Northumbria. This happened on Pascha during the year 627. Éadwine gave orders to Paulinus to refurbish the little wooden kirk he had used to administer the Gifts to his wife during their marriage: to give it a stone basilica. This would later become York Minster. While these renovations were being made and until his flight following Éadwine’s death, Saint Paulinus led the life of an itinerant missionary, teaching, exhorting, consoling and baptising throughout the Northumbrian countryside. So many of the Northumbrian folk yearned to hear the word of life that Saint Paulinus went with Éadwine and Æþelburg to their court at Yeavering, the better to accommodate the great throngs needing baptism. He spent thirty-six days there, performing baptisms constantly through his waking hours. Many of these baptisms were held at the River Swale which runs near Catterick – the lodging-place of Saint Paulinus’s faithful assistant James in later times.
As to the newly-christened Éadwine, he went on to father three more children with Æþelburg: an elder son Æþelhún, a younger daughter Æþelþrýð (both of whom died in infancy) and a younger son Wuscfrea. His earlier friendship with Rædwald served him in good stead, as Éadwine managed to prevail over Rædwald’s younger son and heir Eorpwald to accept the Christian faith in baptism. Éadwine was present at this baptism as Eorpwald’s sponsor; sadly, Eorpwald was assassinated soon afterwards by a heathen named Ricberht. It would therefore be left to his brother Sigeberht, who came to power three years later, and Saint Felix the Burgundian to complete the instruction of the East Angles in the Christian faith.
Éadwine’s old enmity with the Britons, and his earlier slighting of the Mercians, came back to haunt him. Penda and Cadwallon, Éadwine’s two deadly foes, formed an alliance against him and marched into Northumbria. The two heres met at Hatfield on the twelfth of October, 633. It was a total rout for the Northumbrians. Éadwine was beheaded, and most of his here was killed or scattered by the Welsh and Mercian force. Northumbria was totally broken. Penda in particular waged cruel atrocities against the non-combatant populace, and a series of blights and famines followed his campaign which left very little hope for the survivors. For good reason it was called ‘the hateful year’ in the annals which followed. Éadwine’s family was forced to flee to Kent, and then to France, and Paulinus along with them. Only James the Deacon stayed behind, and even then his life was placed in great peril. Of Éadwine’s six children: his eldest son Ósfríð by Cwénburg had been killed in battle in an earlier campaign against the British; his second son Éadfríð was captured and later put to death by Penda; his third and fourth children, whom he had by Æþelburg, died in their infancy; and Wuscfrea was assassinated in exile in France. Reading this history one begins to understand the lamentation for the broken kingdom of the Geats that occupies the end stanzas of Beowulf. The house of Éadwine continued only with Saint Éanflæd, who while yet in the world managed to heal over the long feud within the Northumbrian kingly house by marrying Óswíu, the younger son of Éadwine’s old enemy Æþelfríð. Upon her husband’s death she established the monastery at Whitby, where her father Éadwine’s body was laid to rest after having been buried in haste at Edwinstowe. (Éadwine’s head was taken to York Minster.)
Éadwine reigned for seventeen years; for six of those years he had reigned as a Christian king. Saint Éadwine was indeed exemplary of Leont’ev’s concept of primitive simplicity. He had an overabundance of protean barbarian vigour and vitality that led him to wage war constantly against his British neighbours. It was likely this same health and animal energy which so prepossessed his wife Æþelburg. And yet Bede tells us that within his realm, life was relatively peaceful, such that a woman with a newborn baby could travel the country on foot without having to fear for her safety. Saint Éadwine was therefore remembered with unmatched fondness by the humble folk among the Northumbrians, despite the fall of his kingdom and the suffering that followed thereafter; and the fact that he had fallen in a defensive battle against heathen forces further cemented his reputation as a passion-bearer. Holy and right-believing prince Éadwine, pray to God for us!
Having accepted the true Faith, O righteous Éadwine,
Thou wast found worthy to exchange thy worldly crown
For the crown of martyrdom
At the hands of the godless Mercians.
Inspired by thy example,
We beseech thee to pray that we may have the courage to fight evil in any form
That we too may receive the reward of eternal blessedness.
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