Page:St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester.djvu/50

 of Canterbury. Wharton, as we have said above, printed it again in Anglia Sacra, ii. 78 ff. 5 from a Lambeth MS., still ascribing it to Osbern; but in his preface (p. x) he recants this judgement, and assigns it to Eadmer, among whose works it is found in C.C.C. Cambridge 371. We keep open for the moment the question of authorship. The pages of Anglia Sacra are here quoted, as being the more accessible: the divergence of text is small, save that lines have been dropped in Wharton's edition at several points.

78. sicut rosa e spinis floruit. Cf. Vita Oswaldi, 403 'ut vernis floruit rosis, et enormes peccaminum spin as post baptismi sacramentum defudit'. But here the 'spinae ' are his pagan parents; as in the verses printed by Mabillon at the end of the Life (p. 295): Ut rosa de spinis, sic prodiit Odo paganis.

79. Graeca et Latina lingua magistris edocendum tradidit; guarum linguarum plerisque tune temporis in gente Anglorum usus erat a discipulis beatae memoriae Theodori archiepiscopi profectus. Cf. Eadmer, Vita Bregwini (Angl. Sacr. ii. 185): c Florebat etiam adhuc quaque per Angliam exercitia ac studia literarum, quae ex beati Theodori pontificis Cantuariorum ciusque discipulorum traditione totam terram magnifice irrigabant.'

ita ut posset poemata fingere. Eadmer, in his Life of Wilfrid, ascribes to Oda himself the metrical Life of Wilfrid written by Frithegode, to which Oda wrote the preface: see Raine, Historians of York, I. xxxix.

Post haec Sacramento baptismatis renatus. This is the first serious discrepancy with the Vita Oswaldi, which puts Oda's baptism before the troubles which led him to leave home.

quantum ad instituta canonum spectat. Oda's premature ordination has no place in the earlier account, though it may possibly have been suggested by certain inexact phrases of it; as 'deinde excursis perpaucis anni mensibus', &c. (Osw., p. 405). In his Life of Dunstan Eadmer lays stress on the regularity of that saint's ordination (p. 173): 'Dunstanus ergo monachus sine dilatione factus est, et deinde legitimo tempore per canonicas sacrorum ordinum successiones etiam ad sacerdotii gradum &hellip; provectus.' This is a silent correction of Osbern's account (p. 83): 'celeriter ilium monachal! ac sacerdotali gratia promovit.'

antiquorum exemplorum auctoritate victus. Cf. infra 81: 'Canonum fatetur auctoritate prohiberi &hellip; iuxta veterum monumenta librorum &hellip; exemplum &hellip; victus in his,' &c.

secreta male actae vitae ei aperire. The statement that the courtiers made him their father-confessor has no counterpart in the earlier narrative.