Dear all -
Despite paying reasonable attention since I joined the list about 15
months ago, I don't think I've seen any mention in contributions to it
of an alleged saint whose name was given as [St] Oseburg in the
early fifteenth century - presumably a corruption of Osburh. She
was alleged then to have been the founder of a short-lived nunnery
at Coventry in the late tenth century.
There's an entry for her in Stanton's A Menology of England and
Wales, 137, and Butler's Lives of the Saints (ed Thurston &
Attwater), i, 705, which both rehearse the little that's known about
her cult in Coventry Abbey in the late medieval period but say
very little about her herself. This is not surprising. I've searched
high and wide but haven't come up with a single whiff of her in any
other relevant context, let alone as a historical person. (I don't think
there's any mileage at all in trying to identify her with Alfred's
mother, also called Osburh, who was Jutish and who died when
he was only six; and I can't find anyone else of the same or a
similar name in early sources, neither ecclesiastical nor secular
ones. Nor, so far as I know, was any medieval church dedicated to
her, apart from Coventry Abbey itself according to some accounts.)
However, before I finally resort to (im)purest speculation about who
she might have been in something that I'm writing about the early
history of Coventry's churches, I'd like to check with the experts on
this list that I haven't overlooked anything. So, o sapientes, any
communicable thoughts, please, on St Oseburg/Osburga/Osburh?
Steve Bassett
Dr S R Bassett
Dept of Medieval History
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
tel: 0121-414 5765
email: [log in to unmask]
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