Osmund (missionary bishop)

The delegation from Bremen was obliged to return home, fulminating against Osmund in the defamatory terms which were in due course introduced to the public domain in the third book of Master Adam's history of his archdiocese.

However, already at the time of the original public controversy, at least one person present expressed strong disapproval of Osmund, maintaining that he was a promulgator of 'unsound teaching of our faith' and Stenkil, King Emund's son-in-law and eventual successor, thought well enough of Adalward to offer him some assistance with his return journey.

[12] The best clues to the character of the theological milieu in which Osmund operated, and for which he may have been thought responsible, are to be found in the not always very orthodox inscriptions and mythological carvings on memorial rune-stones set up in eleventh-century Sweden by members of the Christian laity.

[13] As regards Osmund's character, background and standing as a missionary, it is not to be assumed that the characterization of him in Adam of Bremen 3, chapter 15, as an ungrateful, heretical vagabond and acephalous pseudo-archbishop, tells the whole truth about him.

The fact that Osmund's education was sponsored by 'Sigafridus, a bishop of the Norwegians' locates him, in an ancient and honourable tradition of missionaries dispatched from England, or under English leadership, to parts of continental Europe beyond the bounds of Christendom.

[16] Local traditions preserved in Halland, which associate the names of 'Saint Sigfrid' and 'Saint Asmund' with holy springs, may emanate from work done by the two missionaries together in that area, which, in the early eleventh century, up until King Emund's time, was territory disputed between Denmark and Sweden.

[17] Latin hagiographical sources assert that within the Swedish kingdom, Saint Sigfrid was granted land for the church at Husaby near Skara, and at Hoff and Tiurby in the vicinity of Växjö, and that he furthermore founded bishoprics for the two parts of Götaland, western and eastern, and also at Uppsala and Strängnäs.

[18] This information, combined with the evidence of rune-stones datable to the earlier decades of the eleventh century, suggests the spread of 'English' missionary activity over southern and eastern-central Sweden, as far north as Uppland.

[20] However, apart from Adam of Bremen's report of that incident, the only medieval literary records of Osmund's activity as a bishop in Sweden come from the bishop-lists of Skara and Växjö and so refer to his work in the southern part of the kingdom.

Only the late-medieval bishop-lists of Skara provide clues as to what happened there in the years immediately before the accession of Bishop Adalward I. Evidently deriving their data from local traditions quite distinct from Adam of Bremen, they make no mention of either Thurgot or Gottskalk.

Instead, the message they convey is that at first it was Sigfrid 'from England' who served as bishop in the area (though his mission-base was evidently not in Skara itself);[24] that Sigfrid's immediate successor was another Englishman, named Unno, who suffered a martyr's death by stoning;[25] that he, in turn, was succeeded by Osmund, who won acceptance to the extent that he was actually enabled (presumably by the cathedral chapter and the local population) to 'sit' as bishop in Skara, and also provided with a residence at Mildu hede, on former common-land, adjacent to that of the dean, who had been there before his arrival; that he 'swore a solemn oath' and 'governed well as long as he could'.

That Osmund, having ventured to make the journey from Sweden to Rome, was, according to Adam of Bremen's report, rebuffed on arrival at his destination, need not stand to his discredit, given the frequency with which successive popes replaced one another in second quarter of the eleventh century, all too often amidst scandal and faction-fighting.

[40] Osmund, like all Christian missionaries operating in the Swedish kingdom, would have been obliged to respect the agreement made by Olof Skötkonung with the traditional polytheists of his country, 'not to force anyone of the populace to give up the worship of his gods, if he did not of his own accord wish to turn to Christ'.

However, all in all, it may be doubted whether he was guilty of anything worse than pragmatic improvisation in a difficult mission-field and a breach of the letter of the law committed when he was suddenly faced with a crisis threatening the continuation of the labours of love to which he had felt called as the Swedish Kingdom's leading bishop.