12 Facts About Saint Osmund

Saint Osmund was employed in many civil transactions and was engaged as one of the Chief Commissioners for drawing up the Domesday Book.

Saint Osmund's diocese comprised the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, and Berkshire, having absorbed the former bishoprics of Sherborne and Ramsbury under its incumbent Herman at the 1075 Council of London.

Henry I's biographer C Warren Hollister suggests the possibility that Osmund was in part responsible for Henry's education; Henry was consistently in the bishop's company during his formative years, around 1080 to 1086.

In 1086 Saint Osmund was present at the Great Gemot held at Old Sarum when the Domesday Book was accepted and the great landowners swore fealty to the sovereign.

Saint Osmund's canons were renowned for their musical talent and their zeal for learning, and had great influence on the foundation of other cathedral bodies.

Saint Osmund made selections of the practices he saw around him and arranged the offices and services.

Saint Osmund initiated some revisions to the extant Celtic-Anglo-Saxon rite and the local adaptations of the Roman rite, drawing on both Norman and Anglo-Saxon traditions.

At one time Saint Osmund thought Archbishop Anselm too unyielding and needlessly scrupulous in the dispute concerning investitures and in 1095 at the Council of Rockingham favoured the king.

Saint Osmund had a great reverence for St Aldhelm who 300 years before as Bishop of Sherborne had been Osmund's predecessor.

Saint Osmund officiated at the saint's translation to a more fitting shrine at Malmesbury and helped Lanfranc to obtain his canonization.

Saint Osmund is commemorated by a statue in niche 178 on the west front of Salisbury Cathedral.

Saint Osmund's canonization took almost 230 years, with papal proceedings that started in 1228 not concluding until 1457.