Black Hewald

Also known as: Hewald · Family: English · Role: priest and missionary · First appears: Book V · Chap. X

Life events

• c. 692 · Pagans killed Black Hewald and White Hewald for preaching Christianity.(Book V · Chap. X)
  • With: White Hewald
  • “they laid hold of them and put them to death; and White Hewald they slew outright with the sword; but they put Black Hewald to lingering torture”
• c. 692 · The pagans threw the murdered Hewalds' bodies into the Rhine.(Book V · Chap. X · 📍 Rhine)
  • With: White Hewald
  • “and they threw their bodies into the Rhine”
• c. 692 · The Hewalds' bodies were found and buried with the honour due to martyrs.(Book V · Chap. X)
  • With: White Hewald
  • “their bodies being found, were buried with the honour due to martyrs”
• c. 692 · Pippin brought the Hewalds' bodies to Cologne and buried them honourably in its church.(Book V · Chap. X · 📍 Cologne)
  • With: Pippin White Hewald
  • “Pippin, the most glorious duke of the Franks, learning these things, caused the bodies to be brought to him, and buried them with much honour in the church of the city of Cologne”

Book V · Chap. X

• with White Hewald (They were fellow priests and missionaries.) “They were both full of religious piety, but Black Hewald was the more learned of the two in Scripture.”
• with Pippin (Pippin caused Black Hewald's body to be brought to him and buried with honour.) “White Hewald they slew outright with the sword; but they put Black Hewald to lingering torture and tore him limb from limb in horrible fashion, and they threw their bodies into the Rhine. The ealdorman, whom they had desired to see, hearing of it, was very angry that strangers who desired to come to him had not been suffered to come; and therefore he sent and put to death all those villagers and burned their village. The aforesaid priests and servants of Christ suffered on the 3rd of October. Miracles from Heaven were not lacking at their martyrdom. For their dead bodies, having been cast into the river by the pagans, as has been said, were carried against the stream for the space of almost forty miles, to the place where their companions were. Moreover, a long ray of light, reaching up to heaven, shone every night above them wheresoever they chanced to be, and that too in the sight of the very pagans that had slain them. Moreover, one of them appeared in a vision by night to one of his companions, whose name was Tilmon, a man of renown and of noble birth in this world, who having been a thegn had become a monk, telling him that he might find their bodies in that place, where he should see rays of light reaching from heaven to the earth. And so it befell; and their bodies being found, were buried with the honour due to martyrs; and the day of their passion or of the finding of their bodies, is celebrated in those parts with fitting veneration. Finally, Pippin, the most glorious duke of the Franks, learning these things, caused the bodies to be brought to him, and buried them with much honour in the church of the city of Cologne, on the Rhine.”

Also listed in English — Minor Figures

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Extracted from the original text of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England. Made with Rho MD.