Saint Oswald Giving Alms

The monk Bede, writing in Northumbria in 731 tells the story shown here. At an Easter meal the king had a silver dish of fine food in front of him when word came that poor people were begging outside. He sent them the food and had the silver broken up and shared out among them. The bishop at his table, Aidan, took his right hand and prayed that it would never perish. Around 1480 the painter set the scene in a room of his own time, with a checkered floor, a bell hanging from a rope and a potted tree in the window. The king holds out the plate to a bearded man on a crutch and a wooden leg. A pageboy in red hose pours from a jug, and another poor man with a staff waits in the doorway.