Osanna

Osanna (Osana, Osmanna) was a Northumbrian princess, sister of King Osred I of Northumbria (705 to 716), according to some sources. Her veneration as a saint arose informally after her death, without canonization. She is honored as a saint in the West; the days of commemoration differ among the sources: 18 June (the Bollandists), 16 August or 9 September.

The Norman-⁠Welsh chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis (died 1223) calls her the sister of Osred I, which would make her the daughter of King Aldfrith. He tells of her at Howden in Yorkshire, miraculously punishing from her grave, with strokes of discipline, the concubine of the priest of the collegiate church there, who had carelessly sat on her tomb: a tale with a moral, meant to inculcate clerical celibacy. The German source calls her Osanna of Jouarre and says she fled to Brittany and lived as a recluse (walled-⁠in nun) at Saint-⁠Brieuc. She is honored chiefly in the French departments of Sarthe and Seine-⁠et-⁠Marne and in the abbey of Saint-⁠Denis in Paris.

The sources bring two traditions hard to reconcile, so her identity and life are uncertain.