Unwona was consecrated between 781 and 785. He died between 801 and 803.[1]
Unwona appears as a witness to records of ecclesiastical councils and Mercian royal charters twenty times between 785 and around 800. Unwona's name is rare or even unique among Anglo-Saxon names, and seems to derive from Old English wana ('lack'), and to mean 'not lacking'. It is possible that he was the addressee of a letter sent in 797 by Alcuin of York to one 'Speratus'; the letter includes Alcuin's most famous injunction: 'verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio: ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam, sermones patrum, non carmina gentilium. Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?' ('Let God's words be read at the episcopal dinner-table. It is right that a reader should be heard, not a harpist, patristic discourse, not pagan song. What has Hinield to do with Christ?').[2]
Citations
^Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 218
^Donald A. Bullough, 'What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 93-125 (p. 93 for the Latin [quoted from Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, ed. by E. Dummler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistula 4 (Berlin, 1895), p. 183 (no. 12)]; pp. 114-15 for the biographical information aboute Unwona; p. 124 for the translation); doi:10.1017/S0263675100004336.
References
Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-56350-X.
