Oda, the son of one of the fierce band of Ivar, was converted to Christianity in early life, and was in consequence driven from his father's house. He entered the household of an English thegn, who had him taught Latin, and, it is said, Greek also, persuaded him to be ordained, and took him to Rome. He became one of King Eadward's clerks, and AEthelstan made him bishop of Ramsbury and employed him in affairs of state. In 937 Oda, in company with two other bishops, was present at the battle of Brunanburh, and did the king good service either by miraculously obtaining a new sword for him when he had broken his own, or by handing him a weapon as another warrior might have done. Eadmund, who, like his brother AEthelstan, chose his ministers among ecclesiastics, offered him the archbishopric of Canterbury. Like his successor, Thomas, in later days, Oda was by nature a statesman and a soldier rather than a priest, but, like him, he determined when he accepted the primacy to act up to the highest standard of ecclesiastical life. He declared that no one ought to be archbishop who was not a monk, and accordingly received the monastic habit from the famous abbey of Fleury. As archbishop, he sought to bring about a reformation of morals. In a pastoral letter he urged all spiritual persons to purity of life; he insisted on the sanctity of marriage, and in a witenagemot held at London in 944 took part in making laws providing for the protection, maintenance, and dower of wives, and ordering that all marriages should be solemnized by a priest, and that care should be taken that there was no bar of consanguinity. He probably found an efficient ally in AElfheah, or Elphege, the Bald, bishop of Winchester, who appears to have laboured to bring about a faithful discharge of monastic vows. [Sidenote: Dunstan.]