Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T18:13:57.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Genesis of a Cult: Cuthbert of Farne and Ecclesiastical Politics in Northumbria in the Late Seventh and Early Eighth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

D. P. Kirby
D. P. Kirby
Affiliation:
Department of History and Economic History, University of Aberdeen, Taylor Building, King's College, Old Aberdeen AB9 2UB
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The episcopate of Cuthbert as bishop of Lindisfarne was a product of a time of great change in the Northumbrian Church in the late seventh century. Bede's Ecclesiastical history and Stephen's Life of Wilfrid make it clear that the expulsion of Wilfrid, bishop of York and sole bishop of the Northumbrians, in 678 (HE v. 19; VW 24) opened up the Northumbrian diocese to large-scale ecclesiastical reorganisation. Wilfrid's vast see was divided and new bishops appointed. In 664, as a young man, Wilfrid had played a significant part at the Council of Whitby in bringing about the expulsion of Colmán, Aidán's successor as bishop of Lindisfarne, the termination of the Columban mission and the replacement of the see of Lindisfarne by that of York; but the bishops who replaced Wilfrid were prepared to deal sensitively with the legacy of Aidán's mission in a post-Council of Whitby era. Bosa, trained at Whitby under Abbess Hild who had been instructed in the religious life by Aidán, became bishop of Deira at York; Eata, abbot of Lindisfarne, one of Aidán's Northumbrian disciples and formerly abbot of the monastery of Melrose which had been founded in the time of the Columban mission, became bishop of Bernicia with his episcopal seat variously at Hexham and Lindisfarne; and Eadhæsd, a former companion of Aidán's disciple Chad (HE iii. 28), was made bishop of Lindsey (HE iv. 12). When Lindsey was lost to the Mercians in 679 Eadhæd was made bishop of the short-lived see of Ripon [HE iv. 12), and in 681 Trumwine, whose antecedents are unknown but who later retired to Whitby, became bishop of Abercorn on the Forth [HE iv. 12, 26).

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 383 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

HE = Bede's Ecclesiastical history; VCA = Vita sancli Cuthberti auctore anonymo; VCM = Vila sancti Cuthberti metrica auctore Beda; VCP = Vila sancti Cuthberti prosaica auctore Beda; VW = Stephen's Life of Bishop Wilfrid

1 Baedae Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ed. Plummer, C., Oxford 1896Google Scholar; Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B., Oxford 1969Google Scholar.

2 Eddius Stephanus: Life of Bishop Wilfrid, ed. and trans. Colgrave, B., Cambridge 1927Google Scholar, repr. 1985.

3 Gibbs, M., ‘The decrees of Agatho and the Gregorian plan for York’, Speculum xlviii (1973), 213–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Cf. Kirby, D. P., The earliest English kings, London 1991, 105–6Google Scholar.

5 Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, i. 405–23Google Scholar.

6 Campbell, J., Essays in Anglo-Saxon history, London 1986, 1–27Google Scholar: Kirby, D. P., Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: its contemporary setting, Jarrow Lecture 1992Google Scholar, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1993.

7 Cf. on Cuthbert, G. Bonner, ‘“The Holy Spirit within”: St Cuthbert as a western orthodox saint’, Sobornost n.s. i (1979), 7–22Google Scholar; Cramp, R. J., The background to St Cuthberl's life, Durham Cathedral Lecture 1980Google Scholar; Corbett, J., ‘Two early Anglo-Saxon holy men: Oswald and Cuthbert’, in Woods, J. D. and Pelteret, D. A. E. (eds), The Anglo-Saxons: synthesis and achievement, Waterloo, Ont., 1985, 63–76Google Scholar. Rollason, D. W. (ed.), Cuthbert: saint and patron, Durham 1987Google Scholar, contains studies by Rollason, D. W. and Bonner, G., and Bonner, G., Rollason, D. W. and Stancliffe, C. (eds), St Cuthbert, his cult and his community to AD 1200, Woodbridge 1989Google Scholar, makes available the papers of the 1987 Durham conference. I am grateful to Dr Stancliffe for reading and commenting on this article prior to publication.

8 Vita sancti Cuthberti auctore anonymo, ed. and trans. Colgrave, B. in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, Cambridge 1940Google Scholar, repr. 1985, 59–139.

9 Ibid. 13 (note, however, that King Aldfrith, who is spoken of as still alive, probably died in 704, not 705; cf. Kirby, , Earliest English kings, 145–6)Google Scholar.

10 Vita sancti Cuthberti metrica auctore Beda, ed. Jaager, W., in Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti, Leipzig 1935Google Scholar.

11 Lapidge, M., ‘Bede's metrical Vita S. Cuthberti’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and his community, 77–93Google Scholar.

12 The chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington, R. R. and McGurk, P., Oxford 1995, ii. 176–7 and n., sa 721Google Scholar.

13 Vita sancti Cuthberti prosaica auctore Beda, ed. and trans. Colgrave, B. in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, 141–307Google Scholar.

14 Berschin, W., ‘Opus deliberatum ac perfectum: why did the Venerable Bede write a second prose Life of St Cuthbert?’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and his community, 95–102Google Scholar.

15 Bede indicates that Herefrith was no longer abbot of Lindisfarne at the time of the writing of the VCP but that he had been formerly (ch. viii). Whether he was still abbot when Bede showed him his material for the VCP (VCP prologue) is unclear. Nor is it clear whether Bede's ‘qui etiam tune Lindisfarnensi monasterio abbatis iure praefuit’ refers to the time of Cuthbert's death or to the occasion when Herefrith provided Bede with an account of it, but it seems less likely that Herefrith was abbot in 687 and still alive as Bede was preparing to write the VCP than that he was a young man in 687 and abbot many years later. Herefrith's testimony will have been greatly valued as that of an eye-witness but Bede was undoubtedly responsible for the final shape and content of the account he attributes to him: Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 14; Berschin, ‘Opus deliberatum acperfectum’, 102.

16 Campbell, J., ‘Elements in the background to the life of St Cuthbert and his early cult’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and his community, 3–19 at p. 11Google Scholar.

17 C. Stancliffe, ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, ibid. 21–44 at p. 29 n. 54.

18 Abels, R., ‘The council of Whitby: a study in early Anglo-Saxon polities’, Journal of British Studies xxiii (1983), 1–25 at p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Bonner, G., ‘St Cuthbert – soul friend’, in Rollason, , Cuthbert: saint and patron, 23–44 at p. 35Google Scholar, suggests that Cuthbert may have been trying to avoid being sent to Lindisfarne. Alternatively it may be that the monks of Melrose cultivated their own traditions of an eremitical Cuthbert to complement the Lindisfarne phenomenon, or the anonymous writer may simply have supposed that Cuthbert would have behaved in this way (and, interestingly, he thought of Cuthbert as having sailed away from Melrose). See also the comments of Stancliffe, ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, 32–3.

20 Cramp, R. J., The hermitage and the offshore island, Second Paul Johnstone Memorial Lecture: Occasional Lecture no. 3, National Maritime Museum 1981, 5Google Scholar.

21 Campbell, , ‘Elements in the background’, 10–14, 15–17Google Scholar.

22 Cf. Kirby, , Earliest English kings, 143–4Google Scholar.

23 Chad, as bishop of Lichfield, is said to have been accustomed to retire to a secluded place to read and pray privately with a few companions: HE iv. 3. Stancliffe, ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, 39–40, cites the parallels of Columbanus and Fursey. Cf. Thacker, A., ‘Lindisfarne and the origin of the cult of St Cuthbert’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and his community, 103–22 at pp. 113–15Google Scholar.

24 Bullough, D. A., ‘The missions to the English and the Picts and their heritage (to c. 800)’, in Lowe, H. (ed.), Die lren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter, 2 vols, Stuttgart 1982, i. 80–98 at pp. 85–6 n. 18Google Scholar.

25 Campbell, , ‘Elements in the background’, 19Google Scholar.

26 Bullough, D. A., ‘Hagiography as patriotism: Alcuin's “York poem” and the early Northumbrian “vitae sanctorum”’, in Hagiographie cultures et sociétés IVe-XIIe siècles (Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre à Paris, 1979), Paris 1981, 339–59 at p. 344Google Scholar.

27 Picard, J. M., ‘The purpose of Adomnan's Vita Columbae’, Peritia i (1982), 160–77 at pp. 166, 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. P. Meyvaert's comment that ‘it would be anachronistic to consider that Whitby changed Lindisfarne from a Celtic-Northumbrian into an Italo-Northumbrian house’: ‘A new perspective on the Ruthwell cross: ecclesia and vita monastica’, in Cassidy, B. (ed.), The Ruthwell cross, Princeton, NJ 1993, 95–166 at p. 163Google Scholar.

28 Stancliffe, , ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, 23Google Scholar.

29 Kirby, D. P., ‘Bede and the Pictish Church’, Innes Review xxiv (1973), 6–25 at pp. 10–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Cf. Thacker, A., ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, in Wormald, P. and others (eds), Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon society, Oxford 1983, 130–53 at pp. 136–7Google Scholar, and ‘Lindisfarne’, pp. 109–11. Cf. also idem, ‘The social and continental background to early Anglo-Saxon hagiography’, unpubl. DPhil diss. Oxford 1977, 87–93. See also Stancliffe, , ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, 35Google Scholar.

31 Thacker, , ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, 138–42Google Scholar, and ‘Lindisfarne’, 107–12. Cf. also idem, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon hagiography’, 117. See also Stancliffe, , ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, 38Google Scholar.

32 Rosenthal, J. T., ‘Bede's Life of Cuthbert: preparatory to the Ecclesiastical history’, Catholic History lxviii (1983), 599–611 at p. 602Google Scholar.

33 Abraham, L., ‘Bede's Life of Cuthbert: a reassessment’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference, i, Villanova, Penn. 1976, 23–32 at p. 24Google Scholar.

34 Thacker, , ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, 145Google Scholar.

35 Bullough, , ‘The missions to the English’, 94Google Scholar.

36 On the representation of Martin, see Stancliffe, C., St Martin and his hagiographer: history and miracle in Sulpicius Severus, Oxford 1983, 138–9, 257–61, 298–9, 323–5Google Scholar.

37 On the saint as patron, see Brown, P., ‘The rise and function of the holy man in late antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies lxi (1971), 80–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The cult of the saints: its rise and function in later Christianity, Chicago 1981, 55Google Scholar.

38 For a medical report, in so far as one is possible, see Rubin, S., ‘St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne: a medical reconstruction’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland iv (1978), 101–3Google Scholar.

39 Cf. on translation and elevation, Finucane, R. C., Miracles and pilgrims: popular belief in medieval England, London 1977, 26–8Google Scholar, and Geary, P. J., Furta sacra: thefts of relics in the central Middle Ages, Princeton, NJ 1978, 12–13Google Scholar.

40 For the date, see Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ii. 239.

41 Cf. Thacker, , ‘Lindisfarne’, 106Google Scholar, who also suggests that the translation in 664 of the allegedly uncorrupted body of Æthelburh, abbess of Faremoutiers and sister of Seaxburh, Æthelthryth's successor as abbess of Ely, provided a stimulus for the events at Ely.

42 S. Rubin comments pers. comm. that fleshy tissue could have survived and the ligaments holding the body together could have defied decomposition ‘if, for example, the body had been embalmed in some way by the brethren at death. Tight-fitting shrouds and other restraints could have a flesh-retaining effect and most certainly an air-tight coffin would inhibit decomposition’. Cf. Finucane, , Miracles and pilgrims, 22–3Google Scholar.

43 Brown, , The cult of the saints, 11Google Scholar. Cf. Geary, , Furta sacra, 152–3Google Scholar.

44 On the burial of 687, see Thacker, , ‘Lindisfarne’, 105Google Scholar. But not all the items and fabrics buried with Cuthbert were necessarily placed in the coffin in 687 and some certainly were not: Coatsworth, E., ‘The pectoral cross and portable altar from the tomb of St Cuthbert’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and community, 287–301Google Scholar; H. Granger-Taylor, ‘The weft-patterned silks and their braid: the remains of an Anglo-Saxon dalmatic of c. 800?’, ibid. 303–27, and ‘The inscription on the Nature Goddess silk’, ibid. 339–41; C. Higgins, ‘Some new thoughts on the Nature Goddess silk’, ibid. 329–37.

45 Ward, B., Miracles and the medieval mind: theory, record and event, London 1982, 57Google Scholar, comments that these miracle cures ‘provide a typical instance of the change of veneration from a living saint to a posthumous cult at his tomb’.

46 Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people: a historical commentary, Oxford 1988, 173Google Scholar.

47 Cf. Brown, P., ‘Eastern and western Christendom in late antiquity: a parting of the ways’, in Baker, Derek (ed.) The orthodox Churches and the west (Studies in Church History xiii, 1976), 1–24Google Scholar: ‘even death marks only the beginning of long and acrimonious hagiographical manoeuvres’ (p. 185).

48 Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 355.

49 Thacker, , ‘Early Anglo-Saxon hagiography’, 123–4Google Scholar, suspects the influence here of Gregory of Tours, who represented St Martin's tomb as attracting undesirable members of society to Tours, not least rebellious royal princes. The issue was a real one at Lindisfarne too. In 750 Eadberht, king of Northumbria, besieged the church of Lindisfarne where Offa, son of King Aldfrith, had sought sanctuary: Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. Arnold, T., ii, London 1885, 39–40Google Scholar. Cf. in general, Hall, D., ‘The sanctuary of St Cuthbert’, in Bonner, , Rollason, and Stancliffe, , St Cuthbert, his cult and his community, 425–36Google Scholar.

50 Plummer thought that Oithilwald succeeded immediately on Cuthbert's death (Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ii. 273), but in view of the disturbed situation on Lindisfarne in 687–8 this cannot be assumed.

51 Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian renaissance, London 1985, 134–5, lines 169–70Google Scholar.

52 Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 358.

53 Altman, C. T., ‘Two types of opposition and the structure of Latin saints' lives’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. vi (1975), 1–11 at pp. 5–8Google Scholar.

54 On this date see Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, ii. 273.

55 Thacker, , ‘Lindisfarne’, 117Google Scholar.

56 Ibid. and W. Goffart, The narrators of barbarian history, Princeton, NJ 1988, 264, 268, 270.

57 Cf. Thacker, , ‘Lindisfarne’, 119–21Google Scholar.

58 Goffart, , Narrators of barbarian history, 283Google Scholar; cf. Heffernan, T. J., Sacred biography: saints and their biographers in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1988, 140–1Google Scholar.

59 Symeonis monachi opera omnia, i. 37.

60 See above, n. 12.

61 Symeonis monachi opera omnia, i. 39.

62 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 574–5; Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ii. 32; Chronicle of John of Worcester, ii. 186–7, s.a. 738.

63 An Anglo-Saxon chronicle from British Museum, Cotton MS., Tiberius B. IV, ed. Classen, E. and Harmer, F. E., Manchester 1926, 15Google Scholar.

64 Æthelwulf De abbatibus, ed. and trans. Campbell, A., Oxford 1967, 10–11Google Scholar.

65 An Anglo-Saxon chronicle, 15; Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ii. 3.

66 Cf. Cramp, R. J., ‘Northumbria and Ireland’, in Szarmach, P. (ed.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon culture, Kalamazoo 1986, 185–201Google Scholar.

67 If Bede ever felt estranged from Acca during this period over the future of Lindisfarne as an episcopal see (because apart from his regard for the community on Lindisfarne, Bede's letter to Ecgberht shows that he believed in the need for more, not fewer, bishoprics in Northumbria), the resolution of tension with the eventual appointment of Bishop Æthelwald in 723/4 will have allowed the restoration of normal relations. Bede continued to dedicate his biblical commentaries to Acca across these years and he spoke well of him in the Ecclesiastical history.