medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Cuthbert was introduced to me as one of the first saints to be interested in
animals, centuries before St Francis.
A modern interpretation of Cuthbert can be found at the following:
http://www.theblankcardcompany.co.uk/acatalog/-St-Cuthbert-Sings-to-the-Seal
s--by-Colin-Smithson--cs6--1028.html
I love the contrast between the storm and the calm where Cuthbert and the
seals are singing. I presume the birds flying around are his 'cuddy ducks',
who warmed his feet while he was praying. I have picked up some of the
fossils (crinoids?) which are known as St Cuthbert's Beads on the beach
opposite Lindisfarne.
There's the legend that when Durham was under the threat of bombing in WWII
Cuthbert kindly settled a fog over the City until the danger was past.
Anne
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dillon
Sent: 20 March 2016 06:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] FEAST - A Saint for the Day (March 20): St. Cuthbert
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Cuthbert seems to have sprung from Anglo-Saxon nobility living in the more
northerly parts of the kingdom of Northumbria; as he trained at Melrose
Abbey, quite possibly his family was of Lothian. After serving as guest
master at Melrose's newly founded daughter house at Ripon he returned to
Melrose as prior, then moved on to Lindisfarne where he was also prior, and
then became an hermit on Inner Farne. In 685 he was consecrated bishop of
Lindisfarne (for which he exchanged Hexham, to which he had just been
elected). At the very end of 686 or early in 687 Cuthbert returned to Inner
Farne and died there, probably in his early fifties. His body was taken
back to Lindisfarne and interred next to the altar of St. Peter's church.
Eleven years later, Cuthbert was accorded a formal elevation, at which time
his body was declared to be incorrupt.
The focus of what became a more than regionally significant cult, Cuthbert
has an anonymous early Vita (BHL 2019; finished ca. 699-705) by a monk of
Lindisfarne and two Vitae by St. Bede the Venerable, the first in verse and
the second an expanded one in prose (BHL 2020, 2021). When Northmen sacked
Lindisfarne in 793 the monks began a lengthy peregrination with Cuthbert's
body and other treasures (not least the head of St. Oswald), settling in 883
or 885 at Chester-le-Street in today's County Durham. By this time
Northumbrian missionaries had carried Cuthbert's veneration to the Continent
and Cuthbert was entered in the major Carolingian martyrologies. Grotefend
lists feasts for him not only in continental dioceses either founded by
Englishmen (e.g. Utrecht, Freising, Bremen) or influenced from England (e.g.
Rouen, Trondheim) but in others as well (e.g. Kraków, Toledo). In 995
Cuthbert's remains were brought from Chester-le-Street to Durham, where they
repose in the cathedral.
Cuthbert's shrine in Durham cathedral's Galilee Chapel was profaned and then
destroyed in ca. 1539. In 1542 the saint's body was re-interred beneath the
pavement where the shrine had stood. Herewith two views of the location in
its current state:
http://tinyurl.com/jjdvgnk
http://tinyurl.com/h574lad
Some period-pertinent images of St. Cuthbert:
a) as depicted (at right; at left, a king often identified as Ęthelstan) in
a tenth-century copy of St. Bede the Venerable's Vitae of him (Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College, MS. 183, fol. 4r):
http://www.oberlin.edu/images/Art335/335-148.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Athelstan.jpg
b) as depicted (perhaps) in a twelfth-century wall painting in Durham
cathedral's Galilee Chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/2llog4
c) as depicted (full-length portrait) in a later twelfth-century copy of St.
Bede the Venerable's prose Vita of him (ca. 1176-1200; London, BL, Yates
Thomson MS 26, fol. 1v):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllI
D=53088
Expandable views of this manuscript's many other images of Cuthbert are
accessible from thumbnails here:
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6441
A few of these are also reproduced here (with somewhat more discursive
captions):
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/01/
Best,
John Dillon
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