St Cuthbert

Today is the traditional date for the principal feast of St Cuthbert - September 4th which the modern calendar assigns him is the feast of his Translation into the present cathedral at Durham in the early twelfth century.

John Dillon posted as follows on the Medieval Religion discussion group:

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 c. 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 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 Æthelstan) 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 (c.1176-1200; London, BL, Yates Thomson MS 26, fol. 1v):

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=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/

The Translation of St Cuthbert

Today is the feast day appointed for St Cuthbert (c.634-687) in the Ordinary Form. His traditional day, his principal feast indeed, is his dies natalis on March 20th, but that was moved in the revision of the calendar because of the reforming urge to clear Lent of other commemorations. As a result Sepember 4th, his second feast day, that of his Translation, has become his OF commemoration.

St Cuthbert

Twelfth century wall painting in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral

Image:Wikipedia

There is an online account of St Cuthbert, including both his life and of the survival of his relics and items deposited in his coffin, here.

I am not quite clear if the Translation being commemorated today is that of his relics from Chester-le-Street to Durham in 995 or of his relics into the present cathedral there in 1104, that is 910 years ago. It is, of course, perfectly possible that both events were celebrated on the same date.

The opening of the coffin containing the incorrupt body of St Cuthbert
From a copy of Bede's Life of Cuthbert circa 1180

BL MS 39943

Image: Wikipedia

St Cuthbert pray for us

Liturgical combs

Christopher Howse has an interesting piece in his regular column in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday about the use of the liturgical comb in connection with the new exhibition in Durham about the Lindisfarne Gospels.
His article can be read at Why St Cuthbert combed his hair.

As he points out the survival of these great Anglo-Saxon objects is a triumph of chance and good fortune over the events of history. As with St Cuthbert's portable altar which i saw in London the other year in the British Museum's exhibition on relics these are profoundly moving relics, linking us to the great age of the Northumbrian church, and also illustrating how that formed part of the universal Church.

St Theodore of Canterbury

Today is inter alia the feast of St Theodore of Canterbury, often known from his birthplace as Theodore of Tarsus (602-690). In addition to being the Archbishop who is credited with beginning the creation of  the parochial system in England in the years after his appointment to Canterbury in 669 his intellectual importance as a scholar before he came to England and its legacy has come to be appreciated in recent years thanks to the work of  Michael Lapidge in his 1995 study of Theodore. Lapidge's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography life of the saint can be read here. He emerges as a man with the qualities of a Lanfranc or an Anselm.

St Theodore of Canterbury

A modern icon from Aidan Hart Icons

Image: forallsaints.wordpress.com

Gravesite of  St Theodore at St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury

Image:Wikipedia
 

It was Sir Frank Stenton in his Anglo Saxon England who pointed to the cultural breadth of the Church at the time when he described the episcopal consecration in 685 at York by St Theodore, the last known student of the school of Athens, of one of the greatest, and last, products of the Hiberno-Scottish monastic tradition, St Cuthbert.

St Cuthbert

Today is the 1325th anniversary of the death of St Cuthbert in 687, and his traditional feast day. The modern calendar commemeorates him on September 4th, the date of the translation of his relics in 1104, but this, his dies natalis seems much the more appropriate day.

St Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne and died at his hermitage on Inner Farne. My reflections from 2010 on a visit there in 1989 can be read in my post Lindisfarne. To those I would add a note to draw attention to the inherent symbolism in Cuthbert, the Northumbrian hermit monk, whose consecration at York in 685 by the very cosmopolitan St Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, "the last known student of the school of Athens" linked the eastern and north-western limits of Christendom and virtually the whole breadth of the known Christian world.

The biography in the Oxford DNB by David Rollason and R. B. Dobson can be read here, and there is another online account here.

These both discuss the relics of St Cuthbert which survive from his time, or which were given to his body and shrine in the later Anglo-Saxon period. They are described and discussed here, and there is a separate, and longer, article on the St Cuthbert Gospels here. These were plavced in his coffin in the late seventh century and from their size it seems reasonable to believe that they were his own property and used by him on his travels and in his hermitage. They were removed from the tomb at the reformation and eventually came into the possession of Stonyhurst. There is currently an appeal by the British Museum to raise the money to buy this very important manuscript and display it in London and Durham on a six monthly basis.

The St Cuthbert Gospels

Image:pasthorizonspr.com/ Copyright British Museum

Probably the best known of the artifacts found in his grave was his pectoral cross, and its design has been re-used in many representations in Durham and Northumberland.

St Cuthbert's Pectoral Cross

Image: cushneentforce9.co.uk

Devotion to St Cuthbert was widespread, and in the north often reflects the reputed wanderings of the monks with the relics of St Cuthbert, St Oswald and others, and also the later prestige of the see of Durham and its widespread estates. However the cult also trvalled southwards and he was popular in tenth century Wessex, and commemorated by churches such as St Cuthbert in Wells and by the devotion of the West Saxon dynasty to him. As they established their authority in the north after 924 paying respect to St Cuthbert was not only a matter of devotion but also a matter of political tact and the recognition of local custom and practice.

King Athelstan presents copies of St Bede's two Lives of St Cuthbert to the saint in his shrine at Chester-le-Street in 934

Image:Wikipedia from MS at Corpus Christi College Cambridge

Since 1104 St Cuthbert has rested within the walls of Durham cathedral, and his burial place is still a place of pilgrimage. With him in the coffin is, or was, the head of St Oswald, the King of Northumbria killed in battle in 641. As a consequence this came to be one of St Cuthbert's attributes and so he is normally depicted as a vested bishop holding a King's head.

Stained glass figure of St Cuthbert holding the head of St Oswald c.1320
Christ Church Cathedral Oxford

Image: Lawrence Lew OP on Flickr

Early in the fifteenth century Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham from 1406 -1437, gave the glass of the great window of the south choir transept in York Minster, filling it with the story of St Cuthbert, and balanced by that on the north containing the life of St William of York.

The St Cuthbert window
York Minster

Image: Rev.Gordon Plumb on Flickr



The central figure of St Cuthbert holding the head of St Oswald

Image: Rev.Gordon Plumb on Flickr

There is also this link from Gordon Plumb to a comprehensive set of images of the Cuthbert window here; each one is expandable. Not only do the scenes recount the story of St Cuthbert but are a splendid set of portraits of leading figures at the time and depictions of early fifeenth century life. I know from the experience of trying to look at the panels when in the Minster that this is a much easier way of looking at this marvellous window.

May St Cuthbert continue to pray for the Church and Realm

Treasures of Heaven

Yesterday I went with a party from the Oxford Oratory to visit the exhibition Treasures of Heaven at the British Museum. The exhibition looks at relics, reliquaries and pilgrimage from the end of the Western Empire until the reformation and beyond. In addition to the Museum's own holdings there are items from the Vatican collections, from elsewhere in Britain, together with France, Germany and Belgium, as well as museum collections in the USA.

The exhibition is housed in the former Reading Room of the Museum, and is a wondrous display of treasures and a record of devotion. Here are reviews from the Guardian (by Eamonn Duffy) and the Daily Telegraph ( complete with predictable mad anti-Papal rant in the appended comments). Both reviews have illustrations of some of the items on display, so do follow the links.

It is an exhibition to take one's time over, and the objcts repay careful study. Accompanying the exhibition is handsome catalogue, available at a special price of a third off to visitors, and a fine array of souvenirs and related books.

Reliquary of St Baudime
Mid-twelfth century

Image: British Museum exhibition website

The relics and relquaries on show are but a fraction of what still survives on the continent, and infinitely less than once existed. In that sense one might be depressed at the greed and stupidity which destroyed so much that was expressive of faith, love and beauty, but one marvels all the more at the skill of medieval craftsmen - just how did they manage to see to produce such miniscule and exquisite detail? - and the joyful vitality of the pieces they created - there are two absolutely delightful figures of a pair of saintly Belgian bishops peering up from the base of their reliquary chasse, rather as if responding to a polite request to put in an appearance or perform some act of intercession.

Reliquary thought to be of one of the companions of St Ursula.
Netherlandish 1520-30

Image: British Museum exhibition website

As always it is invidious to pick out individual objects, but in addition to the episcipal figures I mentioned above, I was particularly interested to see St Cuthbert's portable altar - a sliver of wood used by the great monk-Bishop of Lindisfarne who died in 687 - as well as a fine late medieval Irish bell reliquary, relics of the Crown of Thorns distributed by St Louis, including the reliquary for one thorn made for the Duke of Berry in the late fourteenth century, other exquisite reliquaries of a a few years earlier associated with the court at Prague of the Emperor Charles IV (well it was the feast of St Wenceslaus), and relics and jewellery associated with Mary Queen of Scots and her grandson King Charles I.

In addition to the fine weather the day was all the more pleasant for being a visit with friends, and I appreciated the fact that I was able to spend much of my time with Dr Robert Beddard, formerly my college advisor at Oriel, and with whom I could swap historical observations on the objects we were looking at.

If you have not already been to the exhibition do try to find the time before it closes on October 9th.

Lindisfarne

Today is the feast of St Aidan and the saints of Lindisfarne. In 1989 I was fortunate to be able to stay there for a long weekend with a religious community and to be able to explore something of its atmosphere.

Getting there is a bit eccentric - the bus from Berwick upon Tweed is the only one in the country, as far as I know, that has a timetable dependent upon the tide-table. Once on the island there are times of great quiet, simply because the tide is up, and the tourists cannot get onto the island. There is a refuge mid-way along the causeway for cars that get caught out by the North Sea.

There are the handsome remains of the Norman priory church - a cell of Durham - but now yet another example of the wanton destruction of the reformation era, the medieval parish church and Tudor castle, together with a modern statue of St Aidan and a very good English Heritage museum that presents a substantial array of finds from the great age of Lindisfarne in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Besides that there is a numinous quality to the place. Yes, you know it is historic - I took a copy of Bede to read whilst I was there, and yes, the light is such that the landscape and seascape are always changing in an elusive, ineffable way (Bishop Trautmann please note) that one wants to capture - I took up sketching again to try to do so. There is more though, indefinable as it is, but the knowledge of what was achieved there is not just of material achievements in the museum or pictures of the Lindisfarne Gospels, or the relics of St Cuthbert in Durham - rather it is an awareness of men seeking God at the frontier of land and sea, of earth and heaven, and in so doing making their way forward into the unseen.

To sit and look at St Cuthbert's Isle, where he used to go just off-shore to meditate, and to know something of his story, and then to go, as I did, on to Durham and see the majestic building of the cathedral rising up above the city and dominating the view, and to understand the extent to which it as building celebrates the life of the saintly hermit and bishop is to have a disclosure of God's grandeur as mediated through one human life and soul.

St Aidan and the saints of Lindisfarne pray for us.