CHAPTER 15: How he exorcized the wife of a sheriff even before he reached her
CHAPTER 15
How he exorcized the wife of a sheriff even before he reached her
FROM having shown what power the venerable Cuthbert had against the deceits and frauds of the devil, we can now go on to reveal his strength in combating the fiend’s undisguised fury. There was a sheriff of King Ecgfrith, called Hildmer, a man dedicated to good works along with all his household and therefore specially loved by Cuthbert. He visited Hildmer whenever he happened to be in the neighbourhood. His wife, though zealous in almsgiving and all the other fruits of virtue, was suddenly possessed of a devil. She was so sorely vexed that she would gnash her teeth, let out frightful howls, and fling her arms and legs about. It was terrifying to see or hear her. The convulsions gradually exhausted her, and she was already at death’s door, or so it seemed, when her husband galloped off to fetch Cuthbert.
‘My wife is ill,’ he pleaded. ‘She is very near her end. Send a priest before she goes, to give her the Body and Blood of the Lord and to bury her in holy ground.’
He was ashamed to admit that she whom Cuthbert was used to seeing well was now out of her mind. Cuthbert went off to see whom he could send when it suddenly came to him that she was in the grip of no ordinary illness; she was possessed. He returned.
‘I will not send anyone else. I ought to go back with you and see her myself.’
As they were going along the sheriff began to weep. The bitterness of his anguish was apparent from the floods of tears. He was afraid that when Cuthbert found she was mad he might think she had served God up to now only in feigned faith. But the man of God gently soothed his fears.
‘Do not weep. Your wife’s condition will not astonish me. I know, even though you are ashamed to admit it, that she is afflicted by a demon. I know too that before I arrive the demon will have left her and that she herself will come running out to meet us as sound as ever. She will take the reins, bid us come in quickly, and treat us with all her usual attention. It is not only the wicked who are stricken down in this way. God, in his inscrutable designs, sometimes lets the innocent in this world be blighted by the devil, in mind as well as in body.’
Cuthbert continued to console and instruct his friend in this vein, and as they approached the house the evil spirit, unable to bear the coming of the Holy Spirit with whom Cuthbert was filled, suddenly departed. The woman, loosed from the chains of the devil, jumped up as though woken from a deep sleep, rushed out in gratitude to the saint, and caught hold of his bridle. Her bodily and mental strength soon returned completely. She asked him to dismount and come in to bless the house, and waited on him with her most devoted attention. She admitted quite openly that at the first touch of his bridle all trace of her affliction had vanished.