CHAPTER 17: How he banished demons from the Farne Island and built himself a dwelling-place there
CHAPTER 17
How he banished demons from the Farne Island and built himself a dwelling-place there
AFTER many years in the monastery he finally entered with great joy and with the goodwill of the abbot and monks into the remoter solitude he had so long sought, thirsted after, and prayed for. He was delighted that after a long and spotless active life he should be thought worthy to ascend to the stillness of divine contemplation. He rejoiced to have attained to the condition of those of whom the psalmist proclaims: ‘They shall go from strength to strength; the God of gods shall be seen in Sion.’1 To learn the first steps of the hermit’s life he retired to a more secluded place in the outer precincts of the monastery. Not till he had first gained victory over our invisible enemy by solitary prayer and fasting did he take it on himself to seek out a remote battlefield farther away from his fellow men. The Farne is an island far out to sea, unlike Lindisfarne, which is an island in the strict sense of the word only twice a day, when cut off by the tide. When the tide is out it is joined to the mainland. (The Greeks call this kind of tide ‘rheuma’.) The Farne lies a few miles to the south-east of Lindisfarne, cut off on the landward side by very deep water and facing, on the other side, out towards the limitless ocean. The island was haunted by devils; Cuthbert was the first man brave enough to live there alone. At the entry of our soldier of Christ armed with ‘the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God’ the devil fled and his host of allies with him. Cuthbert, having routed the enemy, became monarch of the place, in token of which he built a city worthy of his power and put up houses to match. The structure was almost circular in plan, from four to five poles in diameter, and the walls on the outside were higher than a man. Out of piety he made the walls higher inside by cutting away the solid rock at the bottom, so that with only the sky to look at, eyes and thoughts might be kept from wandering and inspired to seek for higher things. This same wall he built not with cut stone or bricks and mortar but with rough stones and peat dug out of the enclosure itself. Some of these stones were so big that four men could hardly lift them, but with the help of angels he managed to fit them into the wall. There were two buildings, an oratory and one for living in. He finished off the walls inside and out by digging away a lot of the soil. The roofs were of rough-hewn timber and straw. Near the landing-place there was a bigger house for the visiting brethren to stay in, with a spring close by.