CHAPTER 46: How Felgild the hermit was cured of a swelling in the face by some of the covering of Cuthbert’s cell wall
CHAPTER 46
How Felgild the hermit was cured of a swelling in the face by some of the covering of Cuthbert’s cell wall
ONE ought not to pass over a heavenly miracle granted by the Divine mercy through part of the fabric of that holy oratory wherein our venerable father did solitary battle for the Lord. He who judges the hearts of men alone knows whether it ought to be ascribed to the merits of Cuthbert himself or to his successor Aethilwald, a man equally devoted to God. There is no reason for not believing that they both had a hand in it, together with the faith of that reverend father, Felgild, through whom and in whom the cure itself was wrought. He was the third heir to Cuthbert’s spiritual battleground and is now over seventy, awaiting the end of this life and longing for the life to come. After Cuthbert’s death Aethilwald came to the Farne, having been already tested many years in the monastic life until he had reached, step by step, the sublime life of a hermit.
The walls of the oratory were crumbling with age. The planks they were made of had been badly put together and had consequently come apart, leaving the place wide open to the stormy winds. Our venerable Cuthbert, more concerned with the splendours of his heavenly than his earthly abode, had simply stuffed the cracks with mud or straw or whatever else he could lay hands on, to avoid having the fervour of his prayer cooled by daily blast and downpour. When Aethilwald saw the state of the building he asked the brethren who used to flock to him to bring calf-skin. This he hoisted up as a shield against the violence of the blasts, at the corner where he, like Cuthbert before him, had most often stood or knelt in prayer. There he remained twelve years without a break until he entered the joys of Paradise. Felgild came next, and it was then that the right reverend Bishop of Lindisfarne, Eadfrith, decided to restore the oratory from its foundations up, since by then it was falling to pieces. When the work was finished Felgild had many requests from devout people for some small relic of Cuthbert or Aethilwald. The idea came to him of cutting the calf-skin into pieces, but he thought he would first try it out on himself before giving it to anyone else. His face was disfigured with a red patch and a swelling, the beginnings of which had been obvious long ago to his colleagues with whom he had lived the common life. Greater abstinence and comparative neglect of the body during his life as a hermit, coupled with the fact that he shut himself up for long periods out of the warmth of the sun and the fresh air, had made the disfigurement much worse. His face was now one mass of inflammation. Fearing that the gravity of his complaint would force him to retire from the solitary life back to the monastery, he was bold enough to pin his faith on a cure, hoping that they whose abode he delighted to dwell in would make him whole again. He put a piece of the leather in water and bathed his face with it. At once the swelling and foul scab disappeared.
The first person to tell me this was a good priest of this monastery at Jarrow. He said he saw Felgild’s face when swollen and disfigured and had put his hand through the window to feel it when it was cleansed. Felgild told the story later himself, saying that everything had happened just as the priest said, and that, though he lived in confinement for as many years again, the swelling never returned. Such is the grace of that almighty God whose property is to cure many even in this world, and to heal all infirmity of body and mind in the world to come, satisfying our desires with good things and crowning us forever ‘with loving-kindness and tender mercies’.
Here ends the book of the life and miracles
of St Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne