St. Cuthbert — 637–687 (part 2 of 2)
should be cured," A short time after her friend sent her a
linen girdle, which she hastened to put on, and in three days she was healed.^'^
Shortly before his death, and during his last pastoral visitation, Cuthbert w^nt to see Elfleda in the neighborhood of the great Monastery of Whitby, to consecrate a church which she had built there, and to converse with her for the last time. They dined together, and during the meal, seeing his knife drop from his trembling hand in the abstraction of supernatural thoughts, she had a last opportunity of admiring his prophetic intuition, and his constant care for the salvation of souls. The fatigue of the holy bishop, who said, laughingly, " I cannot eat all day long; you must give me a little rest " — the eagerness and pious curiosity of the young abbess, anxious to know and do everything, who rushes up breathless during the ceremony of the dedication to ask from the bishop a memento for a monk whose death she had just heard of— all those details form a picture complete in its simplicity, upon which the charmed mind can repose amid the savage habits and wild vicissitudes of the struggle, then more violent than ever, between the Northumbrians and Picts, the Saxons and the Celts.^^
But the last of all his visits was for another ab- nisiast bess, less illustrious and powerful than the two AbbVss*'*^ princesses of the blood of Ethelfrid, but also of ^'^^'^^ high birth, and not less dear to his heart, if we may judge by the mark of affection which he gave her on his deathbed. This was Verca, abbess of one of that long line of monasteries which traced the shores of the Northern Sea, seated on the high promontories, or at the mouths of the
^^ " Sanctimonialis virgo et regalis.... Multo virum Dei semper excolebat amore.... Cum nil curationis adhibere mcdici.... Utinam haberem aliquid de rebus Cuthberti luei! Scio certe et credo et confido in Domino quia cito sanarer." — Bolland., 121. Vita, c. 23.
*' " Fidelissima abbatissa Elfleda de sancto episcopo aliud scientiaj spiritualis miraculum mihi revelavit.... Cum in parochia quae dicitur Osingadum, simul in convivio sederent... praescius vicini sui obitus... rogatus a nobilissima et sanctissima virgine... venit ad possessionem monasterii ipsius, quatenus ibidem et ipsam videre atque alloqui, et ecclesiam dcdicare deberet.... Manus ejus tremefaeta, culteilus quem tenebat decidit in mensam. Jocose respondit: Num tota die nianducare valebam? jam aliquando quiescere debui. Hajc audiens ilia confestira niisit <ad majus suum monasterium.... Ilia statim ad episcopum cucurrit... anhelans in basilicara pervenit." — MoNACH. Lindisf., ap. Bolland., 123. Bede, Vita, c. 34.
Northumbrian rivers. Her convent was on the mouth of the Tyne, the river which divided the two Northumbrian kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, and to it the body of the holy King Oswin had been carried after his murder.^^ She gave Cuthbert a magnificent reception; but the bishop was ill, and after the mid-day meal which was usual in all the Benedictine monasteries, he became thirsty. Wine and beer were offered to him, yet he would take nothing but water; but this water, after it had touched his lips, seemed to the monks of Tynemouth, who drank the remainder, the best wine they had ever tasted. Cuthbert, who retained nothing of the robust health of his youth, already suffered from the first attacks of the disease which carried him off. His pious friend was no doubt struck by his feebleness, for she offered him, as the last pledge of spiritual union, a piece of very fine linen to be his shroud.^^
Two short years of the episcopate had sufficed to consume
his Strength. After celebrating the feast of Christmas in 686 with the monks of Lindisfarne, the presentiment of approaching death determined him to abdicate, and to return to his isle of Fame, there to prepare for the last struggle. Here he lived but two months in the dear and pleasant solitude which was his supreme joy, tem-
pering its sweetness by redoubled austerities. When his
monks came to visit him in his isle, which storms often made
^2 See above, p. 251.
^ " A religiosa et ad saeculum quoque nobilissima famula Christi Verca abbatissa niagnifice susceptus, postqnam de meridiana quiete surrexerunt.... Confitebantur alterutruiii quod videretur sibi nunquam melius vinum bibisse, sicut unus ex ipsis postea in nostro moaasterio... sua mihi relatione testatus est." — Bede, Vita, c. 35. I do not know wby the Bollandists, Mabillon, and M. Varin, agree in placing the monastery of Verca, not at Tynemouth on the Northumbrian Tyne, which flows past Hexham and Newcastle, on the road from Whitby to Lindisfarne, but at Tyninghamo, a little monastery founded by St. Baldred (f GOG), also on the seaside like Tynemouth, but more to the north, at the mouth of the Scotch Tyne, which traverses Lothian and flows through Haddington. The remains of this very ancient monastery are still to be seen in the Earl of Haddidgton's park. This district had been restored to the Pictish dominion after the defeat of Egfrid and the flight of the Bishop of Abercorn, with all the communities of the country. The last historian of our saint, Mgr. Eyre, having more complete information, and writing on the spot, proves that it was Tynemouth, where there were two monasteries, one of monks on the north, the other of nuns on the south of the stream. Mr. Joseph Robertson is of the same opinion; he attributes the error of Mabillon to the inexact information given him by a priest of the Scottish college at Paris, who, though a learned man, had the mania, so common among the Scotch, of claiming for his country both places and personages belonging to Ireland and England. inaccessible for weeks together, they found him thin, tremulous, and almost exhausted. One of them, who has given us a narrative of the end of his life, revived him a little by giving him warm wine to drink, then seating himself by the side of the worn-out bishop upon his bed of stone to sustain him, received from his beloved lips the last confidences and last exhortations of the venerated master. The visits of his monks were very sweet to him, and he lavished upon them to the last moment proofs of his paternal tenderness, and of his minute care for their spiritual and temporal well-being. His last illness was long and painful. He fixed beforehand the place of his burial, near the oratory which he had hollowed in the rock, and at the foot of a cross which he had himself planted. " I would fain repose," said he, " in this spot, where I have fought my little battle for the Lord, where I desire to finish my course, and from whence I hope that my merciful Judge will call me to the crown of righteousness. You will bury me, wrapped in the linen which I have kept for my shroud, out of love for the Abbess Verca, the friend of God, who gave it to me."^
He ended his holy life preaching peace, humility, and the love of that unity which he thought he had succeeded in establishing in the great Anglo-Celtic sanctuary, the new abbot of which, Herefrid, begged of him a last message as a legacy to his community. "Be unanimous in j^our counsels," the dying bishop said to him, in his faint voice; "live in good accord with the other servants of Christ; despise none of the faithful who ask your hospitality; treat them with friendly familiarity, not esteeming yourself better than others who have the same faith and often the same life. But have no communion with those who withdraw from the unity of Catholic peace, either by the
** " Ad dilcctum eremiticsc conversationis agoncm quantocius remeare curavit, quatenus indita sibi sollicitudinis iniindana; spineta liberior priscae compunctionis flamnia consuiueret.... Qui cum duo menses in magna repetitaj suai quietis exsultatione transigeret, multo consuctaj districtionis rigore corpus mentemque constringeret.... Vinum calefaciens attuli... videbam nanique in facie ejus quia niultuni inedia simul ct languore erat defessus. Completa curatione resedit quietus in stratu: resedi et ego juxta eum.... Ilic ubi quantulumcumquc pro Domino eertamen certavi... undo ad coronam justitije sublevandam me a pio judice spcro.... Nolui quidcni ea vivens indui. sed pro amore dilecta; Deo fcmina?, qu;B banc niibi niisit, Verca; abbatissai, ad obvolvendum corpus meum reservare curavi."— Vita, c. 36, 37. This shroud, recognizable by its extreme fineness, was found when his tomb was opened in 1104, according to licginald, De Admirandus, &c., c. 41. illegal celebration of Easter or by practical ill-doing. Remember always, if you must make a choice, that I infinitely prefer that you should leave this place, carrying my bones with you, rather than that you should remain here bent under the yoke of wicked heresy. Learn and observe with diligence the Catholic decrees of the fathers, and also the rules of monastic life which God has deigned to give you by my hands. I know that many have despised me in my life, but after my death you will see that my doctrine has not been despicable." These energetic words, and the allusion to his predecessor Colman, who had left Lindisfarne, carrying with him the bones of the holy Bishop Aidan, rather than submit to ritualistic unity with Rome, shows that this unity had in the Celt Cuthbert a champion less impetuous and less rash than Wilfrid, but not less resolute and devoted.^^
T^^i^ effort was the last. He lost the power of speech, received the last sacraments in silence, and died, raising his eyes and arms to heaven, at the hour when it was usual to sing matins, in the night of the 20th March, 687. One of his attendant simmediately mounted to the summit of the rock, where the lighthouse is now placed, and gave to the monks of Lindisfarne, by waving a lighted torch, the signal agreed upon to announce the death of the greatest saint who has given glory to that famous isle. He was but fifty, and had worn the monastic habit for thirtyfive years.
His most Among many friends, he had one who was at
friradcfies
^^^^ ^^^^ oldest and most beloved — a priest called onthesame Herbert, who lived as an anchorite in an island of Lake Derwentwater, one of those fine lakes which make the district of Cumberland and Westmoreland the most picturesque part of England. Every year Herbert came from his peaceful lake to visit his friend in the other island, beaten and undermined continually by the great waves of the Northern Sea; and upon that wild rock, to the accompaniment of winds and waves, they passed several days together in a tender solitude and intimacy, talking of the life 55 <( pondus gegritudinis facilitatera loquendi minoraverat. Verum me diligentius inquirente, qiiem hereditarium serraonem, quod ultimum vale fratribus relinqueret, coepit disserere pauca sed fortia.... Multo plus diligo ut eruentes de tumulo tollentesque vobiscum ossa niea recedatis ab his locis, et ubicumque Deus providerit incolce maueatis, quam ut uUa ratione consentientes iniquitati scliismaticorum jugo coila subdatis.... Scio eniin quia etsi quibusdam conteniptibilis vixi, post meum taiuen obitum, qualis fuerim, quam ruea doctrina non sit contemnenda videbitis." — Vita, c. 39. to come. When Cuthbert, then a bishop, came for the last time to Carlisle, to give the veil to Queen; Ermenburga, Herbert seized the opportunity, and hastened to refresh himself at that fountain of eternal benefits which flowed for him from
the h-oly and tender heart of his friend. " My brother,-'
the bishop said to him, '' you must ask me now all that you want to know, for we shall never meet again in this world." At these words Herbert fell at his feet in tears. '' I conjure you," he cried, " do not leave me on this earth behind you remember my faithful friendship, and pray God, that, after having served Him together in this world, we may pass into His glory together." Cuthbert threw himself on his knees at his friend's side, and after praying for some minutes, said to him, " Rise, my brother, and weep no more; God has granted to us that which we have both asked from Him." And in fact, though they never saw each other again here below, they died on the same day and at the same hour,, the one in his isle bathed by the peaceable waters of a solitary lake, the other upon his granite rock fringed by the foam of the ocean; and their souls, says Bede, reunited by that blessed death, were carried together by the angels into the eternal kingdom.^ This coincidence deeply touched the Christians of Northumbria, and was long engraven in their memory. Seven centuries later, in 1374, the Bishop of Carlisle appointed that a mass should be said, on the anniversary of the two saints, in the island where the Cumbrian anchorite died, and granted an indulgence of forty days to all who crossed the water to pray there in honor of the two friends.^7
In all the histories of the saints, where shall we find a more complete contrast than that between Wilfrid contrast and Cuthbert, though they were contemporaries, ^''^h^ and devoted, from the bottom of their hearts, to the same cause? The life of Cuthbert, much shorter and less afflicted than that of Wilfrid, aflbrds rest to the observer in the midst of the disturbances of a conflict to which,
^^ " In insula stagni illius pergrandis... jamdudum Cuthbcrchto spiritualis aniicitisB foedere copulatus.... Dum sese alterutrura ccelestis sapientiae poculis debriarent.... Memento, fratcr Hereberte, ut niodo quidquid habes me interroges.... Obsecro per Dominuni ne me deseras, sed tui incmor sis fidissinii sodalis.... Unius cjusdemque momento temporis egrcdientes e corpore spiritus eorum, niox beata invicem visione conjuncti sunt, atque angelico ministerio pariter ad regnum tran.slati ccsleste." — Vita, c. 28.
^' Eyu?:, p. 59. English readers will thank us for reminding them of the beautiful lines dedicated lo our two saints by Wordsworth, a poet whose style at the same time, lie was not a stranger; but his part seems always to have been that of mediator and consoler. He liked better to persuade and to heal than to fight and vanquish. Besides Wilfrid, who is the saint of active life, of polemics, of publicity, of the struggle with kings, princes, and prelates, Cuthbert appears to us as the saint of nature, of a life retired and humble, of popular preaching, of solitude, and of prayer.
Notwithstanding this, the popularity of Cuthbert was immense, infinitely more general and more lasting than that of Wilfrid, or indeed of any other saint of his country and century. The Northumbrians listened with delight to the story of the pontiff who lived their own rustic and sea-faring life, a shepherd and a sailor by turns — who understood and had shared their occupations, their feelings, their necessities—who had taught them goodness by practising it himself, and truth by serving it without remission, but with a boundless charity.
While these recollections were engraved in the faithful memory of the laboring classes, kings, lords, and prelates
of expression does not always equal the nobility and purity of his inspiration, but who deserves to be better known than he is in France: —
" If thou, in the dear love of some one friend,
Hast been so happy that thou know'st what thoughts
Will sometimes, in the happiness of love,
Make the heart sink, then wilt thou reverence
This quiet spot; and, stranger, not unmoved,
Wilt thou behold this shapeless heap of stones —
The desolate ruins of St. Herbert's cell.
Here stood his threshold; liere was spread the roof
That sheltered him, a self-secluded man,
After long exercises in social care
And offices humane, intent to adore
The Deity with undistracted mind.
And meditate on everlasting things
In utter solitude. But he had left
A fellow-laborer, whom the good man loved As his own soul; and when, with eye upraised
To heaven, he knelt before the crucifix, •
While o'er the lake the cataract of Lodore
Pealed to his orisons, and when he paced
Along the beach of this small isle, and thought
Of his companion, he would pray that both.
Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled,
Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain
So prayed he, as our chronicles report.
Though here the hermit numbered his last day.
Far from St. Cuthbert, his beloved friend.
These holy men both died in the same hour."
rivalled each other in demonstrations of respect and munificence to his relics and his spiritual posterity. All these different but equally persevering kinds of admiration produced an incredible amount of offerings, and especially gifts of land, made in his honor to the churches of Lindisfarne and Durham, in which successively he found a tomb. The words of Scripture were never more completely verified — " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
It would require a volume to tell the history of the worship of St. Cuthbert and his relics, a history ^fTJ^°'^ which, during many centuries, is mixed up with the history of the north of England, and sometimes takes the leading place in it.^^ The history of the various journeys made by the monks of Lindisfarne, in the ninth and tenth centuries, to take back from the Danes the corpse of their beloved saint, along with the skull of the martyr-king Oswald, would make of itself an Odyssey full of varied and curious episodes. This treasure at last found an asylum upon a steep platform formed like a horseshoe, covered with wood, and surrounded on three sides by a rapid river, where was built in 995, a chapel which took the name of Dur- Translation ham, and to which was afterwards transferred the ^^ Durham, episcopal and abbatial see. From this moment the name and memory of Cuthbert hovered over the magnificent Cathedral of Durham, one of the most beautiful in the world. This magnificent building, with its three stories of arched windows, its two towers, its five naves and two transepts, forms, with the ancient castle of the bishop, built by William the Conqueror, a monument at once of religion and art as admirable as it is little known. It can be compared only to Pisa, to Toledo, to Nuremberg, or Marienburg. It has even a great advantage over all these celebrated places, in the beauty of the landscape which encloses it. It is the sole existing example of a splendid cathedral situated in the midst of an old wood, and on the height of a rock, the abrupt descent of which is bathed by a narrow and rapid river.^^
*' This volume actually exists; it has been compiled with great care and elegance by Mgr. Eyre, Catholic priest of Newcastle, under the title of Hisiorij of St. CuihheH, with an Account of the Wanderings with his Body during 124 years, of the State of his Body until 1542, and of the various Monuments erected to his Memory (London, 18G2); and has very serviceable maps and plans. It contains the later history of Lindisfarne and of the Cathedral of Durham. Amongst other curious details we are told that a statue of the holy bishop, erected four centuries after his death, bore this incription " Sanctus Cuthbertus monachus, episcopus Lindisfarnensis, niuic patronus ecclesiae ac libertatis Dunelmensis."
*' I may draw attention to the view from the corner of Frarawellgate Bridge
The extreme veneration with which the Saxon people surrounded the relics of St. Cuthbert made this church the best endowed in England. The humble anchorite, who had lived on his rock by the modest produce of his manual labor alone, thus created the richest benefice, after Toledo, in Christendom.
Cuthbert had vainly asked his monks to bury him upon his rock of Fame, in order to spare them the trouble caused by the criminals who would come to take refuge at his tomb.*^'' The monks of Lindisfarne exposed themselves willingly to these importunate visitors, rather than deprive their church of what was to be its most precious treasure. After his translation to Durham, universal consent conferred in an ever increasing degree upon the sanctuary where his relics reposed a universally respected right of asylum. The ring of sculptured bronze attached to the door of the cathedral, which any pursued criminal or persecuted innocent had but to grasp in order to have part in the inviolability of the sanctuary, is still shown. The few who ventured to disregard this inviolability incurred celestial punishment, which increased the fame of the sanctuary. But the good saint did not wait until they had sought the shelter of his tomb to extend the hand of tutelary protection over the unhappy and the oppressed. The records of his church are rich in narratives of his miraculous interposition in behalf of the unfortunate victims of feudal tyranny, or of the too often arbitrary and pitiless justice of the middle ages.^i The poor who
as one of the most picturesque and curious in Europe. The visitor must follow the shady avenue of oaks and beeches which skirts the left side of the horseshoe formed by the Wear opposite to that on which the cathedral stands. Those who know the little town of Seniur in Auxois, with its castle and church built on a peninsula surrounded by the Armanqon, may, by trebling the proportions of the landscape and its monuments, form an idea of the situation of Durham. Those who have visited Toledo, and recollect how the Tagus hollows out a bed for itself between two rocks and winds about the l)lateau on which is built the ancient capital of Spain, can still better imagine the site of Durham; but at Toledo the metropolitan church, buried among houses, does not equal the effect of the English cathedral; it lacks also the fine trees which surround the sanctuary of St. Cuthbert with so beautiful a girdle.
^° " Vobis commodius esse arbitror ut hie requiescam propter incursioneni profugorum vel noxiorum quos non libet: qui cum ad corpus meum forte confugerint, qui (qualiscumque sum) fama tamen exivit de me quia famulus Christi sum: necesse habetis ssepius pro talibus apud potentis sseculi intercedere idque ideo de prajsentia corporis mei inultum tolerare laborem." —Bede, Vita, c. '67.
®' See the curious anecdotes of the twelfth century, related by the monk Reginald in' his Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus qua invoked him saw the saint penetrate into the hideous dungeons where they were buried alive. At his voice their chains fell off, their instruments of torture were broken, and, like the angel who delivered St. Peter, Cuthbert led them to a safe place through the midst of sleep^ing jailers and closed doors.
But in this posthumous history of the holy abbot Hebecomes of Lindisfarne nothing is more singular or more touching than to see a man so humble, so modest, and so pacific, transformed into the patron saint, internal ophistorical, warlike, and political, of all Northumbria, ^nd 'Cdgn and that for six centuries at least after his death, It became a matter of pride to Northumbrian patriotism to sustain and demonstrate that Cuthbert was the most powerful intercessor produced by the Anglo-Saxon race, and that neither the glorious Queen Etheldreda nor the holy King St. Edmond, martyred by the Danes, nor St. Thomas of Canterbury himself, were so much listened to by God.^^ The principal Anglo-Saxon kings emulated each other in seeking his protection. The great King Alfred, when hidden in the marsh of Glastonbury, at the most critical moment of his struggle with the Danes, saw St. Cuthbert in a vision, who encouraged him, and promised him victory and the deliverance of his country. Canute, the great king of the Danes, when he became master of England, went barefooted to the tomb of Cuthbert, to pray there for the protection of the saint most venerated by the people he had just subdued. William the Conqueror himself, when he hastened to Durham to avenge the death of those Normans whom the inhabitants, intrenched in their sacred peninsula, had repulsed and slain, experienced a sort of supernatural impression before the tomb of the Anglo-Saxon saint, and respected the immunities on which
novellis patraia; sirnt temporihiis, which was written after the year 1172, at the request of the holy abbot iElred of Ricvaulx, and published for the first time by the Surtees Society in 1835. This collection is one of the most curious memorials of the religious and social condition of England in the twelfth century. Among a crowd of legends more or less fabulous, it contains many details equally original and authentic of the manners and institutions of the time. Side by side with great examples of sanctity and of habitual f<tudy of the Holy Scriptures, we find, both in lay and in religious life, scandals and excesses of tyranny which nothing could now make supportable in Western Europe, and which could only be reproduced under the dominion of the Czars.
*'* "Gloriosa;reginffiEtheldritha3... tribus praacipuis Anglorum Sanctis." — Reginald, c. lO, 115. the vassals of the bishopric plumed themselves in honor of their patron.*'^
In fact, the Norman Conquest did not in any way diminish the popularity of Cuthbert; Normans and Saxons were rivals for his protection. It is on record that an Anglo-Norman knight of the eleventh century returned from a pilgrimage to Rome, carrying the whole way, upon his bosom, a great piece of antique marble intended to decorate the altar of the holy bishop.*^*
Under the Anglo-Saxon monarchy Durham thus inherited at once all the veneration which attached to Lindisfarne, the cradle of faith and of the national Church of Northumbria — and to the personal memory of St. Cuthbert. Under the feudal royalty of the Plantagenets, the bishops who took special honor to themselves as his successors, succeeded in some degree in identifying themselves and their domains with him. Devotion to St. Cuthbert became so respected and so officially efficacious, that all that was given to them and all they acquired was legally invested with what was called, in the middle ages, freedo7n— that is to say, exemption from all taxes and all jurisdiction except that of the possessor. All the vast bishopric was considered the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, and bore his name. By reason of this privilege the bishops of Durham acquired by degrees all the attributes of royalty. They had a chancery, an admiralty, an exchequer, civil and criminal judges, the right of coining money, and in addition the defence and suzerainty of the English frontier against the Scotch.*^^ It was in consequence of having wasted the lands of St. Cuthbert that King David of Scotland drew upon himself the terrible defeat known as the Battle of the Standard; ^^ and it was upon a fief of the saint's patrimony, though enclosed by the diocese of York, that this decisive victory of the Anglo-Norman barons was gained.^''
Two centuries after that great day, Normans and Saxons finally melted down into one nation, marched to battle against the Scots under the vexillum Sancti Cuthberti, which was no other than the corporal used by the prior of Lindisfarne to cover the chalice at mass, and which his pious admirers had
^^ Simeon Dunelmensis, c. 44.
^•» Reginald, c. 74.
®* Camden's Britannia, Gougli's ed., vol. iii. p. 109.
*8 See above, p. 446.
" EiCAKD. Hagulsxad., pp. 82, 88, 93, Surtees edition.
taken the fancy of placing on the point of a lance, and carrying in place of a banner.^^ Edward III. was in France, where he had just won the battle of Crecy, and was besieging Calais. King David II, of Scotland, son of the illustrious Robert Bruce, had taken advantage of his absence to make a new invasion of Northumberland. He came as far as the walls of Durham at the head of thirty thousand Scots, whose devastations recalled only too distinctly those of their ancestors the Picts. The Queen of England, the generous Philippa of Hainault, led in her own person, to meet the enemy, an army inferior in number, but inspired by the idea of punishing the sacrilegious cruelty of the invaders. The Scots had not even respected the possessions and vassals of the abbey, which was still called the patrimony of St. Cuthbert. At the moment when the irufoct., fight was about to begin, the prior of the monastery planted the standard of the saint upon a height near the field of battle, around which all the monks assembled in prayer. Victory pronounced itself for the English: their formidable archers, drawn specially from among the vassals of St. Cuthbert, made short work with the Scottish men-atarms. The Scottish army was annihilated, and King David wounded and made prisoner along with his archbishop and the flower of his nobility. The next morning the victors, led by the chiefs of the two great chivalric houses of Norman Northumberland, the Nevilles and Percies, carried back to the monastic cathedral, along with the banners taken from the Scots, the precious relic they had borrowed. It reappeared in many battles, always assuring victory to the English, up to the reign of Henry VIII. The last time that this holy banner appeared on a field of battle was again in
*** Reginald, De Virtutibus, c. 39. See also Borland., p. 127, for another curious instance of the protection given by St. Cuthbert against the Scotch in 1207, from whence Camden derived his saying —" Anglorum reges et proceres credidisse S. Cuthbertuni contra Scottos tutelaruni divuni fuisse." Walter Scott, always so skilful in invoking the poetical and religious traditions of the Scottish Marches, has not passed over this one: —
" Who may his miracles declare?
Even Scotland's dauntless king, and heir,...
Before his standard fled.
'Twas he, to vindicate his reign.
Edged Alfred's falchion on the Dane,
And turned the Conqueror back again,
When with his Norman bowyer band
He came to waste Northumberland."
— Marmion, canto ii. 15.
488 CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS
the hands of the Nevilles and Percies. in the glorious but ill-fated insurrection of the Northumbrians against the atrocious tjn-anny of Henry VIII. in 1536.'^9 This insurrection, known under the name of the Pilgrimage of Grace, in favor of the religion which the saints of Lindisfarne had brought into Northumbria, and which the miserable husband of Anne Boleyn -wished to destroy, ended only in the massacre of the rural population, and in the judicial murder of the principal nobles and priests of the country — among others, of the last successor of St. Wilfrid at Hexham. Under the reign of this Defender of the Faith the standard of St. Cuthbert had the same fate as his body, which up to that time had remained uncorrupted. These holy remains, along with the bones of the venerable Bede, were torn from the shrine in which they had been venerated by so many grateful generations; and the noble banner was also torn from the sanctuary and thrown into the fire by the wife of an apostate priest.'^*^
^' Eaine's Priory of Hexham, Appendix, p. 13G, notes 141, 150. The instruction of Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk, as to the punishment of rebels, may be read p. 151. They direct that a good vumher of the inhabitants of every city, village, and hamlet shall be hanged and quartered, and, above all, as many priests and canons as possible are without ceremony to be tyed Kppe. It reads like the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety to the Terrorist generals in La Vendee.
'•^ The shocking details of this profanation, with an extremely curious description of the ancient usages of the great Cathedral of Durham before the Eeformation, are to be found in a rare volume, entitled The Ancient Rites and 3Ionunients of the 3Ionastical and Cathedral Church of Durham. By J. D. (Davies), of Kidevelly; London, 1G72, in Svo.
James Eaine, an Anglican writer whose erudition is clouded by his bigoted prejudices against the religion and the times which he has studied, affirms that at the opening of the tomb of St. Cuthbert in 1827 his body was discovered, together with his garments, comb, and other objects represented in the illustrations of a work entitled St. Cuthbert, ivith an Account of the State in which his Remains were found tipon the opening of his Tomb in Durham Cathedral in the year 1827. By James Eaine, rector of Meldon; Durham, 1828, in Svo. The authenticity of this discovery is denied by Mgr. Eyre, according to whom the body of the saint is deposited in a hiding-place, the secret of which is known only to three English Benedictines!
The British Museum now contains the most ancient monument consecrated to the honor of the great Northumbrian saint — the Gospel called St. Cuthbert's. This celebrated MS. was the gift of Sir Eobert Cotton, 1631. It was written between 700 and 720 by two bishops of Lindisfarne, Eadfreth and Ethelwold, and illuminated by the latter. The monk Betfreth enriched it with gilding and precious stones. It has a Northumbrian glossary of the end of the ninth century, interlined by a priest, Aldred — " bonaj mulieris filius eximius." The whole four, according to a final note, " Deo et Cuthberto construxerunt vel ornaverunt." It is a most curious monument of Irish art. According to Sir Frederick Madden, it bears all the marks of this special and extremely elegant art. It is discussed at length in an essay by Dr. Eeeve, entitled On Early Irish Calligraphy, 18G0, in 4to.
Less dazzling and less universal, but not less Popularity lasting, was the popularity of the holy Bishop of bm*on "ea" Lindisfarne with the seafaring population of the as on land. Northumbrian shores. This is apparent through all the different narratives which remain to us concerning the worship of which he was the object during so many centuries, and which throw a precious light upon the ideas, manners, and belief of the ancient English people. But let us state, in the first place, that all the monks of that district gajjor were, like Cuthbert, bold and unwearied sailors, monks. There are no more interesting recollections of their life than those which show them to us in constant conflict with the element on which England has established her dominion. In that point, as in all else, the monks show themselves in history the pioneers of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is pleasant to see them sounding a prelude, as it were, by their courage and address, to the exploits of the most maritime nation in the world.
"Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the -waves!"
The narratives of the seventh century are full of the cruel tempests which reigned upon the east coast of England, still one of the shores most abounding in shipwrecks."^ But no danger stopped the sons of those bold sailors who owed the conquest of Great Britain to their experience of the sea. The Anglo-Saxon monks, under the frock and scapular, wore hearts which did not yield either in vigor or activity to any of their ancestors or countrymen. They coasted continually between the different monasteries and their dependencies, which extended along that coast bristling with rocks and reefs. Sometimes the furious waves drove them out to sea, out of sight of land, sometimes held them shut up in some desert isle or solitary bay for whole days and weeks. Then, as soon as the wind fell, they put out again to encounter new dangers in their miserable barks, rocked on the crest of
'^ " En tellus nivibus, nebulis coelum horrescit, aer flatibus adversis furit, fluctibus a;quor... manente triduo tcnipestate prasvalida.... Exorta subito tempestas fera, omnem cis naviganda facultateni abstulit... scptem dies fervcnte unda conclusi, tristes in insula resedcrunt... quinque diebus obstitit tempestas nc redire possemus." — Vita S. Cuthherii, c. 11, 3G, 37. "Ecce subito, positis in medio maris... tanta ingruit tempestatis biems ut neque vclo ncque remigio quioquani proficere valeremus.... Cumque diu cum vcnto pelagoque frustra certantes tandem post terga respiceremus... invenimus nos undique versura par tempestate prasolusos." — Bede, Uist. Eccles., V. i. the waves like sea-gulls. They were compared to sea-birds by those who from the shore saw them struggling against the storm; and it was under this aspect that they appeared for the first time to Cuthbert, when in his youth, before he became a monk, he Matnessed, in the midst of a mocking and hostile crowd, the fruitless efForts of the monks of Tyneraouth to effect a landing, against wind and tide, with the wood for building, which they were carrying to their monastery in five little boats,"2 The prayer of Cuthbert saved them, and brought them happily into port, where their brethren awaited them, all kneeling in a mass upon a point of rock which projected into the raging waves, to implore from heaven the safety of their companions.
When Cuthbert himself became a monk, his duties as missionary and prior, and afterward his prolonged sojourn upon the isle of Fame, familiarized him with all the dangers and habits of that seafaring existence which was so closely associated with monastic life. This recollection, joined to the popular glory of his name, gave him the place of patron saint to the poor seamen condemned to gain their bread by bravina; daily that stormy sea. Late in the twelfth His appear- o. " mi i n i i • i ancetoiost century it was still told among them how, in the sai ors. midst of the hurricane, the sailors in extremity saw the holy bishop of Lindisfarne appear in the midst of them, with his mitre on his head and his crosier in his hand, which he used sometimes as a helm, sometimes as an oar, sometimes as a grappling-iron, to save them from shipwreck, and bring them to a place of safety: no one dared to ask him his name, for all recognized, by the sheen of his beautiful and gentle countenance, the tender-hearted pontiff whom they had all been taught to venerate from their infancy as the protector of the country and of the coast."^ It occurred to no one in those days to doubt the reality of such an apparition. For all the nations of Christendom at this period there was nothing more natural than the supernatural. It was only a
" '-Quod videntes e monasterio fratres, emissis in fluvium naviculis, eos qui in ratibus laborabant adjuvare nitebantur.... Sed vi fluminis et violentia ventorum superati, nequaquam valebunt.... CoUecti in proximo obice fiectebant genua... adeo ut quasi quinque aves parvulae, quinque rates undis insidentes apparuerent." — Vita S. Cuthberti, c. 3.
'^ " Cuthbertus, quasi in specie corporali, omnibus visibilis et palpabilis apparuit, et in prora navis, gubernatoris de more, resedit.... Baculo pastorali de modo gubernaculi, pontem saevientem secando dividebat." — Eegi- NALDUS, De Virtutibus S. Cuthberti, c. 23. more frequent and more direct intervention of the omnipotence of God, which appalled them or consoled them, but did not surprise.
In this dangerous archipelago, and on the precipitous island where Cuthbert had his favorite dwelling and where he died, he had more than one successor ambitious of following his holy footsteps in the same spot where he had best known and served his God. The first of these was a monk of Ripon called Ethelwold, who, more effectually itheUvoTd* moved by the example of Cuthbert than by the lessons of Wilfrid, lived for twelve years in the cell of his holy predecessor, the opening of which he attempted to close against the wind and rain by clay, hay, and finally by a hide, that he might not be troubled in his contemplations.'^ But when the moaning of the wind and the waves, which broke against the basaltic precipices of his isle, warned him of coming calamity, he issued from his shelter to hasten to the aid of the shipwrecked; and the sailors, driven in the midst of storm, saw him kneeling on the summit of his rock with his hands raised to heaven imploring from God the salvation of his brethren.'^s
The Anglo-Saxon anchorite thus set up before God and man, on his unknown isle, and in the depths of an unknown age, a touching and glorious symbol of the everlasting part played by his fellow-monks, always ready to lavish upon Christians treasures of intercession, and to encounter public plagues and perils, as well as those temptations and tempests of the soul of which the waves in fury are but an imperfect image.
It is pleasant to connect with this old saint of the past a Christian heroine of our own days, the young and touching figure of Grace Darling, who came from the very isle of Cuthbert and Ethelwold arcifipeiago to expose her life on behalf of the shipwrecked —as if that wild and threatening coast had been pre-
''* " Sumto fceno, vel argilla, vel quicquid hujusmodi materiae reperisset, stipavcrat rimulas, ne quotidianis imbriuni sive ventorum injuriis ab orandi retardaretur instantia.... Pelliculara vituli in angulo, quod et ipse et przedecessor Cutlibertus saipius orans stare vel genuflectere solebat, clavis affixam viok'ntiis procellarum opposuit." — Vita S. CuthheHi, c. 46.
^'' " Ubi longius visum levavimus, vidimus in ipsa insula Fame, egressum de latibulis suis amatissimum Deo patrem iter nostrum inspicere. Audito fragore procellarum ac ferventis Oceani, exierat videre quid nobis accideret, cumque nos in labore ac desperatione positos cerneret, Hectebat genua." —Bede, Hist. Eccles., v. 1.
492 CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS
destined by God up to our own time to be at once the locality and the witness of the noblest deeds of charity. Grace was the daughter of the keeper of one of those lighthouses which modern science has raised upon the group of isles be- 6th Sept., tween Lindisfarne and Bamborough. One night, ^^^- ' in the midst of a terrible -storm, she was awoke by the cries of the crew of a great ship which had gone ashore on a neighboring reef. She awoke her father, and alone with him, oar in hand, in a frail boat, she rushed to the help of the perishing. The sea had never been more furious, nor the difficulty and danger of managing a boat greater. After desperate efforts, she at last reached the rock to which clung the last survivors of the crew. They were but nine in number, all of whom she took into her boat. The rage of the waves and violence of the wind were such that it took almost an entire day to row them back to the lighthouse, where she harbored and cared for them for three days and nights. All England burst into a unanimous transport of enthusiasm on learning this heroic act; and from the royal palace to the smallest village all echoed her praise. She was only twenty, and was no doubt already attacked by the pulmonary disease of which she died four years after- '^*~' wards. She died without any desire to leave her father and her island, leaving only a name worthy of eternal recollection, worthy to be inscribed among the heroes and saints. In Anglo-Saxon times she would have been canonized by the popular voice, as were all the saints whose history we record; and her place would have been fixed between Hilda and Ebba, the two great abbesses of her race and country, whose profaned altars and forgotten fame still hallow in the north and south the historic region which Grace Darling has lighted up with a modern and touching glory.^•^
''^ The ship wrecked upon the reefs of Longstone Island was a steamboat called the Forfarshire. Grace Darling's lighthouse is situated upon the isle called Longstone or Outer Fame. See the fine notice of this incident given by M. Alphonsc Esquiros in one of his excellent articles upon England and English life (Revue des Deux Mondes, 18(54), and for the localities Cruchley's excellent Reduced Ordnance Map, No. 62. Grace Darling's father died in May, 1865. He is buried beside his daughter, who rests in the cemetery at Bamborough, upon the site of the ancient capital of those Northumbrian kings of whom we have spoken so much. The monument raised by a national subscription to this young heroine of Christian charity is visible at sea a great distance off.
OF ST. WILFRID. 493