In Our Time - Saint Cuthbert

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northumbrian man who, for 500 years, was the pre-eminent English saint, to be matched only by Thomas Becket after his martyrdom in 1170. Now at Durham, Cuthbert was buried first on Lindisfarne in 687AD, where monks shared vivid stories of his sanctifying miracles, his healing, and his power over nature, and his final tomb became a major site of pilgrimage. In his lifetime he was both hermit and kingmaker, bishop and travelling priest, and the many accounts we have of him, including two by Bede, tell us much of the values of those who venerated him so soon after his death.The image above is from a stained glass window in the south aisle of the nave in Durham Cathedral: 'St Cuthbert praying before his cell in the Farne Island'With Jane Hawkes Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of YorkSarah Foot The Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church CathedralAnd John Hines Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, for 500 years, Cuthbert was the pre-eminent English saint, and his tombs were major sites of pilgrimage. Now at Durham, he was buried first on Lindisfarne in 687 AD,

where monks shared vivid stories of his sanctifying miracles, his healing and his power over nature. In his lifetime, he was both hermit and kingmaker, bishop and travelling priest, and the many accounts we have of him, including two by the venerable bead, tell us much of the values of those who have venerated him so soon after his death.

When we would have discussed St. Cuthbert are Jane Hawkes, Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of York, Sarah Foote, the Regis Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christchurch Cathedral, and John Hines, Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University. John Hines, what do we know about Cuthbert's early life? Well, there isn't a great deal of detail recorded about Cuthbert's background, but we do at least know that his childhood was spent in an area of what's now the Scottish borders close to the Lammermure Hills.

There's also evidence from which you can tell that he must have belonged to the richer and more privileged classes of that society and perhaps the most telling story is when in his late teens he arrives at the monastery of Melrose in Roxburgh, as it was, to join the monastic community there. He turned up on horseback and carrying a spear, both of which were in effect status symbols. And with an attendant, I understand.

Yeah, well, indeed, yes. You know, it showed he was a free man of considerable status within that area. Now, in that light, it's particularly intriguing that we don't have any information whatsoever on his parentage and what immediate family he belonged to. We do know that he was fostered, apparently at the age of seven. But the information that we've got about that is simply a later record. of who his foster mother, a woman called Kienseweath, was, and we're told about her then that she had become a religious woman

who was living the life of a nun. It's perhaps important to stress that the fact that a boy of about seven was fostered in another household doesn't by any means imply that he was orphaned. This was quite a regular practice. One of the stories we've got of Cuthbert's early years talks of him keeping sheep out on the hills, along with some other shepherds,

which has obviously got biblical connotations, but it's not something that means that Cuthbert was of a particularly modest or ordinary status any more than David, the youngest son of Jesse in the Old Testament, was what it does do is place him very firmly and practically in the farming, pastoral, transhumanist economy of this particular part of Northumbria.

Other than B, there was a much earlier life of, or considerably earlier life of Cuthbert, the so-called anonymous life. And that refers to him very briefly as having spent some time on a military campaign, which is exactly what you'd expect of a young man of this rank. There's other stories, talk about him having an infirmity, causing lameness,

and one does just wonder whether there were some recurrent physical problems that he had. That's rather backed up by the idea that the notion, I don't know what validity you give to this, that he liked doing gymnastics, he was good at doing somersaults and backflips and all the rest of it. And that might have hurt his knee doing that and lamed him to a certain extent. And it's also remarked in that context that he didn't show much religious inclination as a young. We're not talking about the young genius of sanctity from an early age. No, no, no, he isn't one of those horrible. all pious children at the age of three who are singing...

Are all pious children horrible? Not necessarily, but some of them are in these stories, of course. We do actually... There is an anatomical study of Cuthbert skeleton. The stories of him being well-built athletic and strong do seem credible if the skeletal remains that were studied in 1899 in Durham are actually his own. Sir Ruford, a lot of this, a lot of his life was spent in Northumbria.

Now, Christianity had just reached Northumbria then. Can you tell us a bit about the arrival of Christianity in Northumbria? Christianity had first reached Northumbria in Roman times, but the Roman church is much diminished after the end of Roman rule in Britain and in so far as the Romano-British church still survived in the north. It's probably in the Western. parts of the region Cumbria and the like. But Christianity is introduced to the Anglian pagan settlers north of the Humbera twice over in the early part of the 7th century. There's first a

Roman mission that comes from Canterbury led by a bishop called Paulinus, who comes with accompanying the king Edwin's Christian wife to the court of Edwin and successfully converts large numbers of people mass baptisms at York in the year 627. But after Edwin's death, the kingdom reverted to paganism. And it was only on the accession of Oswald, who had spent time in exile on the Scottish island of Iona, where he had been converted to Christianity by Irish monks, that a new effort is made to bring Christianity into Northumbria

with Irish monks coming from Iona at Oswald's invitation, being given a seat for their bishopric on the coastal tidal island of Northumbria and led by an Irish bishop whose name was Aden. Can you give us some more information about Iona at that time, the seeding and breeding ground of what became, I suspect, wrongly called Celtic Christianity? Can we talk about Irish Christianity in this context? These are Irish monks who've come to settle off the western coast of Scotland, led by a very charismatic, ascetic and energetic figure called Colomber,

who had a great passion for living the monastic life, but also an enormous passion for mission and evangelisation among the Scottish peoples. So travelled long distances away from the island to get out among the remote rural population. There are lots of amazing stories about his encounters with the natural world, including a supposed incident on the banks of Loch Ness. where he encountered a mysterious monster in the waters, and also lots of occasions when angels spoke to him and ministered to his needs.

And some of those same themes come out in the lives of Cuthbert. How different was the Ionian Irish Church, from the Roman, perhaps we could call it English-based at Canterbury? I think the differences are first and foremost organisational. the Roman Church has a different view of bishops from that of the Irish Church. Bishops in Ireland are very small and bishops don't have major administrative,

judicial, governmental responsibilities in the Irish church. So they tended to seek people out for the episcopacy because of their spiritual gifts, not because of their administrative talents. But the other thing that really marks out the difference between monks in the Roman and the Irish. traditions is that Roman monks are much more closely tied to the monastic institutions to which

they belong. They tend to follow rules that stress stability and staying within the community, whereas Irish monks like Columba, Aden, Cuthbert, tend to travel long distances away from their home base. Cuthbert could sometimes be away for as much as a month at a time, and this wasn't thought to be inappropriate behaviour. It was in order to enable him to get to the most rugged parts of the region so he could reach those people who hadn't yet had the opportunity to have Christian teaching. And of course, the other really big difference between the Irish and the Roman churches and the one that Bede makes a great deal of in his history is that they use different systems for calculating the date of Easter, which could cause some tensions

when their different calendars came up with different answers in the same year. Can you tell us how the Irish church, how it felt about this, of the Roman Church? It's possible to overstate the possible tensions and difficulties between Roman and Irish Christianity. It's important to bear in mind that both churches believed in one God and the persons of the Trinity. They believed in the promises of salvation made by Christ. They believed in the importance of his resurrection and his ascension. And they believed that it mattered enormously that as many people as possible should be brought to hear that good news and brought into the sheepfold of all believers before the last judgment when an Irish monk or

bishop just as much as a Roman one would have felt the anxiety about what they were going to say to Christ at the last judgment if there were all these people in remote settlements who'd never heard the good news of the gospel and so we're going to be damned and I think the fact that both churches feel passionately about mission and the need to spread the gospel is more important than the differences between them. Yes, they cut their hair in different ways so the Roman tonsia is supposed to imitate that of St Peter and modelled on the crown of thorns. So you just shave the middle of the top part of the head. The Irish tonsia was different. It meant that you could probably distinguish Irish and Roman monks when you saw them. But ultimately,

they're teaching one faith, one church, one resurrection, eternal life for all believers. Thank you. Jane. In the stories of Cuthbert, we hear a lot about his travelling around, which is different from the Romans being more used to sticking inside their monastery. Why was that important to Cuthbert to travel around so much? He even came across to Carlisle. Yes, he did. He gets taken on a trip, on a tour, around the Roman ruins. Cuthbert as a tourist. But he also has a vision in which he sees the forthcoming death of the king. So he does forewarn the king that if he continues his campaigns ultimately against the Irish,

he'll come to a sticky end, which is exactly what happens. And there's still a St. Cuthbert's Church in Carlisle, just next to the cathedral. At one point he was sent to a religious establishment. So occasionally he was. He was sent to this place in Coldingham to address problems there. What does that tell us? It's actually one of my favourite stories about Cuthbert. It was an Irish foundation.

And those were in the early days marked very often by housing both monks and nuns. And it seems that the abbess, Ethelthroth, I was having a bit of a problem with the monks and the nuns getting a little bit too friendly. So Cuthbert went along to try and sort it out. And when he was done for the day, he went and had what Sister Benedict Award called, the equivalent of a cold shower, seen by one of the monks at Cullingham, hiding behind a hedge watching Cuthbert standing pretty well up to his neck in the cold waters of the mouth of the river Tweed. and when he's calmed down sufficiently or cooled off sufficiently, he comes out and a family of sea otters come up and lick him dry.

All of that said, it gives us a real insight into how Cuthbert really was operating at the highest level as some sort of a diplomat within church circles, ecclesiastical circles. Thank you. John Hines, can we develop the Cuthbert's dealings with royalty, and what does that tell us? Without doubt there was a very close relationship indeed between kingship and the church, not just in Northumbria, but in fact throughout Anglo-Saxon England and indeed throughout all of the different communities and populations of early medieval Britain. Would it be fair to say this was stronger on the part of the women in the Royal Court than the men, that the women welcome these these pictures. Certainly, I wouldn't actually quite say it was stronger on the part of the women, but there were different and complementary gendered roles there.

So at Whitby we've got the famous Abbott Hild and her successor, a woman called Alphlid, this woman Abba up at Coldingham as well. and it does in fact seem as if Cuthbert tends to communicate with the king himself through those abysses. The women were also powerful in that part of the world. The women inherited. So he was not dealing with, as it were, the inferior power person. He was dealing often with a very powerful power person at the court. I completely agree.

And saying that these were complementary roles. all of which were representing the interests of the same family and kin group doesn't in any way suggest that these women who were playing those roles were merely puppets in the hand of the powerful men. Clearly there were women. This was a male-centered society. There's no question of that. But in so many of these male-centered societies,

there are ways in which resourceful, able and indeed privileged women can exercise an extraordinary amount of power and influence. Whether Cuthbert and King Edgfried had ever actually met, there is one occasion when they did, which is when Cuthbert was being asked if he would become bishop. There had been a synod held with Archbishop Theodore and King Edgfrith, and Cuthbert was chosen as the bishop. but he was then a hermit on his island of Farn and he didn't want to become bishop. And the story goes that Edgefrith went to the island

to confront Cuthbert and say he had to do this. And in the wonderful 12th century manuscript of the lives of Cuthbert, there's a full page illustration of the king confronting the saint in his cell, begging him to come out and do this thing for the world instead of staying in his hermitage and praying by himself. So there is that one occasion when I think they did need. He seemed to oscillate between being a hermit on this little island, the Farn Island, where he built himself a shelter of sorts, and dealing with royalty and travelling around.

Now, Sarah, can you talk, Sarah Ford, can you talk to me a bit about him being a hermit and why he decided to go to Farn Island? The desire that he would spend some of his time in solitude is something, is an undercurrent that seems to run all the way through his whole life. The anonymous life of Cuthbert divides his life into different life stages and makes them hermetically sealed and separate from one another. But Beads life smooths those edges out and suggests that Cuthbert always, once he'd become a monk, always sought to get away from the others.

So even when he was living in the community at Lindersfarn, he used to sometimes spend the whole night awake. Walking up and down or working with his hands, as he said his Psalms, as a way of warding off the enemy sleep. But he also had a little sort of hermitage just off the edge of the island of Lindisfarne, a tiny little island known as St Cuthbert's Isle, and he used to retire there as much as he could.

After he'd been for a while, the chronology is very vague, but a while at Lindisfarne, he asked and got permission. It's very important that he didn't go and do this without the permission of the abbot and the other monks to go and live in complete solitude on farm, which is just a...

a small way away from Lindisfarne. And there he built himself a cell very much in the Irish model, a circular sort of dwelling cut out of the rock, with walls high enough to prevent him from being able to see out and look at the sea or admire the landscape or see who was coming to visit him. And he made the walls so high that he could only see the sky above his head. Is there any way at all that we can, that we have any knowledge of what he was contemplating

and how he was contemplating. Did he have rules of meditation? Did he, what did he do? I mean, did you just think? I think that he is spending a great amount of his time reciting the Psalms of the Psalter and praying through them as he says them from memory. There is a suggestion that he is combating demons

so whether these are figments of his own imagination or whether these are demonic figures that come and torment him to try and persuade him to give up his austerity and lead a slightly more relaxed way of life. This is a well-established means of getting oneself closer to God. You cut yourself off from all the pleasures of the flesh and particularly from the company and distraction of other human being. So that by focusing on the Word of God and the Word of God especially as articulated through the Son. of the Salter. That helps you to climb the ladder, which will in the end bring you closer to heaven. But all the accounts suggest that Samadhi lies absolutely at the heart of Cuthbert's independent prayer life. Thank you. I mean, in addition to that, we do know that he was

trying to grow crops out there. So it wasn't, you know, totally a life of prayers. He's praying through the work. He's praying through the work of his hands. Absolutely so. Can we just sort of stress another point there too, which is that inner farm is some miles off from Holy Island, you know, they are intervisible, but it's only about a mile off shore from Bamberra, which is the great royal centre. So it's not remote and inconspicuous by any means indeed. And for this legend of Edgefrith going out, it is a romantic legend of Edgefrith going out there to beg him to accept the bishopric is a story that represents very, very nicely the relationship between his rather ostentatious ascetic spirituality of being on his own

and the fact that it's being performed in direct view of the Royal Centre. Can we stick to the idea of the Islander? As I understand it, in imitation of the Antonines of, say, the fourth century, who went into the desert to cut themselves off from earthly temptations, so they were just surrounded by desert in the Middle East. There being few deserts in the north. Anyway, they chose islands, so they were surrounded by water, which helped to cut them off.

Did that play a part? Yes, I think it will have done. But as John has just intimated, sea is also a major highway. way. Holy Island is a tidal island so it's actually connected to the mainland. Holy Island being Lindisfarne, yes. Yeah, being where Linda Svarn is situated. But these places are all very close together and they are absolutely interconnected if you accept that water is your main way of getting from A to B. So getting from Holy Island or Lindisfarne, down to Whitby, just going down the coast,

would take you next to no time at all, whereas doing it by land, where road conditions were not that great, you would have preferred to go by sea and just navigated with the land inside. John, John Hines, let's go back to Lindisfarne now. He came to be treated as a saint

by the monks of Lindisfarne. He became the bishop of Lindisfarne. So can we tie all these together? the saints, the Lindisfan, the island and the becoming of a bishop. How did Lindisfarne associate himself with him or he with Lindistan so closely? Well, he was sent to Lindisfarne, and from what we can tell, he was sent specifically to enforce a more Roman style of discipline on this originally Irish monastery that there was out there.

And really he did it by very largely imitated. the life and virtues of the great missionary saint bishop Aidan. And in some ways his ultimately becoming bishop was the fulfilment of his reproduction of Aden's life. The big difference between Cuthbert and Aden is that Cuthbert was a Northumbrian, whereas Aden, so far as we know, was solely Irish speaking and needed an interpreter all the time. Cuthbert could talk to the people, both the monks, on Holy Island and indeed those he was preaching to and baptising in that northern part of Northumbria

within their own language. It wasn't by any means automatic that as a bishop he would therefore come to be venerated as a saint. It was the many great achievements that he had as a man of, I think, great piety, great commitment to his church, almost an obsessive commitment, we might say in some ways. There was no formal process of canonisation, such as we know in the modern Roman Catholic Church. This stage in the history of the church, it was largely a local matter

if a cult would develop around a dead hero or heroine of the church, and in particular around the relics, the mortal remains of that particular individual. with a series of healing miracles, usually being associated with those, that was how somebody came to be venerated as a saint. And that was indeed what happened with Cuthbert. There is a key, key story, of course, of his body being found incorrupt. But perhaps we can move on to that.

That's later. That's later. We don't have to get that yet. What were these miracles? I mean, did people, can you give us one or two more examples? Let's just Sarah for a moment. were these miracles which played such an important part in the veneration in which he was held? Were they massive, totally believed at the time?

Were they puffed up, as it were, if you'll excuse me for the word, later? One of the striking things about the stories about Cuthbert is how many miracle stories are told of him during his own lifetime on usually, not exclusively, but often involving occasions when he's a long way away from Melrose or Linda. von among wider population.

So there's an occasion. John mentioned earlier the fact that he had a foster mother or Bede calls her his nurse. There's one occasion when he's visiting her, whom he used to do often, and her house caught fire, and he put the fire out and saved her from coming

to harm. Did he put the fire out, not by throwing buckets of water on it, but by prayer? Through prayer. It was through his prayer an invocation to heaven that caused the flames to go out, which of course, instantly was believed by all those people roundabout who had seen the flyer blazing and his nurse in real danger. Even before he became a monk at all when he was a young man, there's a story

when he was standing on the mouth of the river Tyne and a collection of monks from Tymeouth Abbey were out on rafts in the river mouth and a wind got up and they started to be dragged out to sea and the population watching on the bank started to laugh at them. And Cuthbert prayed that the wind would change and they would be brought safely back to shore. And that's even before he'd become a monk. He's already demonstrating his capacity to control the natural world and to intercede directly with God on behalf of living people. So when after his death, miracles start to be associated with his relics or with the

place where the water which had washed his body had been poured away, then people were inclined to think, yes, we know this was a miracle worker. Indeed, a bit of that soil from the place where the water that washed his body was thrown away, put that in water and drink it, and you will indeed be relieved of your demonic possession or whatever your infirmity is. Can we, have we had enough of miracles? It is fascinating, isn't it? The evidence for them, which is, we would be tested and challenged by a lot of people today, perhaps. It's interesting to note that Bede is careful on several occasions to say that he's speaking to eyewitnesses. He has testimony from people who knew Cuthbert and indeed a claim to have witnessed the miracles.

So that can be done obviously because there is skepticism, without doubt, but there is care to try and make the point, to try and prove it. Bid always did that sort of research, didn't it, for whatever direction you went to? But if I could come in, the anonymous life, which is written within about five years of the body being exhumed and found to be incorrupt, that it's so very soon after 698, the anonymous was able to talk to a number of people who had known Cuthbert well in life and people who had witnessed many of these miracles. And so some of the ones from the anonymous life that Bede carefully reshapes and re-crapes and re-carcely. I think it's the Lindisfar monk and his and those who had lived with Cuthbert for a long time who are testifying to the fact that this was a truly remarkable man and one that they recognized to be different from themselves even in life and then, of course, massively in death.

So let's turn to the death, which the death is a story in itself because the dead body continues till today to be an object of fascination. Jane Hawks, the first burial given at Lindisfarne, can you tell us about that? And was there, if there was, anything special about it? Cuthbert died on Inna Farn and perhaps aware of his reputation had asked his fellow monks to bury him on Inna Farn. They, however, took ship to Inna Farn with a son. stone sarcophagus that had been donated and presumably wrapped him up in the very nice white fine linen in shroud that had been woven by an abbess for him. His body in the sarcophagus is taken back to Holy Island and put by the side of the altar in the church at Linda Svon.

and 11 years later, the body is translated. It's taken out of the sarcophagus. Miraculously, his body was discovered to be incorrupt. The story goes that they quickly whipped together a wooden coffin, and Epith, the new abbot, the man credited with creating penning and illustrating the Lindisfarne Gospels, takes over and oversees this translation of the body into the wooden coffin. John Hines, what Cuthbert had some political standing during his life.

What political role would you say was played by the figure of the dead St. Cuthbert? I could talk for a very, very long time about this. Well, please don't, but if you can summon it off. I'll try and get just to the absolutely key points. He certainly becomes, he's now considered the patron saint of Northumberland and there's a real sense in which he is a figure who represents the kingdom of Northumbria. Extremely striking that when the Holy Island and the Monastery of Lindisfarne are raided by Viking raiders in June 793, the Northumbrian scholar and churchmen on the continent

Alquin writing to the nobles of Northumbria refers to the site just as the Church of Cuthbert. It must have been a deliberately targeted attack on such a central and holy site within Northumbria as this effective declaration of war between Scandinavia and Western Europe at that time. And I, sensitive, although the comparison would have to be, I really don't think it's unrealistic at all to say that the impact that had on Northumbria itself, it's a sort of 9-11 event. That's the level of shock and outrage that was intended to be caused by the attack and which resulted from it.

However, at that point, we can also say that actually, Alcoen is a bit Janus-faced really. He's got one story when he's speaking to Northumbria. He's got a different story when he's speaking to southern England, when he's writing to the church at Canterbury. He talks about Viking raids there without making the attack on Lindisfarne, the single atrocity that stands out amongst everything else. Putting Alcuit aside for the moment,

although he was a great teacher, and he illuminated the instigated most of the culture and certainly the Christian culture of Charlemagne and so on. Let's go back to Lindisfar and Sarah Ford. How did Cuthbert end up from Lindisfar to Durham? How long did it take him to get there? It took a considerable time. So John's just talked about the Viking raid in 793.

Yes, it was indeed a very shocking event. But the community stayed in Lindisfarne then. It wasn't until about 875. when the pressure from Scandinavian coastal raiding and probably also the beginning of Scandinavian settlement in Northumbria made the community think that they needed to move from their isolated and vulnerable coastal site. And so they packed up the treasures of the community,

the Lindisfand Gospels, the coffin of Cuthbert with the various things of Cuthbert's that they had preserved and the head of King Oswald of Northumbria, the king who'd first invited us. Irish monks from Iona to come. But in the coffin of comfort, presumably, was the dead Cuthbert? The dead Cuthbert and the head of Oswald. And they travelled round Northumbria.

They went to a variety of different places. They went to Nora Montweed. They stayed briefly in Rippon. They went over to the West Coast. They thought about whether to go to Ireland. They changed their mind. They settled in the middle years of the 10th century at Chesterly Street because the coffin was there in 934 when Avalstam was on his way.

to Scotland and he stopped off to visit the Shrine of Cuthbert and made a present of Bede's two lives of the saint to the community of monks. To cut to the chase, he leaves Lindisfarne and a considerable time later he ends up in Durham. What was that, a hundred and how many hundred and what years? The story is told by Simeon of Durham writing in the early 12th century that it was in the year 995 that the bishop of the community Aeltoon had a warning that they ought to to leave Chesterla Street and flee. They went to Durham, they went to rip them for a bit,

and then they were going to go back to where they'd been. And they were just travelling near Durham at a place called Wurda Lough, and suddenly the cart carrying the coffin wouldn't go any further at all. So they stopped. They had a period of prayer and fasting and asked God what they should do, and God revealed that they should take the coffin to Durham, this uninhabited but very easily defended peninsular site, which they cleared of trees and then built,

established first a wooden and then a stone church there. So how long did Jekindem? 875 to 995 is the conventional view. There is a young scholar at St Andrews, Neil McGuigan, who's recently argued that actually this is a complete fiction and that the chronology is wrong. And he suggests that they were in Noremon Tweed right up until the second decade of the 11th century.

And he thinks that they didn't move to Durham until around 10-20 in the reign of the Danish king, Knute. It became extraordinary Jane Hawks. When he arrived in Durham, and then we have the cathedral and so on, how important was it for Christianity that he was in such a place with such a magnificent edifice being built around him

and himself being laid out in such splendour. As Sarah's just intimated with the visit of the King of Wessex to his shrine in Chesterloo Street, that when he gets to Durham, the cult of St Cuthbert and the shrine of St Cuthbert is probably the most important shrine cult place of pilgrimage that was really only replaced by that of Thomas A Beckett. I do think that he did spend time in Chesterla Street, which ironically was in the centre of the sort of Scandinavian heartland.

And the Cuthbert community was quite important in establishing kings in York, Viking kings in York during this time. So they were working with the Vikings. and I think there was a negotiation with the Vikings that allowed them to settle in Durham eventually. So with Cuthbert with them, they retain that sense of power and authority and the body of Cuthbert is what gives that to them, I think. So he goes to Durham, he went to Durham and it became the great shrine in England for many many years,

in fact until Thomas Beckett was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Did that make a difference to the place, as it were, of Cuthbert in Christian worship? John? Yes, it did, but it did because it changed the practices and the contours of the church generally. The killing of Thomas A Beckett was a seismic event politically, culturally, in all sorts of ways. And one of those impacts was on the... emerging business, as it indisputably was, of pilgrimage tourism. The suggestion's been around for quite some time now that Durham simply realised it had to develop

its offer as a pilgrimage centre in response to the martyrdom of Thomas and the impact that had on pilgrimage to Canterbury. But I think it's really rather more that that event and the consequences it had for Canterbury simply set new, raised the bar. for what a major pilgrimage centre was supposed to be like and was supposed to provide. We can see immediately responses in the 1170s. There's a monk of Durham called Reginald who produces what ironically he calls a little book, the libellos of the miracles of Cuth, but it's an enormous tome.

But it does have a real focus not on the miracles that we've talked about, Jane and Sarah before at various places that Cuthbert was associated in around Northumbria, but much more what happens within Durham and how people go there to be healed. There's an interesting new emphasis on healing women, recognizing that there are influential, affluent and pious women who've got a real interest in supporting this sort of cult. then a decade after that, this magnificent new illustrated manuscript of the life of Cuthbert, which is now in the British Library that Sarah referred to earlier on,

that was produced at that time. So I think what I would say is that the killing of Beckett and the response to that really catalyzes and accelerates a process that's already in train. Quite interestingly, there's a short Old English poem, very large. late literary old English, written around about 1,100 on Durham. And that actually states quite directly that in the church there, along with the saint, that is Cuthbert, there are innumerable relics and many miracles take place there. So what we emphasise had already been around, but suddenly it's got to be developed and promoted in a very new and much more emphatic way.

Sarah Ford, how is Cuthbert St. Cuthbert valued today and what for by Christians? I think by Christians Cuthbert is still seen very much as a spiritual role model. The life that he lived focusing on devotion to God as expressed through the recitation of the Psalms is still attractive to many people. and so he's a person to be emulated and followed. I think one of the reasons why he, above all saints from the pre-conquered period, still stands out in the popular imagination, is because we have all these surviving stories about him,

the three saints' lives written very soon after his death and the exhumation and re-barial of his body as well as the later miracles that John's been talking about. all of them together, plus the very vivid images in the Yates Thompson manuscript in the British Library, they give you an impression of a man that you think you might be able to know. He comes across as a real human being, situated very closely in the geography and topography of northern Northumbria and the Scottish borders. And so the importance of Cuthbert as a saint for that region and the way in which he can build community,

identity and regional identity, I think is something that still continues. There's a St. Cuthbert's pilgrim path, which you can take walking you from Melrose to Linda's Farm, which is becoming increasingly popular. And of course, Durham remains, when we're not locked down, a major site of pilgrimage. And pilgrims go to his shrine at the east end of the cathedral, but also to visit the cathedral treasury and to look at the coffin preserved there and also the various artefacts. that were found later in his tomb. So I think he's a saint that could speak to a 7th and 8th century world but still speaks to a 21st century one.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Sarah Pud, Jane Hawks and John Hines. Next week is Emily de Chatele, the 18th century mathematician and natural scientist who astounded the French intellectual world and outshone her friend and lover, Walter. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now

with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, thank you. That was wonderful. Now, do you mind if we just go on to develop the podcast, if you want to take a deep breath and a drink of water, whatever it is, then we'll move on. Yeah. I'd like to actually pick up on what Sarah ended up with. Please do. Because I think it's not just that we know,

well, we think we know so much about Cuthbert and his life, and how he managed very successfully to work both as an active Christian and as a contemplative, how he moved with royalty but also with normal everyday people. But he is one of the few saints for whom we actually have relics that were his possessions, his own personal possessions. and these include the cross that he wore around his neck. Jane, could we talk about the cross? Absolutely.

I'm really interested in, so you can describe it much more accurately than I can. But it's the only, there are a few other 7th century gold and garnet crosses that we know of, all of which are associated with women. Why is Cuthbert the only man who seemed to have owned one of these? Well, we don't know that he was the only man who did. It's just that his has been preserved because he was wearing it round his neck. And it was so close to his skin that as his body did start to decompose, it actually moved further into his body. So it becomes this wonderful metaphor of, you know, that early monastic ideal that you bear the cross of Christ within your breast.

and this is almost physically happening with Cuthbert. And when Henry's commissioners came to kind of divest the saint of his wealthy possessions, they were kind of a bit taken aback to find the cross still there, and his body still semi-mummified, that they just left it. So we know that he was wearing it in death, but is it possible that it was given to him by Abbas Verka with that amazing linen or silk shroud and that he didn't, because it doesn't fit the image of the ascetic, that he'd wear something that precious in life. This is why I think it was his, because he wasn't just an ascetic. He was a kingmaker.

The king had to come to him to request that he be bishop. And he is able to, negotiate that post-Sinod of Whitby moment and go to Linda Sphan and where he'd previously been invited in, you know, with the monks of Melrose, to found Ripon, he then moves up to, back up into North Northumberland, rather than converting to the Roman way of doing things. That's putting it very crudely. But he's able to negotiate that transition post-Sinod of Whitby. And I think that being buried with that cross, which actually was broken and repaired twice during its lifetime. And I think that does fit with his travels. And I think that it's different, in the past, it's

difference with southern metalwork, Anglo-Saxon metalwork of golden garnet, is that it's not, it doesn't have the gold leaf underlays for the garnet cells, which gives it a very dark red appearance. And I think that that is actually aesthetically a deliberate choice because that colour more closely associates with the dark red of blood whereas the golden garnet with the clausanne work refracts light off and makes the red much brighter and much more capable of moving around and refracting light

in the way that the petrol cross doesn't and I think it fits in with the fact that he did come from the social elite when he entered the monastery He worked with the social elite, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and he also owns a liturgical comb, which is made of elephant ivory. I mean, it's not an attractive thing to look at by any stretch of the imagination, but it is probably one of the most luxe objects that anybody could own. Liturgical combs are not uncommon.

Boniface is always handing them out to people with his letters, But at once made of ivory, I admit, yes, very well. And elephant ivory. We're not talking walrus ivory or whalebone. We're talking, you know, the real thing here. Sorry, can I come in on the cross, please, to Sarah in particular? And this is not a contradiction anyway, anything that Jane has said. But the difference between where we have got examples and know of examples,

which is probably in about a dozen women's graves actually now. More are being found and the fact that non are known from men's graves really has to do with the massive differences that there are in burial practice for the two genders in the middle of the 7th century. Women's graves of that quality outnumber men's graves by around about 6 to 1 and the men's graves are weapon graves, you know, they are not ecclesiast's graves that we have got. So, you know, there is nothing transgressive about that cross having been buried with a bishop and especially as late as the 680s.

The other counter-example we got, a very, very interesting one, is that there is at least one pectoral cross. in the Staffordshire Horde where we only have male gear. And Dr. Jenny Rowlands from Dublin gave an excellent paper in Cardiff last year, really looking at some of the material there from rather more of a Welsh poetic background there and emphasised the point that it does very much look as if we could have fragments of the regalia of a single very high status, very wealthily adorned bishop represented in that collection as well, and the pectoral cross would go with that.

So, no, I don't find anything anomalous actually about that cross being there. No, and I think also, I mean, just going back to your previous question, Sarah, about the shroud that was woven for him. I think it probably was linen. because linen is, I have a student at the moment who's been doing a lot of research into the status of linen. And it really is the primo textile for signifying purity, the whiteness of it, and the fact that Christ's shroud is thought to have been linen. linen is the material that you put over the altar.

Albs that priests wear are made from white linen. So the material that is closest to the body of the priest and which covers the table of Christ at the altar is linen. And I think that's absolutely in keeping with the idea of weaving a white linen shroud for Cuthbert. There was some criticism about him being, please take it up and rubbish it if you want, but still about him being rude and disparaging women and about him being peremptory and so on. He is not thought to be entirely without false even in the hagiographies. The idea that Cuthbert's a misogynist is really a 12th century invention,

but it is true that there are a couple of stories in the bead prose life which retell stories from the anonymous life in a way that make the Abyss of Whitby, Al-Flad, Edgefrieth's sister, come out in not a very good light. And those do need, I think to argue that it's misogyny would be to be going too far. He spends a lot of time, we talked about it, he spends a lot of time with Royal.

religious women, but he does have quite a go at Alflad, especially when she interrupts a service that Cuthbert was performing, dedicating a church, and when she rushes in to say, oh, I know who died, this monk died. Cuthbert tells her off. And you might wonder whether actually he was holding her to a higher standard, you know, should the abbess be rushing in in the middle of a service and interrupting the worship she's supposed to be in charge and setting an example, did be. think that this was a good way just to remind royal abysses of whom he must have known plenty as well, that there are higher authorities than they? Yeah, no, I agree with that because I think so many of Cuthbert's post-mortem miracles involve women.

And I think that sort of Cuthbert having little to do with women is a much later invention. and I have to say from personal experience, the first time I went to Durham in the late 1970s, the black line is still there on the floor beyond which women were not meant to advance. And my son was pretty much a babe in arms at that time. And a man in a black frock did come up and tell me off for walking beyond that line and heading towards the altar down the nave. So, you know, that aspect of the cult, I would A, say is a late invention, and B, it took a long time to see its way through. Could I just sort of follow up on that? And it's particularly picking up that word you used of post-mortem there, Jane. And it comes out to something that you said before, which is one of the real fascinations of Cuthbert, is that those relics are still very really.

there and indeed have been exhumed and translated many times over twice in the 19th century, which is why we've got these anatomical, very detailed, pathological for the time, at least studies of them. And I'm just wondering if I can just sort of put it out there as an idea. What do you two think about the idea that given where laboratory science now is for the study of human skeletal remains, given that? that if we've got Oswald's head in there, chopped about with the parietal bones there, one should be able to get complete DNA sequences, genome sequences, from these two individuals. We should be able to look at the remains of Cuthbert, determine if they are probably Cuthbert's remains,

as I think they very much certainly are, and then see what the impact of his lifestyle and his diet actually had on them. To me, that is a scientific study that would actually really justify the opening up of a grave, which has to be done very carefully and respectfully, of course, and only with very good reason. But it seems an infinitely better project to aim for than some of the crazier hunts for relics of kings here. Did Richard Bailey not track down some of Cuthbert's teeth? He tracked down people who clearly when his grave was opened up in the 1820s various souvenirs were pinched including a few of his teeth so he knew where they had got to.

Yeah, I just wondered if they... Whether he's actually found the teeth or not, I don't know. If they could be resurrected subject to DNA analysis. Yeah, well, it's the parietal bone from the skull is what you want. want to go for. I think we've got to the tooth, so I think we can close it there. Thank you all very much indeed. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.

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