01 — Foundations
The historical and ecclesial ground on which Cuthbert’s life stands: the Northumbria that Aidan of Lindisfarne had evangelized from Iona, the Anglo-Saxon north into which Cuthbert was born around 634, and the night-vision of Aidan’s soul carried to heaven that, the Lives tell us, called the shepherd boy from the hills to the monastery. These files establish the world and the call before the life proper begins.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; wonderworker of Northumbria)
Cuthbert belongs to the second generation of Northumbrian Christianity — not to the missionaries who first planted the faith, but to the native English who received it and made it their own. The kingdom into which he was born had been converted twice over: first, briefly, by the Roman mission of Paulinus under King Edwin, and then, lastingly, by the Irish monks of Iona whom King Oswald summoned, chief among them Aidan, who founded the island monastery of Lindisfarne in 635. This section sets that context — the political and ecclesial north, the Ionan church Aidan planted — and then turns to the Lives’ account of Cuthbert’s own beginnings: his obscure birth, his boyhood as a shepherd, and the vision on the hills, on the very night Aidan died, that the hagiographers present as the hinge of his vocation.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Northumbria After Aidan | The kingdom of Northumbria in the mid-seventh century; the double conversion under Edwin and Oswald; the Ionan mission of Aidan and the founding of Lindisfarne (635); the Anglo-Saxon north into which Cuthbert was born; the character of the church he would enter. |
| The Shepherd Boy and the Vision | Cuthbert’s birth (c. 634) and the Irish-versus-English debate over his origin; his boyhood, the playful child rebuked by an infant, his life as a shepherd; and the vision of Aidan’s soul borne to heaven by angels on the night of Aidan’s death (31 August 651) — the call, as the Lives attest it. |
See Also
- Monk Under Eata and Boisil — the monastery Cuthbert entered after the vision
- The Anonymous Life and Bede — the sources for everything reported here
- St. Aidan of Lindisfarne — the apostle of Northumbria whose soul Cuthbert saw
- Monasticism — the monastic tradition Aidan brought from Iona
References
- Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
- Bonner, Gerald, David Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe, eds. St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989.