02 — Melrose and Ripon
Cuthbert’s monastic formation: his entry into the monastery of Melrose on the Tweed under Abbot Eata and Prior Boisil, the years of discipline, study, and active mission that shaped him, the great teacher Boisil whom he nursed in his dying plague and from whom he received his calling; and the brief, broken foundation at Ripon, where Cuthbert and a band of Melrose monks went to establish a new house, only to be expelled when King Alhfrith gave it to Wilfrid and the Roman party over the Easter question.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; wonderworker of Northumbria)
These years made Cuthbert. He entered Melrose, a daughter-house of Lindisfarne in the Ionan tradition, as a young man, and there under Boisil — guest-master, preacher, prophet — he learned the pattern of life he would keep to the end: the union of strict personal asceticism with tireless pastoral labour, going out on foot to the remote villages to teach. The Ripon episode is the first time the great controversy of his age touches him directly: sent to found a house at Ripon, the Melrose monks were turned out when the king transferred it to Wilfrid, the champion of Roman usage. Cuthbert returned to Melrose — and would soon, after Whitby, accept for himself the very Roman Easter for which his community had been displaced. The episode is thus the prologue to the central drama of Section 03.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Monk Under Eata and Boisil | Cuthbert’s entry into Melrose; Abbot Eata and the prior Boisil; the pattern of ascetic and pastoral life he learned; Boisil’s prophecy and the Gospel of John they read together; the plague, Cuthbert’s own recovery, and Boisil’s death. |
| The Ripon Episode | The foundation of a new monastery at Ripon by the Melrose monks, with Cuthbert as guest-master; King Alhfrith’s grant of Ripon to Wilfrid and the Roman party; the expulsion of the Ionan monks over the Easter question; Cuthbert’s return to Melrose. |
See Also
- The Shepherd Boy and the Vision — Cuthbert’s coming to Melrose, where this section begins
- Accepting the Roman Easter — the controversy that broke the Ripon foundation, brought to its synodal resolution
- Prior of Lindisfarne — Cuthbert’s move from Melrose to Lindisfarne after Whitby
- Monasticism — the monastic discipline Cuthbert learned at Melrose
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.