06 — The Incorrupt Body
The wonder on which the whole later cult of Cuthbert was built, and the long history that followed from it: the opening of his tomb at Lindisfarne eleven years after his death, in 698, when — the Lives attest — his body was found whole and undecayed, the limbs flexible, the vestments fresh, as if he slept rather than lay dead; and then, two centuries on, the flight of the Lindisfarne community before the Vikings, carrying the uncorrupted body and the relics of the saints through long wanderings — Chester-le-Street, Ripon, and at last, in 995, the great rock of Durham, where his shrine would rise.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; wonderworker of Northumbria)
The incorruption of Cuthbert’s body is the central marvel of his cult and the reason for much of what followed: the Lives’ report that the body was found undecayed gave the shrine its power, the community its identity, and the saint his enduring hold on the north. It is reported here as the Lives attest it, pinned to their texts under METHODOLOGY §3.5, with the interpretation of the modern tomb-openings (treated in Section 09) handled as a structured dispute. The wanderings of the coffin are among the great stories of the English Church: a community in exile, the body of its saint borne with it from refuge to refuge across a century of Viking terror, until it came to rest on the rock where Durham Cathedral now stands.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Translation of 698 | Cuthbert’s death on Farne (20 March 687) and burial at Lindisfarne; the opening of the tomb eleven years later (698); the body found incorrupt, as the Lives report; the meaning of incorruption in the tradition — pinned to the Lives under METHODOLOGY §3.5. |
| The Wanderings of the Coffin | The Viking sack of Lindisfarne (793) and the later abandonment of the island; the community’s flight (875) carrying the body and relics; the years at Chester-le-Street (883–995); the final move to Durham (995) — drawn from the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. |
See Also
- The Reluctant Bishop — Cuthbert’s return to Farne to die, where this section begins
- Durham and the Shrine — the shrine at Durham and the 1827 and 1899 tomb-openings
- The Cuthbert Cult and the Gospels — the Lindisfarne Gospels made for the shrine of the incorrupt body
- The Church Calendar — the feasts of his death (20 March) and translation (4 September)
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.
- Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. Ed. and trans. Ted Johnson South. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002.