07 — The Lives of Cuthbert
The source-critical core of the collection: the texts on which everything we know of Cuthbert depends, and the artistic flowering of his cult. First the layered hagiography — the anonymous Life of Cuthbert written at Lindisfarne within a dozen years of his death, and Bede’s two Lives, the verse and the prose, which rework that source to their own ends; the relationship between them, what Bede added and what he muted, and how far the whole tradition can be trusted. Then the great monument of the cult: the Lindisfarne Gospels, made for the saint’s shrine, and the artistic and devotional culture that gathered around him.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic-Roman; wonderworker of Northumbria)
Cuthbert is the rare early English saint with more than one early Life, and the relationship of those Lives is itself a major topic of scholarship. The anonymous Lindisfarne Life is the earliest and, in some ways, the more historically valuable, written by a member of the community within living memory; Bede took it as his principal source and reworked it twice, in verse and in prose, expanding the miracles, reordering the material, heightening the theology, and quietly adjusting the picture to his own ecclesiastical concerns. To read Cuthbert critically is to read these texts against one another. This section sets out their relationship and reliability per METHODOLOGY §2–4, and then turns to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the cult’s artistic legacy.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Anonymous Life and Bede | The anonymous Lindisfarne Life (c. 699–705); Bede’s Metrical Life and Prose Life (c. 705–721); the direction of dependence; Bede’s reshaping — what he added, reordered, and muted, and why; the reliability of the tradition and how a critical reader holds it. |
| The Cuthbert Cult and the Gospels | The Lindisfarne Gospels, made (the colophon says) by Eadfrith for God and St Cuthbert; the St Cuthbert Gospel of John from the tomb; the coffin-reliquary and the relics; the artistic and devotional flowering of the cult, and Aldred’s tenth-century Old English gloss. |
See Also
- The Shepherd Boy and the Vision — the early episodes whose handling in the Lives this section examines
- Healing and Prophecy — the miracle tradition whose sources are assessed here
- The Wanderings of the Coffin — the survival of the Gospels and relics through the Viking age
- The Church Fathers — Bede among the fathers and teachers of the Church
References
- Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.
- Bonner, Gerald, David Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe, eds. St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989.
- Ward, Benedicta. The Venerable Bede. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990.