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Modernizing St Cuthbert: Reginald of Durham’s Miracle Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Sally Crumplin
Sally Crumplin*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
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Extract

Around 1200, the Church of St Cuthbert in Durham produced an illustrated copy of Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert. Opulently decorated with illustrations rich in colour and gold, this book crowned a century that had seen Cuthbert’s church grow in power and stability. After the seventh-century Northumbrian golden age, centuries of upheaval had characterized the Cuthbertine church: it changed immensely in location and religious observance, moving across Northumbria and adapting the community to suit difficult situations. By contrast, the twelfth century saw the building of the imposing Durham cathedral and castle, and the ornamentation of the church with many riches. The church was led by a sequence of very influential bishops and a thriving monastic community. This power and prosperity of the Durham church was marked at the start and end of the twelfth century with great manifestations of Cuthbert’s cult. An illustrated Life of Cuthbert was produced in the early years of the century; in 1104 Cuthbert’s body was translated into its current position in the cathedral and found to be just as incorrupt as it had been in 698, eleven years after his death; several hagiographical works on the cult and church were produced during this century; and its end was marked with the beautifully illustrated Bedan Life. Cult and church were intrinsically linked, and provided the basis upon which Durham’s twelfth-century power was built – a power which was to continue into the ensuing centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 41: Signs, Wonders, Miracles Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church , 2005 , pp. 179 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2005

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References

1 London, BL, MS Yates Thompson 26: see Marner, Dominic, St Cuthbert: his Life and Cult in Medieval Durham (London, 2000)Google Scholar. Bede’s Vita sancti Cuthberti [hereafter: VCB] is published in Two Lives of St Cuthbert, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1940), 142–306.

2 The Cuthbertine community moved from Lindisfarne, possibly to Norham, and wandered (from c.875) before settling at Chester-le-Street in 883. The church was finally established at Durham in 995. During its travels, the community lost elements of its monastic identity, but in 1083 the clerical community of Durham was replaced wholesale with Benedictine monks. For an excellent discussion of the church’s history, see Aird, William M., St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS University College 165: discussed in Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, 2003), 89–108 and in Barbara Abou-El-Haj, ‘Saint Cuthbert: the Post-Conquest Appropriation of an Anglo-Saxon Cult’, in Paul E. Szarmach, ed., Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and their Contexts (New York, 1996), 177–206.

4 These were: a collection of twenty-one miracles, Capitula de miraculis et translationibus sancti Cuthberti [hereafter: De miraculis], ed. Thomas Arnold, in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, RS 75, 2 vols (London, 1882, 1885), 1: 229–61 and 2: 333–62; a tract on the origins and progress of the church, Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie: Tract on the Origins and Progress of This Church of Durham [hereafter: LDE], ed. and transl. David Rollason (Oxford, 2000); and an abbreviated form of this LDE, the Brevis relatio de Sancto Cuthberto et quomodo corpus eius Dunelmum venerit, et excerpta de vita et miraculis sancti Cuthberti, ed. J. Hodgson Hinde, in Symeonis Dunelmensis opera et collectanea, Surtees Society 51 (Durham, 1868), 223–33.

5 Reginaldi monachi Dunelmensis libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus [hereafter: Libellus], ed. Raine, J., Surtees Society 1 (Durham, 1835)Google Scholar. I am greatly indebted to Robert Bartlett for generously sharing his notes on this text.

6 My phases differ slightly from those of Victoria Tudor, who tentatively suggested the first as ending somewhere around chapter 110. Based on stylistic evidence, particularly the length of chapter headings, the second phase began with ch. 108. See Tudor, Victoria M., ‘Reginald of Durham and St Godric of Finchale: a Study of a Twelfth-Century Hagiographer and His Major Subject’, unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Reading, 1979, 91–2.Google Scholar

7 Tudor, Victoria, ‘The Cult of St Cuthbert in the Twelfth Century the Evidence of Reginald of Durham’, in Bonner, Gerald, Rollason, David and Stancliffe, Clare, eds, St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to AD 1200 (Woodbridge, 1989), 447–67, 467 Google Scholar; Marner, , Life and Cult, 54.Google Scholar

8 Matthew, Donald, ‘Durham and the Anglo-Norman World’, in Rollason, David, Harvey, Margaret and Prestwich, Michael, eds, Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge, 1994), 1–22, 19–21.Google Scholar

9 Bartlett, Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), 78 Google Scholar. An example of this recent scholarship is Aird, Cuthbert and the Normans, esp. 227–75; see also Kapelle, William E., The Norman Conquest of the North: the Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

10 For discussion of this episcopate, see Scammell, G. V., Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar.

11 The cults of saints such as Kentigern, Ninian, Margaret, David and Aebbe were linked through institutional, political and personal ties between monasteries, particularly Cistercian houses, and episcopal seats. Cf. Lawrence-Mathers, , Manuscripts in Northumbria, 194–216 Google Scholar; Bartlett, Robert, ‘Cults of Irish, Scottish and Welsh Saints in Twelfth-Century England’, in Smith, Brendan, ed., Britain and Ireland 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change (Cambridge, 1999), 67–86, 81–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in England: a History of its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1963), 481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See for example Historia de sancto Cuthberto: a History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony [hereafter HSC], ed. Ted Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002), cc. 25–28, 64–6, and ch. 32, 68, and LDE, iii.20, 196–200.

14 Finucane, Ronald, Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (2nd edn, London, 1995), 163–6 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Simon Taylor for his guidance with locating place names.

15 Ward, , Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 89–109 Google Scholar; Staunton, Michael, The Lives of Thomas Becket (Manchester, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Libellus, ch. 19,37–44.

17 Libellus, ch. 115, 260–1.

18 Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, 168. On women see Tudor, Victoria, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, Archaeologia Aeliana, ser. 5,12 (1984), 157–67.Google Scholar

19 Ward, , Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 34 Google Scholar.

20 Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London, 1970), 35.Google Scholar

21 Bartlett, Robert, ‘The Hagiography of Angevin England’, in Coss, P. R. and Lloyd, S. D., eds, Thirteenth Century England 5 (Woodbridge, 1995), 37–52, 48–9 Google Scholar. See also Duggan, C., ‘From the Conquest to the Death of King John’, in Lawrence, C. H., ed., The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages (2nd edn, Stroud, 1999), 65–116, 65.Google Scholar

22 Sumption, Jonathan, Pilgrimage: an Image of Mediaeval Religion (London, 1975), 160 Google Scholar; see also Finucane, , Miracles and Pilgrims, 39–55.Google Scholar

23 E.g. Libellus, ch. 48, 98–101 and ch. 125, 270–1.

24 A twelfth-century Durham catalogue shows that the church possessed works from the great medical centres of Montpellier and Salerno, and from Constantine the African’s translations: Cambridge, MS Jesus College 44; National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 18.6.11. Cf. Catalogues of the Library of Durham Cathedral, Surtees Society 7 (Durham, 1838), 6–8. On centres of medical learning, see Siraisi, Nancy G., Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: an Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, IL, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 E.g. Libellus, ch. 98, 217–219, ch. 101, 224–225 and ch. 119, 264–265. I am grateful to Simone Macdougall and Iona McCleery for sharing their ideas on the increasing medicalization of miracles.

26 Sigal, Pierre-André, L’Homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale: XIe-XIIe siècles (Paris, 1985), 255 Google Scholar; Finucane, , Miracles and Pilgrims, 59.Google Scholar

27 See above, nn. 4 and 13.

28 The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster: Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and transl. Frank Barlow (2nd edn, Oxford, 1992); ‘La Vie de S. Édouard le Confesseur par Osbert de Clare’, ed. M. Bloch, AnBoll 41 (1923), 5–131; The Life of St Edward, King and Confessor, transl. Jerome Bertram (2nd edn, Southampton, 1997). I am grateful to Joanna Huntington for sharing her research on Edward the Confessor. On St Thomas’s medical cures, see Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, 67.

29 Harding, L. and Willan, P., ‘Mother Teresa’s “miracle”’, The Observer, 19 August 2001.Google Scholar

30 Libellus, ch. 131, 279–80.

31 Libellus, ch. 119, 264–5.

32 Libellus, ch. 92, 201–4.

33 VCB, ch. 33,258–60.

34 Cf. 1 Kings 17,17–24.

35 E.g. VCB, ch. 19, 220–2 and ch. 20, 222–4; Libellus, ch. 78, 162–3. On Bede’s Cuthbertine animal miracles, see Paul Cavill, ‘Some Dynamics of Story-Telling: Animals in the Early Lives of St Cuthbert’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (1999), 1–20.

36 HSC, 32, 68; De miraculis, ch. 4, 240–2 and ch. 6, 245–7; LDE, ii.13, 120–6, iii.15, 182–8, iii.19–20, 196–200.

37 Libellus, ch. 127, 272–3. These events are described in Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 55.

38 This makes an interesting comparison with St Benedict’s miracles, which display a similar shift in levels of secular detail: see D. Rollason, The Miracles of St Benedict: a Window on Early Medieval France’, in Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore, eds, Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis (London, 1985), 73–90, 81–4.

39 Libellus, ch. 13, 19–20, ch. 16, 28–32 and ch. 105, 234–6.

40 Libellus, ch. 22, 47–50.

41 E.g. Libellus, ch. 28, 63–5 and ch. 30, 67–9.

42 Libellus, cc. 118–119, 263–5; see also ch. 102, 226–9. Geoffrey of Durham’s Vita Bartolomei, concerning a Farne hermit, and the anonymous collection of Farne miracles, both written around the end of the twelfth century, enhanced the reputation of Farne as a cult centre. These texts are bound with Reginald’s Libellus in BL, MS Harley 4843. Vita bartolomœi Farnensis, ed. Thomas Arnold, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, RS 75, 2 vols (London, 1882, 1885), 1: 295–325; Edmund Craster, ‘The Miracles of St Cuthbert at Farne’, AnBoll 70 (1952), 5–19; Edmund Craster, ‘The Miracles of Farne’, Archaeologia Aeliana, ser. 4, 29 (1951), 93–107.

43 Libellus, cc. 97–101, 215–25; see also ch. 53, 109–11, in which a monk habitually carries around a secondary relic.

44 See also the Scottish emphasis of the Libellus de nativitate sancti Cuthberti, ed. J. Raine, in Miscellania Biographica, Surtees Society 8 (Durham, 1838), discussed in Thomas Owen Clancy, ‘Magpie Hagiography in Twelfth-Century Scotland: the Case of Libellus de nativitate sancti Cuthberti, in Jane Cartwright, ed., Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults (Cardiff, 2003), 216–31.

45 For example, insular and continental manuscripts of Bede’s Vita sancti Cuthberti are listed in Two Lives, ed. Colgrave, 20–39.

46 For example the fourteenth-century verse Life: The Life of St. Cuthbert in English Verse, c. A.D. 1450: from the Original MS. in the Library at Castle Howard, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society 87 (Durham, 1891).

47 These were copied from the manuscript of Bede’s Vita, illustrated c.1200: see Colgrave, Bertram, ‘The Saint Cuthbert Paintings on the Carlisle Cathedral Stalls’, The Burlington Magazine 73 (1938), 16–21.Google Scholar