This chapter explores two texts produced in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the Exortacio ad contemplacionem, and the Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne. It argues that the Exortacio retains thematic ties with the topographical interests of Geoffrey’s Vita Bartholomaei, but exchanges its earlier assertions of heroic presence for a contemporary stance of abjection and deprivation. There is no efficacious saint in this poem, only the unremitting hostility of the natural elements. By contrast, the Meditaciones disregards the physical environment altogether. Turning rapturously to Christ and his prophets and apostles in their bibical milieu, it advances Cuthbertine asceticism to previously unscaled heights, comprising one of the most overlooked landmarks in late medieval contemplative composition. Nonetheless, the text’s approach to the Anglo-Saxon saint who has given Farne its contemplative potential remains uneasy, and the chapter demonstrates that Cuthbert is substantially delimited in force in favour of a pantheon of biblical saints.

This chapter examines two Cuthbertine miracle collections produced respectively in the third quarter and the end of the twelfth century: Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus, and the anonymous De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis. Reginald’s De admirandis offers a geographically expansive representation of Cuthbert’s wonder-working, incorporating north-west England, Galloway and Lothian, re-engaging with Farne Island and extending into the North Sea. It also positions him within a British map of competing sanctities, negotiating his power and sphere of jurisdiction in relation to Scottish, southern English and local cults. De mirabilibus, by contrast, remains tightly focused on Farne Island. This textual re-engagement with Farne Island returns Cuthbert’s ascetic sanctity to the fore. Animal and bird miracles make a significant comeback, and are used to determine the parameters of a series of small-scale jurisdictions of immunity throughout Cuthbert’s spiritual geography, debarred to Anglo-Norman secular and religious elites.

This chapter sets the early vitae of Cuthbert in their historical and compositional contexts, and focuses upon his eremitic construction within them. It unpicks their Irish and Gregorian sources, demonstrating the importance of Gregory’s life of St Benedict, but argues that whereas the Anonymous Vita promotes a more heroic and individualistic understanding of Cuthbert’s asceticism, Bede uses Cuthbert’s Farne years to demonstrate the close links between the solitary vocation and the coenobium, and to illustrate monastic ideals of stability, pastoral edification and labour. Turning to Cuthbert’s depiction in the Historia ecclesiastica, it argues that Cuthbert’s eremiticism is placed centre stage there, and used to negotiate Northumbria’s relation with other polities and ecclesiastical rivals, suggesting that Bede’s ambitions for Cuthbert as a saint for the gens Angli are specifically eremitic ones.