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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - Blessings on Pregnant Seals: Constructing Cuthbert’s Asceticism in His Anonymous and Bedan vitae, and the Historia ecclesiastica, 690–740

  • Christiania Whitehead
  • Book:
    The Afterlife of St Cuthbert
    Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 12-33

  • Summary

    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.