CUTCH, or KACIIII, GULF OF, a portion of the Arabian sea, 110 m. long, running between Cute!' and Guzerat.
CuTHBERT, SAINT, OF DURHAM. one of the three great saints of England in the middle ages, the other two being St. Edmund of Edmundsbury, and St. Thomas-A Becket of Canterbury. St. C. was b. about 635. Neither his birthplace nor his parent age has been ascertained; but a legend, which was long generally believed, told that he was born in Ireland, and drew his lineage from one of the petty kings of that country. When the light of record first falls upon him, he is a shepherd boy in the kingdom of Northumbria, which then stretched northwards to the Forth. In 651, while watching his flock by night on the heights of Lauderdale, he believes that he sees the heavens open, and a company of angels descend upon the earth, and again ascend to heaven, carrying with them the soul of St. Aidan, the pious' bishop of Lindisfarne, or Holy island. The vision determines him to become a monk, and in the same year he enters the monastery of Melrose, of which St. Boisil was then provost or prior, and St. Eata, abbot. When the latter removed to the newly founded monastery of Ripon, St. C. accompanied him, and was appointed to the office of superintendent of the guests. In 661, St. Boisil died of the plague, which then ravaged Britain, and St. C. was chosen to succeed him as provost or prior of Melrose. While in this office, he distinguished himself by his assiduity in visiting the neighboring villages, and especially the remoter moun tain hamlets, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, and laboring by his teaching and example to reclaim the people from the superstitious or pagan rites into which they had fallen. After a few years spent in this way, he left Melrose for the island monas tery- of Lindisfarne, of which he became provost or prior, his old master, St. Eats, being abbot. Longing for an austerer life even than the monastic, he quitted Lindis farne in 676, to become an anchorpite, or solitary recluse, in a hut which he built with his own hands on Fame island. Here, in 684, he was visited by Ecgfrid, king of Northumbria, Trumuine, ex-bishop of the Picts, and other great men of the north, who came at the request of the synod of Twyford to entreat that he would accept the bishopric of Hexham. He reluctantly complies with their wishes, but his heart is still with his Northumbrian islands. He exchanges the see of Huh= for that of Lindis farne, and still thirsting after solitude, at the end of two years lie resigns his bishopric, and returns to his lint in Farne island. Here he died on the 20th of Mar., 687. The anniversary of his death was a great festival in the English church, which commemo rated also the 4th of Sept., as the anniversary of the day on which his body was trans lated to Durham. 'The influence which St. C. exercised upon his age seems to have been due chiefly to his fervent piety and extraordinary asceticism. The gift of a per suasive tongue is ascribed to him, and he would seem to have had skill and prudencein the management of affairs, but nowhere is there any trace of his learning.
The fame of St. C. had been great during his life; it became far greater after his death. Churches were dedicated to him throughout all the wide country between the Trent and Mersey on the s., and the Forth and Clyde on the north. When his tomb was opened at the end of 11 years, it was believed that his body was found incorrupt, and so, for more than SOO years, it was believed still to continue. It remained at Lin
disfarne till 875, when the monks, bearing it on their shoulders, fled inland from the fury of the Danes. After many wanderings through the s. of Scotland and the n. of England, it found a resting-place at Chester-le-Street in 882. It was transferred to Ripon in 995, and in the same year it was removed to Durham. Here, inclosed in a costly shrine, and believed to work daily miracles, it remained till the reformation, when it was buried under the pavement of the cathedral. The grave was opened in 1827, when a coffin, ascertained to have been made in 1541—when the body was committed to the earth—was found to inclose another, which there was reason to suppose had been made in 1104; and this again inclosed a third, which answered to the description of one made in 698, when the saint was raised from his first grave. This innermost ease contained, not, indeed, the incorruptible body of St. C., but his skeleton, still entire, wrapped in five robes of embroidered silk. Pragments of these, and of the episcopal vestments, together with a comb and other relics, found beside the bones, are to be seen in the cathedral library. The asceticism which distinguished St. C. in life, long lingered round his tomb. Until the reformation, no woman was suffered to approach his shrine: the cross of blue marble still remains in the cathedral floor which marked the limits beyond which female footsteps were forbidden to pass. under pain of instant and signal punishment from the offended saint. His wrath, it was believed, was equally prompt to avenge every injury to the honor or possessions of his church. It was told that William the conqueror, anxious to see the incorrupt body of the saint, ordered the shrine to be broken up; but scarcely had a stroke been struck, when such sickness and terror fell upon the king, that lie rushed from the cathedral, and, mounting his horse, never drew bridle till he had crossed the Tees. A cloth, said to have been used by St. C. in celebrating mass, was fashioned into a standard, which was believed to insure victory to the 'truly in whose ranks it was carried. Flodden was only one of many fields in which the defeat of the Scots was ascribed to the banner of St. Cuthbert. It hung beside his shrine until the reformation, when it is said to have been burnt by Cal vin's sister, the wife of the first Protestant dean of the cathedral.
The life of St. C. was twice written by the venerable Tiede—briefly in vigorous hexameters in his Liber de Niracutii Swath Cuthbereliti Episeopi; at greater length, in prose, in his Liber de Vita et .J1firaculis Sancti Cudbercti LinoWarnensis Episcopi. In this latter work, lie made use of an earlier life by a monk of Lindisfarne, which is still pre served. Besides theca lives---all of which have been printed more than once—and what is told of St. C. in Bede's Illstoria Eeclesiastica Gentis Arlolorum, the chief ancient authorities are the Historia Translation is S. Cuthberti, published by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum, mens Marta, v of iii.; the Libellus de Exordio Bunhelmensis Bcelesial by Symeou of Durham; the Libellus de .2Vbtivitate S. Cuthberti de Historiis Hybernensium and the Libellus.de Admirandis B. Cuthberti Virtutibus, by Reginald of ham, both published by the Surtees society. There are two modern memoirs of St. C.— the late Rev. James Raine's St. Cuthbert (Durham, 1828), and the very Rev. Monsignor C. Eyre's History of St. Cuthbert (Loud. 1849).