CUTHBERT, SAINT (c.635-6S7). Bishop of Lindisfarne and one of the most popular saints in England in the Middle Ages. He was born about 635, probably of Lowland Scotch parents. In 651. moved by a vision of angels carrying to heaven the soul of Saint Aidan, he entered the monastery of Melrose. Ten years later he was put at the head of this monastery. and did noble missionary work in the surrounding country. He left it in 676 for an austerer hermit life, from -which he was withdrawn in 684 to accept the bishopric of Ilexham, which he exchanged for that of Lindisfarne. holding the latter only two years and returning to his solitary hut on Famine Island. Here he died, March 20. 687.
The influence of Saint Cuthbert upon his con temporaries was great, but his fame became even greater after his death. His body remained at Lindisfarne till 875, when the monks, bearing it on their shoulders, fled from the fury of the Danes. After many wanderings through the south of Scotland and the north of England, they found a resting-place at Chester-le-Street in 883. In 995 the remains were transferred to
Ripon, and then to Durham, where, inclosed in a costly shrine, and believed to work frequent miracles, they remained until the Reformation. when the shrine was defaced and the body buried under the pavement of the cathedral. The tomb was opened Slay 17, 1826, when a coffin ascer tained to have been made in 1541 was found to inclose two others. The innermost case contained the skeleton of Saint Cuthbert, still entire, wrapped in five robes of embroidered silk, and also the head of King Oswald, killed in battle (642). which it was known had originally been buried with the saint. His life was twice written by the Venerable Bede, and still earlier by a monk of Lindisfarne. Besides these lives, all of which have been printed more than once, and what is told of him in Bede's Historia Ecclesiustica Gcntis Anglorum, there are three modern lives, by Raine (Durham. 1828), Eyre (London, 1849: 3d ed. 1887), and Fryer (London, 1880).