St. Cuthbert, foreseeing his death to approach, resigned his bishopric, which he had held two years, and retired to his solitude in Farne Island, to prepare himself for his last passage. Two months after he fell sick, and permitted Herefrid, the abbot of Lindisfarne, who came to visit him, to leave two of his monks to attend him in his last moments. He received the viaticum of the body and blood of Christ from the hands of the abbot Herefrid, at the hour of midnight prayer, and immediately lifting up his eyes, and stretching out his hands, sweetly slept in Christ on the 20th day of March, 687. He died in the island of Farne: but, according to his desire, his body was buried in the monastery of St. Peter in Lindisfarne, on the right side of the high altar. Bede relates many miracles performed at his tomb; and adds, that eleven years after his death, the monks taking up his body, instead of dust which they expected, found it unputrefied, with the joints pliable, and the clothes fresh and entire.[2] They put it into a new coffin, placed above the pavement, over the former grave: and several miracles were there wrought, even by touching the clothes which covered the coffin. William of Malmesbury[3] writes, that the body was again found incorrupt four hundred and fifteen years afterwards at Durham, and publicly shown. In the Danish invasions, the monks carried it away from Lindisfarne; and, after several removals on the continent, settled with their treasure on a woody hill almost surrounded by the river Were, formed by nature for a place of, defence. They built there a church of stone, which {628} Aldhune, bishop of Lindisfarne, dedicated in 995, and placed in it the body of St. Cuthbert with great solemnity, transferring hither his episcopal see.[4] Many princes enriched exceedingly the new monastery and cathedral, in honor of St. Cuthbert. Succeeding kings, out of devotion to this saint, declared the bishop a count palatine, with an extensive civil jurisdiction.[5] The great king Alfred, who honored St. Cuthbert as his particular patron, and ascribed to his intercession some of his greatest victories, and other blessings which he received, was a special benefactor to this church.[6] The present cathedral was built in 1080. When the shrine of the saint was plundered and demolished by the order of king Henry VIII., the body of St. Cuthbert, which was found still entire, as Harpsfield testifies, met with greater regard than many others; for it was not burnt, as were those of St. Edmund, king and martyr, St. Thomas, and others. After the king's officers had carried away the plunder of his shrine, it was privately buried under the place where the shrine before stood, though the spot is now unknown. His ring, in which a sapphire is enchased, was given by lord viscount Montaigne to the bishop of Chalcedon,[7] who had long been sheltered from the persecution in the house of that nobleman,[8] and was by him left in the monastery of English canonesses at Paris, which is also possessed of a tooth of St. Cuthbert. A copy of St. John's gospel, which, after the example of his master St. Poisil, he often read to nourish the fire of divine love in his soul, was put into his coffin when he was buried, and found in his tomb. It is now in the possession of Mr. Thomas Philips, canon of, Tongres, on whom the present earl of Litchfield bestowed it. The copy is judged undoubtedly genuine by our ablest Protestant antiquaries, who carefully examined it.
* * * * *
The life of St. Cuthbert was almost a continual prayer. There was no business, no company, no place, how public soever, which did not afford him an opportunity, and even a fresh motive to pray. Not content to pass the day in this exercise, he continued it constantly for several hours of the night, which was to him a time of light and interior delights. Whatever he saw seemed to speak to him of God, and to invite him to his love. His conversation was on God or heavenly things, and he would have regretted a single moment, which had not been employed with God or for his honor, as utterly lost. The inestimable riches which he found in God, showed him how precious every moment is, in which he had it in his power to enjoy the divine converse. The immensity of God, who is present in us and in all creatures, and whom millions of worlds cannot confine or contain; his eternity, to which all time coexists, and which has neither beginning, end, nor succession; the unfathomed abyss of his judgments; the sweetness of his providence; his adorable sanctity; his justice, wisdom, goodness, mercy, and love, especially as displayed in the wonderful mystery of the Incarnation, and in the doctrine, actions, and sufferings of our Blessed Redeemer, in a word, all the incomprehensible attributes of the Divinity, and the mysteries of his grace and mercy, successively filled his mind and heart, and kindled in his soul the most sweet and ardent affections, in which his thirst {629} and his delight, which were always fresh and always insatiable, gave him a kind of anticipated taste of paradise. For holy contemplation discovers to a soul a new and most wonderful world, whose beauty, riches, and pure delights, astonish and transport her out of herself. St. Teresa, coming from prayer, said she came from a world greater and more beautiful beyond comparison, than a thousand worlds, like that which we behold with our corporal eyes, could be. St. Bernard was always torn from this holy exercise with regret, when obliged to converse with men in the world, in which he trembled, lest he should contract some attachment to creatures, which would separate him from the chaste embraces of his heavenly spouse. The venerable priest, John of Avila, when he came from the altar, always found commerce with men insipid and insupportable.
Footnotes:
1. Cuthbert signifies Illustrious for skill: or G{}bbertus, Worthy of
God.
2. Bede, Hist. b. 4, c. 30.
3. L. 4, Pontif. Angl.
4. Dunelm, or Durham, signifies a hill upon waters, from the Saxon
words Dun, a bill, and Holme, a place situate in or among the
waters.
5. See Dugdale's history of the cathedral of Durham; and Dr. Brown
Willis on the same.
6. See Hickes, Thes. Ling. Septentr. Præf. p. 8.
7. Bp. Smith, Flores Hist. Eccles. p. 120.
8. Dr. Richard Smith, bishop of Chalcedon, relates in his life of
Margaret lady Montaigne, that queen Elizabeth, out of her singular
regard for this lady, from the time she had been lady of honor in
the court of queen Mary and king Philip, tacitly granted her house a
kind of privilege, by never, allowing it to be searched on account
of religious persecution; so that sometimes sixty priests at once
lay hid in it.
ST. WULFRAN, ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.
AND APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY IN FRISELAND.
HIS father was an officer in the armies of king Dagobert, and the saint spent some years in the court of king Clotaire III., and of his mother St. Bathildes, but occupied his heart only on God, despising worldly greatness as empty and dangerous, and daily advancing in virtue in a place where virtue is often little known. His estate of Maurilly he bestowed on the abbey of Fontenelle, or St. Vandrille, in Normandy. He was chosen and consecrated archbishop of Sens, in 682, which diocese he governed during two years and a half with great zeal and sanctity. A tender compassion for the blindness of the idolaters of Friseland, and the example of the English zealous preachers in those parts, moved him to resign his bishopric with proper advice, and, after a retreat at Fontenelle, to enter Friseland in quality of a poor missionary priest. He baptized great multitudes, with a son of king Radbod, and drew the people from the barbarous custom of sacrificing men to idols. The lot herein decided, on great festivals, who should be the victim; and the person was instantly hanged, or cut in pieces. The lot having fallen on one Ovon, St. Wulfran earnestly begged his life of king Radbod: but the people ran tumultuously to the palace, and would not suffer what they called a sacrilege. After many words, they consented that if the God of Wulfran should save Ovon's life, he should ever serve him, and be Wulfran's slave. The saint betook himself to prayer, and the man, after hanging on the gibbet two hours, being left for dead, by the cord breaking, fell to the ground; and being found alive was given to the saint, and became a monk and priest at Fontenelle. Wulfran also miraculously rescued two children from being drowned in the sea, in honor of the idols. Radbod, who had been an eye-witness to this last miracle, promised to become a Christian, and was instructed among the catechumens. But his criminal delays rendered him unworthy such a mercy. As he was going to step into the baptismal font, he asked where the great number of his ancestors and nobles were in the next world. The saint replied, that hell is the portion of all who die guilty of idolatry. At which the prince drew back, and refused to be baptized, saying, he would go with the greater number. This tyrant sent afterwards to St. Willebrord, to treat with him about his conversion; but before the arrival of the saint, was found dead. St. Wulfran retired to Fontenelle, that he might prepare himself for death, and died there on the 20th of April, in 720. His relies were removed to Abbeville, where he is honored as patron. See his life, written by Jonas, monk of Foutenelle, eleven years after his death, purged from spurious additions by Mabillon, {630} sæc. 3, Ben. Fleury, b. 41, t. 9, p. 190. See also the history of the discovery of his relics at St. Vandrille's, accompanied with miracles, and their translation to Rouen in 1062, well written by an anonymous author who assisted at that ceremony, several parts of which work are published by D'Achery, Spicil. t. 3, p. 248, the Bollandists, and Mabillon. The Bollandists have added a relation of certain miracles, said to have been performed by the relics of this saint at Abbeville.