The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): March

by S. Baring-Gould

Some time afterwards we find him at the gates of the monastery of Melrose, the great Keltic establishment for novices in Northumbria. He was then only fifteen, yet, nevertheless, he arrived on horseback, lance in hand, attended by a squire, for he had already begun his career in the battle-field, and learned in the face of the enemy the first lessons of abstinence, which he now meant to practise in the cloister. He was received by two great doctors of the Keltic Church,—the abbot Eata, one of the twelve Northumbrians first chosen by Aidan, and the prior Boswell, who conceived a special affection for the new-comer, and undertook the charge of his monastic education. Five centuries later, the copy of the Gospels in which the master and pupil had read daily, was still kissed with veneration in the cathedral of Durham.

The robust and energetic youth very soon showed the rarest aptitude for monastic life, not only for cenobitical exercises, but, above all, for the missionary work, which was the principal occupation of monks in that country and period. He was not content merely to surpass all the other monks in his devotion to the four principal occupations of monastic life—study, prayer, vigil, and manual labour—but speedily applied himself to the work of casting out from the hearts of the surrounding population the last vestiges of pagan superstition. Not a village was so distant, not a mountain side so steep, not a village so poor, that it escaped his zeal. He sometimes passed weeks, and even months, out of his monastery, preaching to and confessing the rustic population of the mountains. The roads were very bad, or rather there were no roads; only now and then was it possible to travel on horseback; sometimes, when his course lay along the coast of the district inhabited by the Picts, he would take the help of a boat. But generally it was on foot that he had to penetrate into the glens and distant valleys, crossing the heaths and vast table-lands, uncultivated and uninhabited, where a few shepherd's huts, like that in which he himself had passed his childhood, and which were in winter abandoned even by the rude inhabitants, were thinly scattered. But neither the intemperance of the seasons, nor hunger, nor thirst, arrested the young and valiant missionary in his apostolic travels, to seek the scattered population, half Celts, and half Anglo-Saxons, who, though already Christian in name and by baptism, retained an obstinate attachment to many of their ancient superstitions, and who were quickly led back by any great calamity, such as one of the great pestilences which were then so frequent, to the use of magic, amulets, and other practices of idolatry. The details which have been preserved of the wonders which often accompanied his wanderings, show that his labours extended over all the hilly district between the two seas—from the Solway to the Forth. They explain to us how the monks administered the consolations and the teaching of religion, before the organization of parishes, ordained by archbishop Theodore, had been everywhere introduced or regulated. As soon as the arrival of one of these apostolic missionaries in a somewhat central locality was known, all the population of the neighbourhood hastened to hear him, endeavouring with fervour and simplicity to put in practice the instruction they received from him. Cuthbert, especially, was received among them with affectionate confidence; his eloquence was so persuasive that it brought the most rebellious to his feet, to hear their sins revealed to them, and to accept the penance which he imposed upon them.

Cuthbert prepared himself for preaching and the administration of the Sacraments, by extraordinary penances and austerities. Stone bathing-places, in which he passed the entire night in prayer, lying in the frozen water, according to a custom common among the Keltic saints, are still shown in several different places. When he was near the sea, he went to the shore, unknown to any one, at night, and plunging into the waves up to his neck, sang his vigils there. As soon as he came out of the water he resumed his prayers on the sand of the beach. On one occasion, one of his disciples, who had followed him secretly in order to discover the aim of this nocturnal expedition, saw two otters come up out of the water, which, while the saint prayed on his knees, lick his frozen feet, and wipe them with their hair, until life and warmth returned to the benumbed members. By one of those strange caprices of human frivolity which disconcert the historian, this insignificant incident is the only recollection which now remains in the memory of the people. S. Cuthbert is known to the peasant of Northumberland and of the Scottish borders only by the legend of those compassionate otters.

He had been some years at Melrose, when the abbot Eata took him along with him to join the community of Keltic monks established by king Alchfrid at Ripon. Cuthbert held the office of steward, and in this office showed the same zeal as in his missions. When travellers arrived through the snow, famished and nearly fainting with cold, he himself washed their feet and warmed them against his bosom, then hastened to the oven to order bread to be made ready, if there was not enough.

Cuthbert returned with his countrymen to Melrose, resumed his life of missionary preaching, and again met his friend and master, the prior Boswell, at whose death, in the great pestilence of 664, Cuthbert was elected abbot in his place. He had been himself attacked by the disease; and all the monks prayed earnestly that his life might be preserved to them. When he knew that the community had spent the night in prayer for him, though he felt no better, he cried to himself, with a double impulse of his habitual energy, "What am I doing in bed? It is impossible that God should shut His ears to such men. Give me my staff and my shoes." And getting up, he immediately began to walk, leaning upon his staff. But this sudden cure left him subject to weakness, which shortened his life.

However, he had not long to remain at Melrose. The triumph of Wilfrid and the Roman ritual at the conference of Whitby, brought about a revolution in the monastic metropolis of Northumbria, and in the mother monastery of Melrose, at Lindisfarne. Bishop Colman had returned to Iona, carrying with him the bones of S. Aidan, the first apostle of the country, and followed by all the monks who would not consent to sacrifice their Keltic tradition to Roman unity. It was of importance to preserve the holy island, the special sanctuary of the country, for the religious family of which its foundress had been a member. Abbot Eata of Melrose undertook this difficult mission. He became abbot of Lindisfarne, and was invested with a kind of episcopal supremacy. He took with him the young Cuthbert, who was not yet thirty, but whom, however, he held alone capable of filling the important office of prior in the great insular community.

The struggle into which Eata and Cuthbert, in their own persons, had entered against Wilfrid, on the subject of Roman rites, did not point them out as the best men to introduce the novelties so passionately defended and insisted upon by the new bishop of Northumbria. Notwithstanding, everything goes to prove that the new abbot and prior of Lindisfarne adopted without reserve the decisions of the assembly of Whitby, and took serious pains to introduce them into the great Keltic community. Cuthbert, in whom the physical energy of a robust organization was united to an unconquerable gentleness, employed in this task all the resources of his mind and heart. All the rebels had not left with bishop Colman; some monks still remained, who held obstinately by their ancient customs. Cuthbert reasoned with them daily in the meetings of the chapter; his desire was to overcome their objections by patience and moderation alone; he bore their reproaches as long as that was possible, and when his endurance was at an end, raised the sitting without changing countenance or tone, and resumed next morning the course of the debate, without ever permitting himself to be moved to anger, or allowing any thing to disturb the inestimable gift of kindness and light-heartedness which he had received from God.

S. CUTHBERT reasoning with the monks.