The Old Galilee is a room perhaps 55 feet by 75, divided by columns and arches into five sections. The architecture is decorated Norman, finely mixed with Early English, the Norman, or circular arches resting on rather slender columns. It was built by Bishop Pudsey in the twelfth century. In this chapel are the remains of the Venerable Bede, and more venerated dust reposes not in any cathedral. He was probably born in Monkton in Durham, in 672, and died at Girvy, May 26, 735. He was educated in a monastery, and his learning and ability as a scholar and writer were remarkable. He was ordained a priest at the age of thirty. His "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" was a work of great labor, and is still the most reliable authority on the early period of which it treats. He compiled it from chronicles and traditions handed down in the convents, and from miscellaneous testimony; and it is remarkably free from those exaggerations and contortions which fill many books of later monkish historians. His other literary labors were extraordinary, and his devotion to such work was singularly enthusiastic. It is stated that during his final illness, he continued to dictate to an amanuensis the conclusion of a translation of St. John's Gospel into Anglo Saxon; and that as soon as he had completed the last sentence he requested the assistant to place him on the floor of his cell, where he said a short prayer, and expired as the last words passed his lips. In the cathedral are copies of his "Historia Ecclesiastica," as first printed in German in 1475; others are in the British Museum and in Paris. They were translated from the Latin into Anglo Saxon by King Alfred in 1644, and into English in 1722,—and many times since, the latest translation having been made in 1871.
It should be stated that pretended bones of Bede are scattered throughout the world; and though his monument is here, but little if any of his mortal remains are beneath it. Large volumes of manuscripts in his handwriting are in the library of the cathedral, and they are of inexpressible interest. It is related in the old chronicles that, being blind during the latter days of his life, he was led one day by a dissembling guide to a pile of rough stones, and told that there was present a company of persons desiring to hear him preach. Inclined to gratify their request he preached to them, and when he finished, the stones, animated by divine power, ejaculated, like an assembled multitude, "Deo gracias, Amen."
In this Galilee room are also the remains of St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of the church, who died in 687. He was, in 644, prior at Melrose Abbey. His austerity and fondness for monastic life were remarkable, and in order to gratify his feelings he retired to the Island of Farne. It was a very barren place, and destitute of wood or water, but he dug wells and cultivated grain. The fame of his holiness brought many visitors, among them Elfleda, daughter of King Osway the Northumbrian, with whom he condescended to converse through a window; but for more effectual seclusion from the self-invited crowd, he dug a trench around his cabin and filled it with water. In 684 he was induced to yield to the prayer of King Egfrid and accept the bishopric of Hexam, and from this he removed to Lindisfarne. After two years he resigned this office, so uncongenial to his taste, and retired to end his life in his former hut on the Isle of Farne. He died in it, and when the Danes invaded the ecclesiastical domain of Lindisfarne, the fleeing monks carried his remains with them from place to place, till at last they were deposited on the banks of River Wear, where a shrined convent arose, then a church, and finally this cathedral at Durham.
The legends concerning him are among the literary treasures of the cathedral, and by reason of the traditions as well as history are not unworthily appreciated. No one dead has spoken more effectually to the living than he. His name and fame, as a great intercessor with the Almighty, were for centuries a household word. He was considered by the northern peasantry as the saint of saints, and constant, tedious, and sacrificing pilgrimages were made to his shrine. Bede says that his body was found incorrupt eleven years after burial, and that it so continued. The coffin was opened in 1827, and the corpse found to be enveloped in five silken robes. The eyes were of glass, movable by the least jar, and the hair was of a fine gold wire. These things were done by deceptive priests, who annually pretended to take or cut hair from his head, which they said grew immediately. This is not the St. Cuthbert who was a Benedictine monk, a pupil of Bede, and who attended him in his last hours, and finally wrote the memoir of his life. There was yet another Cuthbert who was Bishop of Canterbury from 740 to 758.
The cathedral has but few monuments, and these are not of great interest. It is somewhat remarkable that monuments seem to prevail in some cathedrals, and that there is an absence of them in the others. Some communities then, as in our own day, appeared to consider the commemoration of the dead as a religious duty, and others to neglect the practice, or consider it hardly worthy of their attention. The places of New England burial in their respective variety of care or neglect attest this.
"For thus our fathers testified,—
That he might read who ran,—
The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man."
This cathedral has had a long list of bishops, and among them very distinguished men. The name Durham has an ecclesiastical charm to a churchman, and to him the phrase, "Bishop of Durham," suggests honor, dignity, and renown.
Here once presided Bishop Poore, the famous architect of the cathedral of Salisbury. He was translated from that See to this, and was bishop here from 1228 to 1237, when he died; and then, in 1311, Richard Kellow was elected bishop. He brought with him an inflexible piety, but colored with the extremest humility of the cloister. He was celebrated for a steady and unflinching sense of duty. The meanest vassal shared his protection, and neither wealth nor rank could with him screen a criminal from punishment; and the proudest baron within his bishopric was once obliged to submit to the public penance imposed by a humble ecclesiastic, who, without forgetting his duties, made the imposition, and was sustained by Kellow.
Richard Fox, the founder of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, was bishop here from 1494 to 1501, when he was translated to Winchester. He was afflicted with blindness for many years before his death, but under the pressure of age and infirmity, yet doing his work well, his spirit of integrity was yet unbroken; and when Cardinal Wolsey, desiring his place, wished him to resign his bishopric, he replied that he could no longer distinguish black from white, yet he could discriminate right from wrong, truth from falsehood, and could well discern the malice of an ungrateful man. He then warned the proud favorite of the king to beware, lest ambition should render him blind to his surely approaching ruin; and he bade him attend closer to the king's legitimate business, and leave Winchester to her bishop. The aged prelate died in 1528, and was buried in his own chapel in Winchester Cathedral, where his tomb and its monument exist as fine specimens of the latest style of Gothic architecture.