Cuthbert, ST. OF DURHAM, was 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 Cuthbert was born about 635. A legend, which was long generally believed, tells that he was born in Ireland, and drew his lineage from one of the petty kings of that country; but another tradition fixes his birth in what is now Berwickshire. When the light of record first falls upon him, he was 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 believed that he saw 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 determined him to become a monk, and in the same year he entered the monastery of Old 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, Cuthbert accompanied him, and was appointed to the office of superintendent of the guests. In consequence of the dispute as to the keeping of Easter, which was then raging, Eata returned to Melrose, and Cuthbert, having accompanied him, was on the death of St Boisil in 661 elected prior of the monastery. While in this office, he distinguished himself by his assiduity in visiting the surrounding country, and especially the remoter mountain hamlets, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, and labouring 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 monastery of Lindisfarne, of which he became prior, his old master, St Eata, being abbot. Longing for an ansteter life even than the monastic, he quitted Lindisfarne in 676, to become an anchorite, or solitary recluse, in a hut which he built with his own hands on House Island, one of the Farne group. 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 complied with their wishes, but shortly after exchanged the see of Hexham for that of Lindisfarne. Still thirsting after solitude, at the end of two years he resigned his bishopric, and returned to his hut, where he died on the 20th of March 687. The anniversary of his death was a great festival in the early English Church, which commemorated also the 4th of September, as the anniversary of the day on which his body was translated to Durham. The influence which St Cuthbert exercised upon his age seems to have been due chiefly to his fervent piety and extraordinary asceticism. The gift of a persuasive tongue is ascribed to him, and he would seem to have had skill and prudence in the management of affairs, but nowhere is there any trace of his learning.
The fame of St Cuthbert 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 south, and the Forth and Clyde on the north. It is stated that when his tomb was opened at the end of eleven years, his body was found incorrupt, and so, for more than 800 years, it was believed still to continue. It remained at Lindisfarne till 875, when the monks, bearing it on their shoulders, fled inland from the fury of the Danes. After many wanderings it found a resting-place at Chester-le-Street in 883. 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. The grave was opened in 1826, when a coffin was found to inclose another, which there was reason to suppose had been made in 1104; and this again inclosed a third, which answered the description of one made in 698, when the saint was raised from his first grave. This innermost case contained, not, indeed, the incorruptible body of St Cuthbert, but his skeleton, still entire, wrapped in five robes of embroidered silk. Fragments 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 Cuthbert in life, long lingered round his tomb. Until the Reformation, no woman was suffered to approach his shrine. His wrath, it was believed, was equally prompt to avenge every injury to the honour or possessions of his church. A cloth said to have been used by St Cuthbert in celebrating mass was fashioned into a standard, which was believed to insure victory to the army 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.
The Life of St Cuthbert was twice written by the Venerable Bede. Other ancient authorities are Symeon of Durham, and Reginald of Durham. See Raine's St Cuthbert (1828), Archbishop Eyre's History of St Cuthbert (1849; 3d ed. 1887), and Fryer's Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (1880).
The name St Cuthbert's Beads has been popularly given to single joints of the stems of fossil Crinoidea (q.v.), which being hollow could be strung on thread, and so made into a rosary.