The Afterlife of St Cuthbert

Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

Christiania Whitehead

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781108490351
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108787345
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This ambitious book presents the first sustained analysis of the evolving representation of Cuthbert, the premier saint of northern England. The study spans both major and neglected texts across eight centuries, from his earliest depictions in anonymous and Bedan vitae, through twelfth-century ecclesiastical histories and miracle collections produced at Durham, to his late medieval appearances in Latin meditations, legendaries, and vernacular verse. Whitehead reveals the coherence of these texts as one tradition, exploring the way that ideologies and literary strategies persist across generations. An innovative addition to the literature of insular spirituality and hagiography, The Afterlife of St Cuthbert emphasises the related categories of place and asceticism. It charts Cuthbert's conceptual alignment with a range of institutional, masculine, northern, and national spaces, and examines the distinctive characteristics and changing value of his ascetic lifestyle and environment - frequently constituted as a nature sanctuary - interrogating its relation to his other jurisdictions.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Blessings on Pregnant Seals: Constructing Cuthbert’s Asceticism in His Anonymous and Bedan vitae, and the Historia ecclesiastica, 690–740
• Chapter 2 Travels with My Coffin: The Dislocation and Defence of the Community of St Cuthbert in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, 793–1050
• Chapter 3 The Bishop in the Rain: Celebrating the New Order in Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio, Old English Durham and the Capitula de miraculis et translationibus sancti Cuthberti, 1066–1140
• Chapter 4 Expansions and Contractions of Saintly Space in Two Cuthbertine Miracle Collections: Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis, and De mirabilibus, 1150–1210
• Chapter 5 Godric of Finchale, Bartholomew of Farne and the ‘Irish’ Libellus de ortu Sancti Cuthberti: Three Eremitic Responses to St Cuthbert, 1150–1210
• Chapter 6 Delimiting Sanctity in Two Meditations from Farne Island: The Exortacio ad contemplacionem and the Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne, 1210–1370
• Chapter 7 Vernacular Epitomes and Encyclopedias: Southern Legendaries and the Metrical Life of St Cuthbert, 1270–1500
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index