In his lifetime Cuthbert was an influential churchman. After his death, his grave in Lindisfarne ,and the places to which it was subsequently moved, became the greatest focus of pilgrimage in early medieval England. Now in Durham Cathedral, the grave is still a pilgrim shrine.
Cuthbert was born about 635 and entered the religious life in the monastery of Melrose (now southern Scotland) aged about 16 years in 651 inspired, according to his biographers, by a vision of the soul of Bishop Aidan being carried to heaven. There is little information on his early life; the accounts which we have concentrate mostly on events and prophecies which foretold his later career. At the time of the vision of St. Aidan, Cuthbert was looking after sheep in the hill country, though any suggestion that this indicates peasant origins is belied by the statement in Bede's biography (written some time between 710 - 720) that he arrived at Melrose on horseback, carrying a spear and attended by a servant. The earlier biography (about 700 - 705) written by an anonymous monk from Lindisfarne suggests that he had seen active service on at least one campaign of King Oswiu.
Melrose, where Eata was abbot, was a monastery founded in the Irish tradition which Aidan had established in Lindisfarne. Here Boisil, the Prior, introduced Cuthbert into the monastery and during the next thirteen years, until his death, became a mentor to the younger man. After some years in Melrose, Eata set up a new monastery at Ripon (now in North Yorkshire) with Cuthbert as the Guest Master. Ripon was endowed by Alhfrith, Oswiu's son and sub-king in Deira, but under the influence of Wilfrid in particular, he became committed to the Roman strand of Christianity which had been established in the south of England. Later, in about 660, he evicted the monks who followed the Lindisfarne traditions and installed Wilfrid as abbot to reform Ripon according to Roman practice. Cuthbert and his colleagues then returned to Melrose.
In 664 both Cuthbert and Boisil caught the plague which devastated the country in that year. Cuthbert recovered, though he suffered long term after-effects, but Boisil died and Cuthbert was appointed the Prior in the monastery. Later he transferred to Lindisfarne. The anonymous biographer suggests that he left his post as Prior in Melrose to seek a more solitary life but Bede indicates that Eata, now Bishop in Lindisfarne, summoned Cuthbert to be Prior there. This was a difficult time for the Lindisfarne monastery in the aftermath of King Oswiu's decision taken at the synod of Whitby in 664 to favour the Roman against the Irish tradition of Christianity. Lindisfarne lost something of its position as the centre of the church-state polity. Coleman, Bishop of Lindisfarne at the time, and some monks of the monastery who were unable or unwilling to accept the changes returned to Iona from whence they had come. Others, amongst them Cuthbert, stayed and tried to come to terms with the new order.
At both of the monasteries, Cuthbert was involved as Prior in the management and administration of the houses. At Lindisfarne he had a particular job to do in enforcing observance of the monastic rule. By this time, a position in a monastery had become a career option for men and women of noble status and not all were motivated by the religious spirit to forgo smart clothes and other comforts of secular life. Leading by example, Cuthbert conducted a campaign of attrition against those reluctant to observe the monastic disciplines. Ceolfrith later had similar problems at Wearmouth-Jarrow. Cuthbert was also involved in pastoral work outside the walls of the monasteries and in this he seems to have been assiduous. Bede writes that he would be away from the monastery for weeks on end as he went about his work among the ordinary people of the hill country. Both of the biographies recount miracles performed in the course of this work.
In 676, aged about 41 years, Cuthbert ceased his administrative and pastoral work in favour of a solitary life as a hermit. The Irish monastic tradition which he observed set a high value on the solitary life as a basis of spirituality. Lindisfarne had an isolated cell on a small rocky outcrop just off the main island and a hermitage on some miles away across the sea on the Farne Islands where Aidan, the founder, had spent time as a solitary.
In his retreat on the Farne Islands Cuthbert built a dwelling and an oratory within a compound whose walls were so arranged that from within he could see nothing but the sky so that he should not be distracted from his prayers and meditation. It was perhaps ironic that with his withdrawal from the world his reputation spread so that other monks from the monastery and people from the wider world came to him for his wise counsel and spiritual guidance. Eventually, in 685, a deputation which included King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, Theodore the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Trumwine prevailed upon him, against his will, to abandon his solitary life and take on the demands of being a bishop. The idea of the great man being dragged unwillingly into prominence may be something of a cliché; but Bede gives us an insight into a deep struggle within Cuthbert's own psyche. Boisil had foretold that Cuthbert would become a bishop and this disturbed him during his time in the hermitage. He confessed that even if he were completely cut off from the world he would still be troubled by worldly cares and the fear that a love of wealth would somehow pull him back. He paid a high price psychologically for his commitment to poverty and the solitary life; to be persuaded out of this was traumatic. He was appointed to the Hexham diocese but swapped with Eata for the Lindisfarne seat.
Set beside the pastoral and solitary aspects of Cuthbert's life, his position in the Northumbrian royal house seems surprising to us when we are accustomed to a separation of church and state: Cuthbert was an intimate at the highest levels. He had the reputation of a sage or seer and he was consulted on the most delicate of matters, the succession to the throne. He it was who advised Abbess Ælfflæd of Whitby, King Ecgfrith's sister, that her family had a potential heir to the throne in the person of her half-brother Aldfrith who was in the Irish kingdom of Dal Riata. He advised King Ecgfrith against his disastrous campaign against the Picts which ended with the king's death. And when the king was killed, we see Cuthbert, during his time as Bishop, protecting the queen and arranging for her safety at the time of crisis.
After two years as bishop, Cuthbert resigned his post in 687 and returned to his Farne Island hermitage to prepare for his death. In his final days he was attended by monks from the monastery and he died on 20 March 687. He knew already that his tomb would be sought out by pilgrims and so consented to having his body taken to Lindisfarne for burial. Eleven years later, in 689, his remains were exhumed for transfer to a more prominent place and his body was found to be uncorrupted. This was judged to be a miraculous preservation: a sure sign of Cuthbert's sainthood. He was then enshrined beside the main altar of the monastery church where his tomb became a great pilgrim centre.
During the 9th century the monks abandoned Lindisfarne on account of Viking raids but they stayed together as a community as they set up home in different places in Northumbria at different times before they settled finally in Durham in 995. Wherever they went, the shrine and the mortal remains of their greatest saint went with them. In 1104 St Cuthbert was placed in a new shrine in the new cathedral in Durham. His coffin was opened on this occasion and his body was seen to be still intact. This shrine was a prominent pilgrim centre throughout the middle ages until 1538 when the Commissioners of King Henry VIII dismantled itwhen they came to dissolve the monastery. St. Cuthbert's body, still intact, was moved to a place of safety and was later returned to the tomb. In 1827 and again in 1899 the grave was opened and by this stage the soft tissue of the body had decomposed. The grave of St. Cuthbert can be seen today behind the high altar in Durham Cathedral.
