Works (excl. History) 5 part 5/6

And so it came to pass that, as with a simple and pure mind and tranquil devotion he had served the Lord, so likewise, leaving the world by a tranquil death, he came to the vision of him; and that tongue which had composed so many wholesome words in praise of the Creator, closed also its last words in praise of him, while signing himself and commending his spirit into his hands; and from those things which we have related he appears to have been foreknowing of his own death. [23] In these times the monastery of virgins which is called Coldingham, of which we have also made mention above, was consumed by flames through the fault of negligence.

Yet that this had befallen through the wickedness of those dwelling in it, and especially of those who seemed to be the greater, all who knew could most easily perceive. But there was not lacking, for those to be punished, an admonition of divine mercy, by which, being corrected through fastings, weepings, and prayers, they might turn away from themselves, after the manner of the Ninevites, the wrath of the just Judge. For there was in that same monastery a man of the race of the Scots, Adamnan by name, leading a life much devoted to God in continence and prayers, so that he never took any food or drink except on the Lord's day and the fifth day of the week, but often passed whole nights wakeful in prayer.

This rigour of a stricter life had at first come upon him out of the necessity of amending his own wickedness, but as time went on he had turned the necessity into a custom. For in his youth he had committed some crime, which crime, when he came to his senses, he shuddered at most grievously, and he feared that he would be punished for it by the strict Judge. Coming therefore to a priest, from whom he hoped that the way of salvation could be shown him, he confessed his guilt, and asked him to give him counsel by which he might flee from the wrath to come. And he, having heard his deed, said: 'A great wound requires the care of a greater remedy;

and therefore apply yourself, as much as you are able, to fastings, psalms, and prayers, that by forestalling the face of the Lord in confession you may deserve to find him merciful.' But he, whom an exceeding grief of guilty conscience held, and who longed to be loosed the more quickly from the inner bonds of sins by which he was burdened, said: 'I am rather young in age and vigorous in body; whatever you lay upon me to do, provided I be saved in the day of the Lord, I will all bear easily, even if you bid me pass the whole night standing in prayers, or spend a whole week in abstaining.' He said: 'It is much that you should hold out a whole week without bodily nourishment; but it is enough to observe a two-day or a three-day fast.'

'Do this, until after a little while, returning to you, I may show you more fully what you ought to do, and how long you should persist in penance.' And when these things had been said, and the measure of penance prescribed for him, the priest departed; and, a sudden cause pressing him, he withdrew to Ireland, whence he had taken his origin, and did not return again to him according to their agreement. But he, mindful of his command and at the same time of his own promise, gave himself wholly to the tears of penance, to holy vigils, and to continence; so that he refreshed himself only on the fifth day of the week and the Lord's day, as I have said before, and on the other days of the week remained fasting.

And when he had heard that his priest had withdrawn to Ireland and had there died, ever after from that time, according to his remembered agreement, he kept that measure of continence; and what he had begun once out of the cause of divine fear, being pricked on account of his guilt, he now performed unwearied, delighting in its rewards for the cause of divine love. And while he diligently carried this out for a long time, it happened that on a certain day he had gone out from that monastery a good distance, one of the brethren accompanying him, and, his journey accomplished, was returning. And as they drew near the monastery, and beheld its buildings loftily raised up, the man of God burst into tears, and betrayed the sadness of his heart by the witness of his countenance. Seeing which, his companion asked why he did so. And he said:

'All these buildings which you see,' he said, 'whether public or private, it is at hand that a consuming fire shall turn them into ashes.' Hearing this, as soon as they had entered the monastery, he took care to make it known to the mother of the congregation, by name Æbbe. But she, rightly troubled by such a foreboding, called the man to her and inquired more diligently from him about the matter, and whence he himself knew this. He said: 'Lately, occupied by night in vigils and psalms, I suddenly saw standing by me a certain one of unknown countenance; and when I was terrified at his presence, he told me not to fear; and addressing me as it were with a familiar voice, he said: "You do well, who in this time of nocturnal rest have chosen not to indulge in sleep, but to persist in vigils and prayers." And I said:

'I know,' said I, 'that it is very necessary for me to persist in wholesome vigils, and diligently to beseech the Lord for my errors.' Adding this, he said: 'You speak truly, for both you and many have need to redeem your sins by good works, and, when they cease from the labours of temporal things, then to labour more freely for the appetite of eternal goods; yet this very few do. For just now, traversing this whole monastery in order, I have inspected the cells and beds of each one, and I have found no one out of all save you occupied about the health of his soul; but absolutely all, both men and women, either lie torpid in slothful sleep, or wake for sins.'

'For even the little houses which had been made for praying or reading are now turned into chambers of feastings, drinkings, gossipings, and other allurements; the virgins also dedicated to God, despising the reverence of their profession, whenever they are at leisure, devote themselves to weaving finer garments, with which either to adorn themselves like brides, to the peril of their state, or to procure for themselves the friendship of men outside. Whence for this place and its inhabitants a grievous vengeance from heaven, with raging flames, has deservedly been prepared.' Then the abbess said: 'And why did you not sooner choose to reveal this thing made known to you?' He answered: 'I was afraid on account of reverence for you, lest perhaps you should be too greatly disturbed;

'and yet you may have this consolation, that in your days this plague shall not come upon you.' When this vision had been divulged, the dwellers of the place feared for a few days, and began to chastise themselves, leaving off their misdeeds. But after the death of that same abbess they returned to their former filthiness, nay, did things more wicked. And when they said, 'Peace and security,' straightway they were smitten with the penalty of the aforesaid vengeance. All these things my most reverend fellow-presbyter Ædgils, who was then living in that monastery, related to me as having so happened. Afterwards, when many of the inhabitants had departed thence on account of the desolation, he lived for a long time in our monastery, and there died.

We have thought these things should be inserted into our history for this reason: to admonish the reader of the works of the Lord, how terrible he is in his counsels over the sons of men; lest perhaps we at some time, serving the allurements of the flesh and too little dreading the judgement of God, his sudden wrath should seize us, and either, justly raging, afflict us with temporal losses, or, examining us more strictly, carry us off to perpetual perdition. [24] In the year of the Lord's incarnation 684, Ecgfrid, king of the Northumbrians, having sent into Ireland an army with the commander Berct, miserably laid waste a harmless people and one ever most friendly to the English nation, so that the hostile hand spared not even churches or monasteries.

But the islanders, both as far as they were able repelled arms with arms, and, calling upon the help of divine mercy, with continual imprecations long asked to be avenged from heaven. And although those who curse cannot possess the kingdom of God, yet it was believed that those who were, by the desert of their impiety, cursed, would the more quickly, with the Lord as avenger, pay the penalties of their guilt.

For indeed in the year next after this, the same king, when he had rashly led an army to lay waste the province of the Picts — his friends much forbidding it, and especially Cuthbert of blessed memory, who had lately been ordained bishop — was drawn, by the enemy feigning flight, into the straits of inaccessible mountains, and was slain with the greatest part of the forces he had brought with him, in the fortieth year of his age and the fifteenth of his reign, on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of June. And indeed, as I have said, his friends forbade him to enter upon this war;

but, because in the preceding year he had been unwilling to listen to the most reverend father Ecgberct, that he should not attack Ireland, which was doing him no harm, it was given him as a punishment for that sin, that now he should not hear those who wished to recall him from destruction. From which time the hope and strength of the kingdom of the English began to ebb and to fall back, sliding backward. For the Picts recovered the land of their possession which the English had held; and the Scots who were in Britain; and likewise some part of the Britons recovered their liberty; which they hold even to this day, for about forty-six years;

there, among very many of the English nation either slain by the sword, or consigned to servitude, or escaped by flight from the land of the Picts, even the most reverend man of the Lord, Trumwine, who had received the bishopric over them, withdrew with his people who were in the monastery of Abercorn — set indeed in the region of the English, but in the neighbourhood of the firth which divides the lands of the English and of the Picts. And commending his people, wherever he could, to friends throughout the monasteries, he himself chose a place of dwelling in the oft-named monastery of the men and women servants of God which is called Whitby; and there, with a few of his own, he led, in monastic strictness, a life useful not to himself only but also to many, for a very great length of years;

where also, when he died, he was buried in the church of the blessed apostle Peter, with honour befitting both his life and his rank. Now over that same monastery there then presided the royal virgin Ælfflæd, together with her mother Eanflæd, of whom we have made mention above. But, when the bishop came thither, she found the greatest aid in ruling, and at the same time a solace for her own life, in the teacher devoted to God. And Aldfrid succeeded Ecgfrid in the kingdom, a man most learned in the Scriptures, who was said to be his brother and the son of King Oswiu; and he nobly recovered the shattered state of the kingdom, though within narrower bounds.

In which same year — which is, from the Lord's incarnation, 685 — Hlothere, king of the people of Kent, after he had reigned for twelve years following his brother Ecgberct, who had reigned nine years, died on the eighth day before the Ides of February. For he was wounded in a battle of the South Saxons, whom Eadric, son of Ecgberct, had gathered against him, and died in the midst of being treated. And after him the same Eadric reigned a year and a half; and when he died, kings of doubtful claim or foreigners wasted that kingdom for some space of time; until the lawful king Wihtred — that is, son of Ecgberct — being strengthened in the kingdom, freed his people from foreign invasion by religion as well as by industry.

[25] In the very year, too, in which King Ecgfrid met the end of his life, he had, as we have said, caused to be ordained bishop of the church of Lindisfarne the holy and venerable man Cuthbert, who in a very small island, which is called Farne and is distant about nine miles out in the Ocean from that same church, had for several years led a solitary life in great continence of body and mind. He indeed from the first age of boyhood ever burned with zeal for the religious life, but from the beginning of his youth he took up both the name and the habit of a monk.

Now he first entered the monastery of Melrose, which is set on the bank of the river Tweed, and which Abbot Eata then governed — a man the most gentle and simple of all, who was afterwards made bishop of the church of Hexham or Lindisfarne, as we have recorded above; in which Boisil at that time was prior, a priest of great virtues and of a prophetic spirit. To his discipleship Cuthbert humbly subjected himself, and took from him both knowledge of the Scriptures and examples of good works. And after Boisil had passed to the Lord, Cuthbert, being made prior of that same monastery, instructed many to the regular life both by the authority of a master and by the example of his own action.

He gave the monastery itself not only counsels of the regular life but examples of it as well; and he likewise took care to convert the surrounding common folk, far and wide, from a life of foolish custom to a love of heavenly joys. For many were profaning by wicked works the faith which they held; and some too, in a time of plague, neglecting the sacraments of the faith in which they had been instructed, ran to the erring remedies of idolatry, as though they could check by incantations or amulets or any other secrets of the demonic art a calamity sent by God the Creator.

Therefore, to correct the error of both groups, he himself often went out from the monastery, sometimes on horseback but more often on foot, coming to the surrounding villages and preaching the way of truth to those who erred; which Boisil too had been accustomed to do in his own day. For it was the custom among the English peoples at that time that, when a cleric or priest came to a village, all at his bidding would flock together to hear the word; they would gladly listen to what was said; and still more gladly would they follow in deed what they could hear and understand. Moreover, Cuthbert had such skill in speaking, such a love of persuading, and such a light of angelic countenance, that none of those present dared to hide from him the secret places of his heart;

all would openly bring forth by confession what they had done, since indeed they supposed that these very things could in no way be hidden from him; and they would wash away what they had confessed by worthy fruits of penance, as he commanded. Now he was wont especially to range over those places, and to preach in those hamlets, which, set far off among steep and rugged mountains, were a horror for others even to visit, and by their poverty as well as their rusticity kept teachers away from coming. Yet he, gladly devoting himself to that holy toil, cultivated them with such diligence of skilful teaching that, having gone out from the monastery, he would often not return home for a whole week, sometimes for two or three, and now and then even for a full month;

but lingering in the mountains, he would call the rustic people to heavenly things both by the word of preaching and by the work of virtue. When, therefore, the venerable servant of the Lord, having spent many years in the monastery of Melrose, shone forth with great signs of virtues, his most reverend abbot Eata transferred him to the island of the people of Lindisfarne, so that there too he might both impart to the brethren the keeping of regular discipline by the authority of his office and demonstrate it by his own action. For that same most reverend father then governed that very place by the right of an abbot. Indeed, from ancient times in that place a bishop with his clergy and an abbot with his monks had been wont to dwell; who nevertheless themselves also belonged in a familiar way to the bishop's care.

For indeed Aidan, who was the first bishop of that place, coming there with monks and himself a monk, established a monastic mode of life in it; just as the blessed father Augustine is known to have done earlier in Kent, the most reverend Pope Gregory writing to him—which we have set down above. 'But because your Brotherhood,' he said, 'instructed in the rules of the monastery, ought not to live apart from your clergy, in the church of the English, which has lately by God's authorship been brought to the faith, you ought to establish this mode of life which was for our fathers at the beginning of the new-born Church; among whom none of them said that anything of what they possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.'

[ 26 ] Thereafter Cuthbert, as the merits of his religious purpose increased, attained also to the secret silences of anchoritic contemplation, of which we have spoken. But because we have written sufficiently of his life and virtues before, both in heroic verse and in plain prose, let it suffice for the present to recall only this: that, when about to go to the island, he declared to the brethren, saying, 'If the divine grace shall grant me in that place that I may live by the work of my own hands, gladly will I abide there; but if otherwise, I will, God willing, return to you very speedily.' Now the place was utterly destitute of water and of crop and of tree, and moreover, by the frequent presence of malignant spirits, was little fitted for human habitation;

but at the wish of the man of God it was made habitable in every respect, since at his coming the malignant spirits withdrew. Now when he himself, the enemies having been driven out, had built there for himself a narrow dwelling with a surrounding rampart, and the necessary buildings within it—that is, an oratory and a common living-place—by the help of the brethren's hands, he ordered the brethren to make a pit in the floor of that same dwelling; but the earth was very hard and stony, in which there seemed to be no hope at all of a spring-vein. Yet when they did so, at the faith and prayers of God's servant, on the next day it was found full of water, which to this very day supplies an abundance of its heavenly grace sufficient for all who come there.

He also asked that farming tools be brought to him together with grain; and when, the soil having been prepared, he sowed it at the fitting season, nothing at all—I do not say of ears, but not even of blade—chanced to sprout from it up to the time of summer. Whereupon, when the brethren visited him after their custom, he ordered barley to be brought, in case perhaps either the nature of that soil or the will of the heavenly Giver might be that a crop of that grain should rather spring up there. And when this was brought to him and he sowed it in that same field, past all time for sowing, past all hope of fruiting, soon an abundant crop arose and provided the man of God with the longed-for sustenance of his own labour.

When, therefore, he had served God as a solitary there for many years (and so great was the height of the rampart by which his dwelling was walled, that from it he could behold only the heaven whose entrance he thirsted for), it came to pass that, a synod of no small size having been gathered in the presence of King Ecgfrith beside the river Aln, in the place which is called Adtuifyrdi, which signifies 'at the double ford,' over which Archbishop Theodore of blessed memory presided, he was chosen by the unanimous consent of all to the bishopric of the church of Lindisfarne.

And when, though many envoys and letters had been sent ahead to him, he could by no means be drawn out of his monastery, at length the aforesaid king himself, together with the most holy bishop Trumwine, and also with other religious and powerful men, sailed to the island. From the island of Lindisfarne itself also many of the brethren came together for this very purpose; all bend the knee, they adjure him by the Lord, they pour out tears, they beseech; until they draw him too, full of sweet tears, from his hiding-place, and drag him to the synod. When he arrived there, although much resisting, he was overcome by the unanimous will of all, and was compelled to bow his neck to take up the office of the bishopric;

being chiefly won over by this saying: that the Lord's servant Boisil, when with a prophetic mind he was disclosing to him all the things that should come upon him, had also foretold that he would be a bishop. Yet the appointed ordination was not carried out at once, but, the winter which was at hand having passed, it was completed at the very Easter solemnity at York, in the presence of the aforesaid King Ecgfrith, seven bishops gathering for his consecration, among whom Theodore of blessed memory held the primacy. Now he was at first elected to the bishopric of the church of Hexham in place of Tunberht, who had been deposed from his bishopric;

but since he himself preferred to be set over the church of Lindisfarne, in which he had lived, it was decided that, Eata returning to the seat of the church of Hexham, over which he had first been ordained to rule, Cuthbert should take up the governance of the church of Lindisfarne. And he adorned the rank of the bishopric he had received with works in imitation of the virtues of the blessed apostles. For he both protected the people committed to him by constant prayers, and called them to heavenly things by most wholesome admonitions. And—what most of all is wont to help teachers—those things which he taught ought to be done, he first himself showed forth by doing them.

For he was above all fervent with the fire of divine charity, modest in the virtue of patience, most diligently intent upon the devotion of prayers, affable to all who came to him for the sake of consolation; reckoning this very thing also in the place of prayer, if he should bestow the help of his exhortation upon sick brethren; knowing that He who said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' said also, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour.' He was distinguished by the chastisement of abstinence, he was ever, by the grace of compunction, suspended toward heavenly things. Finally, when he offered to God the sacrifice of the saving Victim, he commended his vows to the Lord not with a voice raised on high, but with tears poured forth from the depth of his breast.

[ 27 ] When two years had been completed in the bishopric, he returned to the island and to his own monastery, warned by a divine oracle that the day of his death, or rather the entrance into that life which alone is to be called life, was now drawing near; as he himself also at that same time disclosed to some, but in rather obscure words which nevertheless were afterward clearly understood, with his accustomed simplicity; and to certain ones he even revealed this same thing openly. For there was a priest of venerable life, by name Hereberht, long since joined to the man of God by a bond of spiritual friendship;

who, leading a solitary life on an island of that very large lake from which the beginnings of the river Derwent burst forth, was wont to visit him every year and to hear from him counsels of perpetual salvation. He, when he heard that the bishop had come to the city of Carlisle, came after his custom, desiring to be kindled more and more toward heavenly longings by his saving exhortations. And while they were drinking deep, one with the other, of the cups of the heavenly life, the bishop said among other things, 'Remember, brother Hereberht, that now you ask me whatever you have need of, and speak with me; for after we have parted from one another, we shall not see one another again with the bodily sight of the flesh in this world.'

'For I am certain that the time of my dissolution is at hand, and swift is the putting off of my tabernacle.' He, hearing these things, fell down at his feet, and with tears poured forth amid groaning, said, 'I beseech you, by the Lord, do not forsake me, but be mindful of your most faithful comrade, and pray the supernal goodness that we, who have served Him together on earth, may pass together to the heavens to behold His grace. For you know that I have always striven to live according to the bidding of your mouth, and whatever I have failed in through ignorance or frailty, I have likewise taken care to amend at once according to the judgement of your will.' The bishop applied himself to prayers, and being straightway instructed in the spirit that he had obtained what he sought from the Lord:

'Rise,' he said, 'my brother, and do not weep, but rejoice with joy, because what we have asked, the supernal clemency has granted us.' The truth of this promise and prophecy the outcome of events that followed confirmed; for both, parting from one another, did not see each other again bodily, and on one and the same day—that is, the thirteenth of the Kalends of April—going forth from the body, their spirits were soon joined to one another in the blessed vision, and were carried together by the ministry of angels to the heavenly kingdom. But Hereberht was first refined by a long sickness; by that dispensation, as is to be believed, of the Lord's goodness, so that, if he had any less of merit than the blessed Cuthbert, the pain of his long illness, chastising him, might supply it;

so that, being made equal in grace to his intercessor, just as he merited to go forth from the body at one and the same time with him, so also he might merit to be received into one and the same and undivided seat of perpetual blessedness. Now the most reverend father died on the island of Farne, having much entreated the brethren that he might also be buried there, where for no small time he had warred for the Lord. Nevertheless, at length, overcome by their prayers, he gave his assent that, being carried back to the island of the people of Lindisfarne, he should be laid in the church. And when this had been done, the venerable bishop Wilfrid kept the bishopric of that church for one year, until one should be chosen who ought to be ordained bishop in Cuthbert's place.

Now after these things Eadberht was ordained, a man distinguished by knowledge of the divine Scriptures, together with observance of the heavenly precepts, and most of all by the working of almsgiving; so that, according to the law, in all years he gave to the poor a tenth not only of his four-footed beasts, but also of all his crops and fruits, and likewise a part of his clothing.

[ 28 ] Now, the divine dispensation, wishing to show forth more widely in how great a glory the man of the Lord Cuthbert lived after death—he whose sublime life before death had also lain open by frequent tokens of miracles—when eleven years of his burial had passed, put it into the minds of the brethren that they should take up his bones, which they supposed they would find dry, after the manner of the dead, the rest of the body being now consumed and reduced to dust; and that, laid away in a new coffin, in the same place indeed, but above the floor, they should place them for the sake of fitting veneration. And when they reported that this had pleased them to their bishop Eadberht, he assented to their counsel, and ordered that they should remember to do this on the day of his burial.

And they did so; and opening the sepulchre, they found the whole body, as though it still lived, entire and with the joints of its limbs flexible, far more like one sleeping than one dead; and moreover all the garments in which it had been clothed appeared not only undefiled, but also in their pristine newness and wondrous brightness. When the brethren saw this, struck soon with exceeding fear, they hastened to report to the bishop what they had found. He was then by chance abiding as a solitary in a place more remote from the church, encircled on every side by the flowing waves of the sea. For in this place he was wont always to pass the time of Lent, in this place to spend the forty days before the Lord's Nativity in great devotion of continence, prayer, and tears;