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in which place also his venerable predecessor Cuthbert, before he sought the island of Farne, for some time warred secretly for the Lord. Now they brought to him also a part of the garments which had wrapped the holy body; and when he gladly received both the gifts and willingly heard of the miracles—for he kissed those very garments, still as if wrapped about the body of his father, with wondrous affection—he said, 'Wrap new garments about the body in place of these which you have taken, and so lay it back in the chest which you have prepared. But I know most certainly that the place will not long remain empty which has been hallowed by so great a grace of heavenly miracle;
and how blessed is he to whom the Lord, the Author and Bestower of all blessedness, shall deign to grant the opportunity of resting in it.' When the bishop had finished these things and many of this kind with many tears and great compunction, his very tongue trembling, the brethren did as he had bidden; and wrapping the body in a new mantle, and laying it again in a new shrine, they placed it above the floor of the sanctuary. Nor was there delay: the bishop Eadberht, beloved of God, was seized with a bitter sickness, and as the burning fever of his languor grew day by day and greatly worsened, not long after—that is, on the day before the Nones of May—he too himself passed to the Lord;
and laying his body in the sepulchre of the blessed father Cuthbert, they placed above it the chest in which they had laid the incorrupt limbs of that same father. In which place also signs of healings, wrought at times by the merits of both, bear witness, some of which we have formerly committed to memory in the book of his life. But in this history too we have thought it fitting to add certain things which we have lately chanced to hear.
[ 29 ] There was in that same monastery a certain brother, by name Badudegn, who for no little time served in the ministry to guests, and who survives even now, having testimony from all the brethren and from all the guests who came, that he was a man of much piety and religion, and submissive to the office enjoined upon him only for the sake of the supernal reward. He, when on a certain day he had washed in the sea the blankets and rugs which they used in the guest-house, returning home, was struck in the middle of the journey by a sudden affliction, so that, falling to the ground and lying prone for some while, he scarcely at last rose again.
And rising, he felt one half of his body, from head to foot, weighed down by the languor of paralysis, and with the greatest labour, leaning on a staff, he reached home. The disease grew little by little, and with the coming on of night became more grievous, so that, when day returned, he could scarcely by himself rise up or walk. Afflicted by this misfortune, he conceived a most useful purpose in his mind: that, coming to the church in whatever way he could, he might enter to the tomb of the most reverend father Cuthbert, and there, with bended knees, suppliant, might pray the supernal goodness either that he might be freed from a languor of this kind, if this should be profitable to him;
or, if it should behoove him to be chastised longer by such an affliction by the divine providing grace, that he might patiently and with a tranquil mind endure the pain laid upon him. He did therefore as he had purposed in his mind, and supporting his feeble limbs with a staff, he entered the church; and prostrating himself at the body of the man of God, with pious intention he prayed that through his help the Lord might become propitious to him; and amid his prayers, as though loosed into a slumber, he felt—as he himself was afterward wont to relate—as if a great and broad hand had touched his head in the part where he was in pain, and by that same touch the whole of that part of his body which had been pressed down by the languor, the pain gradually fleeing and health following after, had passed right down to his feet.
When this was done, soon waking, he rose up most sound, and again giving thanks to the Lord for his health, he made known to the brethren what had been done concerning him; and while all rejoiced together, he returned, as one made more chastened by the proving scourge, to the ministry which he was wont solicitously to perform. Moreover, the garments too, with which they had clothed the body of Cuthbert, dedicated to God, whether living before or dead afterward, even these themselves were not void of the grace of healing, as whoever shall read in the volume of his life and virtues will find. [ 30 ] Nor is that to be passed over in silence which, wrought three years ago through his relics, was lately made known to me by the very brother in whom it was wrought.
Now it was wrought in the monastery which, built beside the river Dacre, received its byname from it, over which the religious man Swithberht then presided by the right of an abbot. There was in it a certain youth on whom an unsightly tumour had disfigured the eyelid of his eye; which, growing day by day, threatened destruction to the eye, and the physicians took care to soften it with applied poultices of salves, yet they could not. Some taught that it must be cut away, others forbade this to be done out of fear of greater danger. And when for no little time the aforesaid brother laboured with such a misfortune, and no human hand availed to cure the destruction threatening his eye, but that it grew day by day, it chanced that he was suddenly healed by the grace of divine goodness through the relics of the most holy father Cuthbert.
For when his brethren found his body uncorrupted after many years of burial, they took a portion of the hairs, which, after the manner of relics, they might give to friends who asked, or show as a sign of the miracle. A small particle of these relics a certain one of the priests of that same monastery, by name Thruidred, who is now abbot of that very monastery, then had with him. He, when on a certain day, having entered the church, he had opened the casket of relics in order to give a portion of them to a friend who asked, it chanced that the very youth, whose eye was ailing, was then present in that same church. And when the priest had given to his friend as great a portion as he wished, he gave the remainder to the youth, that he might lay it back in its place.
But he, admonished by a wholesome instinct, when he had received the hairs of the holy head, applied them to his ailing eyelid, and for some while took care to press down and soften that troublesome tumour by their application. When this was done, he laid the relics back in their casket, as he had been bidden, believing that his eye would be the more swiftly healed by the hairs of the man of God, by which it had been touched. Nor did his faith deceive him. For it was then, as he was wont to relate, about the second hour of the day. But while he thought upon and did the other things which that day required, the sixth hour of that same day drawing near, suddenly, touching his eye, he found it so sound, together with the eyelid, as if no deformity or tumour had ever appeared in it.