How Medieval! Venerating St. Cuthbert

News from The Catholic Herald about a Catholic shrine in an Anglican Cathedral:

Relics of one of Britain’s earliest saints, St Cuthbert, have gone on display in Durham Cathedral.

The centrepiece of the permanent exhibition at the cathedral – which was built in his honour – is an oak coffin, made in Lindisfarne in AD 698, 11 years after Cuthbert’s death. Other exhibits include the saint’s pectoral cross – Cuthbert was called back from his hermit’s cell to become a bishop – and his ivory comb.

Cuthbert’s body and relics were carried by Lindisfarne’s monks when they fled inland to escape Viking raids. They eventually settled in Durham, which became a place of pilgrimage. Although his shrine was destroyed in the Reformation, his relics survived, and his remains were finally reburied in the cathedral in 1899.

The BBC notes that St. Cuthbert's shrine could help save the Cathedral:

Many cathedrals across the UK are suffering financial pressures with some facing closure.

Durham Cathedral's Very Reverend Andrew Tremlett said the £7.50 admission fee for the Treasures of St Cuthbert exhibition would "keep the cathedral open for everybody".

He said: "These things are different in different parts of the country. It depends on your visitor mix.

"We want to keep the cathedral there for the whole community, but also be able to balance the books."

More about the shrine at the Durham Cathedral website, including this detail about Cromwell's commissioners preparing to destroy the shrine:

He found Cuthbert “lying whole with his face bare and his beard as if it had a fortnight’s growth.”

The goldsmith shouted out “Alas, I have broken one of his legs”

Dr Henley called out “throw down the bones”

But the goldsmith replied that he could not do so because the bones were kept together by skin and tissue.

Dr Ley went to the feretory to see for himself, and then told Dr Henley in Latin:

“He was lying whole”

Dr Henley did not believe this and repeated “Cast down the bones,”

“If you do not believe me, come up and see for yourself,” Dr Ley said.

At which point Dr Henley came up and handled him and saw that he was indeed un-decayed.

The commissioners then ordered the monks to move the body to the vestry until the King decided what should be done.

Which just goes to show that some grave robbers have a conscience! Nevertheless, the commissioners knew what to do with the jewels and gold of the shrine.

The British Library and the St. Cuthbert Gospel

I heard this interview on NPR Friday morning:

How much would you pay for a very rare book?

The British Library in London has just paid about $14 million to purchase Europe's oldest intact book, known as the St. Cuthbert Gospel. It's a copy of the Gospel of St. John, thought to have been produced in northeastern England sometime during the seventh century.

Claire Breay is the curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts at the British Library. She says the book's beautifully decorated red leather cover is a wonderful example of Anglo-Saxon leather work, and the inside is astonishingly well-preserved. "The text is beautifully clearly written, looks almost as if it were written yesterday," she says.

But me being me, Claire Breay's statements at the end really caught my ear:

"Eventually they settled in Durham," Breay says. "And then after the Norman conquest [of 1066], with the foundation of a new Norman cathedral in Durham and the creation of a new shrine for St. Cuthbert, the coffin was opened in 1104, and the book was discovered intact inside the coffin."

The story doesn't end there. By the early 17th century, the book was in private hands, and in 1769 it was donated to a Jesuit community in Belgium. "And they have owned the manuscript for almost 250 years, until it's been bought now by the British Library as the result of the largest fundraising campaign that we've ever held," Breay says.

The book had been on loan from the Jesuits since 1979, but Breay says the purchase means the British Library will now be able to invest public money in long-term preservation and interpretation of the Gospel.

"One of the things we really want to achieve through having it in public ownership is to raise awareness of the importance of this book," she says. "Because for a book that is so important, it isn't really very well known."

Notice that the story conveniently skips over quite of chunk of time: the time filled by the English Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the destruction of shrines, the destruction of St. Cuthbert's tomb in Durham Cathedral, the outlawing of Catholicism in England . . .

In the on-air interview (comments not included on-line), she seemed to blame the private ownership of the Jesuits for the lack of knowledge of the treasure that is the St. Cuthbert Gospel. As I've posted several times in the last year or so on various exhibits in England on saints, relics, religious art, and shrines, part of that lack of knowledge also is due to England forgetting its Catholic Christian past. If the monastery at Durham hadn't been dissolved, and the tomb of St. Cuthbert not destroyed, and Catholicism not temporarily suppressed in England, the Gospel of St. Cuthbert would have been a public treasure all these hundreds of years.

Oh well, as my late father used to say: "If dog, rabbit." (Excuses, excuses.)

You can see (kind of rough) images of the St. Cuthbert Gospel here.

Blessed John Speed or Spence

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: English martyr, executed at Durham, 4 Feb., 1593-4, for assisting the venerable martyr St. John Boste, whom he used to escort from one Catholic house to another. He died with constancy, despising the inducements offered to bring him to conformity. With him was condemned Mrs. Grace Claxton, wife of William Claxton, of the Waterhouse, in the parish of Brancepeth, Durham, at whose house Boste was taken and probably Speed also. She was, however, reprieved on being found to be with child. In 1929, John Speed was beatified by Pope Pius XI as one of the Durham Martyrs. (More about the Durham Martyrs here.)

Re: St. John Boste: Priest and martyr, b. of good Catholic family at Dufton, in Westmoreland, about 1544; d. at Durham, 24 July, 1594. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, 1569-72, became a Fellow, and was received into the Church at Brome, in Suffolk, in 1576. Resigning his Fellowship in 1580, he went to Reims, where he was ordained priest, 4 March, 1581, and in April was sent to England. He landed at Hartlepool and became a most zealous missioner, so that the persecutors made extraordinary efforts to capture him. At last, after many narrow escapes, he was taken to Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton, near Durham, betrayed by one Eglesfield [or Ecclesfield], 5 July, 1593. The place is still visited by Catholics. From Durham he was conveyed to London, showing himself throughout "resolute, bold, joyful, and pleasant", although terribly racked in the Tower. Sent back to Durham for the July Assizes, 1594, he behaved with undaunted courage and resolution, and induced his fellow-martyr, Bl. George Swalwell [or Swallowell], a convert minister, who had recanted through fear, to repent of his cowardice, absolving him publicly in court. He suffered at Dryburn, outside Durham. He recited the Angelus while mounting the ladder, and was executed with extraordinary brutality; for he was scarcely turned off the ladder when he was cut down, so that he stood on his feet, and in that posture was cruelly butchered alive. An account of his trial and execution was written by an eye-witness, Venerable Christopher Robinson, who suffered martyrdom shortly afterwards at Carlisle.

Cuthbert Tunstall, Former Bishop of Durham, Dies

On November 18, 1559 Cuthbert Tunstall, the former Bishop of Durham, who refused to take Elizabeth I's Oath of Supremacy, died under house arrest at Lambeth Palace, the "guest" of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. As his biography describes, he managed to weather the stormy seas of religious change through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I.

I guess he reached a "tipping point" when faced with another oath that would allow the monarch to change religious practices in England. He had been one of Queen Catherine of Aragon's legal counsel for the Blackfriar trial, but unlike Bishop John Fisher, Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell, he did not suffer imprisonment or execution (obviously). Tunstall accepted Henry's Supremacy while maintaining loyalty to Catholic doctrines--but he must have begun to see that without the established authority of the Pope, the Church in England was just a feather in the wind.

Tunstall did protest against the Calvinist Reformation during Edward VI's reign, and ended up under house arrest and ultimately in the Tower of London in 1551 and was deprived of his bishopric in 1552. He was then freed when Mary I succeeded and restored to Durham. When Elizabeth I came to the throne he recognized the error of the royal supremacy and refused both to take the new Oath of Supremacy or to participate in the consecration of Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury.

It must been a little awkward to be held under house arrest by the same man he'd refused to recognize, but he did not have to endure the discomfort very long.

This website summarizes his written works and his survival during the Tudor Reformation thus:

His works, exclusive of published letters and sermons, are: "De Arte Supputandi Libri IV" (London, 1522); "Confutatio cavillationum quibus SS. Eucharistiae Sacramentum ab impiis Caphernaitis impeti solet" (Paris, 1552); "De veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Domini in Eucharistia Libri II" (Paris, 1554); "Compendium in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis" (Paris, 1554); "Certaine godly and devout prayers made in Latin by C. Tunstall and translated into Englishe by Thomas Paynelle, Clerke" (London, 1558). Much of his political correspondence is preserved in the British Museum. Despite his weakness under Henry VIII, we may endorse the verdict of the Anglican historian, Pollard, who writes: "Tunstall's long career of eighty-five years, for thirty-seven of which he was a Bishop, is one of the most consistent and honourable in the sixteenth century. The extent of the religious revolution under Edward VI caused him to reverse his views on the royal supremacy and he refused to change them again under Elizabeth".