Quidditas Volume 29 Article 4 2008 The Appropriation of St Cuthbert: Architecture, History-writing, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Durham, 1083-1250 John D. Young Flagler College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Young, John D. (2008) "The Appropriation of St Cuthbert: Architecture, History-writing, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Durham, 1083-1250," Quidditas: Vol. 29 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol29/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 26 Quidditas The Appropriation of St Cuthbert: Architecture, History-writing, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Durham, 1083-1250 John D. Young Flagler College This paper describes the use of the cult of Saint Cuthbert in the High Middle Ages by both the bishops of Durham and the Benedictine community that was tied to the Episcopal see. Its central contention is that the churchmen of Durham adapted this popular cult to the political expediencies of the time. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when Bishop William de St. Calais ousted the entrenched remnants of the Lindisfarne community and replaced them with Benedictines, Cuthbert was primarily a monastic saint and not, as he would become, a popular pilgrimage saint. However, once the Benedictine community was firmly entrenched in Durham, the bishops, most prominently Hugh de Puiset, sought to create a saint who would appeal to a wide audience of pilgrims, including the women who had been excluded from direct worship in the earlier, Benedictine version of the saint. Evidence for this shift in the image of Cuthbert occurs both in the historical writings of the town’s monks—Symeon in the earlier period and Reginald in the later—and in the evolving architecture of Durham cathedral. The cult of Saint Cuthbert constituted the defining feature of the town of Durham in the High Middle Ages. Indeed, the very founding of the town—when the monks of Lindisfarne stopped with their beloved saint at this peninsula on the Wear River in 995—was contingent upon the cult. Although the Norman conquest of the late eleventh century significantly altered the political and ecclesiastical landscape of England1, the veneration of Cuthbert endured, growing 1 The massive restructuring of landholding rights in the immediate post- conquest era has been called a “tenurial revolution.” Ecclesiastics were more Young 27 in strength during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the glorious age of medieval pilgrimage. However, this apparent appropriation of an Anglo-Saxon saint by the Norman conquerors must not be seen as a homogeneous development. The transition of the Cult of Saint Cuthbert from the Anglo-Saxon world to the new Norman reality was characterized by a great deal of uncertainty. Though the veneration of the saint survived intact across this transition, the use of Cuthbert in ecclesiastical politics and religious practice fluctuated significantly during the first century-and-a-half of Norman rule.2 This article will examine the interaction between the clergy and the saint during the period from 1083, when the Benedictine priory was established and the cathedral was first commissioned by Bishop William of St Calais, to the mid-thirteenth century, when major alterations to the cathedral were completed. The impetus for this article came initially from John Crook’s argument in his article “The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saint Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral.”3 Crook surmises that Durham Cathedral in its initial construction phases was not designed to be a major pilgrimage church. Rather, he asserts, the emphasis on pilgrimage came later, along with modifications likely to retain their original estates, since they often kept better records than secular lords; still, the situation was very much in flux. See Robin Fleming,Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 107-144. 2 Barbara Abou-El-Haj arrives at a similar evaluation, although she is concerned primarily with the cult of St Cuthbert in the early part of the twelfth century, particularly with the role it played in the competition for control of eccle- siastical prominence between the Benedictine monks and Bishop Ranulf Flam- bard, rather than with the cult’s major shift in direction after the second half of the twelfth century. See “Saint Cuthbert: The Post-Conquest Appropriation of an Anglo-Saxon Cult,” Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 177-206. 3 John Crook, “The Architectural Setting of the Cult of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral (1093-1200),” Anglo-Norman Durham 1093-1193, ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 235-50. 28 Quidditas to the cathedral to make it more accessible and suitable for large numbers of pilgrims. I extend Crook’s supposition and argue that promotion of the cult of Saint Cuthbert was a secondary concern for the Norman rulers of Durham in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, particularly for the Norman-backed religious community that displaced the former Lindisfarne custodians as caretakers of the saint. Although the saint remained a part of the religious life of this new, Benedictine community during this period, the monks made use of St Cuthbert only insofar as he lent an air of legitimacy to their existence and authority. By contrast, the cult of Saint Cuthbert rose to overwhelming prominence in Durham in the second half of the twelfth century. In the later period, Durham became above all a pilgrimage center. To illustrate this transition, I first discuss the ecclesiastical situation in Durham in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a time marked by tremendous upheaval—the sacking of the long-time caretakers of St Cuthbert’s and their replacement by a Norman- backed Benedictine community, followed by the consolidation of Norman ecclesiastical power against Northumbrian and Scottish threats. I then return to Crook’s subject, the architectural setting for the cult in the twelfth century, to highlight the difference between the original features of the cathedral and the pilgrimage-friendly additions made in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Finally, I demonstrate the change in ecclesiastical mind-set by contrasting the treatment of St Cuthbert by the two major historians of Durham in the high Middle Ages: Symeon, who wrote in the period when Norman clergy replaced the Lindisfarne community, and Reginald, who wrote in the age when Durham was becoming a pilgrimage center. The Historical Context of the Shift St Cuthbert, a seventh-century hermit, abbot of the Celtic monastic community of Lindisfarne, and bishop of the see of Lindisfarne, was the most important saint of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Young 29 Northumbria. He commanded the respect of Deirans, Bernicians, Scots, and Danes alike and lent tremendous prestige to the Lindisfarne community. After repeated sackings of the island by Danish raiders in the eighth and ninth centuries, in 883 the monks of Lindisfarne fled with the remains of their beloved saint to Chester-le-Street, and then, in 995, to the peninsula which became Durham. On the occasion of the town’s founding, as Symeon of Durham records, the monks were returning to Chester-le-Street after a short stay in Ripon. When they set Cuthbert’s coffin down at Durham, it remained fixed to that spot. Taking this as a sign of the saint’s desire to stay, the monks established their residence there, soon erecting lodgings for themselves and a church to house the sacred body.4 As the Normans attempted to consolidate their control over the north of England in the late 1060s, Durham became a key battleground in the fight between the conquerors and the last remnants of Northumbrian, Anglo-Saxon power. William the Conqueror sent his agent, Robert Cumin, to occupy the town in 1069, but Cumin and his men perished in a massive insurrection a short time later, thus prompting the building of Durham Castle and a series of stone fortifications around the peninsula. William found his authority challenged yet again when Walcher, his appointee to the bishopric of Durham, was murdered in 1080 while trying to defuse yet another rebellion. As a result, the new bishop, William of St Calais, instituted sweeping changes—completely overhauling the religious community by dismissing the Lindisfarne monks and establishing a Benedictine priory in their place.5 4 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, 3.1: ed. David Rollason (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 144- 49. There is some evidence of settlement at Durham in the early Middle Ages, though none of it is terribly conclusive. The only documentary source that hints at earlier habitation is an entry from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle for 762, which states that a certain Bishop Whithorn was consecrated on an Aelfet Island. This may refer to Elvet, one of the boroughs of Durham town, though the connection is quite uncertain. See Martin Roberts, English Heritage Book of Durham (London, 1994), 13. 5 On the career of this vital bishop, see H.S. Offler, “William of St Cal- 30 Quidditas Bishop William’s reforms reflect, at least to some extent, the broader movement of church reform in this period when the papacy was making bold moves to root out non-Roman elements from Christian practice and to establish a homogeneous Christendom ruled from Rome.6 The Normans, of course, also favored religious uniformity, since they acknowledged such a condition would help them establish political hegemony over the island.7 Indeed, the supposedly corrupt (i.e., unreformed) condition of the English church served in the first place as a convenient justification for the Norman Conquest.