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40
BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
18th annual edition
Cuthberti virtutibus, proved that the saint’s
power endured. A late 12th-century manuscript
that was probably Reginald’s own autograph
copy is kept in the cathedral treasury. When
Cuthbert was disinterred 11 years after his death
he was found ‘whole, lying like a man sleeping,
being found safe & uncorrupted & lyeth awake,
and all his masse clothes safe & fresh as they
were at ye first hour that they were put on him’.
2
In 875 he was again disinterred when
the monks fled before Viking incursions.
The community entrusted with the care of
these sacred relics was defined by that task
and their ‘Exodus’ experience which lasted
120 years until, while trying to return with
the body to Chester-le-Street where they had
sheltered before, the bier on which the saint
was borne became fixed to the spot. After
fasting and prayer to determine what this
meant, the bishop and the community had
a revelation that the body should be carried
to Dunholm, a hill (or ‘dun’) on an island (or
‘holm’; ‘Dunholm’ gradually evolved into the
modern ‘Durham’). His last resting place was
miraculously revealed to them and a temporary
shelter of wattle was built. Then ‘the Bishop
came with ye corpse and with all his [strength]
did worship’.
3
The cult was now permanently
located on a protected and virgin site, divinely
revealed. The bishop then began work on:
a mykle [little] kirk of stone, and
while it was in [the] making from
ye Wanded kirk or chapel they
brought ye body of that holy man
Saint Cuthbert: & translated him
into another White Kirk so called,
& there his body Remained [ four]
years, while ye more kirk was builded,
then the Bishop Aldun did hallow
ye more kirk or great kirk so called
before ye kallends of September, &
translated Saint Cuthbert’s body out
of ye white kirk into ye great kirk as
soon as ye great kirk was hallowed
to more worship than before.⁴
It seems improbable that Cuthbert’s body was
moved from the wattle church (which even then
appears to have had a stone tomb for the saint)
into a ‘White church’ (implying stone) for four
years before being translated into the greater
stone church at its consecration on 4 September
998.
5
Different interpretations are compatible
with the text of the manuscripts.
6
Whatever the
finer details of that sequence, however, there is
no doubt that the sanctity of the relics and the
established liturgy of the cult of St Cuthbert
dictated the fundamental characteristics of
the architecture from its precise location to its
size and material. Only the most important of
buildings at this date were of stone, so if there
was an intervening smaller church of stone,
then this was a sequence of utmost significance.
In the new abbey church, completed
in 1020,
7
Cuthbert’s shrine was on a broad
pavement elevated ‘[three] yards high, being
in a most Sumptuous & goodly shrine above
ye high altar called ye fereture’.
8
This raised
pavement recalled the first feretory in St Peter’s
Church on Holy Island. Bishop Cosin’s Roll
manuscript continues, describing the saint’s
tomb in the cloister,
9
‘when he was translated
out of the White Church to be laid in the
Abbey Church’, resulting in multiple sites for
veneration. Cosin goes on to describe a carved
and painted stone effigy of the saint, with
mitre and crozier ‘as he was accustomed to
say mass’, placed above the tomb which was
enclosed by a wooden screen. This created
a miniature church, recalling the first one of
wattle which had received Cuthbert’s body
on his miraculous arrival. That resting-place
had been sanctified and memorialised at what
was either another temporary resting-place
for Cuthbert’s reliquary or had possibly been
Cuthbert’s shrine in the Saxon Cathedral.
10
The structure, in any event, remained
in the garth (a garden enclosed by a cloister)
until the Dissolution, near the door where
deceased monks were carried for burial in
the garth. The monks thus made a journey
similar to Cuthbert’s, passing the same
sanctified place, in the hope of the same final
destination in heaven. In this monument, the
long Exodus and the miraculous designation
of its end is called to mind in order to bring
out the full significance of the saint’s tomb.
Processions to the monument and to the
tomb or high altar were, then, redolent of
the memory of that extraordinary Exodus
experience. The high altar was just to the west
of the intended final tomb, so the mass, which
joined the worship of the community with
the worship of heaven, was reinforced by the
relics which were the existential connection
with the saint who continued to intercede
on their behalf in the courts of heaven.
The monumental structure in the cloister
stood until the Dissolution when Dean Horne
caused it to be demolished and its material given
over to his own use. He had Cuthbert’s effigy
set against the cloister wall. Dean Whittingham
had it defaced and broken up to remove all trace
of the cult of saints. Whittingham believed in
the sanctity of the Word, not of places, spaces
or things, and this major theological shift in
the notion of sanctity would cause a similar
shift in the patterns of use and focus of the
architecture. The radical nature of this shift can
hardly be exaggerated; Cuthbert’s presence had
defined the community from before his death
‘The North Prospect of the Cathedral Church of St Mary & St Cuthbert at Durham’, J Harris, 1727 (Cathedral
Library, Durham)
Plan showing the ancient arrangements according to existing remains and other evidence [Based on the
Ordnance Survey 1/500 Plan (1860), and that made by John Carter and published by the Society of Antiquaries
of London in 1801]’, WH St John-Hope, in Fowler’s edition of Rites of Durham