Eadfrith of Lindisfarne
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Eadberht of Lindisfarne
Eadberht of Lindisfarne , also known as Saint Eadberht, was Bishop of Lindisfarne, England, from 688 until 698. He is notable as having founded the holy shrine to his predecessor Saint Cuthbert on the island of Lindisfarne, a place that was to become a centre of great pilgrimage in later years.It...
and nothing in the surviving records contradicts this belief. Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the north-east coast of England. It is also known as Holy Island and constitutes a civil parish in Northumberland...
was among the main religious sites of the kingdom of Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
in the early eighth century, the resting place of Saints Aidan
Aidan of Lindisfarne
Known as Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, Aidan the Apostle of Northumbria , was the founder and first bishop of the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in England. A Christian missionary, he is credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. Aidan is the Anglicised form of the original Old...
and Cuthbert
Cuthbert of Lindisfarne
Saint Cuthbert was an Anglo-Saxon monk, bishop and hermit associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria, at that time including, in modern terms, northern England as well as south-eastern Scotland as far as the Firth of Forth...
.
A colophon
Colophon (publishing)
In publishing, a colophon is either:* A brief description of publication or production notes relevant to the edition, in modern books usually located at the reverse of the title page, but can also sometimes be located at the end of the book, or...
added to the Lindisfarne Gospels
Lindisfarne Gospels
The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the British Library...
in the tenth century states that Eadfrith was the scribe and artist responsible for the work. The Lindisfarne Gospels were the product of a single scribe and illustrator, working full-time over a period of about two years. For this reason, many historians who accept that the work was authored by Eadfrith in person date it to the period before he became bishop. Not all historians accept that he was the scribe: some argue that he may have commissioned the work rather than creating it in person; some reject the association as an unreliable tradition.
Contemporary witnesses to Eadberht's episcopacy portray him as a supporter of the cult of Saint Cuthbert. He commissioned three lives
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
of the Saint, the first by an anonymous writer, written between 699 and 705. This Anonymous Life of Saint Cuthbert was revised on Eadfrith's orders by Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
, writing around 720, to produce both prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
and verse
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
lives.
Eadfrith also oversaw the restoration of the hermitage
Hermitage (religious retreat)
Although today's meaning is usually a place where a hermit lives in seclusion from the world, hermitage was more commonly used to mean a settlement where a person or a group of people lived religiously, in seclusion.-Western Christian Tradition:...
on Farne where Cuthbert had often lived. He is named in Æthelwulf's ninth century poem De abbatibus as having advised Eanmund, first abbot of a monastery—its name and location are unknown—founded during the reign of King Osred
Osred I of Northumbria
Osred was king of Northumbria from 705 until his death. He was the son of King Aldfrith of Northumbria. Aldfrith's only known wife was Cuthburg, but it is not certainly known whether Osred was her son...
.
When Lindisfarne was abandoned in the late ninth century, Eadfrith's remains were among those taken on the community's long wanderings through Northumbria. The relics of Saint Cuthbert, and those of Eadfrith along with them, eventually found a new home at Chester-le-Street
Chester-le-Street
Chester-le-Street is a town in County Durham, England. It has a history going back to Roman times when it was called Concangis. The town is located south of Newcastle upon Tyne and west of Sunderland on the River Wear...
, where they remained for a century. In 995 the relics were translated to Durham Cathedral
Durham Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham is a cathedral in the city of Durham, England, the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Durham. The Bishopric dates from 995, with the present cathedral being founded in AD 1093...
. At Durham Eadfrith, along with his predecessor Eadberht and successor Æthelwold
Æthelwold of Lindisfarne
Æthelwold of Lindisfarne was Bishop of Lindisfarne from 721 until 740.Æthelwold contributed to the production of the Lindisfarne Gospels: he took the raw manuscripts that his predecessor Eadfrith had prepared and had Billfrith bind them so that they could be read easily...
, was commemorated on 4 June.