Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 3.djvu/15

 == THE GOLDEN DAYS OF THE EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH ==

CHAPTER XI ST. CUTHBERHT

We will now turn from the Civil history of Northumbria at this time to its Ecclesiastical history. The most prominent figure in it was doubtless Cuthberht, not that he fills any notable place among the makers of history, but that in romance and popular estimation the ascetic hermit of Farne outweighs all his clerical contemporaries in the north, in fame and in the potency he exercised not only when living but more especially after he was dead. I shall take it for granted here that the Irish legend of the origin of Cuthberht is a fable, as I have shown in the introduction. His name is English, and in his poetical life of the Saint, Bede says he was born in Britain. It is, nevertheless, a strange proof of the power of some legends that Ussher, Ware, Colgan, and even Dr. Reeves in his notes to Wattenbach should have