“You can have your book back” continued Martin. “The harder I study the less I remember. You and your Bede* drain intelligence from me, while pouring it on others who don’t even ask. By God, soon I’ll struggle to have faith even in your sanctity.” After more of the same he left, giving the book a kick.*
He soon returned, however, in case losing it brought more derision. “St Cuthbert” he added, scooping it up, “now at least I will find out what pity you have for me. If you have none your book may as well go on the fire. And you, Bede, urge St Cuthbert to pity, until I am quite familiar with your lessons.” He smuggled the book back to his room and was soon engrossed in it. For wonder of wonders, he now grasped every word he read. He marvelled that ideas so easy had not gone in before. Such are the gifts of St Cuthbert! Wisdom to the foolish, learning to the untaught. Indeed, Martin could hardly be prised away from his book. He even painted an icon of St Cuthbert, which he would often kiss, into the margin of the opening page.
paraphrased
* “Tu, Cuthberte, cum Beda tuo.” Bede (?673-735), who was about fourteen when St Cuthbert died in 687, was devoted to him and wrote his biography in both prose and verse. Bede’s remains were brought to Durham from Jarrow (now a suburb of Newcastle-upon-Tyne) in 1022 and buried alongside the saint he loved and admired. In 1370 Bede was given his own shrine in the Galilee Chapel at the west end of the Abbey Church. Both shrines were broken up and sold off on the recommendation of the Government experts who masterminded the sixteenth-century English Reformation, but the relics of both Bede and Cuthbert escaped the bonfires to which other saintly remains were condemned. Bede’s were returned to a substantial if severe tomb in the Galilee Chapel. Cuthbert lies under a plain slab at the east end, behind the High Altar.
* “I poured out my complaint before him” said King David; “I shewed before him my trouble”. See Psalm 142:2, and also Psalm 39. Martin stands in a long tradition of good men tested to the limits of endurance and even of civility, who nonetheless grasped at some level that God would do right by them. Job’s similarly petulant outburst brought a wrathful response from God: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”. See Job 38:2. Yet the friends who had told Job to suffer in silence, conjuring up various ingenious reasons why God would do nothing to help him, fared worse. “Ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.” See Job 42:8.