A Tale of Two Springs
The way St Cuthbert found water for his island retreat confirmed that Northumbria’s church was the real thing.
676
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
The way St Cuthbert found water for his island retreat confirmed that Northumbria’s church was the real thing.
676
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
This post is number 12 in the series Miracles of St Cuthbert
Unlike some later chroniclers, Bede did not transpose well-known miracles from one saint to another. He researched authentic miracles of Northumbrian saints and found close (but never exact) matches in the lives of saints from the Roman Empire, to show that Christianity in the British Isles was cut from the same cloth.
POPE Gregory* tells how St Benedict of Nursia founded a hill-side monastery above a lake.* However, the path down to the lake proved dangerous for the monks when fetching water, so without telling them Benedict climbed up to the monastery, and laid three stones at a certain spot nearby before stealing back down the mountain. Next morning, he told the monks to go look for the stones. They found them beaded with water, dug beneath them, and a spring welled up.*
Bede asked us to remember this, as he told how Cuthbert had moved from Lindisfarne to Inner Farne, a small island further out to sea, only to find it bare and dry. He called the Lindisfarne monks around, and reminded them that Moses had brought water from a rock in the wilderness. After they had prayed, together they hacked out a hollow in the rocky ground and left it overnight. Next morning, it was full of water; and it never overflowed or ran dry.
Next in series: Cuthbert and the Barley Reivers
Pope Gregory I ‘the Great’ (?540-604) was ultimately responsible for the mission of St Augustine of Canterbury to England in 597. He is held to be saint in the Eastern churches. See The Baptism of Kent.
St Benedict of Nursia (480-547) established a supremely influential ‘rule’ for communities of monks, drawing on those of St Basil the Great (329-379), St Pachomius (?292-348) and St John Cassian (?360-?435) in the East, all of them inspired ultimately by the example of St Anthony of Egypt (251-356). Benedict’s rule was followed in the monasteries of Bede’s Northumbria.
See also The Life-Giving Spring, which tells of a miraculous spring at Constantinople which is celebrated every year in the week after Easter Day.