Cuthbert and Hildemer’s Wife
Cuthbert’s friend comes asking for a priest to attend his dying wife — so long as it isn’t Cuthbert.
664-676
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
Cuthbert’s friend comes asking for a priest to attend his dying wife — so long as it isn’t Cuthbert.
664-676
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
This post is number 15 in the series Miracles of St Cuthbert
St Cuthbert’s miracles not only brought healing or deliverance from danger, but left others wiser and kinder for having lived through them. In this example, his friend Hildemer learnt that illness, and specifically mental illness, is nothing for a Christian to be ashamed of.
WHEN Cuthbert was at Melrose Abbey,* Hildemer, one of King Ecgfrith’s captains, rode up in distress. His wife, it seemed, was dying, and needed a priest. But when Cuthbert with a faraway look muttered ‘I must go myself’, Hildemer’s distress only grew.
It broke his heart that Cuthbert, a frequent guest at the couple’s home, would see his wife’s pitiable and witless convulsions, no doubt caused by an evil spirit. Might his friend even doubt she was really a Christian? He said nothing, but tears pricked his eyes.
“Do not weep!” remarked Cuthbert suddenly as they rode. “You dare not mention them, but the seizures make me think no less of her as a Christian. Devils torment the innocent too. Before we reach your house she will be freed; when she takes these reins her cure will be complete.” They duly arrived to find her weak but rational, and on touching the reins of Cuthbert’s horse she announced herself fitter than ever.
Next in series: ‘Your Child Shall Be Healed’
Not the Cistercian monastery founded in 1136 and now largely ruined, but an older monastery founded by St Aidan in 651, about two miles to the east. Cuthbert was Prior of the Abbey from about 664, until he took up the life of a hermit on Inner Farne in 676.