Ranulf’s Tooth
As he sat in his guest room at Durham Abbey, Ranulf de Capella could think of nothing but finding someone to rid him of his painful toothache.
1150
King Henry II 1154-1189
© mattbuck, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
The north side of Durham Cathedral, photographed from the railway station. The complex was smaller in Reginald’s day but St Cuthbert had been there since 1104, and Reginald walked and prayed in the Quire, Nave, Chapter House and low-roofed Galilee Chapel (just visible at this end of the church) much as they are today; though in his time the interior was a blaze of colour, the stonework picked out in geometric shapes, painted with flowers or dressed with icons of angels and saints. The extended eastern end with the Chapel of the Nine Altars surmounted by the Rose Window came a little later, as did all the towers.
Introduction
This post is number 23 in the series Miracles of St Cuthbert
Reginald of Durham was a monk at the Benedictine Abbey in Durham from about 1153 until his death some forty years later. The Abbey church housed the coffin and body (untouched by time, despite being regularly opened to view) of seventh-century miracle-working bishop St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and from the steady stream of pilgrims who came to visit the shrine Reginald collected a fund of amazing tales.
paraphrased
RANULF de Capella, a knight, had suffered for a long time from extremely severe tooth pain and an ugly red swelling in his cheek. No matter what medicines or charms he tried, he could not cure, soothe or even take the edge off it.
As it happened, other business took him into Durham, and he lodged in the Abbey precincts, away from the main church. There he sat and thought of his painful affliction; indeed, it would not let him think of anything else.
Just before he was due to leave, it came to Ranulf that he might go home easier in his mind if he had visited the tomb of St Cuthbert. So he crossed over to the Abbey church, climbed the steps to the shrine and, pressing the painful cheek against a back corner of Cuthbert’s glorious reliquary,* poured out his entreaties to him. Instantly, the relentless, intolerable pain vanished. Full of joy, Ranulf tumbled down the steps and out to his waiting horse, and galloped home with his news, his swollen cheek subsiding with every mile.
* Judging by his name, Ranulf de Capella was a knight from a well-connected Anglo-Norman family; one Richard de Capella had been Bishop of Hereford from 1121 to 1127. That such a man should turn for help to Cuthbert, a saint from among the vanquished English, would not be lost on Reginald or his readers.
* The shrine was broken up and sold off in 1537 during the English Reformation, under the watchful eyes of Henry VIII’s chief government advisers on religious matters Dr Ley, Dr Henley and Dr Blythman: see Cvthbertvs. In 1593, an anonymous monk of Durham sat down to recall the Abbey church as it had been in happier times. The shrine occupied its current place in a small, raised, square platform of stone behind the High Altar, “in the midst whereof his sacred shrine was exalted with most curious workmanship of fine and costly marble all limned and gilded with gold; having four seats or places convenient under the shrine for the pilgrims or laymen [‘lame or sick men’ according to one manuscript] sitting on their knees to lean and rest on, in time of their devout offerings and fervent prayers to God and holy St Cuthbert, for his miraculous relief and succour which being never wanting made the shrine to be so richly invested, that it was estimated to be one of the most sumptuous monuments in all England, so great were the offerings and jewels that were bestowed upon it, and no less the miracles that were done by it [‘wrought at it’], even in these latter days.”
