Vashara Chamal, an Arab thoroughbred stallion. When Cuthbert subsequently meets another angel (see The Man Who Left No Footprints) his vistor comes on foot, and is not so obviously from another world. That, Bede notes, was how it was when Abraham entertained three men without knowing they were angels. But on this earlier occasion, there was much less mystery about the White Rider and his magnificent stallion.
Part 1 of 2
‘WHOSOEVER hath,’ said Christ, ‘to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.’ In other words, St Bede tells us, to him who has determination and loves virtue, more and more wonderful things will happen. That was true of Cuthbert. As a child he had spoken with an angel, and when he was still a young man it happened again.
Cuthbert was outside, lying on a bed in the fresh air hoping to get some relief from a severe leg pain, when up rode a horseman, dressed all in white. He stopped by the litter, but Cuthbert did not get up. ‘Is this’ inquired the rider with mock severity ‘how we treat our guests?’
‘Alas yes,’ replied Cuthbert. ‘For my sins, I have a swollen knee, which no doctor has been able to relieve. Otherwise I would do whatever lay in my power.’ Straightaway the stranger slipped down from his mount (a horse almost as noble as his rider) and came over to examine Cuthbert’s knee.
Part Two
Tobias healing the blindness of his father Tobit, by an anonymous seventeenth-century Dutch artist. The cure was suggested to Tobias by Azarias, who claimed to be a relative but turned out to be Raphael (‘the healing of God’), who together with Michael, Gabriel and Uriel is one of the seven archangels. Like the angel who visited Cuthbert, Raphael healed Tobit with a poultice applied to the affected part.
THE white rider gently explored the swollen knee. ‘Boil some wheaten flour in milk,’ he pronounced at length, ‘and apply the poultice warm to the swelling, and you will be well.’ Then he remounted, and rode away. Cuthbert followed his prescription to the letter, and in a few days was completely cured.
It was obvious, Bede continued, that the white-robed stranger had been an angel. Cuthbert knew well the story of Tobit, whom the archangel Raphael cured of blindness with a poultice of fish gall;* and as for an angel riding a horse, the reader should recall how in about 178 BC the Syrian legate Heliodorus confiscated from the Temple money intended for widows and orphans.* A horse appeared, with a terrible rider upon him, and together with two other young men ‘comely in apparel’ they scourged Heliodorus almost to death; but afterwards they sent him to the High Priest, Onias III, and by his prayers he was restored to health.
See Tobit 11:5-16.
See 2 Maccabees 3.
