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.
Part 1 of 2
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.”
Précis
Twelfth-century monk Reginald told how a knight who was in Durham on business had called into the Abbey to pray at the shrine of the famous wonder-worker St Cuthbert. For days, this Ranulf had been overwhelmed by a severe toothache, but no sooner had he touched the saint’s shrine with his swollen cheek than the pain vanished, never to return. (60 / 60 words)
Part Two
A lame man prays beside the coffin of St Cuthbert in Durham Abbey, and one of the monks reads or chants from a book. The miniature comes from a copy of the Life of St Cuthbert by St Bede (?672-735), a copy made while Reginald himself was a monk there. Cuthbert (?635-687) was, very reluctantly, Bishop of Lindisfarne in ancient Northumbria; Bede recorded several eyewitness accounts of miracles in Cuthbert’s lifetime, and more were attested at his burial place as early as 698. When the Vikings sacked Lindisfarne in 793, the monks took Cuthbert’s body with them; in 995, he found a permanent home at Durham. Despite hundreds of years, hundreds of miles and countless openings of his casket, his body never showed any signs of decay.
A FEW days later, half the infected tooth fell out, leaving the other half firmly attached to a healthy root; as he turned the fragment over in his fingers, Ranulf was taken aback to see not a jagged break but the regular marks of some serrated tool. Ranulf at once called for his horse and rode back to the Abbey, where he presented the custodian of the shrine with the excised portion of tooth. The custodian retold all this afterwards, just as he heard it, and could not restrain his tears. It is quite amazing, how Cuthbert surgically removed half the tooth like a skilled physician, leaving the healthy part in place.
All this shows clearly that whatever we ask from him in sincere faith, in no doubt of his mercy, he will obtain for us. What a favour we enjoy here in our land! — to have such a father and patron, one who knows how to treat the pains of the body as well as the distempers of the soul.
Précis
A few days after his cure at St Cuthbert’s shrine, a loose piece of Ranulf’s infected tooth fell out, not broken, but bearing the marks of some serrated tool. How fortunate we are, exclaimed Reginald after hearing the tale from the custodian of the shrine, to have a saint who takes care of the body as well as the soul. (60 / 60 words)
