The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Bonser, Wilfrid, 1887-1972.
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    writing on the translation of the relics in 1104, 417 years after St. Cuthbert’s death, testifies that the body was still uncorrupted, and says that he himself had handled it. The body was examined for the fourth time in 1537 or 1538 at the dissolution of the greater monasteries, and, on the contemporary evidence of Harpsfield, found to be still uncorrupt. It then lay in its broken coffin, and it is possible that corruption took place as a result of this exposure to the air. In order to save it from Thomas Cromwell, it was then buried by the prior and monks of Durham in the cathedral—probably in 1542. The almost complete skeleton of the saint was found and replaced at the opening of his tomb in March 1899. ‘There can be no doubt on scientific grounds’, says Henry Gee, ‘that the body of the saint, emaciated by fastings and rigour, had dried up, but had never perished.’ 1 But besides the five saints mentioned by William of Malmesbury as being uncorrupted after death, there are many others of whom records remain. Mention has already been made of the uncorrupted right arm and hand of St. Oswald, and the testimony of Bede 1 2 and of Hugo Candidus has been given. 3 Simeon of Durham also, writing early in the twelfth century, says that Swartebrand, a fellow monk of Durham but lately dead, had frequently testified as an eyewitness to the hand and arm remaining uncorrupt. 4 St. /Ethelberga, a daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, and a sister of SS. Etheldrida and Wihtburh, was abbess of the monas tery of Brie. Seven years after her death Bede says that the monks translated her body: ‘on opening her tomb, they found the body as free from decay as it had been from the corruption of carnal concupiscence, and having washed it again and put on other clothes, they removed it to the church of St. Stephen’. 5 A similar story is told by Bede of St. Fursey. His body was taken up after twenty-seven years from the porch of the church in Peronne in which it had been buried, so that it might be reinterred near the altar. 1 Victoria County History, Durham, vol. ii, p. 11. For modern accounts see J. C. Wall, Shrines of British Saints, Antiquary’s Books, pp. 176-207, and C. F. Battiscombe, ‘The relics of St. Cuthbert’, Trans. Architect, and Archaeol. Soc. Durham and Northumberland, 1937, viii. 43-79. 2 Bede, Eccles. Hist. iii. 6. 3 Seep. 185. 4 Simeon of Durham, History of the Church of Durham, ch. ii (end). 5 Bede, Eccles. Hist. iii. 8.