Lindisfarne Priory is in many ways the archetypal medieval monastery. Its links to the relics of the revered Saint Cuthbert (and therefore with the early history of Christianity in Britain), its isolated position on a near-island that’s cut off from the mainland at high tide, its ruinous state today – all these are the kind of things we think about when we think about early monasticism in England. The original monastery was founded in 635, when Northumbrian king Oswald granted Lindisfarne to Aidan, who made it the centre for converting Northumbrians to Christianity. In the 670s, Cuthbert, then prior of Melrose Abbey, was invited to Lindisfarne and became famous for his saintly way of life, his wisdom and as a healer. When he was canonised, his tomb in the church at Lindisfarne became the centre of a cult. The influence of the Lindisfarne monastery grew, but after a Viking raid in 793, the monks removed his body and other relics to a safer place and the monastery was abandoned – at first Cuthbert’s shrine was at Chester le Street, later at Durham. Here, it’s said, the wheeled cart carrying his body could not be moved any further and those accompanying the coffin interpreted this as the will of the saint expressing itself.* At Durham his relics remain. As a result, Durham prospered, the present cathedral church was begun in 1093, and Cuthbert’s shrine was enhanced by a large collection of other holy relics, including a rib of Edward the Confessor and a tooth of St Cecilia.†
However, eventually monks returned to Lindisfarne and built a new church. When they did so, they designed its architecture to reflect that of Durham. Durham cathedral’s magnificent Norman nave has tall columns with bold geometric designs cut into them – amongst these are chevron patterns and flutes; there are also piers with multiple vertical shafts around them. Although the piers at Lindisfarne are much smaller than those at Durham and are now greatly eroded, you can still see similar designs on them – a pier with chevrons is clearly visible in my photograph, alongside another with multiple shafts. The stump of a further pier with a fluted design exists to the west of these. These architectural flourishes were a way of paying homage to the cathedral at Durham, by then in effect the senior or mother church of Lindisfarne, and of acknowledging the importance of the place that housed the remains of Cuthbert, so deeply revered by the monks of Lindisfarne.
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* Apparently, when anyone tried to move the body beyond Northumberland, similar things happed – at one point it was put on a boat bound for Ireland, only for a storm to blow the vessel back.
† There is a good account of the story of St Cuthbert’s remains and of the relics at the shrine at Durham in Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Modern Europe (Yale University Press, 2011).
