IN 1537, Henry VIII’s experts Dr Ley, Dr Henley and Dr Blythman travelled to Durham Cathedral to superintend another demolition: the shrine of St Cuthbert.
When the goldsmith – someone had to assay the jewellery – broke open Cuthbert’s coffin, he saw to his astonishment that Cuthbert looked to have been buried only a matter of days. His face showed a fortnight’s growth of beard, his limbs were supple, and his priestly garments were soft and fresh. Yet all had lain there for nearly nine centuries.*
Dr Henley down below was calling impatiently for the bones (and Cuthbert’s sapphire-crowned ring) to be tossed out, but Ley cut him short. ‘If you will not believe me’ said Ley, a little shaken, ‘come up and see him yourself!’ The poor goldsmith noticed he had wounded one of the saint’s legs, and wept.*
After some delay, Bishop Tunstall secured permission to reinter the body in the same spot, marked today by a marble slab inscribed with a single word: Cvthbertvs.*
‘There’ being the coffin, made in 698. The coffin itself had travelled extensively: from Lindisfarne in 875, it went to Chester-le-Street, then Ripon a century later, and finally Durham in about 1020. During this period, it was opened countless times; one Chester monk used comb the saint’s hair.
Apparently, a bruise showed. A contemporary, Archdeacon Harpsfield, tells us that a blow “fell upon the body of the Saint itself, and wounded the leg, and of the wound the flesh soon gave a manifest sign.”
There remains some controversy over whether Tunstall actually did so. The grave was reopened on May 17th, 1827, and all parties agree that it was so clean that nothing had ever decayed there. The Protestant view is that despite the eyewitness testimony the story above is false, and Cuthbert was never incorrupt, his dry bones being reburied by Tunstall. The alternative is that Tunstall did not replace Cuthbert’s incorrupt body in the shrine after all, and that to this day it lies in some unknown spot. Back in the old shrine, some bones (including the remains of several children) together with various relics taken from the original grave were buried under a headstone, name-side down, marked Richardus Heswell monachus.
Précis
In 1337, the systematic plunder of saints’ shrines in the Reformation reached St Cuthbert at Durham. However, on this occasion there were no dusty bones, but a whole body untouched by 850 years of burial. Henry VIII’s officials were unsure what action to take, so the Bishop of Durham decided to reinter rather than destroy the precious remains. (56 / 60 words)