QI The Book of the Dead

wandering the wilds as a missionary in the Celtic mode, but was also a pious and obedient member of a Benedictine monastery, committed to the authority of Rome. His time at Lindisfarne was stressful – Bede writes of him being ‘worn down by bitter insults’ – but he managed to win his brothers over by praying harder and longer than anyone else. And his piety was matched by a sunny temperament, which meant he never held a grudge or returned an insult. He gave the credit for his behaviour to the Holy Spirit, working within him and giving him ‘the strength to smile at the attacks from without’. Once, having stayed up for several nights in a row praying, he had finally fallen asleep when a novice woke him up again on a trivial matter. He waved away the apologies saying: ‘No one candisplease me by waking me out of my sleep, but, on the contrary, it gives me pleasure; for, by rousing me from inactivity, he enables me to do or think of something useful.’
    Having persuaded the monks to submit to Rome, Cuthbert withdrew from the daily life of the community and retired to an isolated cell where he spent his days in constant prayer and meditation. In 676 a vision commanded him to leave Lindisfarne altogether and become a hermit on the inhospitable island of Inner Farne, two miles off the Northumbrian coast. It was a life of extreme austerity: just him and the elements and thousands of pairs of guillemots, puffins, and eider ducks. With his own hands, out of stone, he built a two-roomed house surrounded by a high wall. This meant he could spend much of his time praying outdoors, ‘with only the sky to look at, so that eyes and thoughts might be kept from wandering and inspired to seek for higher things’. He was soon inundated by visits from pilgrims. News of the ‘Wonder Worker of Britain’ had spread and there was a constant stream of visitors asking for healing and counselling. As Bede describes it: ‘Not one left unconsoled. No one had to carry back the burdens he came with.’ In return, Cuthbert asked only that his uninvited guests respect the local animals, and he absolutely forbade the hunting of all nesting birds: probably the world’s first piece of wildlife conservation legislation. In his honour, the locals still call eider ducks ‘Cuddy ducks’ there today.
    As the years passed, Cuthbert grew ever more isolated. He withdrew further into his sanctuary, communicating with the outside world through a small window and only emerging to have his feet washed by fellow monks on Maundy Thursday, in remembrance of Christ doing the same before the Last Supper. It was the one time in the whole year he removed his leather boots,and the monks noticed that his shins bore long calluses caused by the endless hours of kneeling in prayer.
    In 684 Cuthbert was elected bishop of Lindisfarne. After almost a decade as a hermit, he was reluctant to accept. Only after a personal visit by Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, was he persuaded to leave his refuge. For two years, he threw himself back into missionary work: travelling all over the diocese, preaching the virtues of frugality and prayer, healing the sick, performing the occasional miracle and taking ‘delight in preserving the rigours of the monastery amidst the pomp of the world’. By the end of 686 he’d had enough. A premonition of his impending death led him to return to Inner Farne and prepare for the end.
    In the last year of Cuthbert’s life, a monk called Herefrith visited him on his island and was taken aback by the level of his self-denial. The saint showed him his weekly rations, which consisted in their entirety of five onions. St Cuthbert told him: ‘Whenever my mouth was parched or burned with excessive hunger or thirst I refreshed and cooled myself with these.’ Only one of the onions had been touched. Cuthbert had successfully managed to fight off the devils of luxurious sensuality – though he confessed that ‘my assailants have never tempted me so sorely as they have during the past five days’. He died quietly, stretching his arms upwards and commending his soul to God. The monks who were with him lighted two beacons, telling their brothers over the water at Lindisfarne that their beloved bishop had passed away.
    Cuthbert was fifty-three years old. He had always wanted to be buried where he lay, by his little stone house on his lonely island, near his friends the otters, eagles and seabirds but, shortly before he died, he gave the monks