The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, Christiania Whitehead's rich and engaging study of the textual tradition associated with Saint Cuthbert, moves chronologically, in an introduction and seven chapters, from texts associated with Cuthbert's early cult to fifteenth-century Middle English treatments of his life. Whitehead reads the literature associated with Cuthbert's cult alongside contemporary local, regional, and national politics. Whitehead covers a large amount of material, which she effectively marshals by focusing attention on a cluster of key themes, such as place and asceticism, which move in and out of focus in the numerous texts under discussion. Whitehead deftly examines multiple refashionings of Cuthbert in response to contemporary preoccupations in both Latin and the vernacular, finding commonalities and connections. Whitehead discerns a materialist aim in the textual tradition associated with Saint Cuthbert, focused on the control of space, while simultaneously resisting the construction of a grand narrative of the tradition. Whitehead does not analyze every treatment of Cuthbert's life, nor every facet of each text, and this selective approach allows for nuanced close readings together with nimble analysis of trends over time. Whitehead is persuasive yet also raises new questions and leaves space for the readers to think for themselves: the result is a compelling study that will stimulate further work.
Whitehead handles canonical texts incisively but relatively succinctly, with the greatest space given to the less familiar materials analyzed in later chapters. In the first chapter, Whitehead positions eighth-century works about Cuthbert in dialogue with contemporary Wilfridian controversies, and she examines their representation of asceticism. In chapter 2, Whitehead analyzes the Historia de sancto Cuthberto to show Cuthbert's community exploiting the power vacuum created by the loss of the Northumbrian royal house, and fashioning Cuthbert as a vigorous and implacable defender of land and borders. Chapter 3 deals with texts produced in the decades following the Norman conquest: Symeon's Libellus de exordio, the Old English poem Durham, and the Capitula de miraculis et translationibus sancti Cuthberti. Whitehead argues that Cuthbert's community used representations of their saint to manage conflicting histories and elites, critique contemporary mores, and protect their monastic character; the texts respond, at times rather less than obliquely, to local and regional disagreements, and endorse Anglo-Norman Durham as inheritor of Cuthbert's spiritual legacy. Whitehead highlights Symeon's linking of Bede and Cuthbert, so the hagiographer and saint benefit from mutual association, and she draws attention to the depiction of Cuthbert as energetic enforcer of boundaries. In the next chapter, dealing with De mirabilibus and Reginald of Durham's Libellus de admirandis, Whitehead discusses the reemergence of asceticism and nature miracles as important parts of the tradition in the late twelfth century. In Whitehead's analysis, Reginald emerges as a shrewd writer, carefully shaping the miracles in his collection to serve his community. New saints’ cults are additional threats to be adroitly managed by Reginald, who marks areas of regional saintly influence by ensuring that Thomas of Canterbury and the much more local Godric of Finchale endorse Durham as a pilgrimage center. From Whitehead's productive attention to both literary style and historical context, the authors of these texts are revealed as pragmatic and practical, engaged with worldly events even as they produce works asserting the greater power of the spiritual.
Asceticism remains in the foreground in chapter 5, wherein Whitehead examines the somewhat fraught textual attempts to enfold the hermit Godric of Finchale into the service of the Benedictine community, alongside Bartholomew of Farne, a more model Cuthbertine figure. Whitehead shows Durham's Benedictine community actively constructing their own version of asceticism built around Cuthbert, with an emphasis on moderation and community. The chapter ends with analysis of the so-called Irish life of Cuthbert, which radically rewrites Cuthbert's origins, and was produced, Whitehead argues, for a Cistercian audience in southern Scotland before being taken up by the Durham community. Whitehead persuasively reads the Bedfordshire hermitage episode as an interpolation, due to its tellingly Benedictine interest in boundaries. Next, in a chapter that will be important reading for those interested in English mysticism, Whitehead examines two contemplative texts that originate in a Cuthbertine milieu: the thirteenth-century Exortacio ad contemplacionem and the fourteenth-century Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne. Whitehead suggests the Meditaciones respond to the altars in the chapel on Farne and emphasizes the importance of that contemplative space to their composition, but also shows how the Monk's theology resists regional anchoring. Whitehead draws attention to the dynamic and dramatic structure of the Meditaciones, and the sense of community they convey despite the intense interiority. Yet, the Monk's deeply affective contemplation, shaped by Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux, emerges in tension with Durham's rather more practical Benedictine tradition, within which Cuthbert, the subject of the incomplete final meditation, remains rooted.
In chapter 7, both Cuthbert and the specific places and spaces associated with him return to prominence. Alongside examination of epitomes of Cuthbert's life, Whitehead identifies a standard sequence for presenting Cuthbert's narrative in the Durham community in the later medieval period, beginning with material from the Irish life, before moving through Bede's Prose Vita to miracles and community history; this arrangement is seen in the Middle English Metrical Life, the principal focus of this chapter. Whitehead's analysis of the Metrical Life offers intriguing insights into the reception of Bede, relations with Scotland and lay elites, and how the conflicting elements of Cuthbert's syncretic tradition were discussed within his own community in the fifteenth century. Whitehead's work will do much to draw scholarly attention to a text that emerges here as unjustly overlooked.
Whitehead's detailed and insightful monograph encourages the reader to think anew about familiar materials, and she brings neglected works to scholarly attention. Whitehead's approach demonstrates the value of combining literary analysis with attention to historical circumstance to examine the ever-shifting traditions surrounding saints. The Afterlife of St Cuthbert will be of interest to those who work on texts, places, and traditions associated with Cuthbert, and the reception of both pre- and post-Conquest saints more generally.
