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  • Chapter 6 - Delimiting Sanctity in Two Meditations from Farne Island: The Exortacio ad contemplacionem and the Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne, 1210–1370

  • Christiania Whitehead
  • Book:
    The Afterlife of St Cuthbert
    Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 139-172

  • Summary

    This chapter explores two texts produced in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the Exortacio ad contemplacionem, and the Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne. It argues that the Exortacio retains thematic ties with the topographical interests of Geoffrey’s Vita Bartholomaei, but exchanges its earlier assertions of heroic presence for a contemporary stance of abjection and deprivation. There is no efficacious saint in this poem, only the unremitting hostility of the natural elements. By contrast, the Meditaciones disregards the physical environment altogether. Turning rapturously to Christ and his prophets and apostles in their bibical milieu, it advances Cuthbertine asceticism to previously unscaled heights, comprising one of the most overlooked landmarks in late medieval contemplative composition. Nonetheless, the text’s approach to the Anglo-Saxon saint who has given Farne its contemplative potential remains uneasy, and the chapter demonstrates that Cuthbert is substantially delimited in force in favour of a pantheon of biblical saints.