David Willem - St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death

Here you can read online David Willem - St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2013, publisher: Sacristy Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Book:
St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death
Author:
David Willem
Publisher:
Sacristy Press
Genre:
Books / Detective and thriller
Year:
2013
Rating:
3 / 5
Favourites:
Add to favourites
Your mark:
- 60
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5

Description
Author's other books
Similar books

St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The miracle of St Cuthberts incorrupt corpse has been the subject of much fascination since his death over thirteen-hundred years ago, inspiring pilgrims, monks, and even the construction of Durham Cathedral itself. Throughout the centuries, Cuthberts coffin has been opened on six occasions. For the first time, accounts of these openings have been brought together in a single volume, providing a unique history of the saint from his death to the present day.

Including details of his death and burial, the moment when monks first discovered his remains to be incorrupt, and the most recent exhumation of his relics in 1899, David Willem brings alive the mystery and intrigue of the life of Cuthberts corpse, and tries to answer questions such as, When did the corpse decay? and, Is Cuthbert still buried in Durham Cathedral?

Elegant, accessible, and movingly written.
- Giles E. M. Gasper, Associate Director, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University

In Christian traditions, curiosity, piety, and awe almost inevitably frame that sensed affinity our own embodiment finds with holy bodies. St Cuthberts body is no exception as this book shows in tracing varieties of hope, faith, and experience down the Christian centuries.
- Prof. Douglas J. Davies, Director, Centre for Death and Life Studies, Durham University

David Willem: author's other books

Who wrote St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

St Cuthberts Corpse

A Life After Death

David Willem

Sacristy Press
PO Box 612, Durham, DH1 9HT
www.sacristy.co.uk

Published in 2013 by Sacristy Press, Durham
Kindle: ISBN 978-1-908381-40-8
ePub: ISBN 978-1-908381-65-1

The right of David Willem to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, documentary, film or in any other format without prior written permission of the publisher.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher would be glad to hear from them.

Sacristy Limited, registered in England & Wales, number 7565667

Table of Contents

Preface

This started life as a travel book. Like many people who know Durham, I was aware of the story of the founding of the city: how the monks fled Lindisfarne after being attacked by Vikings; how they took with them a coffin containing the miraculously incorrupt corpse of their former bishop, St Cuthbert; and how, as they passed the still-forested site that would become Durham, the cart with the coffin on it got stuck fast in the mire. It would only move when they took the decision to follow a milkmaid and her lost cow towards Dunholmethe monks took this as a sign from St Cuthbert that he wanted his corpse to rest there.

I knew there was a record of this journey from Lindisfarne to Durham, and I thought it might be interesting to follow the route, comparing the world of the beginning of the third millennium with the end of the first. But, as I researched the possibility, I began to realise that there was hardly any detail to compare and that the actual route the monks took was more or less conjectural. At the same time, I started to realise that there was a second, much bigger story obscuring the first: the journey of the corpse through time.

It was in AD 698, eleven years after Cuthberts death, that the monks first discovered that his body had not rotteda miracle that was recorded by Bede, the first historian of the English people. But it intrigued me to learn that this was not the only time that the corpse was examined. On five other occasions, over 1,200 years, the possessors of the corpse took it upon themselves to open the coffin. It happened around 934, after the Viking invasion, in order to mark the resurgence of the Anglo-Saxon kings; it happened in 1104, following the Norman conquest; it happened in 1539, during the dissolution of the monasteries; it happened in 1827, as a part of the Protestant enlightenment; and it happened most recently in 1899, at the dawning of our own democratic, scientific age. This is a list that reads like the chapters in a childs history book from the middle of the twentieth century.

It was almost as if, every few generations, as the axis of the political, religious or intellectual world shifted around them, the people who possessed the corpse felt a compulsion to revisit itto examine it, to associate themselves with its power, and to affirm what remained. And, on almost every occasion the body was disturbed, someone kept a record. Sometimes there are two.

This quickly became the subject of the book. I was excited to lay before the people of the north east, and all those who love Durham, a new perspective on the history of the city and the Cathedral: how both were founded on the miracle of an incorrupt corpse and how the condition of that corpse continued to matter, right into modern times. I soon realised it was also an opportunity to bring together all the accounts of the openings of the coffin into a single volume for the first time.

Beyond this, I have added almost nothing.

Acknowledgements

It was a challenge to come to some understanding of all the material that is available, and it was hard work trying to marshal it all into a coherent narrative. But, as much of the material is not my own, I need to thank many people I have never met, while making it very clear that they bear no responsibility for what follows.

First, I need to thank the late C.F. Battiscombe, a man whose given names I do not even know, but whose monumental, completist Relics of Saint Cuthbert is a volume so substantial that it can only be carried to and from Durhams Clayport Library in a bag-for-life, or a hod. And I have had it on loan on and off for most of the last three years.

Then I need to thank Professor David Rollason. I have read quite a bit of his work, and this has made me so aware of his focused, concentrated intelligence that, despite his being very much alive, I have found it easier not to meet him. I just know that if I did, his fierce, forensic brilliance would reveal the chasms of my vast ignorance of, well, everything he has dedicated his life to. All I can say is that I have enjoyed filling the very, very bottom of some of those chasms with a tiny bit of his scholarship.

Then there are the people whom I havent met whose work has influenced perhaps only a few sentences in this book, but who nevertheless revolutionised my understanding of what was sayable. They are Dr Elizabeth Coatsworth for her essay on Cuthberts golden-garnet cross, and Professor Richard Bailey for his research into the nineteenth-century openings of Cuthberts grave (both of which can be found in Bonner, Rollason and Stancliffes Saint Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community). I also need to thank the late Geoffrey Moorhouse, whose The Last Office helped me understand how the dissolution of the monasteries played itself out in Durham. Finally, in the unmet category, I need to thank Dr Sam Lucy for saying something on the phone that made a huge difference: that three of the other four pectoral crosses that have been found were associated with women.

Then there are the people I have had the nerve to meet and who were much more generous with their thoughts and contacts than I had any right to expect. They were Roger Norris, the former Chapter Librarian at the Cathedral, who helped me scope out the project; Gabriel Sewell, Head of Collections at the Cathedral, who found me a piece of the original Anglo-Saxon coffin to examine (it looks, by the way, like chocolate brownie and smells of old, damp spices); Lilian Groves, the chief guide at the Cathedral, and Seif El Rashidi, coordinator of Durham World Heritage Site, for talking me though everything I couldnt understand; and Dr Giles Gasper for suggesting I contact the publishers and for reading some of the manuscript. I also spent a happy hour with Professor Richard Gameson trying to persuade him that the strap line for the 2013 Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition in Durham should be something like The Book that Made England. I imagine his hour was more frustrating, but he was both charming and incisive in his rebuttal, and I can only say I hope he has forgiven me.

I also want to ask forgiveness of some important dead people. I have spent the last couple of years in the company of the few people who may have actually seen Cuthberts corpse: Fowler, Brown, Kitchin, Raine, Bates, Reginald, Symeon and a couple of anonymous monks. Because my mind has been bending on the same material, I have become attuned to their nuances and little evasions and they have ended up feeling to me a bit like family membersdead ones. So I want to be forgiven, both for this presumption, and for the liberties I have taken re-paragraphing much of their writing. I even re-paragraphed Bede. I certainly would not like it if he re-paragraphed me.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death»

Look at similar books to St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Telmidzh Pauell

The Corpse in the Crystal

Ellis Peters

One Corpse Too Many

Sinan Antoon

The Corpse Washer

Bruce Beasley

The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems

Christine Quigley

The Corpse: A History

Vicki León

How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition

John Troyer

Technologies of the Human Corpse

Prophet Muḥammad

Muhammads grave: death rites and the making of Islamic society

Elam Jacqueline

Corpse encounters: an aesthetics of death

Dufferwiel

Durham: Over 1, 000 Years of History and Legend

Gilles

Colder Than Death

Penny Colman

Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial

Reviews about «St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death»

Discussion, reviews of the book St Cuthberts Corpse: A Life After Death and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.