Locating St Cuthbert in Post-Conquest Northumbria: Symeon, Durham Cathedral Priory, and the Sacred Topography of an Anglo-Norman Cult

Abstract

In 1083, a priory of Benedictine monks was founded at Durham Cathedral, in the process displacing a college of secular canons that originated with the cathedral’s foundation in 995. In the process, the new priory took possession of the body and cult of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. In the early 12th century, an ambitious ideological project to legitimise the new priory and their claims to both Cuthbert’s power and his historical legacy were underway, foregrounded by Symeon of Durham, blending and reinterpreting the ancient past and the near present to present a unified history that was realised in the landscape of Northern England, including Cuthbert’s own Lindisfarne. This paper will examine the historical and archaeological evidence for the priory’s activities in the late 11th to early 12th century, and how they represent an alternative model for cult promotion and institutional legitimisation to the shrine and its corporeal remains.