Introduction

Summary

St Cuthbert still commands a devotion in the north of England. Every year in the warmer months, pilgrim walkers take their shoes off to cross the tidal causeway from the mainland, south of Berwick, to Lindisfarne, following a rough path across the wet sands from post to post and passing the raised wooden refuge designed to shelter anyone caught out by the rising tides. When they arrive, they can visit the remains of the medieval priory, see a small exhibition about the monastery’s Anglo-Saxon foundation and enter the parish church built from a sandstone so pockmarked by the wind and salt that it has become a sort of honeycomb. Two monumental wood sculptures of Cuthbert by the contemporary sculptor Fenwick Lawson – the saint seated in meditation, in the ruined cloister, and his coffin borne by six bearers, in the parish church – extend the experience of sanctity into the present day. Artists and devotional writers are still making marks and forming representations of the saint, just as they always have done.