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Biography

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Eadberht, whose name also appears as Eadbert or Eadbeorht, was bishop of Lindisfarne in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria in the late seventh century. The principal contemporary authority for his life is the Venerable Bede, who refers to him in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People and in the prose Life of Saint Cuthbert. Nothing is recorded of his parentage, birthplace, or year of birth. He belonged to the monastic community on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, founded by Saint Aidan from Iona. After the Synod of Whitby in 664 that community had accepted the Roman dating of Easter and related Roman customs while remaining a strongly monastic church. When Saint Cuthbert died in 687, Eadberht was chosen as his successor and was consecrated bishop in 688, holding the see for ten years.

Bede describes Eadberht as a man of unusual learning in the Scriptures and of outstanding generosity in almsgiving. Each year he withdrew for the whole of Lent and for Advent to a small island near Lindisfarne, living in solitude and returning to the main monastery only for the principal festivals. During his episcopate he improved the wooden church of Saint Peter on Lindisfarne by covering it with lead, an act Bede records as evidence of his care for the church.

In March 698, eleven years after Cuthbert’s death, the community, with Eadberht’s consent, opened Cuthbert’s grave in order to translate the relics to a more honourable place above ground. The body was found incorrupt. Eadberht himself died a few weeks later, on 6 May 698. He was buried in the tomb from which Cuthbert’s body had just been taken, while Cuthbert’s remains were placed in a light wooden chest in the sanctuary. The two bishops were thus associated in death as they had been in the government of Lindisfarne.

Eadberht’s relics did not remain on the island indefinitely. In 875, under pressure from Scandinavian raids, the monks left Lindisfarne, taking the coffin of Saint Cuthbert, which by then also contained the bones of Eadberht, of his successor Eadfrith, of Bishop Ethelwold, and the head of King Oswald. After a period of wandering the community settled first at Chester-le-Street and finally at Durham, where a cathedral was later built. Eadberht’s relics have therefore been associated with those of Cuthbert at Durham since the later Anglo-Saxon period. He has been honoured as a saint from the time of his death; his feast is kept on 6 May. No papal act of canonization is recorded, his cult belonging to the age of local recognition of sanctity. As a monk-bishop of the Lindisfarne community he lived in celibacy; no spouse or children are mentioned in any surviving source.

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