He was a monk, bishop and hermit, associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria,[b] today in northern England and southern Scotland.

Edwin had been baptised by Paulinus of York, a Roman who had come with the Gregorian mission from Rome, but his successor Oswald also invited Irish monks from Iona to found the monastery at Lindisfarne where Cuthbert was to spend much of his life.

Cuthbert himself, though educated in the Celtic tradition, followed his mentor Eata in accepting the Roman forms, apparently without difficulty, after the Synod of Whitby in 664.

[13][14][15][c] The earliest biographies concentrate on the many miracles that accompanied even his early life, but he was evidently indefatigable as a travelling priest spreading the Christian message to remote villages, and also well able to impress royalty and nobility.

[16][17] In Cuthbert's time the Kingdom of Northumbria included, in modern terms, northern England and southern Scotland on an intermittent and fluid basis as far north as the Firth of Forth.

After the Synod of Whitby, Cuthbert seems to have accepted the Roman customs, and his old abbot Eata called on him to introduce them at Lindisfarne as prior there.

His asceticism was complemented by his charm and generosity to the poor, and his reputation for gifts of healing and insight led many people to consult him, gaining him the name of "Wonder Worker of Britain".

[d] In 995, the "community of Cuthbert" founded and settled at Durham, guided by what they thought was the will of the saint, as the wagon carrying his coffin back to Chester-le-Street after a temporary flight from a Danish invasion became stuck hard on the road.

The inhabitants of the Palatinate became known as the haliwerfolc, which roughly translates as "people of the saint", and Cuthbert gained a reputation as fiercely protective of his domain.

[29] For example, there is a story that at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, the Prior of the Abbey at Durham received a vision of Cuthbert, ordering him to take the corporal cloth of the saint and raise it on a spear point near the battlefield as a banner.

A modern interpretation of the Banner, designed by Northumbria University academic Fiona Raeside-Elliott and embroidered by local textile artist Ruth O'Leary, is now on display at the saint's shrine in Durham Cathedral.

Cuthbert's shrine at Durham Cathedral was a major pilgrimage site throughout the Middle Ages, until stripped by Henry VIII's commissioners in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

According to Bede's life of the saint, when Cuthbert's sarcophagus was opened eleven years after his death, his body was found to have been perfectly preserved or incorrupt.

[31] This apparent miracle led to the steady growth of Cuthbert's posthumous cultus, to the point where he became the most popular saint of Northern England and Southern Scotland.

In 875 the Danes took the monastery of Lindisfarne and the monks fled, carrying St Cuthbert's body with them around various places including Melrose.

[22] After seven years' wandering it found a resting place at the still existing St Cuthbert's church in Chester-le-Street until 995, when another Danish invasion led to its removal to Ripon.

[33] In 1069 Bishop Æthelwine attempted to transport Cuthbert's body to Lindisfarne to escape from King William at the start of the Harrying of the North.

[35] Also recovered much later were a set of vestments of 909–916, made of Byzantine silk with a "Nature Goddess" pattern, with a stole and decoration in extremely rare Anglian embroidery or opus anglicanum, which had been deposited in his tomb by King Æthelstan (r. 927–939) on a pilgrimage while Cuthbert's shrine was at Chester-le-Street.

When the coffin was last inspected on 17 May 1827, a 'Saxon' square cross of gold, embellished with garnets, in the characteristic splayed shape, used later as the heraldic emblem of St Cuthbert in the arms of Durham and Newcastle universities, was found.

The Newcastle University arms are blazoned Azure, a Cross of St Cuthbert Argent, and on a chief of the last a lion passant guardant Gules.

Cuddy's Corse is a waymarked walking route between Chester-le-Street and Durham Cathedral; it marks the journey between two of the last resting places of the coffin.

The school's houses are named after important locations in the life of the saint: Dunblane (yellow), Elgin (green), Iona (purple), Kelso (blue), Lindisfarne (white), Melrose (red), York (orange) and Durham (pink).

[38] Fossilised crinoid columnals extracted from limestone quarried on Lindisfarne, or found washed up along the foreshore, which were threaded into necklaces or rosaries, became known as St. Cuthbert's beads.