Chapter 32

I cannot omit mention of a cure that took place through his relics three years ago and was told me by the very brother to whom it happened. It occurred in a monastery which was in course of construction near the river Dacore,¹ from which it took its name, and whose head was the devout Abbot Swidbert. In this house lived a young man who developed a tumour on his eyelid, which daily increased in size and threatened to destroy the eye. Although the physicians applied poultices to reduce it, they had no success: some advised cutting it out, while others opposed this, fearing graver complications. So the brother suffered great pain for a long time, and it seemed that no human skill could prevent the loss of his eye, whose condition was deteriorating daily, till he was suddenly cured by the goodness of God and by means of the relics of the most holy father Cuthbert. This came about because, when the brethren found his body uncorrupt after many years in the grave, they had taken some of his hair to provide relics for their friends and to show as evidence of this miracle.

At that time a small portion of these relics was in the possession of Thruidred, then one of the priests of the monastery and now its abbot. And one day, when he went into the church and opened the casket of relics in order to give a portion to a friend who had requested it, the young man with the diseased eye happened to be present. Having given the required portion to his friend, Thruidred handed the remainder to the young man to replace in their casket. Moved by a beneficent impulse, the youth took the hairs of holy Cuthbert’s head in his hand and applied them to his eyelid, and tried by holding them there for a while to soften and reduce the swelling. He then replaced the relics in their casket as he had been directed, confident that, now that his eye had been touched by the hair of the man of God, it would soon be cured. Nor was his faith in vain. For, as he tells, it was then about Terce, and thenceforward he was busy about the day’s duties until nearly Sext, when he suddenly felt his eye and found both it and the lid sound, as though there had never been any deformity or swelling on it.