Rewriting the ecclesiastical landscape of early medieval Northumbria in the Lives of Cuthbert

Abstract

This article re-examines the use of place-names in the early prose Lives of Cuthbert and provides an additional explanation for Bede's removal of many of the place-names that greatly localize the events in the anonymous Life. I argue that the author of the anonymous Life was following a common Irish hagiographic practice of using place-names as propaganda to create a network of churches, monasteries, or lands under the authority of the paruchia of a saint's leading church. Bede's deliberate choice to remove certain place-names that were outside Lindisfarne's diocese, or even its immediate sphere of influence, suggests that he was aware of this agenda and intentionally revised these details in order to set right the Northumbrian ecclesiastical landscape.