APPENDIX B
ST. NEOT AND ST. CUTHBERT
(pp. 29 and 74)
Among the tentative interpretations of the enamelled Figure both of these saints have at different times been put forward, as was only natural, since they both hold a place in the current narratives of king Alfred’s life. But it is well to observe that their several relations to the stream of tradition are neither equal nor alike. The first is found united with that stream in the tenth century, that is to say, at the highest point which has been reached in the investigation of these episodes. As to what is told of St. Neot, however unlikely, it cannot be pronounced impossible that it may have had some original right to the place which it holds. The second is a transparent fraud, introduced in the twelfth century by wrong-headed zeal. A few details will make this clear.
The oldest source for the life of St. Neot is an Anglo-Saxon homily of that well-known type which sprang out of the monastic revival associated with the names of Odo and Æthelwold and Dunstan. Conspicuous examples of this type are the Lives of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, and of St. Swithun.
At this epoch the relics of St. Neot (by a traffic too intricate for us to unravel) were removed from their natural resting-place at St. Neots in Cornwall, where the man had lived and died, to enrich a new foundation in Huntingdonshire, where influential persons were planting a new monastery, which became a second St. Neots. We may pretty safely assume that this event, which happened about 984, gave rise to the biography, in which the relations of St. Neot to Alfred form the distinguishing feature. Of this writing only a late and somewhat interpolated copy has reached our times.
The modern historian will not hesitate to say of St. Cuthbert that his relations to Alfred are wholly fictitious; but he cannot undertake to say the same of St. Neot. Nevertheless, they are equally out of the question so far as regards the icuncula. The idea that the Figure might be St. Neot is excluded by the homily, which places the death of St. Neot shortly before the troubles of Alfred, and the accepted date is 877. According to the most probable chronology we have been able to make out for the Jewel, it was fabricated before 866.
The legendary connexion of St. Cuthbert with Alfred dates from the twelfth century, and is apparently due to Simeon the historian, who was a monk of the monastery of Durham, and who, when about thirty-five years old, witnessed the impressive ceremonial of the translation of the great saint of the North Country, which took place in 1104.
When he compiled his narrative of the reign of king Alfred, he sacrificed facts of history to the fame of the saint. Omitting genuine details which he had at hand, he subjected the capital events of Alfred’s life to the patronage of St. Cuthbert. Thus he begins: ‘In the year 877 the nefarious host quitted Exeter and came to Chippenham and wintered there. King Alfred in those days endured great tribulations and lived an unsettled life. Being encouraged with an explicit oracle by St. Cuthbert, king Alfred fought against the Danes, at the time and in the place which the saint had directed, and gained the victory, and from that time forward he was terrible and invincible to his enemies. The manner in which he vanquished his foes is related as followeth.’
In such a manner was this figment introduced into the page of history, where it long continued in good repute. Hickes was so much swayed by it, that he relinquished his first interpretation of the icuncula in favour of St. Cuthbert.
If the connexion of Alfred with St. Neot is (as it may well be) of a mythical nature, or even an invention of the biographer, he did but use the licence which was then accorded to the panegyrist; and it is very different from that abuse of the authority of the historian which introduced St. Cuthbert into the narrative of the deeds of Alfred.