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Special Service: The Translation of the Relics of St Cuthbert

@ Durham Cathedral

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September 4 has long been venerated as the anniversary of the enshrining in 999 of the body of St Cuthbert in the original ‘White Church’ prior to the building of the present Cathedral, and we celebrate this today with Sung Eucharist at 11.15am.

When Cuthbert’s body was brought to Durham in 995 the Cathedral, as we know it now, did not exist. Cuthbert’s coffin lay first in a temporary church and then in the Anglo-Saxon ‘White Church’, which was begun in 996 and finished in 1017. Our present cathedral was begun in the year 1093, after a community of Benedictine monks had been established here to succeed the Anglo-Saxon community.  Eleven years later, as soon as the east end of the church was ready, a great and solemn festival was held to ‘translate’ (that is, to move) Cuthbert’s body into the new Cathedral. Cuthbert was laid to rest in the Feretory, where his body has remained ever since.

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