Saint Cuthbert - Fat or Thin?

...Possibly not the first question you'd ask yourself when considering Saint Cuthbert: was he a fat or a thin monk?

Granted, many may not pass any a moment giving reflective consideration to the fellow. Even a 'Who he?' remark might be heard among you. Sad that really, as the life of this early Christian British - we'll address that point of his Britishness in a moment - hero is a rich and interesting mixture of the scholar, the monk, the cleric, the soldier too, the hermit and the peace maker.

British? Irish many say, and indeed Cuthbert's allegiance to the Celtic rite - an adherence he renounced in obedience to the Church and his monastic vows - may indicate a homeland. Scots perhaps, born close to Melrose Abbey where his monastic life commenced.

It is not though either Cuthbert's nationality or even all he was as a temporal and spiritual leader that compels my attention tonight. Was he a fattie or was he not I ask?

And why so? This so...

Go to the Holy Island of Lindesfarne, as I have done once more today, where Cuthbert was Prior - when he wasn't busy being hermit then Bishop then back to hermit once more - and you will see a tall, lean modern statue of the man gazing south across the Priory lawn towards his monastic Church then on towards Farne Islands.

Well could you understand the sculptor's thinking here: stern life-long fasting not the diet to build a big fellow. Ascetic by habit and conviction, one can't really picture Cuthbert tucking into the massive monastic meals that some Abbeys did and do enjoy.

Convincing though the portraiture, my diffuculty with this image is that I know a real live monastic Cuthbert who is neither tall nor lean in the slightest. Doubtless - indeed so - a man of deep spirituality, committed to the cause etc., my Cuthbert is nonetheless a jolly round fellow. Always has been and not, over time, losing girth far from it.

So say 'Cuthbert' to me and I picture not this awful lean - gaunt almost - figure that sits on Lindesfarne lawn. But was the sculptor right? I suspect he might have been more lifelike in his presumption than I. For I noted today for the first time, just how narrow and tight the residual spiral staircases are at Lindesfarne.

The night stairs from dormitory to choir are so narrow a couple of pencils would have problems passing each other. The day stairs rather slightly wider, though not by much, and granted that Prior Cuthbert would have had his own quarters apart from the rank and file, that not withstanding the whole tone of the place reeks of 'slim or stuck'.

Really. No Friar Tuck could fit, literally, into Lindesfarne. Nor indeed would my modern Cuthbert.

As we then begin our season of liturgical fasting (I hate 'Slimming For Jesus', but you can see the joke I hope), I must aspire more to the Cuthbert of ancient tradition than of modern actuality.