Eadberht of Lindisfarne

Saint Eadberht was bishop of Lindisfarne, in England, from 688 until his death on 6 May 698. He is a saint venerated in the Roman Catholic Church and, in Orthodoxy, has been entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of Britain and Ireland. Our record gives no commemoration day of his own.

After the death of Saint Cuthbert in 687, Saint Wilfrid acted as administrator of the see of Lindisfarne. His brief tenure was confrontational. After him Eadberht was made bishop of Lindisfarne, in 688. He is remembered chiefly for having founded on the island of Lindisfarne the church of Saint Cuthbert, which later became a great place of pilgrimage. He also made a major repair of the old wooden cathedral of Saint Finan, covering it with lead to make it more durable.

Hagiographical writings describe him in superlatives. Even as bishop he lived in voluntary poverty and was famed for his freedom from possessions. He spent many days in solitude and prayer, but on the days when he appeared among people he showed himself an excellent administrator. He ordered that a tenth of all the revenues of the diocese be given to the poor, and he was known for his knowledge of Holy Scripture. His work, aimed at perpetuating the memory of his predecessor Cuthbert, laid the foundations of the prosperity of the diocese of Lindisfarne for the next two centuries.

He established the local veneration of Cuthbert as a saint, which later became veneration for the whole Church, and moved his relics into the newly built church. When Eadberht himself died, in 698, he was buried in Cuthbert's former grave, from which Cuthbert's body had been taken earlier in the same year. When, in 875, the monks left the devastated Lindisfarne, they took Eadberht's relics with them, and these were eventually moved to Durham, where the episcopal see was also moved.