The Church Fathers · c. 721; a verse life c. 716
The Life of Cuthbert
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
What it is
A rewriting of an anonymous Lindisfarne life, with every episode checked against named witnesses. Cuthbert prays all night standing in the North Sea and is dried by two otters; he clears the birds off his barley by talking to them; he asks to be buried where nobody will come looking for him.
Why it lasted
The most influential English saint's life, and unusual in citing its sources by name — Bede applying to hagiography the evidential habits that make the Ecclesiastical History trustworthy.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next