
I cannot omit mention of a cure that took place through
his relics three years ago and was told me by the very
brother to whom it happened. It occurred in a monastery
which was in course of construction near the river Dacore,
from which it took its name, and whose head was the devout
Abbot Swidbert. In this house lived a young man who developed
a tumour on his eyelid, which daily increased in size
and threatened to destroy the eye. Although the physician
applied poultices to reduce it, they had no success : some
advised cutting it out, while others opposed this, fearing
graver complications. So the brother suffered great pain for
a long time, and it seemed that no human skill could prevent
the loss of his eye, whose condition was deteriorating daily,
till he was suddenly cured by the goodness of God and by
means of the relics of the most holy father Cuthbert. This
came about because, when the brethren found his body un-
corrupt after many years in the grave, they had taken some
of his hair to provide relics for their friends and to show as
evidence of this miracle.

At that time a small portion of these relics was in the possession
of Thruidred, then one of the priests at the monastery
and now its abbot. And one day, when he went into the church
and opened the casket of relics in order to give a portion
to a friend who had requested it, the young man with the
diseased eye happened to be present. Having given the
required portion to his friend, Thruidred handed the remainder
to the young man to replace in the casket. Moved by a
beneficent impulse, the youth took the hairs of the holy
Cuthbert's head in his hand and applied them to his eyelid, and tried
by holding them there for a while to soften and reduce the
swelling. He then replaced the relics in their casket as he had 
been directed, confidant that, now that his eye had been
touched by the hair of the man of God, it would soon be
cured. Nor was his faith in vain. For, as he tells, it
was then about Terce, and thenceforward he was busy
about the day's duties until nearly Sext, when he
suddenly felt his eye and found both it and the lid
sound, as though there had never been any deformity
or swelling on it.

CHAPTER 23 : THE RELICS OF ST CUTHBERT HEAL ANOTHER
BROTHER'S DISEASED EYE.

Bede : A History of the English Church and People.