Herbert of Derwentwater
Herbert of Derwentwater (d. 687), priest and hermit. A close friend of Cuthbert, Herbert used to visit him at Lindisfarne every year. In 686 Cuthbert was in Carlisle and they met there instead; Cuthbert prophesied that they would both die soon on the same day. In fact both died on 20 March 687. Cuthbert's feast was by far the more popular of the two and Herbert was largely forgotten. In 1374 Thomas Appleby, bishop of Carlisle, ordered the vicar of Crosthwaite to celebrate a sung Mass on St. Herbert's Isle each year on his feast, and granted forty days' indulgence to all who visited it on this day. Ruins of a circular stone building there may be connected with him. The Martyrology of Tallaght describes St. Herbert, like St. Cuthbert, as a ‘Saxon’. Feast: 20 March.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- Bede, H.E., iv. 27; B. Colgrave (ed.), Two Lives of St. Cuthbert (1940), pp. 15, 125, 249–51, 326; P. Grosjean, ‘The supposed Irish origin of St. Cuthbert’ in The Relics of St. Cuthbert (ed. C. F. Battiscombe, 1956)
