Biography
Ethelwold of Lindisfarne
About Ethelwold of Lindisfarne
Ethelwold served the monastery of Old Melrose before becoming bishop of Lindisfarne. The Catholic calendar Nominis remembers him as a companion of Cuthbert and describes his progress from prior to abbot, then bishop.
Bede knew him as a priest who had attended Cuthbert and later became abbot of Melrose. In his Life of Cuthbert, Bede recounts the recovery of Ethelwold’s unnamed sister after Cuthbert anointed her with oil. She had taken refuge with other religious women after fleeing an army; the healing belongs to Bede’s hagiographic account.
In his Ecclesiastical History, Bede identifies the former abbot of Melrose as the bishop then serving Lindisfarne. His survey of Britain in 731 names Ethelwold among the four Northumbrian bishops. This gives a contemporary anchor for his episcopate, beyond the later calendar notices.
Ethelwold is also associated with the Lindisfarne Gospels. Getty’s account credits him with its original binding and identifies him as the successor of Eadfrith, the manuscript’s scribe. The attribution rests on a colophon added in the tenth century, rather than on a signature from Ethelwold’s lifetime. The binding itself no longer survives.
Manuscript scholar Janet Backhouse distinguishes his leather binding from the precious outer covering supplied by Billfrith, probably in the middle of the eighth century. Both covers disappeared, while the manuscript survived. She places Ethelwold’s death around 740. His part in the book’s history should therefore not be confused with either writing its text or furnishing its jeweled cover.
A different manuscript, the Book of Cerne, presents a more uncertain connection. Its abbreviated psalter has been attributed to Ethelwold of Lindisfarne. In her Cambridge introduction, Michelle Brown instead places the surviving prayerbook in ninth-century Mercia and connects it with Bishop Æthelwald of Lichfield. She understands it as a compilation drawing on earlier materials, including Northumbrian sources. An association with earlier material does not establish Ethelwold as the author of this later book.
Nominis lists February 12 as his local Catholic commemoration. Its brief notice gives no precise birthplace or place of death.
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