A
colophon added to the
Lindisfarne Gospels in the tenth century states that Eadfrith was the scribe and artist responsible for the work. The Lindisfarne Gospels were the product of a single scribe and illustrator, working full-time over a period of about two years. For this reason, many historians who accept that the work was authored by Eadfrith in person date it to the period before he became bishop. Not all historians accept that he was the scribe: some argue that he may have commissioned the work rather than creating it in person; some reject the association as an unreliable tradition. Michelle Brown, "Lindisfarne Gospels" argues for Eadfrith being the artist and scribe, working on it as eremitic devotional act in the Columban tradition from 715-722 (dated on textual grounds of the liturgies marked by initials therein and historical context), and the main architect of the cult of St Cuthbert. Contemporary witnesses to Eadberht's episcopacy portray him as a supporter of the cult of
Saint Cuthbert. He commissioned three
lives of the Saint, the first by an anonymous writer, written between 699 and 705. This
Anonymous Life of Saint Cuthbert was revised on Eadfrith's orders by
Bede, writing around 720, to produce both
prose and
verse lives. Eadfrith also oversaw the restoration of the
hermitage on
Farne where Cuthbert had often lived. He is named in Æthelwulf's ninth century poem
De abbatibus as having advised Eanmund, first abbot of a monastery—its name and location are unknown—founded during the reign of King
Osred. When Lindisfarne was abandoned in the late ninth century, Eadfrith's remains were among those taken on the community's long wanderings through Northumbria. The relics of Saint Cuthbert, and those of Eadfrith along with them, eventually found a new home at
Chester-le-Street, where they remained for a century. In 995 the relics were translated to
Durham Cathedral. At Durham Eadfrith, along with his predecessor Eadberht and successor
Æthelwold, was commemorated on 4 June. ==Citations==