Early Life and Hereford
Of noble birth, Cuthbert is first recorded as the Abbot of Lyminge, from where he was elevated to the See of Hereford in 736. The identification of the Cuthbert who was Bishop of Hereford with the Cuthbert who became archbishop, however, comes from Florence of Worcester and other post-Conquest sources. The contemporary record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Cuthbert was consecrated archbishop, where if he had been Bishop of Hereford, he would have been translated. No consecration is needed when a bishop is translated from one See to another. Given the nature of the sources, the identification of the bishop of Hereford with the archbishop of Canterbury, while likely, must not be regarded as proven.
If Cuthbert was at Hereford, he served in that capacity for four years before his elevation to the See of Canterbury in 740. He is credited with the composition of an epitaph for the tomb of his three predecessors at Hereford. The cathedral church of the see may not even have been located at Hereford by Cuthbert's time.
Whoever Cuthbert was prior to his election to Canterbury, he probably owed his selection as archbishop to the influence of Æthelbald, King of Mercia. A number of Mercians were appointed to Canterbury during the 730s and 740s, which suggests that Mercian authority was expanding into Kent.
Read more about this topic: Cuthbert Of Canterbury
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“I found my brother’s body at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks, by the river. Like an old, dirty rag nobody wants. He was dead. And I felt I had killed him. I turned back to give myself up.... Because if a man’s life can be lived so long and come out this way, like rubbish, then something was horrible, and had to be ended one way or another. And I decided to help.”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)