(DATE UNCERTAIN.)
[In Ancient Anglo-Saxon Kalendar belonging to the Abbey of Fécamp,
and French Martyrology. Authority:--Two lives of uncertain date, by
anonymous writers.]
The blessed Cuthman was by birth a native of Devonshire or Cornwall,
and his youth was spent in pasturing his father's sheep on the granite
moors. One day, when dinner time came, he was hungry, and not having a
companion to whom he could entrust his flock during his absence, he
drew a circle in the heather and gorse with his staff, and then
planted it in the soil, and said, "In the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, I command you sheep not to transgress the bounds I have drawn,
till I return from my dinner." And, wonderful to relate, the sheep
obeyed his command. Now there was a grey moorstone on which he was
wont to sit; and this moorstone has been ever since regarded with
singular veneration, says the ancient writer of his life.
After some years his father died, and the widow was reduced to great
poverty. Cuthman ministered to her with the tenderest care and filial
devotion, and worked for their joint subsistence. When the poor woman
fell sick, he was unable to leave her, at the same time he was so
destitute that, unless he went forth to work or beg, they must starve.
He, therefore, contrived a wooden truck or barrow on two wheels, and
laid his mother on it, and went behind, thrusting her on with his
hands, and supporting her by a rope slung round his neck, and begged
from door to door, as her condition incapacitated him from working.
One day, as he was thus thrusting his little cart through a field
where the hay-makers were mowing the grass, the rope broke, and the
holy youth stood a while hesitating what to do. Then he tore from an
elder tree a bough, and twisted it, and attached it to his mother's
cart, and supported it therewith. But the mowers laughed at him as a
fool for endeavouring to supply the place of a rope with hollow elder
wood. Their mockery was, however, soon arrested by a pelting rain,
which drove them from their work, and by seeing the bough hold as
firmly as a rope.
And when Cuthman saw that God assisted and avenged him, he vowed to
build a church to his holy Name. But how to do so he knew not. So he
continued his wanderings, ever journeying East way, and thrusting his
mother before him, till he came to Steyning, in Sussex, where the rope
suddenly broke, and his mother was much shaken, but, mercifully, was
not injured. Then he thought that this was to be the place of his
rest, and he said, "O Lord, on me has fallen to undertake the work of
building Thee a house; for to do this thou didst inspire me with the
will. Whither shall I fly from Thy Spirit? This is the place where I
shall finish my wanderings, this shall be my habitation, in which I
shall offer and pay Thee my vows, day by day. Almighty Father, who
hast brought my journey to an end, bless my work of building to thee a
temple. Thou knowest how poor I am, and a labourer from my youth, and
of myself I can do nothing, unless thou dost succour me."
The place was still and solitary, trees surrounded it, and hard by
flowed the tidal river Adur. The land was little populated; here and
there only a farm, buried in a nook of the great chalk downs. He chose
a spot at the foot of these downs, and there he built a hut and laid
his poor mother in it, and at once began to measure out the ground for
his proposed church. He found favour with the people round about, and
they contributed to his sustenance and the support of his mother, as
they watched him single-handed dig the foundations, cut the timber,
and rear the walls of the church he had vowed to God. He was given two
oxen to help him in his work of carrying stones. Now, one day, these
oxen strayed into the field of a woman who had two grown up sons. The
young men at once seized on the oxen, and took them into their house.
Cuthman went after the oxen, and when he could not find them, asked
the young men for them, but they refused to surrender them. Then he
said angrily, "I need them not to do my own work, but to labour for
God. See I have laded my cart with those logs, and must move them to
the house of God. Come then you and draw them." And he grasped the
youths, and yoked them to the wain, and made them drag the stones to
their destination.
Now as the church approached completion, Cuthman was grieved one day
to find that a wooden pillar he had set up, was bent with the weight
imposed upon it, and he feared to remove it, lest he should bring down
a part of the building. Then there came a traveller to the door, of
very grave and beautiful aspect, and asked Cuthman why he was
troubled. And Cuthman pointed to the bent post. Then said the
stranger, "O man of little faith! to those who fear God, nothing is
impossible. Stretch forth thine hand and let me help thee, and we will
straighten it." And he did so, and the pillar became upright. Then
Cuthman fell at the stranger's feet, and said, "My lord, tell me thy
name!" And he answered, "I am Jesus, to whom thou buildest this
house;" and so vanished.
Now Cuthman not only built and laboured for his old bed-ridden mother,
but he also preached to the people, and stirred up the love of God,
and zeal for His commandments in their hearts. And as his church
approached completion, he was glad, and he worked without, and then
rested for a while in prayer within. And chipping at the logs without,
he wore thick gloves, and when he went within he took off his gloves,
and hung them on a little ray of light that pierced through one of the
small windows he had made in the walls. And there, where he worked, he
died, but what was the nature of his illness, and his disposition at
death is not recorded. He was buried at Steyning, and the Adur, then
navigable as far as this place, long bore the name of S. Cuthman's
Port. Steyning was given by Edward the Confessor, and afterwards by
the Conqueror, to the abbey of Fécamp, in Normandy, from which
circumstance Bollandus supposed Steyning was in Normandy, and many
have been misled thereby. The church of Steyning, dedicated to S.
Cuthman, was built by monks of Fécamp to replace his wooden one.
The Monasticon Anglicanum of Dugdale, (II. p. 992), Leland, Collect.
I. p. 96; II. p. 409; III. p. 82; and Camden asserts plainly that S.
Cuthman was buried at Steyning in Sussex. "Cella de Stening Nigrorum
Monachorum in quâ sepultus Stus. Cudman;" "S. Cudmannus in Stenig
prope Brambre flumen." "Stus. Caudmannus in loco qui dicitus ad
Staning requiescit prope amnem Brembre;" this Brembre is Bramber; the
name is no longer given to the river, but to the castle hard by, upon
it.