St Cuthbert's coffin

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St. Cuthbert's coffin is a wooden coffin opened during the Reformation in Durham Cathedral, dated to AD 698, the year of the death of Saint Cuthbert. Among other objects, still mostly in the Cathedral Museum, it contained the Stonyhurst Gospel. It is inscribed with Latin lettering and Anglo-Saxon runes with names of apostles and saints, and the earliest representation of the Virgin and Child in the art of the Western Church. The wood is much weathered, and many names are illegible.

Inscription

The runic inscription reads:

ihs xps mat(t)[h](eus)

The ma and possibly the eu are bind runes. The t is inverted. Then follows:

marcus

The ma is again a bind rune, then:

LVCAS

In Latin letters, followed by runic:

iohann(i)s

Followed by Latin:

(RAPH)AEL (M)A(RIA)

The names of Matthew, Mark and John are thus in runes, while that of Luke is in Latin letters. The Christogram is notably in runic writing, ihs xps ᛁᚻᛋ ᛉᛈᛋ, with the h double-barred in the continental style, the first attestation of that variant in England. The monogram reflects a runic variant of a partly Latinized XPS from Greek ΧΡΙCΤΟC, with the rho rendered as runic p and the eolc rune (the old Algiz rune z) used to render chi.

St Cuthbert's coffin

Inscription

Further reading

See also