Editing Cuthbert (section)

===Origins and background===
Cuthbert was born (perhaps into a noble family) in [[Dunbar]], then in Northumbria, and now in East Lothian, [[Scotland]], in the mid-630s, some ten years after the conversion of [[Edwin of Northumbria|King Edwin of Northumbria]] to Christianity in 627, which was slowly followed by that of the rest of his people. The politics of the kingdom were violent, and there were later episodes of pagan rule, while spreading understanding of Christianity through the kingdom was a task that lasted throughout Cuthbert's lifetime. Edwin had been baptised by [[Paulinus of York]], a Roman who had come with the [[Gregorian mission]] from Rome, but his successor [[Oswald of Northumbria|Oswald]] also invited Irish monks from [[Iona]] to found the monastery at Lindisfarne where Cuthbert was to spend much of his life. This was around 635, about the time Cuthbert was born.{{sfn|Battiscombe|1956|pp=115–116}}

The tension between the Roman and Celtic Christianity, often exacerbated by Cuthbert's near-contemporary [[Wilfrid]], an intransigent and quarrelsome supporter of Roman ways, was to be a major feature of Cuthbert's lifetime. Cuthbert himself, though educated in the Celtic tradition, followed his mentor [[Eata of Hexham|Eata]] in accepting the Roman forms, apparently without difficulty, after the [[Synod of Whitby]] in 664.{{sfn|Battiscombe|1956|pp=122–129}}{{sfn| Farmer|1995|pp= 53–54, 60–66}}{{sfn| Brown |2003|pp= 64–66}}{{efn|At least Bede records no reluctance, though Farmer and others suspect he may be being less than frank in this, as a partisan of Jarrow.}} The earliest biographies concentrate on the many miracles that accompanied even his early life, but he was evidently indefatigable as a travelling priest spreading the Christian message to remote villages, and also well able to impress royalty and nobility. Unlike Wilfrid, his style of life was austere, and when he could, he lived the life of a hermit, though still receiving many visitors.{{sfn|Battiscombe|1956|pp=115–141}}{{sfn| Farmer|1995|pp= 52–53, 57–60}}

In Cuthbert's time the Kingdom of Northumbria included, in modern terms, northern England and southern Scotland on an intermittent and fluid basis as far north as the [[Firth of Forth]]. Cuthbert may have been from the neighbourhood of Dunbar at the mouth of the Firth of Forth in modern-day Scotland, though ''The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints'' ("Butler's Lives"), by [[Alban Butler]] records that he was fostered as a child near Melrose. Fostering is possibly a sign of noble birth, as are references to his riding a horse when young. One night while still a boy, employed as a shepherd, he had a vision of the soul of Aidan being carried to heaven by [[angel]]s, and later found out that Aidan had died that night. Edwin Burton finds it a suggestion of lowly parentage that as a boy he used to tend sheep on the hills near that monastery.{{sfn|Burton|1908}} He appears to have undergone military service, but at some point he joined the very new monastery at Melrose, under the prior [[Boisil]]. Upon Boisil's death in 661, Cuthbert succeeded him as prior.{{sfn|Burton|1908}} Cuthbert was possibly a second cousin of King [[Aldfrith of Northumbria]] (according to Irish genealogies), which may explain his later proposal that Aldfrith should be crowned as monarch.{{sfn|Healy|1909|p=78}}{{sfn|Ireland|1991|p=64}}