Cuncacestre
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Titular See of Cuncacestre Sancti Cuthberti Chester-le-Street |
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|---|---|
| Location | |
| Country | England |
| Ecclesiastical province | Birmingham |
| Metropolitan | Birmingham |
| Information | |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Rite | Latin Rite |
| Established | 882 (moved to Durham 995) |
| Patron saint | Saint Cuthbert |
| Current leadership | |
| Pope | Francis |
| Bishop | Robert Byrne |
| Metropolitan Archbishop | Bernard Longley |
Cuncacestre (Chester-le-Street) is a Roman Catholic titular see and was a former seat of the Anglo Saxon Bishop of Lindisfarne.
The church was established to house the body of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Bishop of Lindisfarne from 684 to 687. After his death he became one of the most venerated saints of the time, with a significant cultus and the Venerable Bede writing both a verse and prose biography of him. So when driven out of Lindisfarne by Viking raids in 875 the monks, led by Eardulf of Lindisfarne, took St Cuthbert's coffin along with other valuable items, including the Lindisfarne Gospels. They wandered for seven years.
They eventually settled at Chester-le-Street (then called Cunecaster or Conceastre), at the site of the old Roman fort of Concangis, in 883, on land granted to them by Guthred.
They built a wooden church and shrine for St Cuthbert's relics, dedicating it to St Mary and St Cuthbert. Though there was no shortage of stone in the ruins of Concangis they did not build a stone church; it has been suggested they did not intend to stay for as long as they eventually did. It was built within the Roman fort, which although abandoned over five hundred years before may have still offered some protection, as well as access north and south along Cade's Road and to the sea by the River Wear.
Cuncacestre was the centre of Christianity for much of the northeast, because it was the seat of the Bishop of Lindisfarne, making the church a cathedral. The diocese stretched between the boundaries of Danelaw at Teesside in the south, of Alba at Lothian in the north and the Irish sea in the west. The bishop's authority was confirmed by Alfred the Great, and for the next 112 years the community was based here, visited by kings Athelstan and Edmund who both left gifts for the community, to add to the treasures brought from Lindisfarne.
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Wikipedia