St Cuthbert Gospel across the width, and probably with two iron rings fixed to it for lifting it off. Eardulf had decided to take the most important remains and possessions of the community with them, and whether new or old, the shelf in Cuthbert's coffin was probably loaded with the St Cuthbert Gospel, which was found there in 1104. It may also have held the Lindisfarne Gospels, now also in the British Library, and other books from Lindisfarne that were, and in several cases still are, at Durham Cathedral. Other bones taken by the party were those remains of St Aidan (d. 651),
St Cuthbert Gospel struggle against the Danes by a vision or dream he had of Cuthbert. Thereafter, the royal house of Wessex, who became the kings of England, made a point of devotion to Cuthbert, which also had a useful political message, as they came from opposite ends of the united English kingdom. Cuthbert was "a figure of reconciliation and a rallying point for the reformed identity of Northumbria and England" after the absorption of the Danish populations into Anglo-Saxon society, according to Michelle Brown. The 8th-century historian Bede wrote both a verse and a prose life of St Cuthbert around 720. He