ON ST. HEREBERT, PRIEST, ANCHORITE IN ENGLAND.
YEAR 687
CommentaryHerebert, Priest, anchorite in England (Saint)
[1] Cumberland, the farthest province of England near Scotland on the Irish Ocean, is divided in the middle by the River Derwent, rising in the valley of Borrowdale, and flowing through the mountains called Derwent Fells, spreads into a very large lake: in which three islands are said to rise, according to Camden among the Brigantes, In Cumberland flourished St. Herebert: the third of which is believed to be the one in which Bede writes that St. Herbert led the eremitic life, in book 4 of the History of the English People, chapter 29, and in the Life of St. Cuthbert now published under this 20th day of March, number 46, as in the other by his disciple, book 4, number 9, he is called Hereberht. Life and Cult: Herebert is moreover a Priest and Confessor: to whom when St. Cuthbert the Bishop said he was about to depart from this world, he, throwing himself at his feet, asked that he might obtain from the Lord that he could pass over with him to eternal joys: and it was done as he had asked: as Hermann Greven, who flourished in the Carthusian house at Cologne two hundred years ago, inscribed him with these words in his additions to Usuard at March 20. Canisius says nearly the same in his German Martyrology, which Ferrarius reported in fewer words in his General Catalog, following, as he asserts in his Notes, the English Martyrology, in which a longer encomium is given from Bede's history: from which the Acts of St. Herebert are drawn out at greatest length by Jerome Porter in the Flowers of the Lives of Illustrious Saints of England, Ireland, and Scotland. He is also inscribed in the ancient manuscript Martyrology of Marian Gorman, Abbot of Louth in Ireland.
[2] Edward Maihew, in the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, enrolls the same St. Herebert, Priest and Hermit, in this Order of his, whether he was a monk and Benedictine. giving this reason at the end: "Since," he says, "in these centuries the custom was to advance to the eremitic life only from the monastic and cenobitic life": which we would prefer to be more solidly proved, especially the claim that in these centuries there was no monastic and cenobitic life except that of the single and sole Order of St. Benedict. We have touched upon some of these matters below in the Life of St. Cuthbert. Edward Maihew is followed by Hugh Menard and Gabriel Bucelin in their Benedictine Martyrology or Menology, and by the same error these three report that St. Herebert led the eremitic life in the County of York, in an island of a very large lake from which the River Derwent flows: whereas the County of York is nowhere contiguous to the province of Cumberland, in which it is certain that the River Derwent rises and the said lake is found. Then in the same province on the borders of Scotland is Lugubalia or Luguballum of the Romans, now Carlisle, commonly called Carlisle: to which city when St. Herebert learned that St. Cuthbert had come, he went to him and had his last conversation with him about a happy death: which can be read in Bede above on page 110 and in the other Life on page 123: from which it is also established that he departed from this mortal life in the year 687, not the following year as various writers say, on the same day and at the same hour as St. Cuthbert.