Cuthbert was the most popular saint of the pre-Conquest Anglo- Saxon Church. He was born about 625. Bede, who wrote a life of Cuthbert, tells us that in his youth, while tending sheep one night and praying, “as was his custom,” he saw a stream of light break through the darkness, and in its midst, “a company of the heavenly host descended to the earth, and having received among them a spirit of surpassing brightness, returned without delay to the…