MONK OF FARNE

The name generally given to the author of seven meditations in MS B iv.34 of Durham cathedral library. His name was John and he should probably be identified with John Whiterig of Northumberland, monk and novice master at Durham, who lived on Farne for eight years and died there in 1371. His longest and most important meditation, on Christ crucified, is concerned with God's love for men, as shown in the Crucifixion, and with man's response, which should also be total love. He begins by addressing Christ under a series of OT types, then contemplates the crucified Christ directly and realistically, but also serenely, calling on man to commit himself to Christ. Once this is done Christ will visit the soul as He did for the saints and martyrs. The reader is exhorted to study the open book of the Savior's sufferings: the letters are the five wounds; the words, His actions and sufferings. The all-important thing is that Christ should be loved: charity will bring the reader through carnal and rational love to the highest kind attainable in this life. Here the writer depends fairly closely on St. Bernard; elsewhere he cites SS. Gregory, Augustine, Bede, Isidore, Ambrose, Peter Damian, Hugh of Saint-Victor, Innocent III, and John Pecham. But the influence of Scripture is the strongest, and the texts, including the dogmatic ones, are frequently and skillfully interwoven.

It is not known with any certainty that the monk of Farne influenced other spiritual writers; his importance lies rather as witness to what a 14th-century Durham monk thought and prayed about. This type of spiritual writing is rare in this century; it affords a glimpse of a fervent, but conservative, monk at prayer. The other meditations are addressed to Our Lady, the angels, Abraham and David, St. John the Evangelist, and St. Cuthbert (incomplete).

Bibliography: w. a. pantin, "The Monk-Solitary of Farne," English Historical Review 49 (1944) 162–186; The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge 1955) 245–252. d. knowles, The Religious Orders in England 2:115–117. Latin Text. h. farmer, "The Meditations of the Monk of Farne," Analecta Monastica 4 (1957) 141–245. Translation. The Monk of Farne, ed. h. farmer (London 1961).

[h. farmer]