due to his horror at the debaucheries and ill-conduct of the nuns of Coldingham, which I have described earlier.[1] On the death of the royal abbess Æbbe, Cuthberht insisted that the two sexes at Coldingham should be rigidly separated, and he afterwards caused a special church to be built at Lindisfarne, known to the inhabitants as the "Grene Cyrice" or Green Church, since it was situated on a green site, and he ordered that women who wished to hear Mass or the reading of the Bible should go thither, and should never approach the church used by himself and his monks. "This custom," says Bede, "is so diligently observed, even to the present day, that it is unlawful for women to set foot even within the cemeteries of those churches where Cuthberht's body in its subsequent peregrinations found a temporary resting-place, unless compelled to do so by the approach of an enemy or the dread of fire." Symeon tells some stories to show how severe the divine penalty was believed to be for any breach of this rule. In one case he mentions a certain Sungeova, daughter of Bevon, called Gamel (i.e, the old), who was struck dead for trying to cross the churchyard to avoid the puddles outside. Another woman, the wife of a rich man who afterwards became a monk, wished to see the beautiful ornaments in the church, and having ventured to intrude too far lost her reason and committed suicide.[2]
The same rule was observed at Durham, where the Saint afterwards lay. Thus a story is told that
