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Saint Cutbert became prior of Lindisfarne in 664, was ordained bishop in 685, and canonized upon his death in 698. On 8 June 793, however, the monastery was hit by one of the first of many Viking attacks that, in 875, led the monastic community to move elsewhere, exhausted from having to face these godless brutes. The holy island, as Lindisfarne was called, was abandoned and, after spending a century in Chester-le-Street (883), the community chose the more sheltered and protected site of Durham (995). When the time came to move, the monks brought along the precious reliquary of their saint and the Lindisfarne library. They founded a new monastery on a hill surrounded on three sides by the River Wear in Durham. Not surprisingly, the city's name derives from the Old English 'dun', hill, and from the Norse 'holme' island. Legend has it that, once they arrived there, Saint Cutbert's coffin came to rest near the hill and no one was able to make it budge: it was a sign. Indeed, the site's orography actually protected the monastery, which, together with the Kingdom of Bernicia, was not part of Viking Danelaw that ruled over part of the British lands between the tenth and the eleventh centuries. All the same, new conquerors arrived on the scene and, with the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Normans generated strong renewal in the insular world. This eventually brought a new bishop to Durham. William of Saint-Calais (1081-1096) reformed the community into a Benedictine priory and. in 1093, founded the new cathedral, one of the masterpieces of Norman architecture in England, that, along with the nearby castle, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. His predecessor, Walcher (1071-1080), was also Norman, and it is quite possible that they may have already begun the renewal. Yet the book collection William found on his arrival must not have been enough for a new cultural movement. There were some important texts, most probably from Lindisfarne, such as the Durham Gospels (Ms. A. II. 17), or manuscripts that had once been at the Wearmouth- Jarrow Abbey, such as the Book of the Maccabees (B. IV. 6), from the time Ceolfrith (d. 716), who collected and reproduced texts from Rome, such as the famous Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Medicea Laurenziana Library, Ms. Amiatino 1). Some of the manuscripts were actually held to be autographs by the Venerable Bede, such as Cassiodorus's Expositio psalmorum (Exposition of the Psalms) from the eighth century, which was probably made in York, the so-called Durham Cassiodorus (Ms. B. II. 30). William managed to procure many other works, purchasing them both in Normandy and in England. The titles of the acquisitions he made can be found in the Carilef Bible (Ms. A. II. 4), which lists around fifty works. They include books for religious services, texts on monastic life and the Fathers of the Church, and Bede's important Historia ecclesiastica (Ms. B. II. 35).