Without the anonymous Lindisfarne Vita S. Cuthberti, written less than two decades after the saint's death in 687, our knowledge of aspects of the Iona-Lindisfarne tradition in the early Northumbrian church and of Cuthbert's life and death would be even more limited than it is. Its medieval tradition is, however, very different from that of Bede's (prose) version of the Life, which, with its greater sense of literary form, composed in superior Latin, and with some additional or better evidence about its hero (although often omitting telling details), effectively drove the earlier work from its land of origin. The Lindisfarne vita's later, post-1100, manuscript testimonies are exclusively in a closely-related group of continental legendaries (passionals); and the one extant pre-1066 English copy was among the books gifted to Saint-Vaast, Arras, c. 1070, by the former abbot of Bath, Sæwold.