LUP_Wallis_Bede_Revel_01_Intro
INTRODUCTION
The Commentary on Revelation (Expositio Apocalypseos) was Bede's first venture into Biblical exegesis. For this reason alone, anyone interested in the development of this remarkable medieval mind will appreciate its intrinsic significance. Its subject matter – the climax of the great story of creation and redemption, of history and of time itself – only intensifies this importance, for these themes lie at the heart of Bede's concerns and of his achievement.
The Commentary thus reveals how closely Bede's exegesis was intertwined with his other writings. Until fairly recently, Bede was studied almost exclusively as the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
By contrast, the commentaries that Bede himself ranked at the top of his 'curriculum vitae' in Ecclesiastical History 5.24 received only scant and fragmented attention. In part, this was because scholars had no reliable
Bedae opera exegetica to match Plummer's Baedae opera historica or C.W.
Jones's Bedae opera de temporibus prior to the mid-1950s, when the Corpus christianorum editions of the commentaries began to appear. Their publication coincided with and contributed to a rehabilitation of Bede's Biblical commentaries as works of Christian learning, and as historical evidence of their author's worldview, education, purposes and prejudices. This rehabilitation has in turn accelerated efforts to understand Bede's life-work as he himself conceived it, in the context of a Christian Latin culture and a monastic worldview that held to distinctive standards of propriety, utility, and truth. In particular, the role of exegesis in Bede's larger mission to edify and reform the English church and people has moved to the fore.
Thus it seems curious that the Commentary on Revelation has failed to attract more than episodic interest from Bede scholars or from historians of early medieval exegesis and eschatology.1 The Commentary's status as 1 Gerald Bonner's 1966 Jarrow Lecture Saint Bede and the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic
Commentary remains the indispensable overview. The most thorough and recent study of the sources, text tradition and manuscript transmission of the Commentary is the introduction to Roger Gryson's critical edition (see Abbreviations), hereafter cited as Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction. There are only a handful of essays devoted specifically to the Commentary. These include
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Bede's first foray into exegesis may even have discouraged interest. Scholars have detected in some of its features a certain awkwardness and youthful uncertainty: the substantial methodological prologue, for example, has been judged in this light.2 Moreover, the Commentary sticks closely to verse-byverse exposition, and is to a significant extent a mosaic of quotations from prior authorities. Bede's mature works of exegesis take a freer and more expansive approach to the Biblical text, and their debt to previous works is less obtrusive. It is thus easy to discount the Commentary as derivative, two fundamental studies by Thomas Mackay, 'Bede's Biblical Criticism. The Venerable Bede's
Summary of Tyconius' Liber Regularum', Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval
Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens (Collegeville, Minn.: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979), v. 1, pp. 209–231, 'Sources and Style in Bede's Commentary on the Apocalypse', Studia Patristica 30, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone
(Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 54–60, and 'Augustine and Gregory the Great in Bede's Commentary on the Apocalypse', Northumbria's Golden Age, ed. J. Hawkes and S. Mills (Stroud:
Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 396–405; Jean-Marc Vercruysse, 'Bède lecteur de Tyconius dans l'Expositio Apocalypseos', Bède le Vénérable entre tradition et postérité/The Venerable Bede.
Tradition and Posterity, ed. Stephane Lebecq, Michel Perrin and Olivier Szerwiniack (Lille:
CEGES – Université Charles de Gaulle, 2005), pp. 19–30; Joseph F.T. Kelly, 'The Venerable
Bede and the Irish Exegetical Tradition on the Apocalypse', Revue bénédictine 92 (1982):
393–406; Yves Christe, 'Ap. VI–VII, 1: de Bède à Bruno de Signi', Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles). Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers: C.É.S.C.M.,
1975), pp. 145–151; and Peter Kitson, 'Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part II,
Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis and Related Works', Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983): 73–123, and most recently Claude Carozzi, 'Apocalypse et temps de l'église selon Bède le Vénérable',
L'Apocalisse nel Medioevo: atti del convegno internazionale dell'Università di Milano e della
Società internazionale per lo studio del medioevo latino, Gargnano sul Garda, 18-20 maggio
2009, ed. Rossana Guglielmetti (Florence: SISMEL–Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), pp. 115-32.
William D. McCready's discussion of Bede's eschatology remarkably does not refer to the Commentary on Revelation: Miracles and the Venerable Bede (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1994), pp. 90–104. Peter Darby's Bede and the End of Time (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2012) on the other hand, integrates the Commentary into its wider argument: see esp. pp. 75–81. Much of the scholarship devoted to Bede's exegesis in general makes only incidental reference to the Commentary, e.g. Bertrand de Margerie in ch. 3 ('Bède le Vénérable commentateur original du Nouveau Testament') of his Introduction à l'histoire de l'exégèse.
T4: L'Occident latin: de Léon de Grand à Bernard de Clairvaux (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1990), p.
197. By contrast, Arthur G. Holder's overview of Bede's New Testament commentaries gives a suitable place to the Commentary: 'Bede and the New Testament', The Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 142–169.
There is also a substantial analysis of the commentary in Kenneth B. Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius: A History of its Reception and Influence, European University
Studies ser. 23, 301 (Frankfurt, Berlin and New York: Peter Lang. 1987), pp. 116–131.
2 Roger Gryson, 'Les commentaires patristiques latins de l'Apocalypse [part 2]', Revue théologique de Louvain 28 (1997), p. 484.
INTRODUCTION
immature, and unassertive,3 and hence to avoid addressing some important questions, notably why Bede composed a commentary on Revelation at all. However, the fact that Bede chose to comment on this notoriously difficult book – a book which none of the major Fathers had subjected to systematic exegesis – strongly suggests that he did not see his efforts as either unoriginal or unassertive.4 Certainly Bede borrowed from others, but as Gerald Bonner observed, he always 'fitted what he took into a plan which was his own'.5 Moreover, in choosing a difficult and understudied book,
Bede may have been consciously imitating Gregory the Great, who in his 3 M.L.W. Laistner, for example, claimed that 'the commentary on the Apocalypse probably contains far less of Bede's own ideas than do some of his later works': 'The Library of the Venerable Bede', Bede: His Life, Times and Writings. Essays in Commemoration of the Twelfth
Centenary of his Death, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935; repr. New
York: Russell and Russell, 1966), p. 252. This assessment of Bede's early exegesis and the Commentary on Revelation in particular is broadly echoed by Scott DeGregorio, 'The Venerable
Bede and Gregory the Great: Exegetical Connections, Spiritual Departures', Early Medieval
Europe 18 (2010): 43–60 at 52. Alan Thacker characterizes all of Bede's early commentaries as 'cautious and derivative': 'Bede and the Ordering of Understanding', Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio, Medieval European Studies 7
(Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006), p. 46. Such virtues as are ascribed to the Commentary are usually simplicity and clarity rather than originality: e.g. Guy Lobrichon,
'Stalking the Signs: The Apocalyptic Commentaries', The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious
Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. Richard Landes, Andrew Gow and David C.
Van Meter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 70; Wilhelm Kamlah, Apokalypse und
Geschichtstheologie. Die mittelalterliche Auslegung der Apokalypse vor Joachim von Fiore.
Historische Studien Heft 285. (Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1935), p. 12.
4 Roger Ray, 'Who Did Bede Think He Was?', Innovation and Tradition, p. 19; Holder,
'Bede and the New Testament', p. 145. E. Ann Matter describes the Commentary as 'a sophisticated analysis of the Apocalypse, one that carries on a reading of the text as the history of the Church on earth while keeping a watchful eye on the larger picture of cosmic history':
'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', The Year 1000: Religious and Social
Response to the Turning of the First Millennium, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002), p. 34. However, some of her argument hinges on a misunderstanding of Bede's periochae: see below, n. 153).
5 Bonner, Saint Bede, p. 9. Roger Ray notes that '[Bede's] practice [was] to deploy the clarified and inflected patristic texts according to didactic claims that make the resulting work his own' in an act of 'creative synthesis': 'What Do We Know about Bede's Commentaries?',
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 48 (1982), p. 11. He makes no exception for early works like the Commentary on Revelation: see p. 18. De Margerie (Introduction, p. 188) calls Bede's exegesis 'un project d'originalité dans la continuité'. He is seconded by A. Willmes,
'Bedas Bibelauslegung', Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 44 (1963): 281–314; Paul Meyvaert,
'Bede the Scholar', Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner (London: S.P.C.K., 1976), pp. 42–44.
These two last studies, however, do not comment explicitly on the Revelation commentary.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
preface to Moral Interpretations on Job (Moralia in Iob) referred to 'this obscure work, which hitherto has been treated thoroughly by none before us'. If he required further encouragement, he could read in one of his major sources, Primasius, a statement, drawn from Jerome's letter 53, on the value of Revelation.6 If so, then he saw himself as 'following in the footsteps of the Fathers' not merely by learning from them and reproducing their doctrine, but by collaborating with them to extend and complete their mission.
Only since the recent publication of Roger Gryson's exceptional edition of the Revelation commentary for the Corpus christianorum series can students of Bede really appreciate the subtle construction of this work. Two substantial Latin commentaries on Revelation were available to Bede: one by the fifth-century North African exegete Primasius of Hadrumentum (d. c. 558), and another by Primasius's compatriot, the Donatist theologian Tyconius
(fl. c. 370–390). He also made use of Victorinus of Pettau's commentary, as revised by Jerome, but in a less sustained way. In the Commentary, Bede mentions the orthodox Primasius by name only once, but acknowledges his debt to Tyconius frequently. Furthermore, Bede's preface incorporates the summary of Tyconius's Book of Rules (Liber Regularum) found in Augustine's On Christian Learning (De doctrina christiana). In fact, Bede was at pains to present Augustine as his premier authority. Primasius's frequent quotations from Augustine's works, notably The City of God, made his commentary a useful index of Augustine's thought on eschatological issues. Primasius and Tyconius recede into the background of Bede's text, becoming a virtually invisible frame on which Bede can display passages he has culled from Augustine, as well as from Jerome and Gregory. This suggests that Bede was doing something bold and creative: fashioning the first impeccably authoritative and orthodox reading of Revelation in Latin.
His readers agreed, for the Commentary enjoyed an extraordinary fortuna.
It was the most widely diffused of all pre-Carolingian commentaries on Revelation,7 and was the fourth most popular work of Bede's after the Ecclesiastical History, The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) and the Commentary on the Catholic Epistles (In epistolis VII catholicis). It exerted a powerful and formative influence on Carolingian exegesis, and was mined for the Revelation section of the Glossa ordinaria, the standard compilation of running commentary on Scripture used in the universities of the later
6 Gregory, Mor. pr. 2; anonymous translation, Morals on the Book of Job (Oxford: John
Henry Parker, 1844), p. 7. Primasius, prol. 3.53-55, quoting Jerome, Epistola 53.9, ed. I.
Hilberg, CSEL 54 (1910), p. 463.
7 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 13.
INTRODUCTION
medieval period. The Commentary on Revelation thus deserves closer study; it repays that study with important insights into Bede's emerging thought and its contemporary context.
1. Bede and the Latin Tradition of Exegesis of Revelation The Book of Revelation struggled for a long time to win a place in the canon of the New Testament, and though it was the object of some of the earliest
Biblical commentaries, its reception was often controversial, and not infrequently associated with heresy. The style of the book is strange and alarming, mixing strident oracles with bizarre, even garish imagery. In this respect, it is typical of the apocalypses that flourished in Jewish and Christian culture from the period of the Second Temple through to the early Middle Ages.
These ancient apocalypses are of broadly two types. One type presents a revelation of the cosmos, particularly the celestial realm or the state of souls after death; time and history are of little or no concern. The second announces the course and end of history; the book of Revelation is such a historical apocalypse. The message of the historical apocalypse is that history is even now hurtling towards a final crisis that will be marked by terrors and the persecution of God's people. However, God will soon intervene definitively: the just will be rewarded, and the reprobate consigned to everlasting punishment. Apocalyptic salvation is rescue from and through catastrophe, and its fruition is a utopian messianic kingdom. The dominant tone of the historical apocalypse is one of struggle against enemies, followed by total triumph and cosmic renewal. Even when the timing of the end is explicitly declared to be unknown and unknowable (as in the 'Little Apocalypses' in the Synoptic
Gospels: Matt. 24:1-25 and 36; Mark 13:1-37; Luke 21:5-38; cf. Acts 1:6-7), the reader is expected to adopt a posture of tense expectation. Indeed, Bede himself, in line with the exegetical tradition he espoused, rejected predictive imminence, but preached psychological imminence, with greater or lesser intensity as the circumstances of his life altered.8
8 Bernard McGinn, 'Introduction: John's Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic Mentality',
The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 7–9; Brian E. Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian
Theology', The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, ed. Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins,
Stephen J. Stein (New York and London: Continuum, 2003), p. 221; Bernard McGinn,
Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), pp. 10–16. Darby's Bede and the End of Time, ch. 7 (pp. 165–185), and
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The message of the Gospel proclaimed by the Fathers of the first six centuries is wrapped around an irreducibly eschatological core. The life, death and resurrection of Christ themselves constitute God's decisive intervention into human history. These events fulfilled and completed the processes recounted in the Old Testament, reaching back to Creation, but the meaning of these processes lay in events which were very recent. By the same token, God's action in Christ ushered in a new and culminating chapter in history. In a sense, the end had already arrived; it was pulled proleptically into the present. This overlapping of past, present and future underlies the exegetical tradition on which Bede drew, and that shaped his historical, theological, and pastoral sensibilities.9 Indeed, Bernard McGinn has argued that an apocalyptic vision of time and human history was a fundamental constituent of the culture of the 'first Europe', the emerging Latin Christendom of the early Middle Ages.10
The first generations of Christians expected Christ's return at any moment, but the eventual acceptance of its delay did not spell the end of apocalyptic hopes and fears. Many of Bede's most revered patristic authorities, such as Augustine and Jerome, lived at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, when there was a fresh upwelling of apocalyptic sentiment and speculation.
Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, frequently expressed his conviction that present disturbances were signs that the end was drawing near. But Bede, and the tradition he drew on, vigorously rejected two corollaries. The first was that the signs of the times indicated not only that the end was coming, but also when it was coming. The orthodox response was to discourage any attempt to calculate the deadline. The second was that the messianic kingdom would be an earthly one, lasting one thousand years.
Since this Millennium is found only in Rev. 20:4-6, one solution was to erode the text's eschatological immediacy by re-framing John's vision as a theological key to the whole experience of the Church from the Incarnation until the end of time. Allegorical exegesis that regarded Scripture as a repository of eternal spiritual truths (its premier exponent was Origen) was ch. 8 (pp. 187–214) demonstrates how Bede's later writings present the theme of psychological imminence with greater intensity than the earlier ones.
9 G.W.H. Lampe, 'The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture. 1. To Gregory the Great',
The Cambridge History of the Bible. The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G.W.H.
Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 155; R.A. Markus, 'Living within Sight of the End', Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and W.M. Ormrod (York:
York Medieval Press, 2001), p. 24.
10 Bernard McGinn, 'The End of the World and the Beginning of Christendom', Apocalypse
Theory and the Ends of the World, ed. Malcolm Bull (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 58–89.
INTRODUCTION
the ideal method for accomplishing this. The imagery of Revelation could thus be protected from over-literal readings that would bring the inspired text into disrepute, leaving it vulnerable to accusations of coarse and absurd materialism. But how far could allegory be exploited before it endangered the literal reality of the resurrection of the body or the final judgement, which were core doctrines of the faith?
1.1 The Roots of Bede's Major Exegetical Themes The oldest stratum of the exegetical tradition of Revelation already reveals the difficulties of maintaining a suitable balance.11 This stratum comprises a thin layer of full-scale commentaries on Revelation, plus much thicker and more diverse deposits composed of references and incidental remarks found in expositions of other books of Scripture (e.g. the Gospels and Daniel), or in sermons, letters and thematic treatises. This had the effect of blending
Revelation's apocalyptic with those of other eschatological passages from the Old and New Testaments, suggesting a synthetic 'history of the future'.
Much of this material was not directly accessible to Bede, but came filtered through the commentaries of Tyconius and Primasius, Augustine's
The City of God (De civitate Dei), Jerome's Commentary on Daniel (In Danihelem), and Gregory's Moral Interpretations on Job (Moralia in Iob).
Nonetheless, a survey of this tradition helps us to understand why some themes were significant to Bede, and why he came to treat them as he did, even if he himself was not always fully aware of their pre-history.
Already in the second century, Revelation was linked to doctrinal controversies. In his Against the Heresies (Adversus haereses) Irenaeus of Lyons (c.
130–c. 202) grappled with a question which was evidently much discussed in his day: whether the thousand-year reign of the saints with Christ after the general resurrection prophesied in Rev. 20 would be a literal, earthly
11 This overview of patristic and early medieval Revelation exegesis in indebted to the following studies: Brian E. Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', in The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Bernard McGinn, 'Turning Points in Early Christian Apocalypse Exegesis',
Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity, ed. Robert J. Daly (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2009), pp. 81–105; E. Ann Matter, 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', and 'The Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis', The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed.
Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp.
38–50; Wilhelm Kamlah, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, chs. 1–2; G.W.H. Lampe, 'The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture. 1'; R.E. McNally, The Bible in the Early Middle Ages
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1959), pp. 116–117.
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kingdom. The problem was a delicate one: a literal Millennium seemed offensively crude, but spiritualizing the Millennium played into the hands of the Gnostics, who denigrated both the bodily resurrection and the value of the material universe. Irenaeus strove to defend the reality of the Millennium, while avoiding the more embarrassing kinds of literalism. Ambiguity also characterizes Irenaeus's ideas about the deadline for the end-times. On the one hand, he embraced the idea that world-history was divided into six ages corresponding to the days of Creation, and that the world would end in annus mundi 6000 (Adv. haer. 5.28.3). While he professed to accord no importance to any countdown to this date, the analogy between the week and the world-ages opens the way to an intertwining of chronology and eschatology, that would prove of great concern to Bede.12 The figure of Antichrist also attracted Irenaeus's attention. This is an excellent example of the synthetic trend in patristic eschatology. Antichrist does not appear in Revelation. The only passages in the Bible which use the term 'Antichrist(s)' are 1 John 2:18 and 22, 4:3, and 2 John 7: the general idea in these epistles is that the present time is the 'last hour', and even now a person (or more than one person) is on earth who denies Christ and attempts to deceive the faithful. Irenaeus expanded the synthesis by identifying this Antichrist with both the 'man of lawlessness, the son of perdition' of 2 Thess. 2:3-4, who will usurp the title of God in the last days, and the blasphemous tyrant of Dan. 7:25, 8:25, and 11:36. Thus did Antichrist begin to take form as a bloodthirsty ruler, who would demand divine worship, and whose appearance would inaugurate the last days (Adv. haer. 5.25.1; 28.2; 29.2).13 Most importantly for our purposes, Irenaeus identifies the Beast of Rev. 13:18 as Antichrist, and the number of the Beast, 666, as a cipher of his name.14 He also adds many extra-Biblical details, notably Antichrist's descent from the Hebrew tribe of Dan.
12 See below, section 3. This conflation is discussed by Jean Daniélou, 'La typologie millenariste de la semaine dans le christianisme primitif', Vigiliae christianae 2 (1948): 1–16, and Arnaldo Momigliano, 'Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century AD', The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963), pp. 79–99. The belief in a world-week of six equal thousand-year 'days' is distinct from, but obviously closely related to, the idea of six ages of world history: see A. Luneau, L'Histoire du salut chez les Pères de l'Église: la doctrine des âges du monde (Paris: Beauchesne, 1964), pp. 81–85, 209–217.
13 G.W. Lorein, 'The Antichrist in the Fathers and their Exegetical Basis', Sacris erudiri
42 (2003): 35–36.
14 One of Bede's suggested solutions to the cipher, Teitan, is already found in Irenaeus
(Adversus haereses 5.30.3): see below, p. 205, n. 667.
INTRODUCTION
This synthetic biography was solidified and enlarged by Hippolytus (martyred c. 235) in his On Antichrist (De Antichristo), an annotated anthology of Biblical passages allegedly referring to Antichrist. Hippolytus also added details on his own. Antichrist will be the perverse mirror image of Christ in every respect. However, he will not appear until the Roman
Empire (represented by the beast of Rev. 11) is destroyed and replaced by ten kingdoms. Another precondition is the reappearance of Enoch and Elijah as preachers. Antichrist (the second beast of Rev. 13) will establish an empire in the Near East, restore the Temple of Jerusalem, and recruit the Jews to launch a persecution of Christians. Hippolytus also wrote a commentary on Daniel (c. 204), the oldest extant Christian Scriptural commentary, which lays out a similar scenario: Antichrist is the 'abomination of desolation' spoken of by the prophet (Dan. 11:31, 12:11). Hippolytus also set a date for the end-times. He argued that Christ was incarnated in the middle of the sixth millennium, i.e. in annus mundi 5500; thus the end will come 500 years after the death of Christ. At the same time, he pointed out that for the individual, the day of death is a sort of Judgement Day, when an account must be rendered for one's moral choices during life.
The sources available directly to Bede were marked by these prior preoccupations concerning Revelation: namely, the level of literal interpretation permissible, the issue of the timing of the end, and the integration of Antichrist as a dominant actor. They were also influenced by the current of allegorical or spiritual exegesis associated with Origen. Origen's references to Revelation and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible were few and scattered, but he did articulate two positions which were destined to exert considerable influence: first, the prophecies of the end-times are in fact references to past events or perennial realities; and secondly, both Antichrist and the Millennium are symbols.
1.2 Victorinus of Pettau The earliest surviving complete commentary on Revelation in Latin was composed by Victorinus, bishop of Pettau (Poetovium, modern Ptuj in Slovenia) and martyr (d. 304). It reflects the new trend towards a more sophisticated and spiritual reading of the text, grounded in the concept of recapitulatio. Recapitulation is a literary device for articulating the typo logical relationship between past, present, and future that was held to underpin the Bible. Victorinus observed that most of the book of Revelation does not follow a linear narrative sequence, but unfolds in a series
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
of tableaux, each of which recapitulates or reiterates the substance of the previous tableau, but using different imagery. The sevens seals, trumpets, and vials are all figures depicting the same content, but under different aspects. This content is also recapitulative, for it embraces the history of the Church from its inception until the end of time. Antichrist, for example, is both the future persecutor of the Church, and the Roman emperors who persecuted her in the past.15 Through Tyconius's use of the recapitulatio idea, Bede would come to appreciate its value, both as a tool for structuring the text of Revelation, and as an exegetical principle that balanced history, moral exhortation, and eschatology.
Victorinus's series of tableaux ends at Rev. 16:17, when the angel pours out the seventh vial and the great voice cries from the throne, 'It is done'.
From that point on, the text moves forward in an apparently direct chronological sequence, through the fall of Babylon; the victory of the Rider on the white horse over the beast, who is imprisoned; the 'first resurrection' of those beheaded for God, and their thousand-year reign with Christ; the release of the beast, his siege of Jerusalem and final defeat; the general resurrection and last judgement; and the transformation of heaven and earth. At this point, Victorinus apparently abandoned his spiritual reading of Revelation, and embraced a more literal eschatology, notably the notion of the earthly Millennium. By the end of the fourth century, the fact that a bishop and martyr held such views scandalized readers such as a certain Anatolius, who sent Victorinus's treatise to Jerome for his appraisal. Jerome's counterattack on millenarian expectation was brief and brutal – Cessat ergo mille annorum fabula ('That puts an end to the myth of the Millennium!').16 But he was acutely aware that the ambiguous or even openly chiliast views of 15 Victorinus/Jerome 86.6-8; Lorein, 'The Antichrist in the Fathers', pp. 41–42. On Victorinus's approach to the text of Revelation in general, see M. Dulaey, introduction to her edition of the original version of Victorinus's commentary in Victorin de Poetovio, Sur l'Apocalypse.
Suivi du Fragment chronologique de De la construction du monde. Sources chrétiennes 423
(Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1997), pp. 37–38; McGinn, 'Introduction', p. 14; Adela Yarbro Collins,
'The Book of Revelation', The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, p. 98; Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', p. 232; Matter, 'The Apocalypse in Early Medieval
Exegesis', p. 39, and 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', p. 30. It should be noted that recapitulation, by allowing the text to speak to the present as well as to the past and the future, leaves open a door to reading contemporary events, if not as apocalyptic signs, at least as apocalyptic symbols.
16 In Dan. 2.7.17/18 (848.13-14). Some manuscripts read Cesset…, 'Let the myth of the Millennium be suppressed!'
INTRODUCTION
many respected Fathers made its 'end' less than final.17 Victorinus's status as a martyr also made it difficult for Jerome to simply condemn his work, and so he set about producing a revised edition instead, replacing references to a literal Millennium with a more Origenist reading.18 The result was a sober and spiritualized reading of Revelation, albeit with an enlarged role for Antichrist.
1.3 Apocalyptic Retreats and Revivals in the Fourth Century The early and mid-fourth-century Fathers who basked in the exhilarating warmth of the Peace of the Church found literal readings of Revelation irrelevant and even embarrassing. The drive to tame John's vision and integrate it into a broader doctrinal synthesis also had a political dimension: for example, a belief in the thousand-year messianic kingdom on earth implied that there would be a future earthly dispensation which would replace both the institutional Church and the Christian Empire – hardly a politic notion in the age of Constantine and Theodosius.19 But when the fortunes of the Empire wavered, interest in the end-times revived. Even Ambrose of Milan, normally an Origenist when it came to eschatology, thought that the death of the emperor Valens at Hadrianople in 378 was a sign of the approaching end-times.20 As the fourth century drew to a close, apocalyptic rumours and 17 In the prologue to On Isaiah (In. Is.), Jerome says, 'I know how much difference there is among people…about the way in which John's Apocalypse is to be understood. To take it according to the letter is to "Judaize". If we treat it in a spiritual way (as it was written), we seem to go against the views of many older authorities: Latins, such as Tertullian, Victorinus and Lactantius; Greeks, such as Irenaeus…': In Is. 18, prol., 741.15-20; trans. McGinn, 'Introduction', pp. 18–19. On Jerome's shifting attitudes towards millenarianism and his ambivalence towards Victorinus, see M. Dulaey, 'Jérôme, Victorin de Poetovio et le Millénarisme', Jérôme entre l'Occident et l'Orient, ed Y.-M. Duval (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1988), pp. 83–98, and 'Jérôme "éditeur" du Commentaire sur l'Apocalypse de Victorin de Poetovio', Revue des études augustiniennes 37 (1991): 199–236; Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', p. 307.
18 The critical edition of Victorinus/Jerome by Johannes Haussleiter (see Abbreviations) gives facing-page texts of the editio Victorini and Jerome's emended version in three versions:
'Y'; a post-Vulgate recension, 'O'; and a later version that conflates the two: Matter, 'Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis', p. 38, n. 1.
19 François Paschoud, 'La doctrine chrétienne et l'idéologie impériale romaine', L'Apocalypse de Jean: Traditions exégétiques et iconographiques: IIIe–XIIIe siècles, ed. Yves Christe
(Geneva: Droz, 1979) pp. 31–72. See also Kamlah, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, pp.
71–72; Gerald Bonner, 'Augustine and Millenarianism', The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), pp. 235–254 at 247–248.
20 Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam 10.10 and 14, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 14 (1957),
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
speculations intensified among both Jews and Christians. Sulpicius Severus (d. c. 420) even thought that the conversion of the Empire to the Faith was ominous, for it left only one persecution to come: Antichrist's. His hero, St Martin of Tours (d. 397), was persuaded that Antichrist had already been born.21
Very little of this was translated into exegesis on Revelation, though Bede may have caught the echoes of these sentiments in the poems of Venantius
Fortunatus and Paulinus of Nola.22 One aspect of the new apocalypticism was certainly known to him: a fresh concern with the approaching year
AD 500. Speculation had been abroad since the days of Hippolytus and of Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160–c. 240), who calculated that Christ had been born in annus mundi 5500; if one believed that the world would last 6000 years, this pinpointed AD 500 as the date of the end. The work entitled On the Duration of the World (De mundi duratione) by Quintus Julius Hilarianus, composed around 397, ended with a scenario of the end-times based
328.10-112 and 349.156–350.161.
21 Oded Irshai, 'Dating the Eschaton: Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Calculations in Late Antiquity', Apocalyptic Time, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 113–53;
Markus, 'Living within Sight', p. 32. On Sulpicius Severus's beliefs concerning the imminence of Antichrist, see McGinn, 'The End of the World', p. 61, Antichrist, p. 68; Clare Stancliffe,
St. Martin and his Hagiographer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983): pp. 38, 41–42,
79; G.K. van Andel, The Christian Concept of History in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus
(Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1976), 117 sqq.; J. Vaesen, 'Sulpice Sévère et la fin des temps',
The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst and Andries Welkenhuysen. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series I/Studia XV (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), pp. 49–71. Perhaps the strangest expression of this pervasive anxiety was the chronicle of Hydatius, bishop of Aquae Flaviae in Galicia 428–c. 449. Though this chronicle was one of the many continuations of Jerome's Latin adaptation of Eusebius's chronicle, it was apparently not known to Bede. Hydatius's copy of Eusebius/Jerome contained an interpolation based on the apocryphal Apocalypse of Thomas, predicting Christ's return at the close of the seventh Jubilee following his ascension, i.e. 27 May 482: see Richard W. Burgess, 'Hydatius and the Final Frontier: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the End of the World', Shifting
Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. Ralph W. Mathiesen and Hagith S. Sivan (Aldershot: Ashgate,
1996), pp. 321–332. The Apocalypse of Thomas was widely diffused in the Latin West, and a number of variant versions were also available in Old English from the ninth century onwards.
It is the source of the motif of the seven-day or fifteen-day countdown to the Last Judgement, sometimes mapped across the days of a week: see M. Förster, 'A New Version of the Apocalypse of Thomas in Old English', Anglia 73 (1955): 6–36; W.W. Heist, The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952); R. Faerber, 'L'Apocalypse de
Thomas en vieil-anglais', Apocrypha 5 (1994): 125–129. It is possible that Bede's apparently digressive discussions in The Reckoning of Time on some Biblical expressions regarding time, including the Seventy Prophetic Week of Dan. 9:24-25 ( ch. 9) and the Jubilee (ch. 8) may be designed to prevent their use for apocalyptic speculation.
22 Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', pp. 235–239.
INTRODUCTION
on Revelation, and declared that Antichrist would come in annus mundi 6000; as he dated the Passion to AM 5530, this would work out to about AD 498. Hilarianus closes with a bald statement that there were only 101 years left to the end.23 Bede's hostility to such calculations is a significant background story to his Commentary on Revelation, and will be discussed in greater detail below.
This age of apocalyptic revival also produced three exceptional writers, who tackled the implications of Revelation directly: Jerome (c. 331–420),
Tyconius, and Augustine (354–430). Collectively they represent a reaction against speculation about dating the end, excessive literalism in the interpretation of apocalyptic imagery, and the rank growth of the legendary biography of Antichrist. Jerome's eschatology is not systematic, and his devotion to asceticism led him to stress personal over ecclesial or cosmic judgement, but his widely read commentaries on Daniel and Matthew, as well as his revision of Victorinus, diffused his approach to generations of readers. His commentary on Daniel canonized the identification of the beast of Dan. 11 with Antichrist, though it rejected some features of the Antichrist legend (e.g. that Antichrist will rebuild the Temple). Jerome also translated
Eusebius's Chronicle and thereby promoted a new chronology of annus mundi, with Christ's incarnation dated to AM 5199. This was additional, if unintentional, insurance against speculation concerning AD 500.24
23 Ed. C. Frick, Chronica minora 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892), p. 171. For a translation of the relevant passage, see Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1979), pp. 52–53. See also Irshai, 'Dating the Eschaton', pp. 141–153; Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, ch. 10. The build-up to the year 500 also saw a flurry of original apocalyptic writing, some in the mode of Revelation, such as the Apocalypse of Thomas, and others in the form of journeys to the otherworld, such as the Apocalypse of Paul. Both circulated in the Latin west, and were particularly associated with monastic communities: Daley, 'Apocalypticism in early Christian Theology', pp. 244–246. Bede's account of the Vision of Dryhthelm
(HE 5.12) is an otherworld-journey apocalypse. However, this genre in my view exerted no influence on the Commentary on Revelation.
24 On Jerome's In Dan. and Antichrist, see McGinn, Antichrist, pp. 74–75; Lorein, 'The Antichrist in the Fathers', pp. 47–51. Jerome himself excerpted the sections of his commentary relevant to Antichrist, as De Antichristo. This work was in turn abbreviated: see Régis
Courtray, 'Nouvelles recherces sur la transmission du De Antichristo de Jérôme', Sacris erudiri
43 (2004): 33–53. On Jerome and the chronicle of Eusebius, see Alden Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979), pp. 146–147; R. Croke, 'The Origins of the Christian World Chronicles',
History and Historians in Late Antiquity, ed. R. Croke and Alanna M. Emmett (Sydney and Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983), pp. 120–121; Richard Landes, 'Lest the Millennium Be
Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Historiography 100–800 CE', The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, pp. 138–139, 146–150.
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1.4 Tyconius While Jerome would prove a potent and useful authority for Bede and others, his direct influence on the exegesis of Revelation pales before that of his North African contemporaries, Tyconius and Augustine. Very little is known about the life of Tyconius (d. c. 390). He was a layman, and a loyal adherent of the Donatist church, though often at odds with his sect. Despite this affiliation, Tyconius was openly admired by Jerome and Augustine, both for his treatise on exegetical hermeneutics, the Book of Rules, and for his commentary on Revelation. The full original text of Tyconius's commentary has been lost. What survives are some fragments, a segment of an adaptation, and a number of suggestive parallel passages in the commentaries of Victorinus/Jerome, Primasius, Caesarius of Arles, Bede, and particularly
Beatus of Liébana. On the basis of a critical evaluation of all these witnesses,
Roger Gryson has produced a reconstruction of Tyconius's commentary, with a companion volume containing a translation into French.25
Donatism may also have affected the survival of Tyconius's writings, for the trail of textual transmission of his commentary on Revelation goes cold in the Carolingian period. A ninth-century catalogue of books in the library of St Gall records a copy, but it is described as a volumen vetus, an old book.26
However, three segments of the original commentary were recovered in two stages from the bindings of two books from the library of the Jesuit seminary in Bratislava, and are now in the Central Catholic Seminary in Budapest
(MS S. Fr. L. m. 1): these 'Budapest fragments' cover the commentary from Rev. 6:6 to the first part of verse 13.27 Their claim to be Tyconius's original
25 Tyconii Afri Expositio Apocalypseos. Accedunt eiusdem expositionis a quodam retractatae fragmenta Tauriensia, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011);
Tyconius, Commentaire de l'Apocalypse, trans. Roger Gryson, Corpus christianorum in translation 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). References to the text are signalled by the abbreviation
'Tyconius'; references to Gryson's introductions by either 'Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction' or 'Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction' as appropriate.
26 Roger Gryson, 'Fragments inédits du Commentaire de Tyconius sur l'Apocalypse',
Revue bénédictine 107 (1997): 189–226.
27 Edited by Gryson, 'Fragments inédits', pp. 197–200 and 224–226. The convoluted process by which these fragments were recovered and published is described by Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, ch. 2.1. The discovery of the first two fragments was announced by A. Pincherle, 'Nuovi frammenti di Ticonio', Rivista di storia e letteratura religiose 5 (1969): 756–757 and 'Alla ricerca di Ticonio', Studi storico-religiosi 2 (1978): 355–365. However, only the third fragment was edited by the scholar responsible for the discoveries, L. Mezey, 'Egy korai karoling kódextöred (Ticonius in Apocalypsin?)', Magyar Könyvszemle 92 (1976): 15–24, and 'Un fragment de codex de la première époque carolingienne (Ticonius in Apocalipsin?)', in
INTRODUCTION
text rests on certain features missing from an edited and abridged version of the commentary found in the tenth-century Bobbio manuscript now in Turin
(Biblioteca nazionale universitaria F. iv. 18), known as the 'Turin fragments' and covering Rev. 2:18–4:1 and 7:16–12:6. 28 The Turin abbreviation edits the substance of Tyconius's exegesis to suppress his numerous allusions to the religious tensions in North Africa, but Gryson argues that these so-called
'catholicized' passages do not contradict Tyconius's views as reported by Augustine. The revision was probably carried out in North Africa by a disciple of Augustine, not long after the bishop's death.29
Tyconius's purpose was to illuminate the distinctive language of the Spirit in Revelation. In this unique, divine rhetoric, every detail is significant, but also unsettling and obscure. Separate symbols in the same scene can have a single referent (e.g. the throne, the living creatures and the Elders in Rev. 4 – even the heaven where the vision takes place – all stand for the Church). Genus and species are interchangeable. From the viewpoint of the divine Author, time is not linear, so the text uses 'recapitulation' to move back and forth from past, to present, to future.30 Therefore Antichrist is not only an individual who will appear in the future, but also a force already at work in the world, though not yet able to exert its full apocalyptic strength.
The millennial kingdom of Rev. 20 is the Church itself, founded at the Resurrection, and the thousand years is a figure referring to the indeterminate
Miscellanea codicologica F. Masai dicata, ed. P. Cockshaw, M.-C. Garand and P. Jodogne.
Les publications de Scriptorium 8 (Ghent: Story-Scientia, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 41–50. Many commentators on Tyconius were only aware of this third fragment, notably K.B. Steinhauser,
The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius.
28 The first edition by A. Amelli, 'Tyconii Afri fragmenta commentarii in Apocalipsin',
Spicilegium Casinense 3.1 (Monte Cassino: Typis Archiocenobii Montis Cassini, 1897):
263–331, has been replaced by the editions of Lo Bue and Gryson (see Abbreviations).
29 Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction 28–35; 'Commentaires [part 1]', p. 313; 'Fragments inédits', pp. 189–190.
30 Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction, ch. 1, and M. Dulaey, 'La sixième règle de Tyconius et son résumé dans le "De doctrina christiana"', Revue des études augustiniennes 35 (1989):
83–103. On Tyconius's approach to Revelation, see also Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', pp. 240–241, as well as Paula Fredriksen, 'Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity from John of Patmos to Augustine of Hippo', Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991):
151–183, 'Tyconius and Augustine on the Apocalypse', The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, pp.
20–37, and Paula Fredriksen Landes, 'Tyconius and the End of the World', Revue des études augustiniennes 28 (1982): 59–75. The classic study by Traugott Hahn, Tyconius-Studien. Ein
Beitrag zur Kirchenund Dogmengeschichte des vierten Jahrhunderts, Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche 6/2 (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1991, repr. of Leipzig, 1900 ed.), remains valuable despite his limited knowledge of the text of Tyconius's commentary.
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historical time-span of the Church's existence. What John's vision 'reveals' is the hidden truth about the present. Moreover, for Tyconius, the Church was a 'bipartite body' (corpus bipartitum) of saints and sinners, who would only be separated at the end of time. Thus the frontier between good and evil passes not only between pagans and Christians, but through the very centre of the Church itself. This aggravated his fellow Donatists, for whom membership in the 'pure' Donatist church constituted a manifest sign of salvation, while all outside the community were without exception damned.
Finally, Tyconius presented Revelation as a thematic and theological unity.
Its unique subject was the Church itself, the Body of Christ, extending his salvific mission to the end of time. All the visionary imagery and oracles of Revelation point to this single, central mystery.31
Tyconius's approach nonetheless never completely evacuates the prophetic character of Revelation. The historic combat of good and evil will culminate in a final crisis at the end of time, a crisis foretold in Revelation. Certainly Bede did not regard Tyconius as a doctrinaire allegorist: in the preface to the Commentary, he even criticized him for interpreting the persecution of the Donatists as prefiguring the eschatological confrontation.32 But by producing an exposition that was (in Roger Gryson's words) politically correct, theologically acceptable and spiritually useful, Tyconius ensured that the Western Church, unlike the Eastern, would embrace the book of Revelation not only into its canon of Scripture, but into the main channels of its religious thinking.33
1.5 The Tyconian Tradition from Augustine to the End of the Sixth Century Tyconius's eschatology was disseminated and validated for western Christians by Augustine, who in a sense 'sponsored' Tyconius, just as Jerome guaranteed the orthodoxy of Victorinus.34 However, the nature and extent
31 Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction, ch. 2.
32 The Budapest fragments reveal that Tyconius definitely saw current events in Africa as prefiguring the future appearance of Antichrist: Budapest fragment IIva 11-20, ed. Gryson
'Fragments inédits', pp. 198–199 and 214–216. See also Frederiksen Landes, 'Tyconius and the End of the World'. Augustine criticized Gaudentius for holding such beliefs: Contra Gaudentium 1.27.30-31, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 53 (1910), pp. 228–230.
33 Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, p. 7.
34 Matter, 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', p. 31.
INTRODUCTION
of Tyconius's influence on Augustine is matter for debate.35 It is certain, however, that, Augustine's views on the end-times became less literal over the course of his life. In his homilies on the epistles of John, he concentrates on spiritualizing and moralizing the figure of Antichrist, who becomes a symbol for heretics, schismatics, and bad Christians.36 Augustine made two singularly significant and highly influential contributions to eschatology in general, and to Bede's exegesis of Revelation in particular. It was Augustine's considered view (articulated in The City of God 20.30) that the history of the Sixth Age, from Incarnation to the Last Judgement, was essentially homogeneous. No events within the Sixth Age constituted significant turning points, so the prophecies of Revelation and cognate texts could not apply to current situations. Thus in his correspondence with bishop Hesychius
(Ep. 197–199), Augustine articulated why it was impossible, unwise, and unnecessary to speculate whether the end-times had actually begin, or to attempt to calculate the deadline for the end of the world. In The City of God 20, on the other hand, he declared his confidence that the timeline of the events of the eschaton, once they were set in train, could be clearly established.37 Bede cited the correspondence with Hesychius in the Letter to Plegwin (708), his defence of the chronology of world-history which he had proposed in On Times. On Times and the Letter to Plegwin are closely bound up with the composition of the Commentary on Revelation, and I shall discuss the letter to Hesychius in detail when I examine the circumstances of the composition of the Commentary below in section 3 of this Introduction.
In the Commentary, Bede will not only refer frequently to The City of God, but he will use Augustine's timeline of the eschaton as the exegetical key to the book of Revelation. This is discussed more fully in section 4.
While apocalyptic excitement ebbed and flowed in the sixth century, this is also a period which sees a revival of commentaries on Revelation, both in Greek (Oecumenicus, Andrew of Caesarea) and in the West (Apringius of 35 Roger Gryson argues that Tyconius's commentary underlies the whole final section of The City of God: 'Commentaires [part 1]', p. 311. Others warn that this dependence is easily overstated, e.g. M. Dulaey, 'L'Apocalypse. Augustin et Tyconius', Saint Augustin et la Bible, ed. A.M. La Bonnardière, Bible de tous les temps, v. 3 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), pp. 369–396;
Bonner, 'Augustine and Millenarianism'.
36 McGinn, Antichrist, p. 77; see Augustine's In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos 3.4-10
(PL 35.1199-2003) and 7.2 (2030). Bede quotes frequently from these homilies in his own commentary in 1 John.
37 Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', pp. 240–243; Markus, 'Living within Sight', p. 27; McGinn, 'The End of the World', p. 62.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Beja,38 Caesarius of Arles, and Primasius). The commentary of Primasius is our chief concern, because it is a major resource for Bede.
Primasius, bishop of Hadrumentum or Justiniapolis (modern Sousse in Tunisia) from 527 to 565, was a staunch anti-Arian and a vigorous supporter of the emperor Justinian's reconquista of the Vandal kingdom of north Africa. His commentary on Revelation is permeated by his hostility to Arian heresy, which the historic circumstances of his life encouraged him to identify with tyranny and persecution. As we shall see, this rubbed off on Bede.39 Primasius was pleased to align his commentary on Revelation with the authority of Augustine, book 20 of whose The City of God was his major source for the exegesis of Revelation 20–21. He was also deeply in debt to Tyconius, whom he frequently quotes verbatim, but often without acknowledgement.40 Indeed, Primasius is rather churlish on the subject of Tyconius, because he was a Donatist. In his prologue he states,
…but I also culled some material from the late Tyconius the Donatist which was amenable to correct interpretation. What I chose from this, I brought into line with Catholic standards, suppressing what was tangential, pruning what was unsuitable, adjusting what was crude. For I found many things in this work of his which were superfluous, foolish, and opposed to sound doctrine, as when he gives a specious interpretation in some harmful passages, following the depravity of his heart, for the sake of that controversy which lies between his folk and us, and when he fancies he makes a biting mockery of our Church by his offensive exegesis. It is no wonder that a heretic turns something to his own advantage; rather, it is a wonder that he discovered things that are worth collecting, though he dared to do so who had no right. It was our care to proceed truthfully, as the opportunities of the text presented themselves, and to root out their errors by clear demonstration. For just as a wise man should value a jewel found in a dung-heap, pick it up, and restore it to its pristine worth, so truth, wherever it shines forth, is to be alleged in defence of Catholic unity.41
38 Virtually the only post-Tyconian western commentator who worked outside the range of Tyconius's influence was Apringius of Beja (fl. 531–548). His commentary, edited by Gryson in Commentaria minora in Apocalypsin Johannis, CCSL 107 (2003), pp. 13–97, was not known to Bede.
39 On Primasius's commentary, see Bonner, Saint Bede, pp. 7–8, and A.W. Adams's introduction to his edition (see Abbreviations).
40 Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, pp. 47–50; Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius pp. 81, 88; Matter, 'The Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis', p. 41. The source apparatus of Adams's edition is not altogether reliable or complete: see Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, p. 72.
41 Primasius 1.7–2.21; my translation. For Bede's more generous views on Tyconius, see below, pp. 29–30.
INTRODUCTION
Primasius also betrays his use of Tyconius in his numerous references to 'another version' (alia editio) or 'another translation' (alia translatio) of the Biblical text; in many cases, this is the North African version of the Vetus Latina used by Tyconius. Bede reproduces a number of these variant readings. Primasius also absorbed Jerome's revision of Victorinus, which he used extensively, often without acknowledgement. In this respect, his influential commentary both distilled and disinfected the problematic earlier tradition of exegesis on Revelation. Primasius was a cautious reader of Revelation, and apparently uninterested in the imminence of the last days. Finally, his was the first commentary to propose that Revelation has an internal structure and meaningful divisions; it was according to these divisions that he organized the five books of his commentary.42
Another important channel for the diffusion of Tyconius's thought was the commentary by Caesarius of Arles, Primasius's older contemporary.
It circulated in the Middle Ages under the name of Augustine, and was restored to its rightful author by its editor, G. Morin.43 Caesarius undoubtedly encountered the work of Tyconius when he was a young man in the monastery of Lérins, the gateway through which the African's commentary entered
Europe in the second half of the fifth century.44 It is almost certain that Bede did not use Caesarius directly, an issue to which we will return below.
Full-scale commentaries on Revelation were not the only vehicles for the Tyconian tradition. Tyconius was also a resource for briefer and less ambitious expositions such as Cassiodorus's Complexiones in epistulis apostolorum et actibus apostolorum et Apocalypsi (Collections about the Catholic Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles and Revelations). In his Institutiones (Institutes of Divine and Human Learning) 1.9.3, Cassiodorus mentions a copy of Tyconius's commentary at Viviarium which he had annotated to flag the passages he approved or rejected, in the same manner as he had annotated the works of Origen. Despite reservations, he held the commentary in high regard, praising Tyconius for explaining the Apocalypse 'with subtlety and style' (subtiliter et eleganter). However, the Complexiones
42 Matter, 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', pp. 31–32.
43 For bibliographic information, see Abbreviations. On the commentary and its diffusion, see Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 45 sqq., Gryson, 'Commentaires
[part 1]', pp. 317–321; G. Morin, 'Le commentaire homilétique de S. Césaire sur l'Apocalypse', Revue bénédictine 45 (1933): 43–61; G. Langgärtner, 'Der Apokalypse-Kommentar des Caesarius von Arles', Theologie und Glaube 57 (1967): 210–225. Gryson disputes the common perception that this commentary was a suite of sermons: Tyc. ed. Introduction, p. 36.
44 Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', p. 311.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
survives in only one manuscript, Verona Bibl. Capitulare XXXIX (c. 600, Italy), and was not known to Bede. 45 Closer to Bede's milieu are three Irish texts: the so-called 'Irish Reference Bible' of uncertain date, but probably midor late eighth century, the Commemoratorium in apocalypsin Ioannis apostoli (Commentary on the Revelation of John the Apostle) by pseudoJerome,46 and the lost early eighth-century commentary on Revelation that lies behind the glosses in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.X.16 (s.
IX/X, n. France).47 The 'Reference Bible', or Bibelwerk as it was termed by Bernhard Bischoff – its medieval title is Pauca problesmata de enigmatibus ex tomis canonicis – is a collection of questions on every book of the Bible.48
45 The text has been edited by Roger Gryson, Commentaria minora in Apocalypsin Johannis, pp. 101–129. See also Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', pp. 331–333, Tyc. ed. Introduction ch. 2.5. The question of whether Bede knew the Institutiones remains an open one: see Alan Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: History and Figure in Sacred Text, Jarrow
Lecture, 2005, pp. 7–8 and n. 35.
46 The Commemoratorium and the Revelation section of the Reference Bible are edited by Roger Gryson, Commentaria minora in Apocalypsin Johannis, pp. 233–295 and 161–229.
See also Gryson's introduction to this volume, pp. 8–9. G. McGinty's edition of the full Reference Bible is published in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 173 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000). Gryson's edition of pseudo-Jerome replaces the earlier ones by K. Hartung,
Ein Traktat zur Apokalypse des Ap. Johannes in einer Pergamenthandschrift der K. Bibliothek in Bamberg (Bamberg: Gärtner, 1904) and Grazia Lo Menzo Rapisarda, Incerti Auctoris commentarius in Apocalypsin. Miscellanea di studi di letteratura cristiana antica 16 (Catania:
Centro di studi sull'antico cristianesimo, 1967); repr. Patrologia Latina Supplementum, ed. A.
Hamman (Paris: Garnier, 1958–1971) 4:1850–1863. For discussion, see Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', pp. 333–337; K.B. Steinhauser, 'Bemerkungen zum pseudo-hieronymianischen
Commemoratorium in Apocalypsin', Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 26
(1979): 220–242. Note that in the present translation, references to the Commemoratorium are to Gryson's edition; Gryson's apparatus to his edition of Bede, which appeared before his edition of pseudo-Jerome, cites Rapisarda's edition.
47 Identified and discussed by Lobrichon, 'Stalking the Signs'. Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction chapter 2.3 argues that the Irish source of the Cambridge glosses also underpins the glosses in the Micy Bible (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 15679, c. 810), ed. by Gryson,
Commentaria minora pp. 303–337. Gryson compares parallel passages from the Cambridge glosses to the Commemoratorium in his edition of the latter. He is preparing an edition of the Cambridge glosses for the Corpus christianorum series.
48 Bernhard Bischoff, 'Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im
Frühmittelalter', Sacris erudiri 6 (1954): 189–279, and repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien 1
(Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966), pp. 205–273. Bischoff's criteria for identifying Irish Biblical exegesis have been subject to criticism, notably by Michael Gorman, 'A Critique of Bischoff's
Theory of Irish Exegesis: The Commentary on Genesis in Munich Clm 6302 (Wendepunkte
2)', Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1997): 178–233, and 'The Myth of Hiberno-Latin Exegesis',
Revue bénédictine 110 (2000): 42–85. The Irish character of the Pauca problesmata has been defended by Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction p. 56, and by Michael Herren, 'Irish Biblical
INTRODUCTION
The section devoted to Revelation is disproportionately large, testifying to the interest this book held in Irish scholarly circles. The Commemoratorium is a kind of telegraphic reader's guide to the terminology and symbols of Revelation. It was composed between 550 at the earliest (the author uses
Primasius) and 750, when it was used by Ambrosius Autpertus. Gryson argues for the earlier date, because the text uses the pre-Jerome version of Victorinus, which was more or less out of circulation after 600.49 Both the 'Reference Bible' and the Commemoratorium drew on a lost commentary that apparently reproduced the text of Tyconius with great fidelity. Though
Bede may not have used any of these works – indeed, the Reference Bible may have used Bede – the fact that three Irish commentaries on Revelation tapped into the Primasian-Augustinian-Tyconian tradition suggests that Bede's milieu was interested in the exegesis of Revelation, and both familiar with and broadly accepting of Tyconius's approach to the text.50
The final link in the exegetical chain leading to Bede, Gregory the Great, is in one sense the weakest, in that Gregory paid little attention to Revelation per se, preferring to anchor his eschatology in the Synoptics.
However, Bede's heavy use of Gregory's Moralia and other works lends particular importance to the pope's views on the end-time. These views are quite complex. Gregory's sometimes dramatic declarations that the dire events of his day pointed to the approaching Judgement have been the object of much scholarly attention, and were familiar to Bede.51 This rhetoric of Commentaries Before 800', Roma magistra mundi: Itineraria culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts au Père L.E. Boyle à l'occasion de son 75e anniversaire (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales, 1998), pp. 404–405.
49 Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', p. 337, n. 101.
50 Kelly, 'The Venerable Bede', esp. pp. 395–399, 403–406 on Bede's possible uses of ps.-Jerome, and 'The Venerable Bede and Hiberno-Latin Exegesis', Sources of Anglo-Saxon
Culture, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, Studies in Medieval Culture 20 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute
Publications, Western Michigan University, 1986), pp. 65–75. Kelly is persuaded that the Irish
Reference Bible drew on Bede's commentary on Revelation.
51 R.A. Markus, 'Gregory and Bede: The Making of the Western Apocalyptic Tradition', Gregorio Magno nel XIV centenario della morte, Atti dei convegni Lincei 209 (Rome:
Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 2004), pp. 247–256, 'Living within Sight', passim and Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), ch. 4; R.
Manselli, 'L'escatologia di Gregorio Magni', Ricerche di storia religiosa 1 (1954): 72–88;
Claude Dagens, 'La fin des temps et l'Église selon Saint Grégoire le Grand', Recherches de sciences religieuses 58 (1970): 273–288; H. Savon, 'L'Antichrist dans l'oeuvre de Gregoire le
Grand', Grégoire le Grand, ed. Jacques Fontaine, Robert Gillet and Stan Pellistrandi (Paris:
C.N.R.S., 1986), pp. 389–405; J.N. Hillgarth, 'Eschatological and Political Concepts in the Seventh Century', Le septième siècle: changements et continuités. The Seventh Century:
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
imminence fed off a resurgence of apocalyptic anxiety in the later sixth century – anxiety that even the passage of the ominous year 550 could not allay.52 However, Gregory refused to speculate on dates; instead, he believed in preparing for the Second Coming by strenuous missionary and reformist activity. Signs of the end were evident, but not all of the prophesied signs had manifested themselves, and the very postponement of the end seemed to intensify Gregory's sense of urgency and moral seriousness. This ethical and pastoral eschatology, grounded in a vision of the future which was all the more powerful for being 'unscheduled', would have a deep impact on Bede.53
2. Bede's Immediate Sources and How He Used Them The complex and contested history of the exegesis of Revelation was funnelled to Bede through a handful of heavily used sources: the commentaries of Tyconius and Primasius, Augustine's writings, and particularly The City of God, Jerome's commentary on Daniel, and Gregory's homilies and Moralia.54 To these we can add Victorinus in Jerome's revised version, though
Bede seems to have made limited use of it, largely to supplement Tyconius and Primasius. Almost all the passages traceable to Victorinus/Jerome are also found in Tyconius or Primasius. However, Bede will occasionally use a turn of phrase or slip in a few words which indicate that he consulted the original (e.g. exegesis of Rev. 1:4, 4:4, 10:1).55
Change and Continuity, ed. Jacques Fontaine and J.N. Hillgarth (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1992), pp. 212–235; Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Medieval
Theology', pp. 249–250; McGinn, 'The End of the World', pp. 69–70.
52 For a survey of references in contemporary Italian chronicles, see Fabio Troncarelli, 'Il consolato dell'anticristo', Studi medievali ser. 3, 30 (1989): 567–92.
53 See below, pp. 84–85. For a thorough discussion of the impact of Gregory's eschatological ideas on Bede, see Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 147–63, as well as R.A. Markus,
'Haec non longe sunt: Gregory the Great on the Antichrist and the End', Munera amicitiae: studi di storia e cultura sulla tarda antichità offerti a Salvatore Pricoco, ed. Rossana Barcellona
(Solverina Mannelli: Rubbettina, 2003), pp. 255–264; 'Gregory and Bede', passim, and 'Living within Sight', pp. 31–34, especially p. 33 on Gregory's hostility to securitas or complacency.
54 The definitive survey of Bede's sources is Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, ch. 4. The pioneering work was carried out by Bonner, Saint Bede.
55 Bede's copy of Victorinus/Jerome was apparently the Φ recension, which substitutes
Irenaeus's reading of the number of the Beast in Rev. 13:18. Primasius used an earlier version of Victorinus/Jerome: see Gryson, 'Les commentaires patristiques latins de l'Apocalypse
[part 2]', Revue théologique de Louvain 28 (1997): 484–502 at 485, and Dulaey, Victorin de
Poetovio, pp. 364–365. Some historians doubt that Bede made direct use of Victorinus/Jerome, e.g. Matter, 'The Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis', chart p. 42; Mackay, 'Sources and
INTRODUCTION
Apart from these core texts, Bede had access to an exceptionally rich library, whose resources supplied specific kinds of information required by his exegetical task, such as the etymologies of names, or the elucidation of the properties of the precious stones in the foundations of the Heavenly
Jerusalem (Rev. 21:18-20). These sources were excerpted, paraphrased, spliced together, and marshalled into a tightly organized and compact gloss.
2.1 'Commaticum interpretandi genus'
At the end of his exposition of the twelve precious stones, Bede apologizes for dilating 'at greater length than was suitable for this summary style of commentary' – quam commaticum interpretandi genus decebat. Bede borrowed this expression from Jerome.56 It refers to the visual arrangement of texts, particularly the text of the Bible, per cola et commata, 'by clauses and sections'. Instead of being written out in long lines or justified columns, the text was divided into clauses, and each clause began on a fresh line. Per cola et commata was deployed in some ancient Roman manuscripts, but came into its own in the Late Antique Bible. The Codex Amiatinus, created at Wearmouth-Jarrow in the early years of the eighth century, is laid out in this way. Its pages have a majestic aspect, enhanced by the stately script and generous use of space; but per cola et commata presentation also facilitates public reading. As well, it influenced exegesis; commaticum interpretandi genus was thus a concise style of commentary that followed the Biblical text, section by section. This was the approach taken by Bede's foundational sources, Tyconius and Primasius, and it may have had a special stylistic appeal for commentators on Revelation: as Gryson points out, it lends an air of nervous urgency not out of keeping with the gripping prophetic character of the Biblical text. If anything, this is more pronounced in the case of Bede, whose lemmata are much shorter than those of his sources.57
Style', p. 58. Lapidge does not include Victorinus/Jerome in his index of Bede's sources in The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
56 The phrase appears in Jerome's preface to his Commentariorum in Matthaeus libri, ed.
D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, CCSL 77 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 4.92–5.93; cf. Jerome's translation of Origen's Homeliae in Ezechielem ed. W.A. Baehrens, Die griechischen christlichen
Schriftsteller 33 (1925), pp. 31–32. See also P. Jay, L'exégèse de saint Jérôme d'après son
Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1985), pp. 76–80; George Hardin Brown,
A Companion to Bede (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), pp. 69–70.
57 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, pp. 133–134. Cf. Joyce Hill, 'Ælfric, Gregory and the Carolingians', Roma, magistra mundi, pp. 409–423 at 413; Holder, 'Bede and the New
Testament', pp. 148–149.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
However, Bede did not subject every verse to interpretation, or expound every clause of those verses he did treat. Of the 405 verses of Revelation,
32 are omitted entirely and 194 are only partially cited. This amounts to the omission of about one quarter of the text.58 In some cases, Bede cites a verse in part, truncating with the words 'and so forth'. The omissions may, in certain circumstances, be significant, and these cases are discussed in the next section of this Introduction. On the other hand, Bede sometimes commented on parts of the text which he had truncated from the lemma (e.g.
Rev. 1:4-5, 2:2-3) or even omitted altogether (e.g. Rev. 3:16), so one must conclude that he expected his readers to know, or have access to, the entire text. In most instances, however, omitted passages are passed over in silence.
When Bede expounds a whole verse, his custom is to break it into units of meaning, and then interpret each unit in a concise, self-contained exposition.
Occasionally the closing sentence or phrase of his exposition forms a link to the next conceptual unit, creating a more sustained sense of flow. From time to time, Bede will refer backwards or forwards to other parts of the text. In the main, however, the Commentary on Revelation is a chain of short exegetical 'bites'; indeed, Bede's 'bites' are generally smaller than those found in Tyconius or Primasius, his foundational sources.59 There are two exceptions to this pattern: the lengthy treatment of the signing of the Twelve
Tribes (Rev. 7:5-8), and the allegorical interpretation of the twelve precious stones that constitute the foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem referred to above. The exposition of the Twelve Tribes essentially condenses Primasius, but the explanation of the Twelve Stones appears to be quite original. These two passages look like embedded sermons, particularly as each ends with a peroration. Some early copyists of the Commentary seem to have thought them excessive, and consequently dropped them after a few lines.60
It is important to note, however, that Bede only deployed this commaticum style in his earliest commentaries, namely those on Revelation and Acts. By 716 at the latest (when the commentary on 1 Samuel was written) he had adopted a more expansive exegetical voice. Nonetheless, interlocking thematic units and internal cross-references would remain signatures of his exegetical approach, even when it developed in more discursive directions.
58 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 179. Both Tyconius and Primasius drop verses, though less frequently than does Bede. Most manuscripts of the Commentary are reasonably consistent in their presentation of the Biblical lemmata.
59 Mackay, 'Augustine and Gregory', p. 401.
60 E.g. Erfurt, Stadtund Regionalbibliothek CA 4o 96 (ca 800), Gryson's MS P: Bede ed.
Introduction, p. 36.
INTRODUCTION
The embedded dilations on the Twelve Tribes and the foundation stones announce, so to speak, Bede's future potential.
2.2 A Mosaic of Quotations Bede's Commentary on Revelation was probably composed at about the same time as his On the Nature of Things, and the two texts share some common methods of construction. In On the Nature of Things, Bede began by appropriating (with modifications) the structure of Isidore of Seville's book of the same name, together with some extracts from Isidore, cited without acknowledgement. He then proceeded to supplement, modify and correct this Isidorean base by substituting or adding material gathered from other writers, notably Pliny.61 Another of Bede's early works, On Figures and Tropes (De schematibus et tropis), was constructed in a similar fashion, using Donatus's chapters on figures and tropes as the backbone.62 In his
Commentary on Revelation, the foundation course is Tyconius's and Primasius's commentaries. Primasius, like Isidore in On the Nature of Things, is actually occluded. On top of this armature, Bede adds details and qualifications from works which are not commentaries on Revelation, by major patristic writers such as Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory.63 This method is complementary to the procedure Bede used in his collection of extracts from Augustine on the Pauline epistles, which is a single-author florilegium that assembles a 'virtual' commentary from fragmentary expositions of individual passages scattered through Augustine's writings.
Hence, despite the weight of his debt to Primasius, Bede mentions him by name only once, namely in connection with the decoding of the name of the Beast '666' in Rev. 13:18. Setting aside the prologue, Tyconius is named ten times. Augustine appears in person four times, Jerome twice and Gregory three times, though all these Fathers are actually used much more extensively. Venantius Fortunatus (Rev. 2:9) and Arator (Rev. 21:20) are explicitly acknowledged, and Bede undoubtedly consulted them directly;
61 See Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis, trans., Bede: On the Nature of Things and On Times
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), introduction pp. 12–13.
62 See Calvin B. Kendall's introduction to his edition and translation of Bede, Libri II De arte metrica et De schematibus et tropis. The Art of Poetry and Rhetoric (Saarbrücken:
AQ-Verlag, 1991), pp. 23–24, and Louis Holtz, 'Bède et la tradition grammaticale latine',
Bède le Vénérable entre tradition et postérité/The Venerable Bede. Tradition and Posterity, ed.
Stephane Lebecq, Michel Perrin and Olivier Szerwiniack (Lille: CEGES – Université Charles de Gaulle, 2005), pp. 9–18.
63 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 162; Mackay, 'Augustine and Gregory', p. 402.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
his quotation from Ignatius of Antioch (Rev. 18:21) was culled from Jerome's De uiris illustribus, that from Cyprian of Carthage (Rev. 9:6) from Jerome's Vita Pauli, and the paraphrase of Dionysius of Alexandria (22:7) from Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History in Rufinus's Latin translation. Read without a source apparatus, Bede's text looks like a largely original composition, frankly indebted to Tyconius's commentary, and endorsed by the greatest authorities of Latin Christianity. As we shall see, this was exactly the impression Bede desired to convey. But if read alongside the superb apparatus fontium of Roger Gryson's critical edition of the Commentary on Revelation, the overall impression is of an artfully assembled mosaic of quotations and paraphrases, some as short as a few words, others composed of whole sentences.64 An example will serve to illustrate the method, drawn from the exposition of Rev. 18:3: 'and the merchants of the earth have been made rich by the power of her delicacies': 'They are said to be rich in sins [Tyconius] who for temporal gain trade their own souls, in a doleful commerce [Primasius]. For abundance of luxury makes them poor rather than rich [Tyconius]'.
Such creative interweaving of his sources shows that Bede's reliance on patristic authority was not merely a symptom of youth and inexperience, but a conscious craftsmanship and policy. Indeed, exegesis by excerpting was a relatively new method in Bede's day, though it was strategically practised by Jerome65, and would become commonplace by the Carolingian period.
It required some explanation and justification, and Bede provided this, to some extent, in his Preface. Later, Bede would employ a system of abbreviated marginal source-marks in his Gospel commentaries; there are no such marks, however, in manuscripts of the Commentary on Revelation.66 Bede's exchange of letters with Acca, prefaced to the Commentary on Luke, suggests that he developed this system in response to criticisms of his commentaryby-excerpt method, notably in the exegesis of Rev. 4:7.67 Acca encouraged
64 Mackay, 'Sources and Style', p. 54; 'Augustine and Gregory', pp. 401–402.
65 Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian
Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 192–197. Jerome's defence of this method as especially appropriate to monastic humility may have appealed to Bede.
66 Mackay, 'Sources and Style', p. 57.
67 In Luc. 7.105-11; cf. In Marc. (432.39-54) and see below, pp. 134–135, n. 181. Mark
Stansbury, 'Source Marks in Bede's Biblical Commentaries', Northumbria's Golden Age, ed.
Jane Hawkes and Susan Mills (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 383–389; Michael Gorman,
'Source Marks and Chapter Division in Bede's Commentary on Luke', Revue bénédictine 112
(2002): 246–290. The system is described by Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.26.1, ed. R.A.B.
Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), p. 67. For examples in extant MSS of Bede's works,
INTRODUCTION
Bede to continue with this method, citing precedents in Augustine, Gregory, and Ambrose. Bede never totally abandoned commentary-by-excerpt; the sixth book of his Commentary on the Song of Songs is explicitly a suite of excerpts from Gregory. He claimed to be imitating Paterius's anthology of exegetical extracts from Gregory, a work he knew only by reputation.68
Commenting by excerpting also suited Bede's intention to distil, and thereby in some measure recreate the heritage of Christian erudition for the young English Church. As he remarks in this preface to the Commentary on Revelation, his aim was to present the solid substance of Catholic tradition in a digested form that would be palatable to a people who were (in his view) slothful and not enthusiastic about reading. Behind this chiding we can perhaps glimpse something of how Bede himself learned and taught the Bible.
Contemporary Irish scholars seem to have worked through the text using a combination of paraphrase, amplification and 'crisp notes or quotations based on named patristic sources',69 and this is consonant with Bede's commentaryby-excerpt style. But this method was also a vehicle for particularly monastic intentions. To form one's own text, even one's own prayer, from the substance of one's spiritual reading is the classic form of early medieval monastic meditatio: thus Bede says that he built on the commentary of Tyconius by adding 'as far as we are able, from material handed down from our teachers, or from recollecting what we have read [memoria lectionis], or even from the resources of our own understanding. For we have it from the commandments that we should repay to the Lord the talent which we have received, with interest'.70 see M.L.W. Laistner, 'Source-marks in Bede Manuscripts', Journal of Theological Studies 34
(1933): 350–354.
68 In Cantica Canticorum 6.17-23 (CCSL 119B, 359); cf. Stansbury, 'Source Marks', pp.
387–388.
69 Herren, 'Irish Biblical Commentaries Before 800', p. 396.
70 Ed. p. 231.126–232.133; see translation below, p. 105. The phrase memoria lectionis points to monastic meditatio, which was often simply the memorization of Scripture; A. De
Vogüé consistently translates meditatio as 'mémorisation' in his edition of the Regula magistri,
Sources chrétiennes 105–109 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1964). See also P. Catry, 'Lire l'Écriture selon saint Grégoire le Grand', Collectanea cisterciensia 34 (1972): 177–201. Bede's account in HE 4.24 (414–420) of the illiterate poet Caedmon's weaving of text from reminiscences of Scripture and liturgy – which earns him automatic admission to Hild's monastery – is an apt illustration of monastic composition: see Philip J. West, 'Rumination in Bede's Account of Caedmon', Monastic Studies 12 (1976): 217–236, and (on the imagery of 'eating the book')
Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images,
400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 123–124. On the meditative dimension of Bede's exegetical works, see Gerald Bonner, 'Bede: Scholar and Spiritual
Teacher', Northumbria's Golden Age, pp. 368–369.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
An important ingredient of Bede's craft was, therefore, wide background reading. Roger Gryson imagines Bede embarking on his project to comment on Revelation by systematically scanning all the writings of the Fathers at his disposal, pen in hand; he noted relevant passages on index cards
(schedulae), and slotted them into the appropriate place in his 'base-line' commentary.71 Gryson's reconstruction is based on Bede's statement in his letter to Bishop Acca prefacing In Lucam that he has had to act as dictator, notarius and scriptor in preparing this work. He proceeds to explain how after looking through the works of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory for what they had to say about Luke, he copied into his own work exactly what they said, or a close paraphrase. To save time and effort, he adopted the source-mark system of reference. Then he added a few comments of his own. There are problems, however, in taking this as a straightforward description of Bede's working methods. Not only was it unusual for Bede to act as his own secretary and scribe (indeed, he offers these exceptional circumstances as an excuse for his tardiness), but his explanation of his treatment of the Fathers seems designed to explain the innovative marginal source-marks, and perhaps deflect accusations of plagiarism. Finally, Bede does not mention schedulae. Pliny the Elder worked with index cards, but he had an enabling infrastructure of slave-secretaries; moreover, the culture of reading in a medieval monastery has its own distinctive laws, and even its own ways of storing and ordering the contents of material read, associated with contemplative rumination or meditatio.
2.3 Reconstructing Bede's Use of Tyconius While it is evident that the bulk of Bede's Commentary is actually drawn from Primasius, Gerald Bonner was convinced that there is in fact a considerable quantity of unacknowledged Tyconian quotation in Bede. Some of this can be identified by collation with other commentators indebted to Tyconius, like Beatus, Caesarius, and the Tyconian Fragments of Turin, while other passages may be provisionally identified as being by Tyconius because of their agreement with his characteristic theology. By these tests the number of apparently Tyconian citations in Bede becomes so considerable as to imply that Bede had a very genuine admiration for Tyconius' writings. Naturally, he deplored his Donatism; but unlike Primasius he spoke of Tyconius himself with respect and admitted that he had followed the pattern of his commentary in his own work. For this reason I would suggest that Bede's qualitative debt
71 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 163.
INTRODUCTION
to Tyconius is greater than his quantitative debt to Primasius and regard him as reasserting the Tyconian tradition in Apocalyptic commentary.72
In the appendix to his lecture, Bonner included a survey of Tyconian passages in Bede's Commentary. This survey applied a method that had been proposed as early as the nineteenth century for identifying references to or quotations from Tyconius's lost commentary by collating parallel passages in the commentaries of Bede, Cassiodorus, Primasius, Beatus and others.
Parallels which could not be traced to any other shared source, and which exhibited patterns of thought known to be characteristic of Tyconius, could legitimately be ascribed to his pen. This method, while in theory defensible, often broke down in practice, due to a lack of adequate understanding of the sources and methods of each of these authors, and in particular, a failure to account for the possibility that some witnesses (like Bede) may have been reading others (like Primasius) as well as – or instead of – reading Tyconius directly. These failings provoked criticism of the method,73 but also inspired refinements. Roger Gryson's reconstruction of Tyconius's commentary is the culmination of this process.74 The source apparatus in Gryson's edition of Bede is based on the same method.
Bede evidently had very high regard for Tyconius, and drew on his commentary extensively. Unlike Cassiodorus or Primasius, he usually
72 Bonner, Saint Bede, p. 13.
73 Notably by H.L. Ramsay, 'Le commentaire de l'Apocalypse de Béatus de Liébana',
Revue d'histoire et de littérature religieuses 7 (1902): 238 et sqq., who shows that many of the passages assigned by Hahn to Tyconius are in fact from Isidore and Gregory. Cf. Yves Christe,
'Beatus et la tradition latine des commentaires sur l'Apocalypse', Actas del Simposio para el estudio de los códices del commentario al Apocalypsis de Beato de Liébana (Madrid: Joyas,
1978), p. 57.
74 For an account of the scholarship on Tyconius's text, see Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, chapter 1. The comparative method was first proposed by Johannes Haussleiter, 'Die Kommentare des Victorinus, Tichonius und Hieronymus zur Apokalypse', Zeitschrift für Kirchenund
Dogmengeschichte und kirchliches Leben 7 (1886): 239–257. It was taken up by W. Bossuet,
Die Offenbarung Johannes. Kritisch-exegetische Kommentar über das Neue Testament v. 16
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1896), Hahn, Tyconius-Studien, Kamlah's influential study Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, p. 12, and more recently by Pincherle, 'Alla ricerca di Ticonio', and Gerald Bonner, 'Towards a Text of Tyconius', Studia Patristica 10. Papers
Presented to the Fifth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1967, ed. F.L. Cross, Texte und Untersuchungen 107 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970): 1, pp. 9–13.
Steinhauser's synopsis of the contents of the lost commentary is also based on witness collation: see The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 23–26, 255–264 (re: principles of reconstruction) and 265–316 (the synopsis). It is strenuously criticized by Gryson, Tyc. ed.
Introduction, p. 17.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
refrained from flagging references to Tyconius with precautions or qualifications, even though he closes the Commentary with a rebuke to the Donatists and Pelagians. In short, he treats Tyconius as an authority, even when
Tyconius's views depart from the patristic consensus (as at Rev. 16:17).75 In Gryson's opinion, Bede is the most faithful witness to the exact wording of Tyconius's text of any of the exegetes who used it.76
2.4 The Occlusion of Primasius Bede's virtual silence about his debt to Primasius is rather puzzling, given that Primasius's commentary was well known and highly valued in Bede's milieu. It is found in Bodleian Library MS Douce 140, a late seventhor early eighth-century copy by insular scribes of a French half-uncial exemplar. The exemplar appears to have been copied from unbound gatherings – a trait of Irish books – and may have resided in a northern French centre with Irish connections, such as St-Riquier or St-Bertin. Palaeographical analysis points to Glastonbury as the home of the scribes, and capitula of Book 5 were added by St Boniface, who left England in 716. None of its highly distinctive readings can be found in Bede's Commentary on Revelation, but the fact that in the early decades of the eighth century there were at least two manuscripts of Primasius in England – Bede's and the Douce volume – is an index of interest in this commentary. It also strongly suggests that the Irish were agents for the diffusion of this text in northern Europe, and therefore probably in Northumbria as well.77
75 Vercruysse, 'Bède lecteur de Tyconius', pp. 24–17. Vercruysse argues that Bede transmitted Tyconius's views 'sans doute par souci d'exhaustivité' even when he disagreed with them (25), but in the light of Bede's purposes and his modus operandi in this Commentary, this does not seem plausible.
76 Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, p. 62, and n. 158.
77 This summary is based on Adams's introduction to his edition of Primasius (see Abbreviations), pp. xiv–xv. For illustration and discussion of Douce Primasius, see Elias Avery Lowe,
Codices latini antiquiores. Pt 2, 2nd edn, ed. Virginia Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), no. 237; Summary Catalogue v. 4 (1897) 7.717-719. It is assigned on the basis of script to Glastonbury by Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), no. 461, p. 74, and N.R. Ker, Medieval
Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. Supplement to the Second Edition, ed.
Andrew G. Wilson (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 38.
INTRODUCTION
2.5 Did Bede Read Caesarius?
The issue of Caesarius is more complex. Roger Gryson does not include Caesarius's commentary among Bede's immediate sources, though he uses
Caesarius as a proxy for Tyconius.78 Bede's first abbot, Benedict Biscop (d. 689), was trained as a monk at Lérins, as was Caesarius. Gryson argues that Biscop brought the text of Tyconius to England from Lérins; might he not have brought works by Caesarius as well? It is noteworthy that Bede quotes from a sermon of Caesarius in his exegesis of Rev. 3:6. Manuscripts of Caesarius's commentary were certainly in England in the ninth century,79 and arguments have been made for Caesarius's influence on eschatological themes in Old English literature.80 However, there is almost no sign that Bede knew Caesarius's commentary. Caesarius is heavily dependent on Tyconius, so agreement between Bede and Caesarius may, in fact, mean that both are drawing upon Tyconius independently, even when there is no corroboration from Primasius or Beatus. Indeed, where the Turin fragments survive, there is no instance of a verbatim parallel between Bede and Caesarius where there is not a substantial and sometimes quite close verbal cognate in the Turin fragments.81 Bede's direct access to Caesarius is therefore doubtful, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
78 Michael Lapidge includes Caesarius in his list of sources used by Bede in The AngloSaxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 204 (no. 83), possibly due to a failure to distinguish the 'sources' from the 'lieux parallèles' in Gryson's index.
79 British Library Egerton 874, from St Augustine's Canterbury; note also the tenth-century
Glastonbury copy, now Bodleian Library, Hatton 30: Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 1]', pp.
320–321; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 294; Morin, 'Le commentaire homélétique', p. 209.
80 J.B. Trahern, 'Caesarius of Arles and Old English Literature: Some Contributions and Recapitulation', Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1975): 105–119; Tom Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield,
1976), pp. 30–31. Caesarius's sermon 57 is quoted in some versions of the Old English Apocalypse of Thomas: Faerber, 'L'Apocalypse de Thomas', p. 135.
81 Lo Bue (p. 21) claims, albeit without producing much evidence, that the Turin revision of Tyconius was produced in Lérins, where Caesarius was once a monk. He also argues that Bede used Caesarius directly. His prime example, the commentary on the first part of Rev. 8:9, is not however, borne out by Gryson's research, which identifies Primasius as a major source.
See this translation, n. 385. While Gryson agrees that Lérins was the principal gateway for Tyconius's text into Europe, he rejects the idea that the Turin Fragments were written there: see above, p. 15. The affinity between Bede's commentary and Caesarius did not go unremarked in the Middle Ages. A twelfth-century manuscript from Bury, now Cambridge, King's College
7, ascribes Caesarius's commentary to Bede, and Bede's own commentary is accompanied by Caesarius's (albeit wrongly ascribed to Gennadius) in Cambridge, St John's College H. 6
(England, c. 1170–1180).
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2.6 Bede's Borrowings from Augustine Alan Thacker's 2005 Jarrow Lecture tallies Bede's considerable debt to Augustine, and his profound familiarity with his writings, particularly
The City of God. Better than almost any other early medieval writer, Bede comprehended Augustine's central idea of the dual status of the city of God, on pilgrimage through time yet already reigning in eternity.82 Augustine's influence is certainly visible in the background ideas and the exegetical details of the Commentary on Revelation. Book 20 of The City of God was an influential source of ideas about the end-times in general, and Revelation in particular. Many of Bede's quotations from this book are also found in Primasius, but a significant number are not,83 or else there is evidence that Bede read The City of God and Primasius in tandem. In the midst of his commentary on ch. 20, where he is mining large segments of Augustine from Primasius, Bede suddenly turns on his own initiative to the original text to expound Rev. 20:6.84 In the exposition of Rev. 20:10, the alternative explanation of 'fire from heaven', with its reference to 2 Thess. 2, is drawn from a passage in The City of God 20:12 which was dropped by Primasius.
When Bede borrows Augustine from Primasius, he often neglects to cite Augustine by name, but naming of Augustine does not necessarily mean that Bede used him directly: the long quotation from De sancta virginitate (On Holy Virginity) in the exegesis of Rev. 14:4 was at least cued by Primasius.
Bede cites Augustine as his source for the commentary on Rev. 20:3, in a passage evidently copied from Primasius. However, Primasius does not identify Augustine as his source in this instance. Bede therefore knew The City of God well enough to know that he was reading Augustine when he read Primasius, and to supply the author's name.
The likelihood that Bede knew Augustine's masterpiece in its original form, and knew it deeply, increases when we consider the echoes of and allusions to this work. Bede's exegesis on Rev. 9:15, where the release of Satan and his minions from captivity, and their final assault on the saints, is prefigured, is a good example:
Bede: What do you imagine they will do when they are loosed, who do so much harm now, when they are bound?85
82 Alan Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo.
83 Bede's exegesis of Rev. 13:14 and 14:11 paraphrases The City of God, and is not paralleled in other sources. The passage borrowed for the exegesis of Rev. 13:14 might have been found in Eugippius's anthology of extracts from Augustine, but not the second.
84 See below, p. 255, n. 1000.
85 Ed. 355.25-26; translation p. 173.
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Augustine: And what are we in comparison with those saints and believers of the future, who are to be tempted by the loosing against them of such a foe: a foe whom we resist at such dire peril even when he is bound?86
Bede also declares his allegiance to Augustine by quoting from or paraphrasing Contra adversarium legis (Against the opponent of the Law),
Enarrationes in Psalmos (Commentary on the Psalms), Letter 55, and of course, On Christian Learning in the prologue. Bede's confidence in Augustine's authority led him to side with the bishop even against the consensus of tradition. In assigning the four living creatures of Rev. 4:7, Bede departed from the customary interpretation by identifying the lion with Matthew and the man with Mark. His source was Augustine, but that did not spare Bede from criticism. He was obliged to defend his choice in the prologue to his commentary on Luke.87
2.7 Bede Reads Jerome and Gregory Bede drew a number of etymologies from Jerome's Interpretations of Hebrew
Names (Liber interpretationum hebraicorum nominum), and made some use of Jerome's commentary on Daniel, a work not exploited by Primasius.88
Bede retained an interest in this commentary late into his career, using it for its discussion of chronological problems in the critical period following the fall of the Jewish kingdom and the end of the Biblical regnal lists in ch. 9 of The Reckoning of Time, and in his commentary on Ezra. Bede also used
Jerome's commentary on Isaiah, notably to expound the twelve stones of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Darby remarks that Jerome's influence on Bede's eschatological thinking (the biography of Antichrist, the trial of patience and the post-resurrection fate of the damned) is disproportionate to his influence in other areas of Bede's interest, though it never matched that of Gregory and Augustine.89 Gregory the Great, an author especially dear to Bede, is saluted as the apostle to the English in the preface of the Commentary, and contributes to its substance through his Moralia, his commentary on Ezekiel, and even his homilies, a resource which Bede was also exploiting for his parallel
86 DCD 20.8 (713.54-57) trans. Dyson, p. 984.
87 See above p. 26, and translation below, n. 181; cf. In Lucam , prol. pp. 7–10; Holder,
'Bede and the New Testament', p. 147.
88 Mackay, 'Augustine and Gregory', p. 397. Mackay's claim that Bede read the Lib. int. through Primasius is not entirely correct: the etymology of Jezebel in the exegesis of Rev. 2:20 is not mediated.
89 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, p. 219.
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project of commenting on Luke.90 In contrast to Jerome, Gregory, despite his oft-expressed sense that the end was close, usually furnishes Bede with moral or allegorical corollaries rather than eschatological material per se.
2.8 Was Bede's Exegesis of Revelation Influenced by Visual Sources?
Bede's immediate milieu also contributed to his project; for example, Irish exegetes showed a strong interest in Revelation. It is probable that Bede made use of the Irish pseudo-Jerome, though with a few exceptions the parallels are minor. He certainly drew on an anonymous Irish commentary on the Catholic
Epistles91 – an interesting coincidence, given that Bede was also working on his own commentary early in his career. Insular lapidary materials such as the Irish De XII lapidibus (On the Twelve Stones) and Anglo-Saxon lapidary glosses supplemented Isidore of Seville, Jerome, Solinus, and Cassiodorus's commentary on the Psalms in the embedded 'sermon' on the twelve gems.
But Bede's exegetical imagination may also have been nurtured by other resources close to home, namely the paintings in Wearmouth and Jarrow.
In the History of the Abbots 6, Bede tells how Benedict Biscop brought back from Rome and installed on the north wall of the church of Wearmouth a suite of paintings representing the Revelation of John.92 Unfortunately,
Bede does not reveal the content of these pictures, nor does he allude directly to them in the Commentary, so it is very difficult to say whether they exerted any influence either on his decision to comment on this book, or on the Commentary itself. We are not even sure whether the 'scenes from St John's vision' constituted a coherent cycle, or isolated episodes, though
Bede implies the former by comparing them to illustrations of the Gospels on the facing south wall:
Thus all who entered the church, even those who could not read, were able, whichever way they looked…to put themselves more firmly in mind of the 90 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 164; DeGregorio, 'The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great', p. 50.
91 See exegesis on Rev. 1:6.
92 The format and medium of these images is not known. They are commonly assumed to be panel paintings, but Ernst Kitzinger argues that what Benedict may have brought back was a pattern-book, from which artists created a series of wall-paintings in tempera: 'Interlace and Icons: Form and Function in Early Insular Art', The Art of Migrating Ideas. Early Medieval
Art in Northern Britain and Ireland, ed. R. Michael Spearman and John Higgitt (Edinburgh:
National Museums of Scotland and Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993), pp. 7–8. This position is rebutted by Paul Meyvaert, 'Bede and the Church Paintings at Wearmouth-Jarrow',
Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979): 63–77.
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Lord's Incarnation and, as they saw the decisive moment of the Last Judgement before their very eyes be brought to examine their conscience with all due severity. 93
Late antique Christian art generally favoured isolated themes or episodes from Revelation, and notably scenes of triumph and adoration. Illustrative cycles as such cannot be documented before the Carolingian era.94
Moreover, these early cycles seem quite disconnected from the commentaries. The textual exegesis of Revelation in the patristic and early medieval periods is focused on the Church, while visual exegesis is Christological in emphasis. Scenes such as the adoration of the Lamb (5:9-14), which Bede understood to refer to the state of the Church awaiting the Second
Coming and Last Judgement, were transformed in works of visual art into images of the Church Triumphant. Bede's emphasis on the Last Judgement as the theme of the Wearmouth Revelation images, in Yves Christe's view, indicates that they followed the Late Antique Roman iconographic tradition.
Christe's arguments would suggest that their content would have been incommensurate with Bede's exegetical approach, which understood most of the book of Revelation, at least until the end of the sixth periocha, as concerned with the struggles of the Church within history.95 Nonetheless, it would be rash to conclude that the Wearmouth pictures, collectively or individually, did not exert an influence on Bede. He certainly used pictures
93 Trans. D.H. Farmer in J.F. Webb, The Age of Bede (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 191. For general remarks on this cycle, see Bonner, Saint Bede, pp. 11–12, Meyvaert, 'Bede and the Church Paintings', p. 74, and the illuminating analysis by C. Chazelle, 'Art and Reverence in Bede's Churches at Wearmouth and Jarrow', in Intellektualisierung und Mystifizierung mittelalterlicher Kunst: 'Kultbild': Revision eines Begriffs, ed. M. Büchsel and R. Muller (Berlin:
Mann, 2010), pp. 79–98.
94 Dale Kinney, 'The Apocalypse in Early Christian Monumental Decoration', The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, pp. 200–216. Bede's account is the earliest extant reference to a cycle
(if it is a cycle) of illustrations of Revelation, in any medium. The earliest surviving cycles are in Carolingian manuscripts: James Snyder, 'The Reconstruction of an Early Christian Cycle of Illustrations for the Book of Revelation – the Trier Apocalypse', Vigiliae Christianae 18
(1964): 147. Evidence for Italian Apocalypse cycles antedating Benedict Biscop includes the decoration of the (destroyed) church of St John in Ravenna, commissioned by Galla Placidia:
George Henderson, Vision and Image in Early Christian England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), pp. 4–5. There is also a stylistic similarity between the Trier Apocalypse and sixth-century Italian St Augustine's Gospels; see F. Wormald, The Miniatures in the Gospels of St Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 15.
95 Christe, 'Ap. IV–VIII,1', pp. 150–151 esp. n. 6. Christe mistakenly situates the pictures in York, rather than Wearmouth. On the role of the Last Judgement in the Commentary on Revelation, see below, pp. 82–85.
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as a source of information in other circumstances. For example, he referred to the schemata found in the Codex Amiatinus in On the Tabernacle and On the Temple, citing Cassiodorus himself as an authority for this practice.96
In the second of his Eight Questions (PL93.456 sqq.), Bede states that it was seeing an illustrated life of St Paul brought to England from Rome by bishop Cuthwine of Dunwich that helped him to grasp Paul's reference in 2
Corinthians 11.24 to 'forty stripes less one'. In the picture of this scene in the manuscript, the torturer had a four-cord lash, but he held one cord in his hand so that the total number of stripes administered would be a multiple of three, i.e. 39.97 In another passage from Eight Questions 6 (PL 93.459) he refers to conventions of painting men of different races; it has been argued that this passage was inspired by a Last Judgement scene depicting representative peoples of the earth before the throne of the Judge.98 At least one passage in the Commentary hints that Bede might have been inspired by the Wearmouth paintings. His exegesis of Rev. 6:7 ('And behold, a pale horse…
And hell followed him') states that 'the Devil and his ministers are called Death and Hell by metonymy'. There is no traceable textual source for the identification of the Devil with the rider and his suite. But in the Carolingian
Trier Apocalypse, Hell following the fourth Horseman is represented as a winged demon. This is also found in the eleventh-century Roda Bible, which is possibly copied from an early Christian exemplar.99 On the other hand, it is not impossible that the influence went in the other direction – that is, that Bede's commentary shaped later iconographic tradition. As this Introduction was being completed, news broke of the discovery in a pastedown in the Stadtbibiothek in Mainz of a single leaf fragment of an illustrated copy of Bede's Commentary on Revelation (Hs frag. 18, s. IX–X). Dr Peter Klein
96 George Henderson, Bede and the Visual Arts, Jarrow Lecture 1980, p. 5, citing De temp.
2 (192.28–193.3, 48-52) and De tab. 2 (81.1555–82.1570). Cf. Arthur G. Holder, 'Allegory and History in Bede's Interpretation of Sacred Architecture', American Benedictine Review 40
(1989): 115–131.
97 Henderson, Bede and the Visual Arts, p. 7: this manuscript was apparently loaned to Bede, possibly because 'his interest in authentic visual records was known to his wide acquaintance'.
Cf. Dorothy Whitelock, 'Bede and his Teachers and Friends', Famulus Christi, p. 23.
98 Henderson, Bede and the Visual Arts, pp. 9–13: my attention was drawn to this passage by Peter Darby, who also points to the connection between this scene and Bede's oft-repeated claim that the process of the Last Judgement will be fair: see Bede and the End of Time, pp.
126–128.
99 Snyder, 'Reconstruction of an Early Christian Cycle', pp. 160–161; for description and bibliography on the Trier and Valenciennes manuscripts, see Richard Emmerson and Suzanne
Lewis, 'Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca. 800–1500 [part 1]', Traditio 40 (1984): 345–347.
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of the University of Tübingen has published an article on this fragment for Bulletin monumental.100
There is also some evidence that Bede had access to illustrations of the Heavenly Jerusalem such as the schematic plan illustrating Revelation in the Book of Armagh, written in 807 (Dublin, Trinity College 52, fol. 171r), or the opening illustration of the Carolingian Valenciennes Apocalypse
(Valenciennes Bibl. mun. 99, fol. 2, Liège? s. IX in.). Both of these images fuse the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem with that of the Old Testament
Tabernacle, with the twelve gates inscribed with the names of the tribes recalling the encampment of the tribes around the Tabernacle in the desert.
In the case of the Armagh diagram, the Patriarchs, Apostles, and gems of the City's foundations are merged.101 Given his later interest in the symbolism of Biblical architecture, it is surprising that Bede does not pick up any of the exegetical cues linking the City and the Tabernacle. However, at 21:12, he connects the names of the tribes on the gates with the names of the Patriarchs inscribed on the stones of the High Priest's rational, and the High Priest's role in the worship of the Tabernacle and Temple. Since this is original with Bede, it may have been suggested by an iconographic source.
Finally, and most significantly, Bede's description of the Wearmouth paintings in the History of the Abbots stresses the typological correspondence between the Gospel pictures, which represent Christ's Incarnation or first Parousia, and the Revelation pictures. The Tyconian tradition within which Bede worked understood Revelation to be about the Church's experience from the Incarnation to the end of the world, and it is precisely these two poles which the pictures depicted. Linking two images – of a Gospel scene and a Revelation scene – through typological arrangement of the panels shows that the prophecy of revelation is not just about the future: it is about the past and present as well.102
100 See the report of the Stadtbibliothek's news conference announcing the discovery in the Allgemeine Zeitung for 23 September 2011: http://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de/region/kultur/ literatur/11188948.
101 Peter K. Klein, 'Un fragment illustré d'époque carolingienne du commentaire de Bède sur l'Apocalypse', Bulletin monumental 170, 1 (2012): 43–45. See also Thomas O'Laughlin,
'The Plan of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Armagh', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 39
(2000): 23–38. Peter K. Klein argues that the Valenciennes cycle originated in a Northumbrian model of c. 700 copied from the Wearmouth paintings: 'The Apocalypse in Medieval Art', The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, pp. 177–178; J.J.G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 1 (London: Harvey Miller, 1978), pp. 82–83.
102 Cf. Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 219–21, who suggests that they visually book-ended the sixth age of the world.
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2.9 Bede and the Text of the Bible Most of the concerted interest in Bede's Commentary on Revelation has come from scholars whose principal focus has been the text of Revelation itself, whether in the Vulgate version (Hadley Sparks), or the Vetus Latina
(Roger Gryson). Bede's Vulgate text is itself distinctive, as it contains Vetus Latina contaminants, as well as independent variants. Bede was also alert to the fact that one of his major sources, Tyconius, used the Vetus Latina, and not the Vulgate; where Bede shares an alternative reading of the Bible with one signalled by Primasius, he is usually reproducing Tyconius's North
African Vetus Latina Biblical text.103 Primasius and Augustine also point out alternative readings in the text of Revelation, and the problems and possibilities these provided. In his exegesis of Rev. 4:8 for instance, Primasius offers an alternative reading from an alia translatio which is, in fact, the received version of the Vulgate. Bede transposes Primasius's main interpretation, based on his variant Vulgate, to a secondary position, so that Primasius's variant text now becomes the alia translatio. Finally, Bede's lemmata occasionally pick up readings from his sources. Though these rarely affect the substance of the text, all significant variants from the received text of the Vulgate are recorded in the notes to this translation. These notes are based on the thorough analysis furnished in part 5 of Gryson's introduction to his edition of the Commentary on Revelation.
The Bible itself was a source of exegetical material for Bede. Like the Fathers, he assumed that the Scriptures shared a common message and inspiration, and thus could best be expounded by concordance. The exegesis of Rev. 5:2 – 'Who is worthy to open the book and break its seals?' – furnishes a good example. Using the key word 'book', Bede scans his mental index of Biblical references to celestial books:
In Isaiah, this is the book which cannot be opened for the literate or the illiterate, though even there, its opening is proclaimed in this way: And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book.104 Ezekiel also speaks of it: And I looked, and behold, a hand was sent to me; wherein was a book rolled up; and he spread it before me: and it was written within and without.105 Thereupon he adds what John
103 H.J. Vogels, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der lateinischen Apokalypse-Übersetzung
(Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1920), p. 68; Johannes Haussleiter, Die lateinische Apokalypse der alten afrikanischen Kirche. Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons 4, 1–8
(Erlangen, Leipzig: Andr. Deichert'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1891), pp. xiii, 77; Steinhauser,
The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 9–11, 83, 130.
104 Isa. 29:11-12, 18.
105 Ezek. 2:9.
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passes over in silence, namely, what was written in the book, saying, and there were written in it lamentations and canticles and woe.106 For the whole sequence of the Old and New Testament warns that penance should be done for sins, the kingdom of heaven should be sought, and the pains of hell escaped.
Exegesis by concordance bears some resemblance to the 'mosaic' method of composition discussed above. It is associated with the ruminative style of meditative reading and prayer practised in monastic communities; indeed, the liturgy that occupied the monastic day was built up of Biblical extracts chosen to resonate with one another. Textual support for the practice could also be found in the form of thematic Biblical florilegia, such as Isidore of Seville's Sententiae.107
3. Date and Circumstances of Composition 3.1 The Significance of the Date of Composition
In Bede and the End of Time Peter Darby presents a richly documented and carefully reasoned argument that Bede's ideas about the end-times evolved from the relatively subdued Tyconian–Augustinian apocalypticism of the Commentary on Revelation to a more articulate and explicit interest in the eschaton, culminating in the coherent narrative of the events of the future laid out in chapters 67–71 of The Reckoning of Time (completed in 725).
The Reckoning of Time begins with the smallest units of time-reckoning and works up through the week, the month and the year to the larger multi-year cycles governing the calculation of Easter. Finally, Bede turns to the worldages, which he lays out in a sweeping universal chronicle (ch. 66). This chronicle adopts the patristic division of history into six epochs, the last of which begins with the Incarnation. Unlike Bede's earlier work On Times, however, The Reckoning of Time follows the chronicle with a discussion of the future. Here Bede not only dilates on the end of the Sixth Age, but expands the conventional schema by adding a Seventh Age. This Seventh
Age is the state of the Church Expectant, that is, the souls of the righteous in heaven who await the final resurrection and judgement. Bede is leaning heavily on Augustine here, who replaced the earthly thousand-year reign of 106 Ibid.
107 Jean Leclercq, 'The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture: From Gregory the Great to Bernard', Cambridge History of the Bible, pp. 187–189; idem, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1982), pp. 76–77.
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the saints with Christ of Rev. 20:6 with this parallel time. In an even more daring move, Bede projected an Eighth Age to follow the renewal of heaven and earth at the end of history. This Eighth Age is one of 'eternal stability and stable eternity', a perennial Easter and a beginning which shall never know an end. And yet this ageless Age is a kind of time; Bede even argued in chapter 70 that the fire destined to consume the 'first heaven and the first earth' will not touch the heavenly bodies which God created as signs of times and seasons at the beginning of the world. He repeated this argument in his commentary in 2 Pet. 3:5-6 and 10,108 and it is present, albeit only in germ, in his exegesis of Rev. 21:1 and 23. But as Darby observes, there is no Seventh or Eighth Age in the Commentary on Revelation. Moreover, in this work, Bede was careful to sidestep passages which suggest that the end is imminent, nor did he hint that he could see any current events or conditions that would suggest that this was so. The Sixth Age was historically 'homogeneous'. By contrast, Bede's middle and especially later works become (at least on occasion) rather less reticent about the possibility that Judgement was fast approaching.
The event of 708 that triggered this process was the controversy that erupted over the revised chronology of the Six Ages of the world Bede had put forward in On Times (completed in 703). Those who objected to this chronology accused Bede of heresy, and in his Letter to Plegwin Bede fought back. It was his accusers, he said, who were guilty of heresy – the heresy of presuming to know how to calculate the date of the end of the world. It would seem pertinent, then, to ask whether the Commentary on Revelation was written before this scandal, or after. Was Bede's un-apocalyptic apocalypse a sign of his dependence on the Fathers, and hence the relative immaturity of his thinking? Or was it a deliberate choice, to address specific circumstances?
3.2 The Commentary on Revelation and the Preface to the Commentary on Acts The only chronological fact at our disposal is that the Commentary on Revelation was written before the Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles was completed, because it is mentioned in the dedicatory epistle of that work.109 This is addressed to bishop Acca of Hexham, who was consecrated
108 DTR 70, ed. Jones, 540.5-35, trans. Wallis, pp. 243–244; Cath. Ep. 277.35-48 and 279.110-125, trans. Hurst, pp. 147–148, 150–151.
109 When the Acts commentary was begun is not known; Bede may have been working on
INTRODUCTION
in 709 or 710 as Wilfred's successor. Both the Commentary on Acts and the Commentary on Revelation were composed before 716, because both mention Hwætberht (known as Eusebius) as 'brother'. Hwætberht became abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow after the departure of Ceolfrith in 716, and Bede thereafter refers to him as 'father'. Hwætberht was also the dedicatee of the Commentary on Revelation, and he seems to have played a crucial role in its reception.
Here is what Bede says:
I have received your Beatitude's very numerous letters in which you took care to remind me that I should not allow the keenness of my mind to dawdle and doze in slothful leisure, but that watchful and unwearied I should eagerly pursue daily meditation on and investigation of the scriptures. And [your letters remind me that] as I had brought together a commentary on the Apocalypse [post expositionem…complexam] of the holy evangelist John (the three books of which, upon the request of our brother Eusebius, I arranged to have transcribed directly for you), I should consider how far my labour would suffice for an explanation of the blessed evangelist Luke, following in the footsteps of the fathers. I have not yet been able to accomplish this, both because I have been overawed by the task, and because I have been hindered by the demands of annoying matters
[obstrepentium causarum] of which you are very much aware. In the meantime, however, lest the authority of your request be disparaged, I have done what I could. I have sent [you] a little work on the Acts of the Apostles, which was produced not many days ago, and, so as not to impede your most holy will, I put it out as quickly as time permitted in the form of little parchments. Here I have attempted, insofar as I could, to shed light on those things which seemed to be treated mystically or stated somewhat obscurely…. I have also sent a very short explanation of the epistle of the most blessed evangelist John. As an abbreviating summarizer I selected the major part of this from St Augustine's homilies, which are permeated with an abundant sweetness. By my own labour I have added some things at the end. 110 it for some time: see Darby, Bede and the End of Time, p. 80, n. 68. The connection between these two works was noted by medieval readers. A number of MSS of the Commentary on Revelation contain a spurious second preface in the form of an address to Acca confected from the prefatory letter to the Acts commentary, e.g. Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 5543-45 (s. XI),
Charleville, Bibliothèque municipale 164 (s. XII); Düsseldorf, Universitätsund Landesbibliothek B 20 (s. XV ex.); Düsseldorf, Universitätsund Landesbibliothek B 22 (s. XV); Liège,
Bibliothèque de l'Université 73 (s. XII); Utrecht, Biblioteek der Rijksuniversiteit 77 (s. XV).
These are respectively MSS 18, 22, 25, 26, 50 and 95 in the inventory in Gryson, Bede ed.
Introduction, ch. 1.
110 Ed. M.L.W. Laistner, Mediaeval Academy of America Publications 35 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1939), pp. 3.3-17, 5.12-17. The English translation is by
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It is certain, then, that the Commentary on Revelation was already finished when Bede sent Acca the Acts commentary, together with the exposition of 1 John; presumably this exposition was the same one (or an earlier draft of the same one) later incorporated into Bede's On the Catholic Epistles (In epistolas septem catholicas). But how much time had elapsed between the composition of the Commentary on Revelation and the one on Acts? The reference to the copy of the Commentary on Revelation made for Acca, at the initiative of Hwætberht, is expressed in the perfect tense and qualified by the adverb mox, which usually means 'soon afterwards' or 'directly afterwards'.
This might suggest that the Revelation commentary was copied shortly after it was finished, but mox carries a fairly indistinct temporal meaning. Whether
Acca was already a bishop when this copy was undertaken is not clear, but if he were – and this is a big 'if' – then the Commentary on Revelation would have been written shortly before 710.111 But if Acca was not yet a bishop when this copy was delivered, a wider time-frame opens up. Indeed, this second scenario makes better sense of other evidence in the dedicatory letter.
Bede claims that Acca approved his Commentary on Revelation, and encouraged him to proceed with an explanatio of Luke. Instead, Bede composed a commentary on Acts, apparently in haste. His excuse for not fulfilling Acca's command was that he was dismayed (perterritus) by the immensity of the task of commenting on the gospel, but also obstructed or tied up (praepeditus) by what he called obstrepentes causae. He does not explain why he chose instead to rush through a commentary on Acts, nor why he added a commentary on 1 John.
In itself, Bede's decision to follow up his Commentary on Revelation by issuing one on Acts would not have seemed unusual. The overwhelming majority of early medieval Bibles were copied as autonomous segments
(Gospels, Heptateuchs, etc.) or as multi-volume sets. Revelation, when not copied on its own, was customarily bundled with the Acts of the Apostles and sometimes the Catholic Epistles as well. Such an arrangement can be seen in the 'Ezra' miniature in the Codex Amiatinus (fol. 5r), created in Bede's own monastery in the years leading up to 716. The priest-scribe is depicted sitting before a book-cupboard containing the Bible in nine labelled volumes. The last volume in Ezra's armarium contains the Acts and Revelation together. Yoking Revelation and Acts in effect casts Revelation
Lawrence T. Martin, The Venerable Bede. Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (Kalamazoo:
Cistercian Publications, 1989), pp. 3–6, slightly modified.
111 710 is advanced as the terminus a quo by Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 2]', p. 484, and Benedicta Ward, The Venerable Bede (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990), pp. 51, 58.
INTRODUCTION
as a projection of the history of the Church which begins with Acts, or as the typological counterpart of Acts. And indeed, Bede's Commentary on Revelation frequently circulated in the company of his commentaries on Acts and the Catholic Epistles.112
As for the commentary on 1 John, we are confined to inference, but two facts command our attention. First, as the preface to the commentary on Acts makes plain, the John who wrote the Epistle was, in Bede's eyes, the John who composed Revelation. Secondly, the first Epistle of John contains the passage 'Little children, it is the final hour' (2:18), a text that some cited as proof that Christ's parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-7) contained the code for the date of the end of the world. Bede, as we shall see, assails this 'proof' in his Letter to Plegwin.
3.3 Obstrepentes causae?
While it might be possible to support an argument for dating the Commentary on Revelation to around 710, many scholars prefer an earlier date, around 703,113 and a date of 703 would gain in plausibility if events that took place in or before 703 could furnish a persuasive context. One event that can be securely dated to 703 is the completion of Bede's On Times; it is also likely that its companion-piece, On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum), was finished simultaneously.114 Bede explicitly refuses to discuss the end of time in On Times, save to close his chronicle with a terse reminder, echoing Isidore of Seville, than no one can know when the Sixth Age of the world will end. Moreover, On the Nature of Things was based on Isidore of Seville's On the Nature of Things, a book composed in part as a response to apocalyptic speculation following an unusual convergence of eclipses in 612–613. Jacques Fontaine has argued that Isidore intended to rationalize the very phenomena that were regarded as signs of the impending end of the world (eclipses, comets, atmospheric disturbances, pestilences, etc.).115
Bede if anything goes further along this path, by eliminating Isidore's religious allegories.116 For Bede to compose a commentary on Revelation,
112 See below, p. 87, and Perette Michelli, 'What's in the Cupboard? Ezra and Matthew
Reconsidered', Northumbria's Golden Age, pp. 345–358.
113 E.g. Brown, A Companion to Bede, p. 69 (703 as terminus a quo).
114 See Kendall and Wallis's translation, Introduction, pp. 1–3.
115 Jacques Fontaine (ed.), Isidore de Seville: Traité de la nature (Paris: Institut d'Études
Augustiniennes, 1960), introduction, pp. 3–6.
116 See Kendall and Wallis's translation, Introduction, p. 19.
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particularly a commentary which played down apocalyptic realism, thus seems compatible with the other projects he had in hand around 703. Bede was aware of the two types of apocalypse discussed earlier: one reveals the secrets of the cosmos through a vision or heavenly journey (the vertical or spatial mode), while the second reveals the secrets of history, the end of time, and what will follow thereafter (the horizontal or temporal mode).
On the Nature of Things and On Times are likewise surveys of the cosmos and time respectively.117 The critical link between the two complementary genres is the comparison of the cosmos to the Church, which is the central subject, in Bede's view, of Revelation.118 In 703, there were no eclipses or other potential portents, but there was, it would seem, a mood of apocalyptic anxiety in Bede's milieu. We hear about it obliquely in the Letter to Plegwin, and also in the Commentary on Revelation.
It was, in Bede's words, obstrepentes causae that caused him to set aside his commentary on Luke. Obstrepentes is a strong term, denoting hostile clamour, furious and aggressive shouting. Only one known crisis
117 Two forms of apocalyptic: McGinn, 'Introduction', p. 7; Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', pp. 244–246. The alphabetic poem Altus Prosator ascribed to St Columba is a history of the world from Creation to Last Judgement (the latter occupying a disproportionate space), with an embedded explanation of tides, the waters above the earth, and the nature of hell. These subjects also appear in ancient cosmological apocalypses like
1 Enoch: McGinn, 'The End of the World', pp. 67–68 and n. 37. Bianca Kühnel points to the complementary relationship of science and the exegesis of Revelation in the Carolingian period: 'The expansion of learning, the multiplication of Carolingian schools and scriptoria, as well as Charlemagne's own endeavours to penetrate the secrets of natural phenomena, all suggest that science was accorded the task of distinguishing between natural and supernatural signs. It can hardly be a coincidence that both the Apocalypse and Isidore's De natura rerum aroused such wide interest among illuminators in Carolingian scriptoria; the Carolingian period produced the earliest extant illuminated manuscripts of these texts. If this does not necessarily mean that such illumination began only in the Carolingian period, it is certainly an indication of the massive and significant Carolingian interest in this literature': The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early Medieval Art (Regensburg: Schnell &
Steiner, 2003), p. 253. In the light of this complementarity, it would be gratifying to be able to assert that the composition of the Commentary on Revelation coincided with that of the first part of On Genesis, which discusses creation, and this indeed was asserted by M.L.W. Laistner and C.W. Jones. However, Calvin Kendall argues cogently that the first part of On Genesis was probably composed in 717–718: see his introduction to On Genesis, pp. 45–53. It is interesting to note, however, that Victorinus of Pettau composed a hexaemeron, De mundi fabrica (ed.
Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio).
118 Yves Congar, L'Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge: de Saint Grégoire le Grand à la désunion entre Byzance et Rome (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1968), pp. 101–102, citing Gregory, Mor.
28.4.14 'ad instar quippe ecclesiae fabricatus est hic mundus', quoted by Isidore in De natura rerum 17.5. Bede does not press this comparison in any of his works, but possibly did not need to.
INTRODUCTION
in Bede's life qualifies as an obstrepens causa: the accusation of heresy directed against him by someone at the court of Acca's predecessor Wilfred in 708. Bede was slandered on account of the chronology of world-history he proposed in On Times, and there is an intimate connection between this chronology and the question of the end-times.
On Times culminated in a survey of the Six Ages of the world, and the historical events which defined them. While the model for Bede's Christian world-chronicle was Eusebius, his understanding of the Six Ages was heavily dependent on Augustine.119 The schema of the Six Ages of the world as Bede understood it was based on two analogies. World-history is like the human life-span, proceeding through six aetates from infancy to old age.
World-history is also like the week in which God created the world – six days of activity, followed by a seventh day of rest. By the time he composed
The Reckoning of Time, Bede was ringing the changes on both analogies.
In On Times, however, Bede avoids the week-day metaphor. Instead, he prefaces the world-chronicle with a summary of the life-span analogy. The life-span metaphor has the advantage of deflecting speculation about the timing of the eschaton. We know when the other ages of human life begin and end, but while we can fix the time when old age begins, the time when it will end in death is not fixed. The life-span analogy at the head of Bede's chronicle in On Times drives this message home: 'The sixth age, which is unfolding now, has no established sequence of generations or times, but like extreme dotage itself, will end in the death of the whole world-age
[saeculum]'.120 By contrast, the week-days analogy concealed a potentially dangerous explosive. The detonating device was 2 Pet. 3:8: 'one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day' (cf. Psalm
90(89):4). This suggested that the world-ages were not elastic historical divisions, but fixed chronological units of one thousand years in length. In consequence, the world was bound to end 6000 years after its Creation, and if one knew the number of years that had passed since Creation, one could calculate the date of that end. This posed a theological problem, for Christ declined to reveal this date, and even claimed not to know it himself.121
119 On Bede's use of the Six Ages concept, see C.W. Jones, 'Some Introductory Remarks on Bede's Commentary on Genesis', Sacris erudiri 19 (1969–70): 191–198; Darby, Bede and the End of Time, chs. 1–3 and passim.
120 Trans. Kendall and Wallis, pp. 117–118. On the history of this analogy, see Paul
Archambault, 'The Ages of Man and the Ages of the World', Revue des études augustiniennes
12 (1966): 193–228, esp. 206–207 re: Bede.
121 Only once in the Commentary on Revelation does Bede come close to invoking the
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Any misguided attempt to calculate the date of the end of the world would also face technical challenges. Eusebius's world-chronicle did not number the years from Creation, but from the time of Abraham. In his preface, Eusebius divided history after Abraham into four periods, and added that prior to Abraham, there were two further periods, running from Adam to the Flood and from the Flood to Abraham. This brought the total to the symbolic figure of six. The chronology of the first two periods could only be determined by adding up the life-spans of the patriarchs in the genealogies recorded in Genesis. The numbers in the Hebrew and Septuagint texts of Genesis differed, and Eusebius opted for the Septuagint's calculation.
This put Christ's birth at annus mundi 5197 or 5198, which (albeit unintentionally) roughly coincided with the beginning of the sixth millennium after creation. When Jerome translated Eusebius into Latin, he modified this date slightly to 5199. Thus for those who believed in fixed thousand-year worldages, and who consulted the chronology of Eusebius-Jerome, the world had just crossed the threshold of its final century at the time Bede was writing
On Times – in the year 701, to be precise. Yet On Times proposed a revision to the Eusebius-Jerome chronology which uncoupled the Six Ages concept from any association with apocalyptic calculations. Using the genealogies recorded in the Hebrew text of Genesis, as represented by Jerome's Vulgate,
Bede reduced the length of the first two ages of the world from the Septuagint's 3184 years to 1948 years. This put the birth of Christ at A.M. 3952.
In the court of Bishop Wilfred, this revised chronology caused a stir.
Someone in the bishop's entourage accused Bede of heresy, apparently at a public gathering hosted by Wilfred himself, and Wilfred did not intervene.
Bede's response in the Letter to Plegwin states that the charge was that 'I denied that our Lord and Saviour had come in the flesh in the Sixth Age'.
But he knew exactly what his accusers were really driving at: they believed that each of the six world-ages was 1000 years long, and in their eyes Bede had perversely dated the Incarnation – the event which inaugurated the Sixth
Age – to the end of the Fourth Age.
Bede devoted the first part of the Letter to reviewing patristic (particularly analogy of the world-ages and the days of the week, and that is in the exposition of 11:15 (but cf. Capitula lectionum IV; see Appendix of this volume). It is, however, very muted, the only hint being the word 'sabbath'. On the history of the idea of the world-ages as fixed units of 1000 years and its connection to the week-day analogy, see Daniélou, 'La typologie millenariste de la semaine', R. Schmidt, '"Aetates mundi". Die Weltalter als Gliederungprinzip der Geschichte',
Zeitschift für Kirchengeschichte 67 (1955–56): 288–317, and the comprehensive study by Luneau, L'Histoire du salut chez les Pères de l'Église, esp. pp. 37–44 and chs. 1.1, 8 and 9.
INTRODUCTION
Augustinian) arguments in favour of the hebraica veritas of the Vulgate that underpinned his revised chronology. This defence finds a direct echo in the preface to the commentary on Acts, where Bede expresses surprise that an inspired writer like Luke should prefer the genealogy of the patriarchs found in the Septuagint translation of Genesis.122 This seems like an odd digression, for Old Testament chronology is irrelevant to Acts. But it is certainly pertinent if Bede was addressing readers of On Times who claimed that the New Testament did not privilege the Hebrew Truth.
Bede spent the remainder of the Letter to Plegwin accusing his accusers of heresy:
14. On the subject of times and years, I warn your simplicity, dearest brother, lest seduced by vulgar opinion you should expect that this present world will endure
6,000 years, as it were. According to a book of I know not what heretic which I remember seeing as a lad, written in old-fashioned script, though the day and hour of Judgement cannot be known, the year can. In fact you think that man can foresee this, because the Lord said, But of that day and hour knoweth no man
[Matt. 24:37; Mark 13:32], and yet said nothing about the year. And again when he said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons [Acts 1:7], he did not add the years thereto. And again this heresiarch chronographer exerted himself to add that 5,500 years had passed before the Incarnation, and from thence to the Day of Judgement only 500 remained, of which 300 and some had passed at the time when he uttered his ravings. Accumulating the sum of this number partly from Genesis, partly from the Book of Judges, but attributing forty years each to Samuel and Saul, he used the argument that in the Lord's vineyard, the workers hired last will work one hour, and that John had said, Little children, it is the final hour [1 John 2:18], as if 500 years out of 6,000 ought to be as one hour out of a day, when evening falls after twelve hours of daylight. So when
12 times 500 years had passed, that is 6,000 years, the eternal retribution of the just Judge would come to pass.
15. On this matter I confess I am quite grieved, and often irritated to the limit of what is permissible, or even beyond, when every day I am asked by rustics how many years are left in the final millennium of the world, or learn from them that they know that the final millennium is in progress, when our Lord in the Gospel did not testify that the time of His advent was near at hand or far off, but commanded us to keep watch with our loins girded and our lamps lit, and to wait for Him until He should come [cf. Luke 12:35-37]. For I notice that when in conversation with the brothers the occasion arises for us to dispute concerning the Ages of the world, certain of the less learned ones allege that we are speaking of 6,000 years, and there are those who think that this world will
122 Ed. Laistner, 4.1-12; trans. Martin, p. 4.
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end at 7,000 years because it unfolded in seven days. The said doctor Augustine in his explanation of Psalm 6 often openly accused these people of temerity, saying amongst other things: For if this day is to come after 7,000 years, everybody can add these to the computed years of his Advent. How will it be that the Son does not know [the time]? … What does this strange presumption seek, which hopes [to find] the most certain day of the Lord by counting 7,000 years?
[Augustine, En. in Ps. 6.1] 16. I send these letters, signs of charitable friendship, dearest brother, as pledges of my innocence, lest you judge me deeply lacking in secular or sacred learning.
Rather, [we shall] state openly that our Lord and Saviour took mortal flesh for our sake in the Sixth Age of the world, according to the Scriptures or acknowledging the faithful and catholic voice of the Fathers. But the course of the world is not defined for us in any fixed number of years, and is known only to the Judge himself. And if anyone were to say to me, 'Lo, Christ is here', or 'Lo, He is there'
[cf. Luke 17:23], that is, [that Christ is] to come to Judgement at such and such a time, I would not listen to or follow him at all. For I know that as the lightning, that lightneth under heaven shineth on those things which are under heaven; so shall the Son of Man be in his day [Luke 17:24]. For you know by what opinion of the multitude it will come in six or seven thousand years, and by what authority I build the assertion of my computation: namely by the Hebrew Truth, recorded by Origen, published by Jerome, praised by Augustine, confirmed by Josephus….123
Bede makes his point by calling the anonymous chronographer who used fixed-period world-ages to decode the date a heretic, though he lets his opponents off a bit more lightly by branding their views as 'vulgar opinion'.
He is being ironic here, for the notion of 1000-year world-ages was by no means a popular delusion. It was the clergy of Bishop Wilfred's familia – silently seconded by Wilfred himself – who accused Bede, and they did so on the basis of entrenched learned tradition. The scheme Bede refers to in section 14 of the Letter to Plegwin – found in the Cologne Prologue and ultimately based on the Chronographia of Julius Africanus – was legitimated by a chronological interpretation of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16). The parable assumes a twelve-hour working day, since those hired at the eleventh hour work only one hour. Dividing these twelve hours into 6000 years produced 'hours' of 500 years each. Since 1
John 2:18 states that it is now 'the last hour', the world ought to end – or to have ended – about AD 500. It is noteworthy that Bede also rejects this interpretation in his commentary on 1 John 2:18. The 'eleventh hour', he argues, covers the entire history of the sixth age, from the Incarnation to the 123 Trans. Wallis, pp. 412–414; ed. Jones, pp. 623–625.
INTRODUCTION
end of the world. Hence even the time when the evangelist John was alive was truly 'the last hour'.124
One passage in the Letter to Plegwin merits closer attention, however, because it takes us beyond the walls of Wilfred's palace and into the heart of Bede's own monastery. Indeed, the 'rustics' who (Bede says) hounded him to specify the number of years left until the Last Judgement may have been his own monastic brethren. If Bede had to repeatedly field questions about the date of the end of the world, some people – and not a few it seems – were genuinely anxious that it was nearly upon them. No eclipse or comet seems to have provoked their panic. Rather, it was, I would propose, the fatal figure
6000, because as of 701 there was only a century left. One is reminded of Hilarianus's stark declaration in On the Duration of the World that only 101 years were left until the end. It is not impossible that this work was known in Bede's milieu – Hilarianus may even have been the chronographus haereses
– but even if its prophecy had been proven wrong, it served to model the idea that the final century was an ominous date, the beginning of the countdown.
In 701, were Bede's brothers also pestering him to explain the Biblical prophecies of the end-times, to tell them whether this or that event was one of the figural signals of the final tribulation? If so, this might explain
124 Ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983): 295.213-238. '(1 John 2:18) Little children, it is the last hour. He calls the last age of the world which is now in progress the last hour, according to that parable of the Lord in which he tells of the workers having been hired at the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours. For those who served the will of their
Creator either by teaching or living properly from the beginning of the world cultivated the vineyard of the Lord from the first hour; those who lived from the time of Noah did so from the third hour; those who lived from the time of Abraham did so from the sixth hour; those who lived from the time of the giving of the law did so from the ninth hour; those who obey the heavenly commands from the time of the Lord's incarnation to the end of the world do so from the eleventh hour. In this [eleventh] hour, namely, it was foretold by the prediction of the prophets that there would be both the coming of the saviour in the flesh and that there would follow the plague of antichrist, which would assail the heralds of salvation. Hence there follows: And you have heard that the antichrist is coming, now many antichrists have appeared. He is calling the heretics antichrists. But those who by their wrongful actions destroy the faith of Christ which they profess are also justifiably called antichrists, that is, opposed to Christ. All these give witness to that greatest antichrist who will come at the end of the world as to their head. Hence Paul says of him that the mystery of iniquity is already at work [2 Thess. 2:7]. From this we know that it is the last hour. From what? From the fact that many antichrists have appeared. What he says about it being even then the last hour can also be understood thus, however, that the persecution which was being waged at that time by the heretics had great similarity to that final persecution which is to come just before the day of judgment, although the former smote the Church only with savage tongues, the latter will also smite it with injurious swords': trans. D. Hurst, pp. 175–176.
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why Bede chose to comment on Revelation. He had other choices, such as the Little Apocalypse in the Synoptic Gospels, or 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
The symbolic narrative of Revelation, however, offered greater scope for a typological or allegorical reading than did the declarative prophecies of the Little Apocalypse. For example, the celestial and meteorological omens mentioned in the Gospel – the darkened sun and moon, falling stars – appear as figurae in Revelation, and Bede consistently allegorizes them as allusions to the trials of the church or the doom of heretics. Revelation gave Bede the opportunity to uncouple the eschaton from anxious preoccupation with warning signs. His Commentary was thus a sort of exegetical companionpiece to On the Nature of Things, which rationalized comets and eclipses, storms and earthquakes, and even the infernal fires of Mount Etna.
There is an echo of this in Bede's unusual exegesis of Rev. 20:7. The period when Satan will range freely – three years and six months – is so short that it hardly is worth counting; rather, it should be included in the symbolic one thousand years which have just 'finished'. Such an assimilation is appropriate because – and this is Bede's original addition – 'seven hundred years and however many [years] God might wish are called "an hour" by the Apostle [John in 1 John 2:18]'. Bede has unhooked the apostle's 'hour' from its traditional association with a span of five hundred years, but the figure of seven hundred years 'and however many [years] God might wish' is striking, and would support the hypothesis that AD 701 was a date that roused concern.
This would point to a date of composition closer to 701 than to 710.
If these were indeed the circumstances of the composition of the Commentary on Revelation, they help to explain other matters. A mood of apocalyptic dread in English clerical and monastic circles in the first decade of the eighth century, rooted in the 'heresy of calculation', makes what took place in Wilfred's hall more serious, and Bede's response more comprehensible. It was no frivolous accusation by irresponsible drunks, but truly an obstrepens causa. It might also explain why Hwætberht apparently on his own initiative arranged to send a copy of the Commentary on Revelation to Acca, perhaps on his accession as bishop, but possibly well before this, for Acca was a cleric in Wilfred's entourage. Acca may not have thought Bede a heretic, but he may not have grasped the point of the Letter to Plegwin either. Additional clarification was required; perhaps Acca even demanded it. In 710, Bede and his friends thought it good to do three things: remind
Acca of what the truly orthodox reading of Revelation was; re-frame the commentary on Revelation by detaching it from its previous association with issues of chronology and portents, and associating it instead with the
INTRODUCTION
history of the Church begun in Acts, thereby reinforcing its typological reading; and back up some crucial arguments in the Letter to Plegwin by commenting on the First Epistle of John, whose author was presumed to be the John of Revelation.
3.4 An Apocalyptic Eighth Century?
Bede's confrontation with the readers of On Times gives us a glimpse of the more or less articulate apocalypticism abroad in England, and indeed across western Europe, at the beginning of the eighth century. It can be read on the walls of a late seventh-century crypt from the region of Poitiers: 'Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the End. For all things become every day worse and worse, for the end is drawing near'. It can be traced in the new phenomenon of High Crosses in Ireland and Northumbria, echoes of the growing role of the embellished Cross (crux gemmata) as an iconographic emblem of the Second Coming.125 Julian of Toledo, primate of Spain from 680 to 690, denounced the literal reading of Revelation in his Prognosticum futuri saeculi (Prognostic of the Age to Come), but his De comprobatione aetatis sextae (Affirmation of the Sixth Age) explicitly concluded that the world was destined to end in annus mundi 6011 (AD 810). The commentary composed by Julian's fellow-countryman Beatus of Liébana (c. 750–798) notoriously predicted the end of the world in a mere fourteen years.126 Sometime around
700, a Latin translation of the Byzantine Revelations of pseudo-Methodius appeared in Gaul (the earliest manuscript is dated 727). This apocalyptic rallying cry against Islam contained a treasury of fresh legends about the last days, including the prophecy of the Last World Emperor and the identification of Gog and Magog as ferocious Asian peoples pent up by Alexander the Great. Though Revelations was destined for exceptional popularity, it was not the only new apocalyptic writing to appear at this time.127 Closer
125 McGinn, 'The End of the World', pp. 58 (crypt), 73–75 (crosses). The translation of the inscription from the crypt of abbot Mellebaudis is by J.N. Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism
350–370: The Conversion of Western Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1986), p. 16.
126 Beatus 4.5.13 (p. 368) commenting on Rev. 7:4; Hillgarth, 'Eschatological and Political
Concepts', p. 228; Juan Gil, 'Los terrores del año 800', Actas del simposio para el estudio de los codices del "Comentario al Apocalipsis" de Beato de Liebana (Madrid: Joyas, 1978), pp.
217–247.
127 Hillgarth, 'Eschatological and Political Concepts', pp. 227–228. The Latin pseudoMethodius is edited by E. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle: Niemeyer, 1898), pp. 59–96; selections are translated in McGinn, Visions of the End, ch. 7. The contemporary
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to home were the contemporary productions of Irish eschatology, such as the De monogramma (On the Monogram), a dossier of interpretations of the number of the Beast, 666.128 Bede probably did not know any of these particular texts, but the intensity of his opposition to calculation reveals that he was tuning in to a serious contemporary problem. Even as he resisted the temptation to guess when the end would be, was he himself persuaded that it was at the very least not far off? Did his views, whether positive or negative, have any consequences for the Commentary on Revelation?
This question is difficult to answer, for a number of reasons. There is ample evidence that Bede's sense of the proximity of the end-times varied over the course of his life. However, apart from the Commentary on Revelation, the closing chapters of The Reckoning of Time and his poem
On Judgement Day – the first composed at the beginning of his career, the second probably at the very end129 – Bede does not address the end of the world as a separate issue. Passing allusions and phrases appear in Biblical commentaries, sermons, and the Letter to Ecgbert, but it is not an easy matter to determine what pressure was exerted by the text of the Bible or Bede's immediate intention to exhort his listener or reader. By the time he wrote the Commentary on Luke (between 710 and 716) and the Commentary on Samuel in 716–717, he was openly referring to 'the approaching end of the world'. The phrase adpropinquante…mundi termino ('with the end of the world at hand') is Gregory's and is found (with slight variations) in a number of his works, including the letter to King Æthebert of Kent that Bede incorporated into HE 1.32:130
Visio Baronti (MGH Scriptores rerum merovingicarum 5, 377-94) is translated by J.N. Hillgarth in Christianity and Paganism, pp. 195–204.
128 Ed. Gryson, Commentaria minora, pp. 142–157.
129 On the authenticity of De die iudicii see Michael Lapidge, 'Bede and the "Versus de die iudicii"', in Mittelund neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. A. Bihrer and E. Stein (Munich: Saur, 2004), pp. 103–11. Lapidge argues that this is an early work; Peter
Darby will present the case for a later date in his forthcoming article 'Bede, Acca and the Latin
Poem De die iudicii'.
130 E.g. In Sam. 4 (2045-6) 'sed approprinquante mundi termino'; cf. In Lucam 4 (190914) and In Gen. 2 (98.900-901) 'cum uiderint crebrescentibus mundi ruinis adpropinquare diem iudicii'. Gregory's formative influence on Bede's expectation of the end of the world is remarked by Bonner, Saint Bede, p. 5; Plummer, Opera historica 1, pp. lxvi–lxvii, 2.62;
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Europe, Jarrow Lecture, 1962, pp. 9–10; R.A. Markus, Bede and the Tradition of Ecclesiastical Historiography, Jarrow Lecture, 1975, p. 14, Henry MayrHarting,The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), p. 217; Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 147–148 and 192–193. The Gregorian tag adpropinquante mundi termino becomes something of a cliché
INTRODUCTION
Besides, we would wish your majesty to know that the end of the world is at hand, as we learn from the works of Almighty God in the Holy Scriptures; and the kingdom of the saints which knows no end is near. As the end of the world approaches, many things threaten which have never happened before; these are changes in the sky and terrors from the heavens, unseasonable tempests, wars, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in diverse places. Not all of these things will come about in our day, but they will all follow after our days. So if you see any of these things happening in your land, do not be troubled in mind; for these signs of the end of the world are sent in advance to make us heedful about our souls, watching for the hour of our death, so that when the Judge comes we may, through our good works, be found prepared.131
It is noteworthy, however, that Gregory shifts in the middle of the letter from a focus on cosmic signs of the end to a moral and reforming message.
As noted above, Gregory's apocalypticism, while expressed in strikingly dramatic language, is not concerned with how soon was 'soon', but with how the message of 'soon' should energize Christians to shake off moral and spiritual complacency. In this respect, R.A. Markus sees Bede's views as fundamentally aligned with Gregory's.132 While Bede does not imitate
Gregory's identification of dire current events with signs of the end, it is surely significant that the phrase appropinquante mundi termino ('with the end of the world at hand') is found only in Gregory and Bede, and is used on a number of occasions by both writers.133 'The end is near' is never a cliché for Bede, but neither should it be taken too literally. The Great Paschal Cycle of 532 years that Bede lays out in chapter 65 of The Reckoning of Time runs from AD 532 to 1063, and he expresses no doubt that there will be a year
1063: indeed, he points out that the cycle can be further projected into both in later Anglo-Saxon charters: see Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr., 'The Final Countdown: Apocalyptic
Expectations in Anglo-Saxon Charters', Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed.
Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riano (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 510–514.
131 Ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 112–115.
132 Markus, 'Gregory and Bede'; this view is endorsed and developed by Darby, Bede and the End of Time, chs. 6–7. Somewhat dissenting views are registered by McCready, Miracles, pp. 89–104, who argues that 'the end is near' is a topos, because Bede did not equate contemporary abuses in the Church with signs of the end. Jan Davidse, 'The Sense of History in the Works of the Venerable Bede', Studi medievali, ser. 3, 23 (1982): 662–70, claims that Bede's debt to Gregory is overstated. The global issue of Bede's attachment to Gregory is discussed in Paul Meyvaert, Bede and Gregory the Great, Jarrow Lecture, 1964; Scott DeGregorio,
'The Venerable Bede on Prayer and Contemplation', Traditio 54 (1999): 1–39 at 3–15; idem,
'The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great'. Substantial discussion of this theme is found in Markus, Gregory the Great and his World, pp. 51–67.
133 Markus, 'Gregory and Bede', pp. 249–250, n. 13.
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the past and the future to find any date of Easter, whether past or to come.134
In short, if Bede experienced a stronger sense of the immanence of the end in his later life, that sentiment did not express itself as a conviction that there would be no, or very few, future Easters.
Helpful guidance on these treacherous slopes is furnished by R.A.
Markus, who observes that there is no essential contradiction between the eschatologically circumspect Bede of the Commentary on Revelation and the more vocally anxious Bede of the later writings. Bede's views fluctuated with his circumstances, his purposes and his audience.135 The death of King Osred and the departure of Ceolfrith in 716, and the appearance of appropinquante mundi termino in the two commentaries mentioned above, may not be coincidental. Moreover, the victory of the 'Roman' party in Iona, and the advance of the Anglo-Saxon mission in Germany were causes for celebration in HE, but might also have suggested that the apostolic mission of converting the nations was almost finished.136 Though some of these events lay in the future when Bede was composing the Commentary on Revelation, the implications of the successful conversion of the nations were already clear in his mind. The only place in the Commentary where he uses the term consummatio (saeculi) ('the consummation of the worldage') is in the quotation from Matt. 24:14 embedded in his exegesis of Rev.
14:6, where the Angel of the Eternal Gospel flies through the heavens to preach to every nation and people. Bede notes that this passage marks an important turning point in Revelation, when the account of 'the shifting and changeable warfare' of the Church and its enemies draws to an end, and the final separation of the just and the reprobate commences. Some of Bede's middle-period commentaries such as On the Tabernacle and On the Temple even allude to recent conversions of Jews, and the conversion of the Jews was an important marker for the inauguration of the end-times.137
Markus argues, however, that any changes in Bede's perspective were the result of the deepening of the very views that inform the Commentary. The 134 Reckoning of Time 65 (trans. Wallis, p. 156).
135 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, chs. 7–8.
136 The temporal end of the world and the geographical ends of the earth share a common conceptual circumference in Bede's thinking: see Jennifer O'Reilly, 'Islands and Idols at the Ends of the Earth: Exegesis and Conversion in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica', Bède le Vénérable entre tradition et postérité, pp. 119–145; Darby, 'Bede's Eschatological Thought', pp. 315–317.
The theme is an old one in the Insular world: the Confession of St Patrick also links his mission to the outermost reaches of the inhabited world with the imminent end: McGinn, 'The End of the World', p. 66.
137 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 200–203; cf. McCready, Miracles, p. 95.
INTRODUCTION
Commentary sees the Church as an army engaged in perennial struggle. As time went on, Bede's 'apocalyptic sense of a permanent conflict in history' sharpened his awareness of particular conflict in his own milieu and his own time, where before he had been content with generalizations. The foundation of Bede's views, however, remained Tyconian and Augustinian.138
Wallace-Hadrill is in agreement: it was not the conflict with the eastern Emperors, nor even the rise of Islam, that made Bede more sensitive to the signs of the end, but the deepening of a zeal for reform that was inherent in Gregory's conception of the role of the papacy in connection with the Second Coming.139 In Markus's view, Gregory's eschatology combines immanence with postponement, 'already' with 'not yet', an unscheduled future that is always almost here. Bede seems to have caught something of Gregory's sense of drama inherent in this tension, for in his analogy between the world-ages and the ages of human life in On Times 16, he substituted
Gregory's more ominous aetas decrepita ('enfeebled' or 'decrepit' age) for Augustine's more neutral senectus ('old age') as the homologue of the sixth age of the world.140
In short, Bede gives no indication in the Commentary on Revelation that he was particularly concerned about the impending end of the world; but then, neither here nor elsewhere does he seem notably optimistic about the future of the Church. The burden of the Tyconian-Augustinian exegesis of Revelation was that until the very end, the two cities would be locked in conflict in their 'commingled camps', as Bede's prefatory poem put it. And as the Letter to Plegwin makes clear, Bede was firmly agnostic on when that end would come. Later in life he may have been willing to throw out hints that the situation in Northumbria, or in Christendom at large, was ominous, but it is noteworthy that in his response to his accusers in Wilfred's court,
Bede identifies chronological speculation itself as the problem, and does not comment on other sources of alarm. The 'heresy of calculation' may have been, in Bede's eyes, actually a sign of the coming end. In the Commentary on Revelation, heresy exerts a disruptive effect on Bede's own efforts to avoid
138 Markus, Bede and the Tradition of Ecclesiastical Historiography, p. 14; idem, 'Living
Within Sight', pp. 31–32.
139 Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Europe, p. 9; McGinn, 'The End of the World', pp. 70–71.
140 DT 16 (ed. p. 601; trans. Kendall and Wallis, p. 118). Bede shifted senectus to the fifth age, displacing Augustine's gravitas. Augustine's analogy of world-ages and human stages of life is found in De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 58.3 and DCD 16.43. Gregory's aetas decrepita comes from his analogy between the hours of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard and the stages of human life: Homiliae in Evangelia 1.19. See Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 154–156.
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apocalyptic speculation. In his exegesis of Rev. 14:18, he quotes Gregory to the effect that the time of the end is unknown, and at the same time the appearance of 'certain perverse people' is an infallible sign that it is near. Heresy, like persecution, is an ambiguous bridge between the indeterminate past and present, and the unscheduled future. It is always with us, but its ferocious resurgence is the overture to the end-times.
Bede's sources also offered him numerous occasions for introducing heresy into his discussion of Revelation: Tyconius yokes heretics with pagans and traitors as perennial enemies of the Church, and Primasius is vocally antiArian. But Bede also took up the theme on his own initiative. For example, in his exegesis on 9:1-3, he ventures out on his own to interpret the star falling from heaven upon earth as 'the flame of the heretics'. From Tyconius, he takes the notion that the great furnace is the final persecution, but he adds a detail not found in his source: the persecutors burn with heretical madness. Bede uses a term with a particularly heavy load of meaning for him – perfidia – to characterize the Nicolaitan heretics (2:12).141 The locusts that emerge from the smoke of the pit represent not merely Primasius's 'blindness', but heretical blindness.142 Commenting on Rev. 6:7 ('power was given to him over the four parts of the earth'), Bede makes the rather striking statement that 'the madness of Arius, which originated in Alexandria, reached the Gaulish sea [ad
Gallicum usque peruenit oceanum]'. The implication that it reached Britain will be made explicit in HE 1.8.143 Finally, he closes his commentary with a parting shot at the Pelagians and the Donatists (Rev. 22:21).
Bede's views on heresy are very complex – too complex, indeed, to attempt to analyse fully here144 – but it is worth pointing out how the Commentary on 141 On the importance of the word perfidia for Bede and its association with heresy, see
Alan Thacker, 'Bede, the Britons and the Book of Samuel', Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter (Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 129–147.
142 Primasius 9.14, 34-35, 51; the locusts are also identified with heretics by (ps.-)Jerome,
Commemoratorium 214.5-6; cf. Kelly, 'The Venerable Bede', p. 403.
143 On Arianism in the early medieval Insular milieu, see Michael W. Herren and Shirley
Ann Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth
Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), pp. 47–52 and ch. 3 passim. It is possible that Bede's sensitivity to Arianism was heightened at the time when the Commentary was composed.
This was also when he completed On Times, his exposition of Dionysius Exiguus's computus.
Dionysius regarded his annus domini era as a way of affirming both the endorsement of the Alexandrian Easter reckoning at Nicaea, and its condemnation of Arianism: see Luciana Cuppo
Csaki, 'Roma magistra historiae: The Year 680 as caput saeculi in Cas. 641', Roma, magistra mundi, pp. 121–136 at 128–129.
144 Alan Thacker's illuminating paper 'Why Did Bede Think Heresy Mattered?', delivered
INTRODUCTION
Revelation might have been coloured by very recent schisms, especially the Monothelete heresy. Arthur G. Holder argues that heresy was the core preoccupation of Bede's early exegesis, much as reform was of his later commentaries.145 Bede grew up in an English church (and indeed, a monastery) that was marked by the doctrinal controversies that separated east and west. Benedict
Biscop's first trip to Rome took place in 653, during the chaotic aftermath of Pope Martin I's arrest subsequent to the condemnation of Monotheletism at the Lateran Synod of 649. One of John the Chanter's tasks was to rally the English church in defence of Rome against Constantinople, and the synod of Hatfield in 679 composed a letter confirming the five ecumenical councils and the Lateran synod. Documents concerning this controversy flowed into Northumbria from Rome. Celia Chazelle finds traces in the Codex Amiatinus – the great Bible manuscript made at Wearmouth-Jarrow, and to which Bede himself may have contributed – of the fallout from the rejection by Pope Sergius I of the decrees of the Quinisext Council in Trullo held under Justinian II in 691–692.146 Anxiety about heresy thus formed an important backdrop to Bede's early experience. And for any exegete schooled in Tyconius's thought, heretics were the principal representatives of those 'false brethren' who would reveal their enmity for the Faith in the last days.147 at the 2011 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, illustrated how deeply concerned Bede was with heresy, out of proportion to any real threat it posed in contemporary Britain. Thacker is enlarging his paper for publication in a forthcoming volume on Bede and the Future, ed.
Peter Darby and Faith Wallis.
145 Arthur G. Holder, 'The Feminine Christ in Bede's Biblical Commentaries', Bède le
Vénérable entre tradition et postérité, pp. 109–118 at 116.
146 The use of the Lamb to represent Christ (fol. VIIr) in a book which was a gift for St Peter and Rome was a statement of doctrinal allegiance in a time of tension: Celia Chazelle,
'Christ and the Vision of God: The Biblical Diagrams of the Codex Amiatinus', The Mind's Eye:
Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie
Bouché (Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology in association with Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 84–111, esp. 99–102. See also Éamonn Ó Carragáin, The City of Rome and the World of Bede, Jarrow Lecture, 1994, pp. 16–17, and Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Europe, p.
9, on the importance of the Monothelete heresy for Bede; McCready, Miracles , pp. 121–22 on his obsession with Pelagianism.
147 Landes, 'Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled', pp. 156–165, who observes that the Vandal attacks were seen by North Africans such as Quodvultdeus as signs of the end, not because the Vandals were barbarians, or exceptionally violent, but because they were Arian heretics.
The connection is, however, much older, for Athanasius records that St Anthony identified the Arians with Antichrist: Richard Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), p. 65.
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4. Shape and Style of the Commentary on Revelation The way Bede approached the task of composing this, his first work of exegesis, opens a window onto the emerging mental world of a brilliant and ambitious Christian thinker. What we see is a precocious interest in exegetical theory, a concern to master the overarching structure of the Biblical text, and an interpretive approach that was at once respectful of tradition, and bold in the way it deployed it.
4.1 The Poem of Bede the Priest The Commentary on Revelation is the only work of exegesis for which Bede composed a verse epigraph. This may have been a youthful affectation, for the other works equipped with poetic prologues are also early, namely On the Nature of Things and its companion On Times (703) and On the Holy
Places (De locis sanctis), probably composed around 702–703.148 Four lines of verse preface On the Nature of Things/On Times, and six On the Holy
Places; by contrast, the poem which Bede composed for his commentary on Revelation comprises twenty-two verses. It aims at grandeur in both content and style, with allusions to the Aeneid and classical, even recondite vocabulary.149 Indeed, it was occasionally copied on its own into anthologies of poetry.150 On the other hand, a number of manuscripts dropped the poem altogether, and at least half a dozen position it after rather than before the prose preface. Yet it deserves our attention for what it reveals about Bede's overall intentions. Its accents are strongly Tyconian and Augustinian. Revelation is introduced as a vision of conflict-in-progress between two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem. On one plane, the two cities are sharply distinguished, but on another, they are confusingly intermingled. John's vision is of ongoing war in the realm of 'wave-wandering wheels' (fluctiuagas rotas). There is a distant echo here of Neptune's chariot (Aeneid 1.147, 156), but fluctiuagas is Bede's word, and one of his favourite locutions. He likes to deploy it in connection with historic time, which rolls on unceasingly and unpredictably,
148 The verse epigraph usually heading On the Nature of Things in fact covers On Times as well: see trans. by Kendall and Wallis, p. 135. For the dating of On the Holy Places, see
Brown, A Companion to Bede, p. 13. These epigraphs are not discussed by Michael Lapidge,
Bede the Poet, Jarrow Lecture, 1993.
149 The Greek loan-word choici ('soil', 'earth') in line 3 evidently stumped many scribes:
Brown, A Companion to Bede, p. 92.
150 E.g. in the eleventh-century German MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. lat. 639 (Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, p. 91).
INTRODUCTION
in contrast to the stabilitas of eternity and heaven.151 The eventual separation of the two cities is assured, with the Lamb leading his hosts into heaven and the Dragon drowning with his followers in hell, but Bede's poem proclaims that it is the war itself that is his principal theme. He thus announces the bifocal character of Revelation as a symbolic account of historical time as well as a prophecy concerning its consummation.
4.2 Bede's Preface: The Structure of Revelation and the 'periochae'
The preface of the Commentary on Revelation is divided into two parts.
The first concerns the internal structure or divisions of the book of Revelation itself into seven sections; division was one of headings in the classical literary accessus – the formal scholarly 'approach' to the study of a text that identified the author, the intention of the work, its structure, genre and so forth. Following Tyconius, Bede calls these divisions periochae ('sections' or 'passages' of text)152 and notes that each closes with a recapitulatio – a term which means 'recapitulation', but which carries a special connotation in the tradition of Revelation exegesis, as we shall see. The fact that the periochae are seven in number is probably not coincidental: Tyconius's exegetical rules are also seven in number, and the number seven features in the imagery of Revelation itself – the seven Churches, the seven seals, plagues and so forth. Tyconius saw these sevens as both a structural principle and an exegetical key to Revelation, and Bede endorsed this view. The first six periochae correspond to six distinct but chronologically superimposed aspects of the Church's history from the Incarnation to the end of the world, while the seventh refers to its eternal state in the world to come. Thus the first periocha opens with John's vision of the 'one like the Son of Man' who addresses words of encouragement and warning to the Seven Churches of Asia (Rev. 1:9–3:22). Bede points out that two of these messages are of special significance: the sixth, which announces the conversion of the Jews (an important signal of the immanent end of the world, of which more
151 See note 832 below, re: Bede's exegesis of Rev. 16:20.
152 From the Greek perioche: cf. Acts 8:32, where the term refers to the passage of Scripture which Philip expounded to the Ethiopian eunuch. In the Vulgate it is translated locus. On Tyconius's periochae, see Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, ch. 3.3. Bede's periocha four does not quite match Tyconius's: ibid., p. 100. For an instructive table comparing Bede's division of the text and placement of the recapitulationes to that of other preceding and succeeding exegetes, see Yves Christe, 'Traditions littéraires et iconographiques dans l'interprétation des images apocalyptiques', L'Apocalypse de Jean: Traditions exégétiques et iconographiques: IIIe–XIIIe siècles, tableaux 1 and 2.
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below in section 4.4 of this Introduction); and the seventh, which rebukes the lukewarmness of the church of Laodicea. In every sequence of sevens, the sixth and seventh carry a special meaning.153
The importance of this pattern is underscored in Bede's explanation of the second periocha, which covers the vision of the court of heaven and the opening by the Lamb of the seven seals (Rev. 4:1–8:1).154 The opening of each of the first six seals (which Bede will expound as symbols of the historical experience of the Church from its beginnings to the time of Antichrist) is followed by a catastrophe upon earth, but the sixth seal, the earthquake, is followed by a recapitulation – the signing of the twelve tribes and the vision of the 'multitude without number' (7:1-17). The opening of the seventh seal
(8:1) inaugurates, not a seventh catastrophe, but the next periocha. The third and fourth periochae replicate the second, but use different images (species) and symbols (figurae). The third concerns the seven trumpets (8:2–11:18).
Here again, the first six trumpets and the disasters they announce are followed by a recapitulation – the eating of the book, the measurement of the city, and the episode of the two witnesses. The seventh trumpet announces 'the eternal sabbath'; hence it inaugurates, not another disaster, but a triumphant hymn of praise. It also ushers in the fourth periocha. This periocha is a recapitulatio of the history of the Church told through the image of the Woman clothed in the Sun, her Child, and the Dragon (Rev. 12:1–14:20).
The fifth periocha returns to the pattern of the seven angels dispensing seven catastrophes: this time they are vials of plagues (15:1–16:21). Once again, six vials inaugurate six disasters, but the seventh, instead of bringing in a fresh plague, announces the end of the series: 'It is done'. History is finished, and judgement is come. The sixth and seventh periocha show the contrasting fates of the two cities, Babylon (17:1–21.9) and Jerusalem
(21:9–22:21).
Given this attention to the architecture of Revelation, it is rather surprising that Bede did not actually use the periocha division to structure his exposition. The periochae are not even mentioned in the body of the Commentary, though some of the early manuscripts mark where the periochae begin at the appropriate places in the text.155 Instead, his preface points to two other ways
153 Ann Matter argues that Bede's periochae stand for ages of the world: 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', pp. 34–35. However, the word periocha does not carry any temporal connotation, but simply means summary or section. Bede himself never suggests a connection between the periochae and the world-ages.
154 On this periocha, see Christe, 'Ap. IV–VIII, 1', pp. 146–147.
155 These are the MSS of Gryson's g family: Bede ed. Introduction, pp. 145–146. On the other hand, Bede's periochae were rediscovered in the eleventh century by Anselm of Laon
INTRODUCTION
in which he has articulated the text. First, he ordered the material into three books.156 Though the three books actually correspond to periochae 1–2, 3–4 and 5–7 respectively, this division is not accorded any inherent significance.
Taking his cue from Augustine, Bede claims that they are simply convenient stopping points for the reader. On the other hand, he attaches great significance to his division of the commentary into chapters: nonetheless so that whose who seek may more readily find, it will be seen that the same unbroken order of chapters [capitulorum intemerata series] ought to be preserved throughout, in accordance with the way in which I previously distinguished them in the chapter-headings which are prefaced [praepositis brevibus] to the book [libellus] itself.
In sum, Bede's capitula in the Commentary correspond to chapter numbers and summary headings (breves) which are to be found at the beginning of his copy of Revelation, and which will allow the reader to refer back and forth between the commentary and the text of Scripture. The relationship between the Bede's three books, seven periochae and 38 chapters is summarized in Table 1.
The word breves has a technical meaning in the language of scholarship of late antiquity. It means a summary composed of tituli or headings; Cassiodorus equates the term with divisa commonitio, a 'divided reminder', or in other words, an outline.157 Capitula lectionum are breves, being a kind of table of contents composed of short numbered summaries of the contents of a book of the Bible, usually found at the beginning of the text, and keyed to the contents of the book by the numbers. They enable the reader to gain an overview of the text, and, by means of the reference numbers, to find readily any particular section. Bede was familiar with the system; the Codex Amiatinus, for instance, incorporated capitula, though not for Revelation. Moreover, Bede himself claims to have composed capitula for much of the Old Testament, and all of the New Testament except for the Gospels.158 He used capitula to structure and his school, and recruited as a structural element of the nascent glossa on Revelation:
Yves Christe, 'De l'absence ou des lacunes d'Ap 15,1–20,15 dans les cycles apocalyptiques monumentaux des XIe–XIIe siècles', Testo e immagine nell'alto medioevo, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 41 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1994), pp. 812–813.
156 Bede was probably inspired by Primasius, who structured his own commentary in five books. Bede's division has been mistakenly projected backwards onto Tyconius's commentary:
Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 118–120.
157 Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 92–93.
158 HE 5.24 (568): Colgrave and Mynors somewhat misleadingly translate capitula lectionum as 'summaries of lessons' (p. 569).
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Table 1: The divisions of Bede's Commentary and the text of Revelation Bede's books Bede's periochae Bede's capitula Content of capitula Modern chapters/verses
Preface I Title 1:1-3 II Salutation 1:4-8 1. The vision of the Son of Man and the messages to the Seven Churches III Vision of 'one like the Son of Man'
1:9-20 IV Messages to the Seven Churches 2:1–3:21
2. The vision of Heaven and the opening of the Seven Seals V Vision of the Throne, the Four Living Beings, and the Twenty-four Elders 4:1-11 VI The Lamb is given the scroll sealed with the seven seals 5:1-12 VII The first five seals: the Four Horsemen and the souls beneath the altar 6:1-11 VIII The sixth seal: the earthquake 6:12-17 IX The sealing of the Tribes 7:1-8 X Acclamation of the Lamb by the multitude in white robes; the Lamb opens the seventh seal 7:9–8:1
3. The Seven Trumpets XI The angel with the golden censer 8:2-6 XII The first four trumpets: hail and fire, the mountain thrown into the sea, the star Wormwood, the darkening of the heavenly bodies 8:7-13 XIII The fifth angel (first woe): locusts 9:1-12 XIV The sixth angel (second woe): the army of the Euphrates 9:13-21
INTRODUCTION
Bede's books Bede's periochae Bede's capitula Content of capitula Modern chapters/verses XV The angel with the little book 10:1-7 XVI John eats the little book 10:8-11 XVII The two witnesses 11:1-14 XVIII The seventh trumpet:
Acclamation of God and Christ 11:15-18 4. The Woman, the Dragon, and the Beasts XIX The Woman clothed with the sun 11:19–12:6
XX War in heaven; the dragon pursues the Woman 12:7-17 XXI The beast with ten horns and seven heads 13:1-10 XXII The second beast with two horns: '666'
13:11-18 XXIII The Lamb and the 144,000 on Mount Zion 14:1-5 XXIV The three angels 14:6-13 XXV The harvest and the vintage 14:14-20
5. The Seven Vials of Plagues XXVI The song of triumph of the saints around the sea of glass and fire 15:1-4 15:5–16:11
XXVII The first five plagues: sores, sea turned to blood, fountains turned to blood, scorching sun, darkness 16:12-17 XXVIII The sixth plague: Euphrates dried up. The dragon, beast and false prophet spew out foul spirits. Armies assemble at Armegeddon 16:18-21 XXIX The seventh angel's vial is emptied and the angel announces, 'It is done'.
Lightning, thunder, earthquake and hail 6. The fate of Babylon XXX The Harlot 17:1-6
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Bede's books Bede's periochae Bede's capitula Content of capitula Modern chapters/verses XXXI Interpretation of the Harlot and the beast with the ten horns 17:7-18 XXXII Proclamation of the fall of Babylon 18:1-20 XXXIII Rejoicing at the fall of Babylon 18:21–19:10
XXXIV The Rider Faithful and True goes forth and defeats the beast and the false prophet 19:11-21 XXXV The dragon is cast into the pit for 1000 years; the reign of the saints; the dragon is released and finally defeated 20:1-9 XXXVI The judgement of the living and the dead. The new Jerusalem descends from heaven 20:11–21:8
7. The triumph of Jerusalem XXXVII Description of the Heavenly Jerusalem 21:9–22:5
XXXVIII Final admonitions and 22:6-21 blessings his commentary on 1 Samuel, and also copied them into his commentaries on Mark and Luke.
Manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana B.6 (c. 850; n. France, perhaps Reims), a Bible whose text of Revelation contains capitula lectionum,159 has attracted much attention because of its close links to Alcuin. The capitula, keyed to the text by marginal numbers (albeit not entirely accurately), contain clear echoes of passages in Bede's Commentary, and Steinhauser concluded that they were composed at Wearmouth or Jarrow around 700.160 On the basis
159 Transcribed by Sparks, pp. 410–418. The Vallicelliana capitula have been designated the Tur series by Donatien De Bruyne, Sommaires, divisions et rubriques de la Bible latine
(Namur: Auguste Godenne, 1914), pp. 369–399. The text was first published by G.M. Tommasi,
Opera omnia, vol. 1 (Rome: Typographia Palladis, 1749), pp. 475–479. See also Haussleiter,
Die lateinische Apokalypse, p. 196.
160 Steinhauser, The Apocalypse Commentary of Tyconius, pp. 111–113. E.g. Bede's exegesis of Rev. 6:1 contains a reference to the 'threefold war' mentioned in capitulum VII, which would immediately precede 6:1: see Translation, p. 140; that of 8:1 ends with an allusion
INTRODUCTION
of a much more extensive stylistic comparison of all the sets of capitula in this manuscript, Paul Meyvaert has argued that the author was none other than Bede himself.161 Neither Steinhauser nor Meyvaert refers to the passage in Bede's preface concerning praepositis brevibus, but in fact the capitulation of Bede's
Commentary matches that in the Vallicelliana manuscript. This reinforces the case for identifying the Vallicelliana capitula lectionum as Bede's breves.
Gryson edited the capitula from the Vallicelliana Bible, Paris BNF lat. 4, and Reims, Bibliothèque municipale 2 in the Introduction to his edition of the Commentary (pp. 137–139), and pointed to parallels to the Commentary
(pp. 139–141 and apparatus passim). A translation of the capitula based on this edition is included in the Appendix of the present volume.
Bede's capitula lectionum bring the complex interplay between the historic and the prophetic strands of Revelation to the fore, and emphasize the central role assigned to Antichrist. The Christ who appears at the beginning of John's vision is both the historic and the glorified Christ (I–III).
The messages to the Seven Churches (IV) concern the whole period of the Church's history, past, present and future. The apocalyptic tribulations are unfolding in the present age as the repeated attack of pagans, traitors and heretics (VII) and will be mirrored in the persecutions launched by Antichrist
(VIII); likewise, Antichrist's downfall is already enacted in Christ's incarnation (IX). The acclamation of the white-robed multitude points to the defeat of Antichrist, but the recapitulation (X) brings the reader back to the historical plane. The perennial struggle continues between righteous teachers (XII) and heresy (XIII); the angels of Satan now work from within the hearts of the wicked, though in the future they will be openly revealed
(XIII). Just as Antichrist's fall is about to be described, the text once again reverts to the history of the Church throughout time (XV–XVI). Then it turns to the final persecution and the preaching and martyrdom of the Two
Witnesses (XVII), which ends, once again, in the acclamations of the saints at God's triumph (XVIII). The symbolic figure of the Woman clothed with the Sun returns us to the historical conflict of the Church and the Devil
(XIX–XX). Then the pendulum swings back to the prophetic: Antichrist, the beast with ten horns and seven heads, reigns for three and a half years, and is slain (XXI). His career is shadowed by that of the second beast, who stands for his followers (XXII). The prophetic pace builds as the 144,000 to the capitulum which immediately follows at the beginning of Book 2 (see Translation, p. 159), and that on 9:21 echoes capitulum XV (see Translation, pp. 175, 289).
161 Paul Meyvaert, 'Bede's capitula lectionum for the Old and New Testaments', Revue bénédictine 105 (1995): 348–380, esp. 355–357.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
redeemed who resisted Antichrist rejoice (XXIII), but before they appear a second time (XXVI), the historical dimension intervenes, with preachers announcing the Last Judgement (XXIV–XXV). Following the established pattern, the first five plagues concern the historical experience of the Church
(XXVII), but the sixth points forward to Antichrist (XXVIII). At this point, however, the emptying of the seventh vial and the angel's proclamation 'It is done' hurtles the text into the future (XXIX). The vision of the Harlot and the Beast (XXX–XXXI) inaugurates the account of the definitive collapse of Babylon (XXXII–XXXIII). The Rider, Faithful and True, defeats Antichrist and the Devil (XXXIV). There is nonetheless a recapitulative pause: the chaining of the dragon and the reign of the saints for a thousand years represents the history of the Church from the Incarnation to the final conflict, when the Devil will be released and defeated forever (XXXV). The resurrection and the judgement of the living and the dead signal the true end of the saeculum, and the passage of time into eternity (XXXVI–XXXVIII).
Two conclusions may be drawn from this evidence. First, Bede conceived his Commentary as a companion to the full text of Revelation, and this full text was equipped with numbered breves, that is, a set of capitula lectionum, composed by Bede himself. The Commentary and the text of Revelation with its capitula may have been in the same libellus, though this is not entirely clear.162 Secondly, Bede expected the capitula numbers to be used as a reference system to link his exposition to the Biblical text.
Many early manuscripts of the Commentary retain Bede's chapter divisions more or less faithfully. However, without a Bible equipped with the breves, the chapter numbers are useless as a reference system; for this reason, they tend to drop out of the manuscripts of the Commentary over the course of time. Where present, they are often altered, or reproduced inaccurately,163 or replaced by other systems of capitulation: Adhémar of Chabannes composed his own system of chapter divisions for Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz Phillipps 1614 (copied in Vatican,
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Reg. lat. 1003, s. XII), as did the scribe of Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale 52.164
162 Some early copies of the Commentary are found in manuscripts containing Revelation, notably Rome, Vallicelliana B 25 ii (Rome, s.IX in.). The text of Revelation in this manuscript even contains capitula, but they are not the same as those in Vallicelliana B 6, nor are they linked to Bede's commentary: Gryson designates them KA Apc A. They are the same set of 48 capitula published by Haussleiter, Die lateinische Apokalypse, pp. 197–199.
163 Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, pp. 141–143.
164 Gryson discusses and transcribes these chapter divisions in his Introduction, pp.
INTRODUCTION
4.3 Bede's Preface: The Methodological Framework The second part of Bede's preface to the Commentary on Revelation is a survey of principles guiding the interpretation of Biblical texts, devised by Tyconius, and expounded in his Book of Rules. Like the divisions of the text of Revelation, they are seven in number: a symmetry Bede seems to have appreciated.165 It is in fact not improbable that Tyconius conceived of his commentary as an illustration of his exegetical rules.166 The Book of Rules, unlike Tyconius's commentary on Revelation, has survived in its original form.167 However, medieval readers knew of the rules through the epitome in book 3 of Augustine's On Christian Learning (De doctrina christiana), or through summaries of and excerpts from On Christian Learning, such as the 'Monza Epitome'.168 Bede was no exception, though he used On Christian Learning directly, and not the excerpts in Eugippius's anthology, or an epitome.169 Augustine's approval of both Tyconius and his principles
147–151. Conversely a number of manuscripts of the Bible incorporate Bede's chapter divisions
(pp. 150–151). The three manuscripts are respectively nos. 13, 101 and 96 in his inventory,
Introduction ch. I.
165 George Hardin Brown, Bede the Venerable (Boston: Twayne, 1987), p. 50.
166 Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction, pp. 11–12; P. Marone, 'La continuità esegetica che caratterizza le opere di Ticonio ovvero l'applicazione delle Regole nel Commento all'Apocalisse', Studi e matriali di storia delle religioni 67 (2001): 253–270.
167 From which it was edited by Burkitt (see Abbreviations), whose edition is the basis of the translation by W.S. Babcock (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). Burkitt's edition is the one cited in Gryson's apparatus to his edition of Bede's Commentary. It is reproduced, virtually without change but with a facing-page French translation and substantial introduction, in Jean-Mark Vercruysse, Tyconius. Le livre des règles, Sources chrétiennes 488 (Paris:
Éditions du Cerf, 2004). For discussion of manuscripts and text transmission, see Burkitt, pp. xxi, Vercruysse, Le livre des règles, Introduction, pp. 104–115. Fundamental studies include
Pamela Bright, The Book of Rules of Tyconius. Its Purpose and Inner Logic, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 2 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), and the essays in A Conflict of Christian Hermeneutics in Roman Africa: Tyconius and Augustine, ed. Charles
Kannengiesser and Pamela Bright, Protocol of the fifty-eighth Colloquy: 16 October 1988,
Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, Graduate Theological
Union and University of California – Berkeley (Berkeley: [The Center], 1989).
168 Burkitt's ed., pp. xxi–xxiv and Appendix; Vercruysse, Le livre des règles, Introduction, pp. 90–94; Pamela Bright, '"The Preponderating Influence of Augustine": A Study of the Epitomes of the Book of Rules of the Donatist Tyconius', Augustine and the Bible, ed. Pamela
Bright, The Bible through the Ages, 2 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp.
109–128; Pierre Cazier, 'Le Livre des règles de Tyconius. Sa transmission du De doctrina christiana aux Sentences d'Isidore de Seville', Revue des études augustiniennes 19 (1973): 241–261.
169 This is demonstrated by Mackay, 'Bede's Biblical Criticism', pp. 213–219. See also
Vercruysse, Le livre des règles, Introduction, pp. 50–82, esp. pp. 80–82.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
bestowed the benediction of patristic authority on Bede's choice. But it also meant that Bede's understanding of Tyconian hermeneutics was filtered through Augustine's sometimes considerable revision of Tyconius's ideas.170
But we must bear in mind that Bede frankly proclaims his dependence on Tyconius for both the substance and the spirit of his own Commentary. Given
Tyconius's controversial reputation, Bede's posting of Augustine's summary of the Rules serves to justify the use of Tyconius's commentary, in which these rules were actually applied. In short, if the principles of Tyconius's exegesis are approved by patristic authority, so must the product. However, this is not to suggest that reproducing the Rules was merely a kind of insurance policy against critical attack. Bede also made creative and independent use of the Rules, or at least some of them, for his own exegetical purposes.
Augustine's epitome changed, sometimes quite radically, the fundamental ideas and intentions of the Book of Rules. To begin with, Augustine stripped out much of their eschatological and ecclesiological framework.171
Tyconius's Rules were deeply bound up with his vision of the Church as ecclesia bipartita, and his conviction that the historical realities of Scripture are mystically re-enacted in the Church's contemporary trials. The task of the exegete was therefore to read the 'prophecies' as signs of the times – not as proof of literal fulfilment, but as revelations of the inner state of the Church. In particular, 'breaking open' the prophecies reveals the 'separation' (discessio) – a term that comes from the apocalyptic prophecy of 2
Thess. 2:3, but which Tyconius reads as the actualization of the essential cleavage between righteous and reprobate. The persecution of the Donatists was therefore not an episode in the unfolding drama of the end-time, where a small remnant of true believers endured suffering at the hands of Antichrist, but rather a sign revealing the cleavage between true and false Christians within the Church. In Tyconius's pithy phrase, 'But what Daniel said is going on now in Africa, and the end is not at this time'.172
Much of this background is muted in Augustine's epitome, and consequently in Bede's understanding. But Bede could to some degree have reconstituted it through Tyconius's commentary on Revelation. Tyconius's first rule 'concerns the Lord and his Body'. It holds that when Scripture appears
170 See Bright, Book of Rules, esp. ch. 5; Robert A. Kugler, 'Tyconius' Mystic Rules and the Rules of Augustine', Augustine and the Bible, pp. 129–148; Vercruysse, Le livre des règles,
'Note complémentaire 3', pp. 385–389.
171 Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction, pp. 26–28.
172 Tyconius, Lib. reg. 67.8-10; this analysis is based on Bright, Book of Rules, esp. chs.
3–4. See also Gryson, Tyc. trans. Introduction, pp. 54–56.
INTRODUCTION
to speak of the Lord, what it says can be applied as well to the Church which is his Body, and vice versa. Bede's own Commentary contains numerous instances where this principle is invoked. Sometimes it is expressly ascribed to Tyconius, as in the exegesis of Rev. 5:6, where Bede reports that Tyconius identifies the Lamb with 'the Church, which has received all power in Christ'.173 At other times, Tyconius is not named as the source, though his lost commentary may well underlie Bede's text: for instance, commenting on Rev. 2.13, Bede notes that the martyr Antipas of Pergamum may stand for Christ himself, who is continuously martyred by unbelievers.
The second rule, concerning the 'two-fold (bipartito) Body of the Lord', posed more serious challenges. Augustine himself had some reservations about Tyconius's formulation, because it implied that the temporal condition of the Church as a mixture of good and evil people was in fact an essential part of its nature, and thus of Christ's nature. For him, evil was not a real part of the Church, but only appeared as such. Hence in his summary of Tyconius's rules, Augustine reproduces Tyconius's example from the Song of Solomon 1:4 – 'I am dusky and beautiful, as the tabernacle of Kedar and as the tent of Solomon', – but alters Tyconius's interpretation of the 'tabernacle of Kedar'. For Tyconius, this juxtaposition of Ishmaelite and Israelite was a symbol of the inseparable nature of the double seed of Abraham within a single Church;174 for Augustine, it is a figure of their radical separateness 'for [Ishmael] is not to be an heir with the son of the free woman'.175
Augustine therefore suggested two re-formulations: 'of the True (i.e. essential and eternal) and Mixed (i.e. temporal and contingent) Body of the Lord', and 'the True and Simulated Body'. Bede chose the latter, and passed over the former. For example, his exegesis of Rev. 14:10 incorporated a quotation from The City of God 20.9 that identified the Beast with those who are Christians in appearance only. But some of the essence of Tyconius's notion of the 'bipartite' or 'double church' (ecclesia bipartita) seems to have filtered into Bede's Commentary. Tyconius's own explanation of Rule
2 emphasizes that when Scripture ascribes praise and blame simultaneously to one object, the spiritual addressee is the ecclesia bipartita. One of his examples is the sequence of prophecies to the Seven Churches of Asia in Rev. 1:11, 2:1, and following. In his exegesis of these passages, Bede on a number of occasions uses unmistakably Tyconian formulations. Indeed, he concludes his commentary on this section with a summary striking for both
173 See below, p. 138, and also exegesis of 14:19 (n. 216).
174 Lib. reg. 10.13-30; cf. Bright, Book of Rules, p. 13.
175 DDC 3.32.45 (105.13-20).
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
its understanding of the concept of ecclesia bipartita, and its understanding of Tyconius's notion of prophecy:
Note that in the case of each of the Churches, the Lord first displays his power, and then rehearses what is praiseworthy or blameworthy in the Church, with admonition intermixed. Finally he pays out the reward due to each side, which we can understand as both happening in the present, and to come in the future…176
On Rev. 2:1, Bede quotes from Tyconius's commentary: 'He rebukes a part of this Church, and praises a part, in accordance with the significance of its name. For Ephesus means "a great falling away" and [also] "my will is in her"'. Indeed, the example of the Seven Churches is invoked in the Book of Rules' discussion of Rule 2.177
The third rule concerns 'the promises and the Law', and in Tyconius's original work, it illustrated the bipartite nature of the Church, at once subject to the Law, and the recipient of Grace.178 Augustine preferred not to draw too much attention to this as an exegetical principle, lest it provide ammunition to the Pelagians, and Bede has little to say about it. The fourth rule,
'of species and genus' on the other hand, is one which Bede applied with considerable enthusiasm. In the context of Tyconius's concept of prophecy, it showed how specific instances of rebuke or threat in Scripture could be read as generic warnings. Much of this is lost in Augustine's epitome, but Bede could have found it in Tyconius's commentary on Revelation.179
Tyconius's fourth rule 'of times' was of intense interest to Bede. Augustine's explanation makes this rule into a particular case of 'species and genus', but for Tyconius himself, its scope was wider. Scripture uses numbers, especially references to periods of time, in two ways. First, by synecdoche, so that specific measures of time can stand for the whole period of time and vice versa. Tyconius's example is the chronology of Christ's passion and resurrection; Christ can be said to have lain buried for three days and nights, when in fact he was in the tomb for about thirty-six hours. This notion assumed a permanent significance for Bede, for it reappeared in ch. 5 of The Reckoning of Time, but Bede was equally impressed with the concept of 'legitimate' or 'fixed' numbers. Tyconius defined these as symbolic numbers, for example seven, ten or twelve (and their mathematical products), by which 176 See below, p. 131.
177 Lib. reg. 11.3; cf. Bright, Book of Rules, p. 87. It is indicative of Augustine's unwillingness to accept the notion of ecclesia bipartita that he actually claims that Tyconius never applied his rules to the exegesis of this particular section of Revelation: DDC 3.30.42 (102.17–103.23).
178 Bright, Book of Rules, pp. 66 sqq., p. 104.
179 Bright, Book of Rules, pp. 72–73.
INTRODUCTION
the Bible designates either a long period of time, or the totality of time. For Bede, this insight into the protean nature of Biblical numbers furnished the exegete with an instrument of enormous flexibility. For example, it could be used to transform a specific time-prophecy into a generic reference to 'all time'. Here is where it proved truly useful in expounding Revelation, for Tyconius dismissed the literal millennium by classifying 1000 as a legitimate number, not a literal chronological indicator. Bede's own exegesis of Rev.
20:3-5 shows the extent of Tyconius's triumph: Bede quotes verbatim from Primasius, who is quoting verbatim from Augustine, who incorporates fully the concept of legitimate numbers. Moreover, in expounding Rev. 8:6, Bede likens the seven angels with the seven trumpets to the Church and its historic mission to proclaim the word. This idea is derived from Tyconius through Primasius,180 but the next thought has no traceable source or analogue. Bede compares the seven angelic trumpets to the trumpets which brought down the walls of Jericho in seven days: 'For the seven-day circling [of the walls of Jericho] intimates the totality of the time of the Church'. Bede made this connection himself, based on Tyconius's Rule 5.
Rule Six is the principle of recapitulation. For Tyconius, this term appears to have had two meanings: as a literary device, and as an application of typology. The latter meaning of 'recapitulation' goes back to Irenaeus of Lyon, and even to St Paul; the core concept is that key figures or events gather into themselves the totality of a theological mystery. Thus Antichrist, for example, recapitulates all evil and opposition to God from the beginning of the world to the end.181 The literary application of 'recapitulation' to Revelation, discussed above in relation to Victorinus of Pettau, is a disruption of chronological order; Augustine records only this literary connotation in On Christian Learning, possibly influenced by his own reading of Tyconius's Revelation commentary.182
The final rule is the homologue of the first. Just as references to Christ may be references to his body the Church, so also allusions to the Devil may in fact pertain to his body, the damned. In Tyconius's original Book of Rules, however, the implications of this principle were very far-reaching: it was the key to revealing the mystery of the Antichrist's advent 'in the midst' of the historic Church, and therefore the climax of Tyconius's quest for clues to the 'mystery of iniquity'.183 This is largely lost in Augustine's epitome, but 180 See p. 163, n. 363.
181 McGinn, Antichrist, p. 59.
182 Dulaey, 'La sixième règle de Tyconius', pp. 88–89.
183 Bright, Book of Rules, pp. 83–86; Brown, Bede the Venerable, p. 50.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Bede in effect recovered it through Tyconius's commentary. An exceptionally striking example is found in Bede's exegesis of Rev. 13:5-6. Tyconius's commentary furnishes Bede with a lapidary summary of the key elements of Rule 7, replete with Tyconius's signature phrases: 'mystery of iniquity',
'separation' (discessio), 'man of sin'.184
In sum, Bede was dependent on Augustine for his formal understanding of Tyconius's rules, but through his access to Tyconius's commentary on Revelation, he had an independent avenue for understanding how Tyconius himself conceived them. This is demonstrated in the final part of his Preface, where Bede actually disagrees with Augustine about the scope and nature of Tyconius's rules. Augustine criticizes the Donatist for claiming that his hermeneutic technique was applicable to any obscurity in Scripture.
Tyconius, of course, made this claim precisely because obscurity, for him, was synonymous with those 'prophetic' passages whose present import has to be 'broken open' by exegesis. For Augustine, however, 'obscurity' simply meant any statement which could not be readily understood or accepted at face value. The global applicability of the Rule to the whole of Scripture was therefore questionable.185 Bede, on the other hand, goes out of his way to point out that Tyconius's rules apply not only to Revelation, but to 'the whole of canonical Scripture, particularly prophetic Scripture'.186
One can only conclude that Bede had grasped through reading Tyconius's commentary on Revelation something of the comprehensive hermeneutics that underpinned the Book of Rules.
Bede's defence of the Rules' wide applicability is woven into a defence of his own profound indebtedness to Tyconius's commentary. Tyconius's is the only commentary he openly acknowledges as a major source. He defends the essential orthodoxy of Tyconius's interpretation, though in the Prologue he takes him to task for flattering the Donatists by identifying their persecution at the hands of Valentinian with the torments inflicted on the faithful in Revelation.187 Moreover, Bede ostentatiously inverts Primasius's mean-spirited comparison of his own wholesale pillaging of Tyconius's commentary to 'plucking gems from dung and restoring them to their pristine worth'.188 For Bede, Tyconius was, on the contrary 'one who (as it was said of him) flowered as a rose among thorns', a man of insight who 184 See below, p. 199. For other echoes of Rule 7, see exegesis on Rev. 11:2.
185 DCD 3.30.43 (103.27-48); cf. Bright, Book of Rules, ch. 5.
186 See below, p. 105.
187 See below, p. 105.
188 Primasius, [Prologue] (1.7 sqq., esp. 2.18-22).
INTRODUCTION
understood Revelation vividly and explained it in a truthful and orthodox manner. Bede was not embarrassed to name him as his teacher.
4.4 The Unscheduled Future: How Bede Shapes the Meaning of Revelation Bede carried out his intention to convey an impeccably orthodox and patristic interpretation of Revelation by giving his commentary a certain shape, and by filling that shape with a distinctive meaning. By using Primasius and Tyconius as the virtually invisible framework on which to display passages culled from Augustine, Gregory and Jerome, Bede in effect argues that the great Fathers endorsed a coherent and authoritative reading of Revelation. There may have been an urgent need around 700 for such an orthodox synthesis.189 But the tradition Bede was working with was ambivalent: it wanted to retain the core prophetic message of Revelation, but uncouple its belief that the world would end from any unhealthy and intemperate use of John's vision as a prophecy. Bede likewise never renounced an interest in the prophetic character of the Revelation. Indeed, he re-oriented that prophetic character by making Revelation point, not to an indeterminate range of generic events that could happen at any time (such as disasters or persecutions), but to a specific scenario of the future. This essentially Augustinian scenario – a homogeneous Sixth Age, and a clear narrative of its future dénouement – was defined by events not found in Revelation, indeed barely found in the Bible at all, namely the conversion of the Jews and the rise and fall of Antichrist. No deadline was or could be associated with the onset of these events, but they were still certain, for Revelation arranged them into a chronological time-line. In sum, Bede found a way to orient Revelation safely to the future, while leaving that future unscheduled.
As the analysis of the periochae and capitula lectionum above indicate, Bede internalized the patristic position that Revelation is not linear and sequential narrative, but multi-directional and disrupted, pointing simultaneously to past, present and/or future. However, he seems to want to go beyond reading Revelation in the light of the total history of the Church by deliberately playing down the potential of the text to trigger speculation about the immediacy of the end-times. A particularly subtle way of muting the prophetic tone of Revelation was to explain away, or avoid altogether any passages that seemed to say that the end was coming soon. As noted above,
189 See above, pp. 43–57.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Bede does not comment on every verse of Revelation, and he often truncates those which he does expound. Peter Darby has perceptively observed that Bede tends to drop phrases that proclaim the swift approach of the end. For example, his lemma for 1:3 reproduces the first half of the verse, 'Blessed is he who reads and hears the words of this prophecy', but omits the entire second clause, 'and keeps those things which are written in it: for the time is at hand'. Moreover, his commentary, based loosely on Primasius, directs the reader's attention not to the future but to eternity. Whole verses are passed over, such as 2:16: 'In like manner do penance. If not, I will come to you quickly and will fight against you with the sword of my mouth'. Most striking of all is Bede's treatment of 22:7, 'Behold, I come quickly'. Not only does he drop these words from the lemma, but his exposition warns that literal interpretations of Revelation have an unsavoury association with heresy. Not surprisingly, 22:12 ('Behold, I come quickly…'.) is passed over altogether.
Bede does indeed confront the third proclamation in 22:20 ('Surely, I come quickly'), but, helped by Primasius, he draws the sting of imminence from the passage by linking it to the Church's daily prayer 'thy kingdom come', and to the allegorical dialogue of Bride and Bridegroom in the Song of Solomon.
This diversionary tactic is also employed in his exegesis of 3:11: the lemma reads 'Behold I come quickly (Ecco uenio cito…)', but Bede rewrites the text as a promise of divine assistance: 'I shall swiftly help you (cito enim auxiliabor…) lest perchance you should fail'.190
Another way in which Bede softened the eschatological intensity of Revelation was to uncouple 'prophecy' from prediction of the future.
Commenting on 22:8, 'For I am your fellow-servant, and of your brethren the prophets', Bede says: 'Notice how frequently John is called a "prophet" and this book a "prophecy". For there is much in this book which accorded with the prophets not only in meaning, but also in words. How many verses from Isaiah, Zechariah, and the other prophets you can find here!' In sum, John's status as a prophet rests not on predictions which are or will be coming true, but on his quotations from the Old Testament prophets, whose literal prophecies had already been fulfilled. Even where Bede takes prophecy to mean foreseeing what is to come, he mutes its effect with a qualification. For example, commenting on the loosing of the four angels who were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year to slay one-third of humanity (9:15), Bede begins with a strikingly literal observation, leaning on Primasius: 'As is the manner of prophecy, that speaks of what will happen
190 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 189–91.
INTRODUCTION
to us, he himself sees these things take place in the spirit. He said that there were four angels, because this persecution will rage in the four parts of the world'. But the second part of the verse abandons both Primasius and this hint of prophetic realism: the evil spirits always hunger for the death of humankind, at every hour and in every season. The time-references have been universalized. Only the intensity of the last persecution will be distinctive: 'What do you imagine they will do when they are released, who can do so much harm now, when they are bound?' Bede says, paraphrasing The City of God 20.8. Incidentally, this rhetorical question implies that the end-times still lie in the future, and have not yet commenced.
Bede is also cautious and low-key in his treatment of the traditional cosmic portents and natural signa that are supposed to inaugurate the end-times. Eclipses, comets, meteorological anomalies of various kinds, and earthquakes were perennial flashpoints for the apocalyptically minded.
Attention to such portents was not unique to Christians – indeed, many of the fathers associated it with paganism and condemned it accordingly. Orosius, for example, loads the first six books of his universal history with portents of disaster to prove how bad life in Rome was before Christ. After the birth of Christ, portents disappear, though it is telling that he expects them to resume
'in those distant last days at the end of the world and the advent of the Antichrist'.191 The difference, according to Orosius, will be that the troubles at the end of time will be, as Christ prophesied, unlike anything ever seen before. Bede was well aware (through Isidore of Seville) that the images of cosmic catastrophe in Revelation were an especially potent ferment in susceptible minds. In his On the Nature of Things (composed probably at the same time as the Commentary on Revelation) Bede treats earthquakes, pestilence, comets and eclipses as either purely natural events or at most moral wake-up calls. In his corpus as a whole, Bede shows at most episodic interest in natural phenomena as signs of impending judgement, especially when compared with his most venerated Father, Gregory. The exception, of course, is his poem On Judgement Day (De die iudicii), but in a sense it is the exception which proves the rule, because the Last Judgement plays a very incidental role in Revelation.192
191 semotis illis diebus nouissimis sub fine saeculi et sub apparitione Antichristi: 1, prol.
15, ed. C. Zangemeister, CSEL 5 (1882) 5.3-5: the translation is by Burgess, 'Hydatius and the Final Frontier', p. 327.
192 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 97–103 (on signs and portents), 162–63 (on how
Bede edits passages from Gregory to take off the apocalyptic edge) and 103 (on De die iudicii).
On the links between Bede's science and his exegesis, see above, p. 43.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
In the Commentary on Revelation, virtually every reference to cosmic and natural catastrophe is allegorized. The opening of the sixth seal (Rev.
6:12-17) unleashes an earthquake, after which the sun turns black, the moon turns to blood, the stars fall from heaven, and the mountains collapse. For Bede, none of this is about the material world, but about the final persecution. No ordinary earthquake could possibly be identified with the opening of the sixth seal, because ordinary earthquakes are local, while this earthquake is said to affect the whole world. Tellingly, Bede regards the literal reading
(iuxta litteram) of the earthquake as a reference to the day of judgement (exegesis of Rev. 6:17). The terrors that accompany the trumpets (8: 5-13) and the vials of plagues (16:2-12), the lightning-flashes, voices, thunders and earthquakes of Rev. 16:18 are, in Bede's view, genuine signs that will take place in the last days, though their import will be ambiguous.
In Revelation, the earth is not engulfed with fire at the Judgement, nor does fire serve a purgatorial purpose or as a means to separate the just from the reprobate. These themes, culled from other apocalyptic references in the Bible, take up much space in ch. 70 of The Reckoning of Time, De die iudicii and in the commentary on 2 Peter, but in the Commentary on Revelation literal fire only appears as the punishment of the devil and his associates, and also the damned in general (20:15). Fire also appears in 16:8-9 in the context of the emptying of the fourth vial, but this is interpreted allegorically, and distinguished from the fire into which the condemned are hurled after the Last Judgement. However, Bede works the idea of fire into his interpretation of 21:1. The appearance of the 'new heaven and the new earth' demands an explanation for the disappearance of the first heaven and the first earth, something which the Biblical text does not discuss. Quoting
Primasius verbatim Bede concludes that they must have been destroyed by fire, which would also plausibly explain why there was 'no more sea'. Given the interest in the effects of eschatological fire on the physical fabric of the universe that Bede will later express in ch. 70 of Reckoning of Time and elsewhere, he is notably silent on the subject here. To be sure, the text he was commenting on did not give him much encouragement to dilate on this theme, but neither did Bede see fit to introduce it.
However, the more original element of Bede's solution to the problem of Revelation was not to avoid the prophetic potential of the text, but to re-orient it. In so doing, Bede closed the door to using Revelation as a cypher for any and every current crisis. Instead, he made the text point to a specific future scenario, one essentially endorsed by the Fathers, but not systematically deployed by any previous commentator as the key to Revelation. The
INTRODUCTION
inspiration seems to have come from two works by Augustine with which Bede was certainly very familiar, since he uses them both in the Letter to Plegwin, composed about five years after the Commentary on Revelation.
These are Augustine's letter 197 to Hesychius, and book 20 of The City of God. The letter to Hesychius explains Augustine's scruples about speculating about the deadline of the end; The City of God 20.30 expresses his confidence that the timeline can be clearly established.
At that [last] judgment, or near the time of that judgment, we have learned that the following things will come to pass: Elijah the Tishbite will come; the Jews will believe; Antichrist will persecute; Christ will judge; the dead will rise; the good will be separated from the wicked; the world will be destroyed by fire and renewed. We must believe that all these things will come to pass. But how and in what order they are to do so we shall learn by experience of the events themselves when the time comes. This is something that, at the present time, the human intellect cannot manage to teach us. My own belief, however, is that they will happen in the order in which I have here stated them.193
These episodes constitute what could be called a 'preconditions narrative' of eschatology, one that solidified the shape of the end-times, and hedged its terrors behind events which had evidently not yet taken place. While
Bede maps all of these episodes across Revelation, he places exceptional emphasis on the conversion of the Jews and the rise and fall of Antichrist, while adding some original details concerning Elijah. It was these events alone that would signal the end-times.
Bede presents his new scenario with considerable ingenuity and insistence. For example, in interpreting the prophecy to the church in Philadelphia (Rev. 3:10) he begins with a moral reading (Christ will defend those who imitate him in adversity), and then shifts to Primasius's ecclesiological interpretation (the Church has always been subjected to adversity, and will be even more afflicted in the time of Antichrist). He then slips the conversion of the Jews into a crack in Primasius's text, and seizes his opportunity to dilate on that future conversion. It should be noted that Philadelphia is the only church whose message is expanded, and Philadelphia is in the crucial sixth position in the sequence of the Seven Churches.
Another way in which Bede advances his new scenario is by interpreting the repeated sevens (seals, trumpets, plagues and so forth) in a way that subtly turns the sequence into a unified plot-line that inexorably points towards Antichrist. His exposition of the seven seals is an epitome of the history of the Church from its primitive glory through to the time of 193 The City of God against the Pagans, trans. Dyson, pp. 1042–1043.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
Antichrist and the beginning of eternal rest. In the exegesis of 8:2, the first trumpet announces, in fact, the last event in time: the ultimate destruction of the wicked. The second alludes to Christ's persistent protection of his church from the Devil; the third and fourth, to the perennial assaults of heretics and false brethren. But from the fifth trumpet onwards, the series becomes a sequential narrative, focused on the prelude to Antichrist, his appearance, and his final defeat.When dealing with a cognate interpretation of the seven seals, Bede begins with Primasius's ecclesiological reading, but then enumerates the seals themselves as a digest of the history of the church, culminating once again in the conflict with and triumph over Antichrist.
The particular advantage of a narrative 'history of the future' is that these are unique events, not generic occurrences that could happen at any time, like earthquakes. They certainly do not seem to be happening in Bede's time.
At this stage in his career at least, Bede does not notice any Jews actually converting to Christianity, nor does he expect them, as he has raised a very specific historical barrier to be overcome, namely the reappearance of Enoch and Elijah. By the time he composed his comprehensive history of the future in The Reckoning of Time, Bede had advanced the two witnesses of Rev. 11:3 to the ranks of major actors in the apocalyptic drama.194 They are clearly identified as Enoch and Elijah, and their role is to prepare the faithful for the coming persecution under Antichrist, following the conversion of the Jews
(DTR 69). By contrast, the Commentary on Revelation recounts the entire episode of the two witnesses in more muted and symbolic terms. In his exegesis of Rev. 11:13-14, Bede does identify the two witnesses as Enoch and Elijah, but he does not indicate that their activity is primarily directed to converting the Jews. He seems to have envisaged the conversion of the Jews as taking place through some intervention of Elijah not recorded in Revelation, but linked to the persecution of Antichrist.195 Moreover, it is unclear why Enoch is specifically introduced as Elijah's partner. Nonetheless, the equation of the two witnesses with Enoch and Elijah seems to be Bede's original contribution to the exegetical tradition of Revelation.196 He is coy
194 In his later exegesis, he would always pair Elijah with Enoch: Darby, Bede and the End of Time, p. 216.
195 Cf. Augustine, DCD 20.29, where Elijah alone converts Jews. Bede's understanding of the role of the two witnesses seems to be just coming into focus at this stage: Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 111–13.
196 There is a patristic pedigree for the idea, though it had hitherto not appeared in a Revelation commentary: see Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 109 sqq. It will enjoy a long afterlife, thanks to its incorporation into Adso's De ortu et tempore Antichrist: Emmerson,
Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 41, 97–98.
INTRODUCTION
about where he got the idea, ascribing it to quidam – certainly a signal that he is stepping out of the stream of interpretation carved out by his sources.
Gryson notes that the passage has no traceable source, but is composed in a style which echoes that of Primasius, as if Bede were (consciously or unconsciously) trying to father the idea on his sources.197 However, Luciana Cuppo
Csaki has drawn attention to an anonymous 6th-century text from Vivarium on the Two Witnesses whose wording matches Bede's exactly. This text is both obscure and anonymous, which explains Bede's quidam. Bede evidently thought that the question of the identity of the Two Witnesses was an important one – one that was worth the risk of citing a nameless source.198
The conversion of the Jews is an important theme in the Commentary on Revelation and will remain so throughout Bede's life. It surfaces as early as the commentary on Acts, where the election of Matthias to replace
Judas symbolizes the reintegration of the Jews at the end of the world, and again in the commentary on 1 Samuel, the books on the Tabernacle and the Temple, and the commentary on Tobit.199 In the Revelation commentary,
Bede's eschatological expectation that Jews and Christians would one day form a single people of God affected the way in which he used his sources.
He twice omitted passages from Primasius which disparage the Jews.
Commenting on Rev. 1:7, Primasius identified those who pierced Christ and 'all the tribes of the earth and particularly the Jews who accounted him as nothing (Omnes etiam terreni uel omnes generaliter mali, maxime
Iudaei qui eum ut minimum putauere negandum…)'.200 Bede picked up Primasius after 'qui eum', omitting the reference to the Jews. Commenting on Rev. 2:9, Primasius says that the term 'Jew' can apply both to literal
Jews outside the Church and to false Christians within it. Bede dropped this passage, as well as Primasius's remark that Smyrna was not the only place where there are or were 'blaspheming Jews'; he reconnected with Primasius's text at the point where Primasius allegorizes 'Jew' as a religious term. On the other hand, Bede reproduced Jerome's stinging words about the lack of belief of the Jews in his exegesis of Rev. 13:7, so one can hardly claim that he was following a consistent policy. Possibly Bede's editing out of the Jews from Primasius's explanation of 1:7 reflects the fact that the passage is referring to the Second Coming, at which point the Jews would
197 Gryson ed., p. 378.
198 See p. 186, n. 537.
199 Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 176–197.
200 Primasius 1.94-97.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
have been converted, but this must remain only a suggestion.201
Much more prominent and fully developed is the role Bede assigns to Antichrist.202 Bede adds little to the legendary biography of Antichrist, but notes that he will be a descendant of the tribe of Dan, which is why
Dan is omitted in the list of tribes in Revelation 7:5-8. He explains the ten horns of the beast (Rev. 17:12) by invoking the legend that Antichrist will be a ruler, born in Babylon, who will subdue ten kings. Bede's real innovation, however, was to insert Antichrist prominently, even insistently, into Revelation, often on his own initiative, and often departing from the paths trodden by his sources.203 That he is breaking new ground here is evident in his vacillations over the details of this biography. For example, he is not certain whether the miracles performed by Antichrist are indeed miracles. Bede acknowledges that even the Devil can perform wonders, but is Antichrist a devil? The Commentary on Mark 4 (599–600) and Commentary on 1 Samuel 4 (242) depict Antichrist as the son of a devil, one of the fallen angels, which would account for his powers, but Bede seems to pull back from this position in the Commentary on Luke 6 (lines
1431–1433) when he avers that this is to be interpreted metaphorically.204
Indeed in expounding Rev. 13:18, Bede (echoing Jerome) is at pains to differentiate between Antichrist and Satan.205 Antichrist's overthrow is also not yet fully worked out in Bede's mind in Commentary on Revelation; he has not decided, for example, whether Antichrist will be destroyed by the archangel Michael or by Christ himself, a scenario intimated in 2 Thess.
2:8.206
201 Bede's ambivalence towards the Jews: A.P. Sheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), chs. 1–2; Thacker, 'Bede and the Ordering of Understanding', pp. 55–57; Kendall, Bede:
On Genesis, Introduction, pp. 22–27. Residual Pelagianism in the Insular milieu encouraged fascination with and reverence towards Jewish law and tradition, at least as recorded in the Old
Testament: see Herren and Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity, pp. 109–114.
202 Bede does not appear at all in McGinn's Antichrist save as a footnote (p. 304, n. 23) to a general comment that early medieval exegesis eschewed historical speculation about Antichrist in favour of moral commentary.
203 Matter, 'Exegesis of the Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages', p. 36. Bede may have been inspired by Gregory, whose attention to Antichrist is quite exceptional amongst the Fathers: Markus, 'Haec non longe sunt'.
204 McCready, Miracles, pp. 134–139.
205 Cf. McGinn, Antichrist, p. 74.
206 Gregory shared this uncertainty: Mor. 34.3.7 echoes 2 Thess. 2:8 that it will be Christ, but Hom. in Ev. 2.34.9 says that it will be Michael: McGinn, Antichrist, p. 82; cf. Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 118–21.
INTRODUCTION
Notwithstanding, Bede relentlessly intrudes Antichrist everywhere in the text of Revelation. In his exposition of Rev. 6:12, he interjects Antichrist into the text of Primasius. At 7:14, and on his own initiative, he identifies 'the great tribulation' with the persecution launched by Antichrist, while at 9:13 he introduces further references to Antichrist which are not in his sources. Unlike any of his predecessors, Bede identifies the forty-two months of Rev. 11:2 as the time of Antichrist. He is drawing on Primasius here, but Primasius is in fact saying something rather different. Primasius speaks of an alliance of Jews, heretics and gentiles, but more importantly, he expressly denies that the number of months refers to the final persecution; it is, rather, a trope for the whole span of Christian history. Bede regards the time period as referring to both the whole of Christian history and the future time, not of generic persecution, but of Antichrist. This is a classic
'Tyconian' manoeuvre, but with a difference: the future is included within time – it has a history, and that history is the story of Antichrist. In The Reckoning of Time ch. 69, Bede would fully integrate Antichrist's 'time' into this history of the future. This chapter held a special fascination for medieval readers, and circulated as an independent tract.207
Yet while the career of Antichrist has a time-line, its starting-point is explicitly unscheduled. Bede's sources identified the second Beast, whose name is the number 666, with Antichrist, and Bede himself duly records various efforts to decode his name by gematria – a form of cryptography or divination which assigns numerical values to the letters of the alphabet, so that a name can be represented by a number that is the sum of the values for the letters composing the name. However, he finds them all unpersuasive: why should one so greedy for worship choose such limiting names? The threefold six must refer to totality of time, past, present and future. In his
1966 Jarrow Lecture, Gerald Bonner drew attention to the originality of these final remarks.208 They certainly demonstrate how closely connected the two parts of Bede's strategy were, for in effect he has applied Tyconius's rule of legitimate numbers here to leave Antichrist firmly in a future that is real, but not reducible to anyone's name or available to any speculation about dates. It is surely significant that Bede edited the lemma of Rev. 13:18 to remove the invitation to calculate the Beast's name from his number.
207 D. Verhelst, 'Le préhistoire des conceptions d'Adson concernant l'Antichrist',
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médievale 40 (1973): 84 n. 172.
208 Saint Bede, p. 13.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
4.5 Judgement and Reform Nested within Bede's larger exegetical concerns are a number of themes which play a significant, if less consistent and coherent role. The subordinate status of some of these themes is dictated by the text of Revelation itself: the Last Judgement, for example, occupies only a few verses, but its importance for Bede was enormous. Other themes, like the role of doctores
('teachers') and praedicatores ('preachers'), were thrust into Bede's hands by his sources, but he manipulated them in a distinctive way.
While it was not Bede's primary aim in the Commentary on Revelation to produce a synthetic picture of the end-times, he neither could nor wished to evade opportunities to link the text of John's vision to other chapters of the story of the end-times found elsewhere in Scripture. Sometimes the effort seems to be a strain. The 'rapture' of the saints into the air to meet the returning Christ, described in 1 Thess. 4:16, is not in Revelation, but Bede, following Tyconius, managed to find a small niche for it in his exegesis of 11:12, 'and they went up to heaven in a cloud'.209 A few verses later
(11:18) we find him labouring to coordinate the prophecy of John with the scenario of the Little Apocalypse in Matt. 25, and even with Christ's farewell discourse in John 14:2.
By contrast, Bede found it easy and natural to stretch the theme of the Last Judgement across the whole text of Revelation. Though the Judgement proper occupies only Rev. 20:11-14, it is the climax of the book – the definitive end of history and the ultimate victory of good over evil.210 Hence
Bede, in common with many of his sources, scattered numerous references to the Judgement throughout his exegesis, beginning with the vision of the Son of Man. The two-edged sword coming from his mouth, and his face, shining like the sun, project forward to the Judgement (Rev. 1:16; cf.
2:12). Indeed, the saints and the Church pray for the Day of Judgement to come (Rev. 6:10). The broadening of the resonance of the Last Judgement is also reflected in Bede's summary of the cycle of illustrations of Revelation in Wearmouth abbey church. In this respect, Bede is participating in a much broader theological, exegetical, artistic and ascetic process within the western Church that equated the eschaton with Doomsday. The Cross in particular assumed a new importance as the sign of the returning Christ
209 In other works, Bede locates the Last Judgement in the air, e.g. Chad's sermon in HE
4.3; see Darby, Bede and the End of Time, pp. 128–29.
210 On the importance of the Last Judgement in Bede's thinking, see Darby, Bede and the End of Time, ch. 5, pp. 125–33.
INTRODUCTION
that would appear in heaven (Matt. 24.30), a motif Bede introduces in his exegesis of Rev. 7:2-3.211
What is notably absent from the Commentary on Revelation is any displacement of judgement to the immediate aftermath of the death of the individual. This was a venerable theme in Christian literature; indeed, it is the assumption behind the type of apocalypse that describes a journey through or vision of the cosmos, and especially of the state of the dead.212
Bede was certainly well acquainted with this tradition. In the final book of HE, there are three connected visions of the 'last things', but these are visions of the afterlife and of personal judgement, not of the end of time and universal judgement. Their position may not be fortuitous: as Bede reaches the end of his history, the themes of repentance and reform become more insistent. His account of Dryhthelm's vision (5.12) illustrates how
Bede linked individual judgement after death with the Last Judgement. The antechamber of hell – a place of simultaneous fire and ice – is for those who died repentant, but with no time to emend their lives. They will enter heaven after the Last Judgement. The antechamber of heaven is inhabited by people who look like the redeemed in Revelation; they wear white robes, and dwell in a supernatural city filled with light and exquisite perfume. Yet the angelic guide clearly states that this is only the temporary dwelling of those who did good deeds; they did not achieve a sufficient degree of perfection to enter Heaven (regnum caelorum) immediately, but would do so after the Last Judgement. By implication, both the definitively damned and the definitively saved have already been judged; in contrast, in his commentary on Rev. 20:13, Bede states that all the dead will be summoned to judgement.
Bede follows up the vision of Dryhthelm with the vision of the mortally ill Mercian thegn (5:13). In his agony, he sees two handsome young men by his bedside, each with a book: a tiny but beautiful volume inscribed with a few good deeds, and a huge tome filled with his sins. Demons appear and claim the thegn's soul, which the angels concede belongs to them. In short, the thegn has been judged and damned. Again, though Bede does not draw the comparison, the two books clearly allude to the Last Judgement scene in Rev. 20:12-13. In his exegesis, Bede cites Gregory the Great's view that the 211 McGinn, 'The End of the World', pp. 72–75. See above, p. 5.
212 Kamlah, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, pp. 70–74; John J. Collins, 'From Prophecy to Apocalypticism: The Expectation of the End', The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, pp. 64–88. On the early medieval development of this style of apocalyptic and its particular appeal to monks, see Daley, 'Apocalypticism in Early Christian Theology', pp.
244–246.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
books are records of the deeds of the righteous and the reprobate, considered as two categories of people; in the HE, they have been interiorized in the individual. Bede's remarkable poem On Judgement Day not only contracts the end of the world to the Judgement, but also lays its stress on the fate of the individual sinner. Bede's final composition, his 'Death Song', also emphasizes imminent and individual judgement:
Before the journey that awaits us all, No man becomes so wise that he has not Need to think out, before his going hence,
What judgment will be given to his soul After his death, of evil or of good.213
By contrast, the Revelation commentary does not use the judgement scene in ch. 20 as an opportunity for moral exhortation, whether to steadfastness and detachment (as in the epilogue of On Judgement Day) or to repentence (as in the letter of Ecgbert). However, it is eloquent on the importance of teachers
(doctores) and preachers (praedicatores). These terms derive from Tyconius, who juxtaposes these worthy guides to the heretics and false brethren who mislead the faithful. Bede refers to the latter in his commentary on Rev. 2:13 as 'teachers who lead astray' (seductores…doctores; cf. the mali doctores of 9:7 and the falsi doctores of 9:19). Revelation, on the other hand, is written primarily for the benefit of praedicatores (Rev. 1:1) who are the 'eyes of the Lord' (1:14). For Bede, the titles doctor and praedicator carried a special, positive resonance. Teachers and preachers are first and foremost clergy, and his lifelong concern was to instil a distinctive ethos and educational tradition into the English clergy.214 The clergy as a whole were to instruct the people of God in the true faith, identify and uproot heresy, correct morals, and show a shining example by their zeal and purity of life. They were, in sum, agents of reform. This broadly practical focus permeates Bede's exegesis, and is one of its most distinctive and original qualities. It influenced the topics he wrote on and the way he wrote about them. But the doctores and praedicatores also carried out complementary tasks. The doctores constituted a distinct group within the church whose mission was, through religious learning and contemplation, to inspire, instruct and energize the preachers. These men
213 Trans. R. Hamer, A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), pp. 126–127; for original see C. Plummer, Baedae opera historica (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1896), vol. 1, p. clxi.
214 Henry M.R.E. Mayr-Harting, The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St Benedict, and Social
Class, Jarrow Lecture, 1976; on the significance of these terms in Bede's exegesis, see Holder,
'Bede and the New Testament', pp. 151–152.
INTRODUCTION
– like Bede's heroes, the peripatetic preacher-monks Aidan and Cuthbert – would spread the saving word to the people. Moreover, Bede seems to have seen his own role as that of a doctor. This played a critical role in how he understood his relationship to the Fathers, as a colleague and continuator.215
It also perhaps inclined him to soften somewhat the Tyconian notion, echoed in Primasius, of internecine conflict (bellum intestinum) within the Church, pitting the true Christians against hypocrites (cf. exegesis of Rev. 3:10).
The high calling of the doctor is the theme of many original passages in the Commentary on Revelation. The voices of the four Living Creatures around the throne (Rev. 5:11) are those of teachers who both proclaim the truth and set the people an example of worship. Teachers are likened to the Patriarchs in the peroration of the sermon on the signing of the Twelve Tribes
(Rev. 7:5-8). Teaching about the last things – what Bede himself is doing in this commentary – is singled out for special attention. The eagle who announces 'Woe!' (Rev. 8:13) stands for 'eminent teachers in the Church, when they preach the wickedness of the heretics, the ferocity of Antichrist, and the Day of Judgement which with all severity is to come to those who love the earth'. The angel who lights up the earth with his glory (Rev.
18:1) is an image of both Christ himself and the doctors of the Church who proclaim the fall of the world. Finally, the twelve angels at the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12) are '[t]he teachers [doctores]: that is, those who follow the footsteps of the apostles [apostolorum uestigia…sequentes] in the mystery of faith and the word'. Here is Bede's 'signature phrase' for his own life-work, which he repeatedly, if ambiguously, characterized as patrum uestigia sequens – 'following in the footsteps of the Fathers'. It is telling that the passage of the Commentary on Revelation that contains this echo has no patristic source, but is Bede's original contribution.216
215 Alan Thacker, 'Bede and the Ordering of Understanding', pp. 43–45, and 'Bede's
Ideal of Reform', Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Patrick Wormald, Donald Bullough and Roger Collins
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp. 130–153. On the pastoral function of exegesis for Bede, see
Arthur G. Holder, 'Bede and the Tradition of Patristic Exegesis', Anglican Theological Review
72 (1990): 399–411. Bede's conception of reform: Scott DeGregorio, 'Nostrorum socordiam temporum: The Reforming Impulse of Bede's Later Exegesis', Early Medieval Europe 11
(2002): 107–122, 'Bede's In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church',
Speculum 79 (2004): 1–25, 'Bede's In Ezram et Neemiam: A Document in Church Reform',
Bède le Vénérable et la posterité, pp. 97–107. Bede and monk-preachers: Bonner, 'Bede:
Scholar and Spiritual Teacher', pp. 365–370.
216 This echoes Roger Ray's understanding of the phrase: 'Who Did Bede Think He Was?', pp. 11–19. It can be found in In Sam. 1 (10.52-54), In Regum prol. (293.22-30), In Cant. Cant.
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
5. Bede's Commentary on Revelation:
Transmission and Translation 5.1 Transmission in Manuscript Bede's commentary enjoyed greater popularity and wider diffusion than any other pre-Carolingian exegesis of Revelation. It was just the right length – neither as telegraphic as Cassiodorus or the pseudo-Jerome's Commemoratorium, nor as prolix as Ambrosius Autpertus or Beatus. It also won approval for digesting the tradition in a balanced and careful manner.217 In consequence, it now survives in 113 manuscripts of which 84 contain the full text; the remainder are mutilated or fragmentary, or else contain excerpts or abbreviations. The definitive survey of the manuscript tradition is Roger Gryson's inventory in the opening chapter of the introduction to his critical edition of the Commentary. In his statistical overview of Bede manuscripts, Joshua
Westgard admits 96 witnesses; this makes the Commentary on Revelation the fifth most frequently copied of Bede's works. In Westgard's analysis,
28.5 manuscripts date from the eighth or ninth centuries, 7.5 from the tenth, 16.5 from the eleventh, 21.5 from the twelfth, 2.5 from the thirteenth, 4.5 from the fourteenth, and 15 from the fifteenth century or later. The fraction
.5 indicates composite manuscripts or those dated across a century divide.218
The text conveyed in these manuscripts can be divided into four main families, one Insular and three continental.219 All derive from a single archetype which, in Gryson's judgement, could not have been Bede's autograph.
At least four generations of the text preceded the oldest surviving copy.
There are no surviving eighthor ninth-century Insular exemplars apart from the fragment Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 10400 fols. 107–108
(Gryson's siglum x), nor any continental pre-Carolingian copies. However, the pre-Viking period Insular lineage (Gryson's text family δ) is represented by two survivors: Kassel, Gesamthochschulbibliothek theol. 2o 25, Fulda s.
IX2/4 (Gryson's siglum K ) and Durham, Cathedral Library A IV 28, Durham s. XI (D). The three Continental families are descended from lost Carolingian archetypes. These come from (1) n. France, perhaps Saint-Amand, but with progeny in Salzburg and Reichenau (family α), (2) Tours, from an archetype which may have arrived with Alcuin (family β), and (3) the prol (180.501-504), Exp. Act. praef. 3.9-10, Hom. 2.11 (258.191-192 and DTR 5 (287.86).
217 Gryson, Tyc. ed. Introduction, p. 63.
218 Joshua Westgard, 'Bede in the Carolingian Age and Beyond', The Cambridge Com panion to Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 211.
219 What follows summarizes Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, ch. 2 'Histoire du texte'.
INTRODUCTION
Lake Constance region (family γ, the most widely dispersed family, with the largest number of surviving witnesses). One manuscript seems to belong to no known family: Erfurt, Stadtund Regionalbibliothek CA 4o 96, c. 800
(Gryson's siglum P).
The Commentary on Revelation sometimes circulated on its own, or in heterogeneous miscellanies. But for the most part, it is found in two kinds of composite manuscripts. The first species is centred on the Scriptural triad
Acts–Catholic Epistles–Revelation. In numerous manuscripts, our Commentary accompanies Bede's commentaries on Acts and/or the Catholic Epistles, often copied as a block. Occasionally, Bede's commentary on Mark is added; other fellow-travellers can include one or more of Bede's Wisdom books commentaries (Proverbs, Song of Solomon), or his expositions of the Tabernacle and the Temple (see Table 2). A variant version of this configuration juxtaposes Bede's commentary to the text of Revelation itself (Cologne,
Stadtarchiv GB 4o 147, c. 1445 [Gryson no. 46]; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 317, s. X [Gryson no. 69] Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Reg. lat. 21, s. XI ex./XII in. [Gryson no. 100]) , or the text of the Acts–Catholic
Epistles–Revelation block (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz Hamilton 88, s. XV1/2 [12]; Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 176, s. X [29]).
The second type of manuscript setting places the Commentary on Revelation in the company of other exegetical works on Revelation, both pre-Bedan (Victorinus/Jerome, Caesarius, ps.-Jerome Commemoratorium) and post-Bedan (Ambrosius Autpertus, Haymo of Auxerre). In Leiden,
Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit Voss. lat. F. 70 I. B (s. X, n. France [Gryson no. 48]), Bede is excerpted, along with other commentaries, to form a composite gloss on Revelation. In a similar fashion, Wrocław, Biblioteka
Uniwersytecka I F 46 (s. XV1/2 [Gryson no. 110]) interlards extracts from Bede's commentary with that of ps-Jerome. Conversely, some virtually selfcontained elements of the Commentary, and particularly the exposition of the twelve precious stones, could be hived off as tracts: examples include
Bern, Burgerbibliothek A 91 no. 11 (s. XIII; Gryson no. 16), Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. lat. 3852 (c. 804, Lyon; Gryson no. 106) and Zürich, Zentralbibliothek Car. C 176 (s. X/XI; Gryson no. 113). This section of the Commentary was reworked as a self-contained essay entitled Diversitates duodecim lapidum (Distinctions of the Twelve Stones).220 It is also
220 Edited and discussed by Christel Meier, 'Zur Quellenfrage des "Himmlischen Jeru salem": ein neuer Fund', Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 104 (1975): 204–43. This text survives in two versions in Orléans Bibliothèque municipale 343 (s. X) and Bern, Burger bibliothek A.92.27.
Table 2: The Commentary on Revelation accompanies other works by Bede (shelf-marks are followed by numbers in quaest Tobit Octo Kings Comm. sanctis Quest.
Cant.
De loc.
Historisch Fonds 77 [17] x x x Prov.
Comm.
De templ.
Comm.
164 [22] s. XII x x Mark De tab/ + [19] s. XIII in. x Cath. Ep.
Comm.
Landesbibliothek B 20 [25] s. XV ex. x x [18] s. XI x x Acts Comm.
Landesbibliothek B 22 [26] s. XV x x Kulturbesitz theol. lat. 329 [14]
x 15 [4] s. XII2 x Shelf-mark Date Comm.
Kulturbesitz Phillipps 1664 [13] ante 1034 x Kulturbesitz theol. fol. 361 [15] s. X x Arras, Bibliothèque municipale 728 [5] s. IX1/4 x Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 246 [2] s. XII x Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 5543–45 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale II 1062 Charleville, Bibliothèque municipale Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Altenburg, Stiftsbibliothek AB 14 D Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek Düsseldorf, Universitätsund Düsseldorf, Universitätsund Gryson's inventory)
quaest Tobit Octo Kings Comm.
[37] s.XII x x sanctis Quest.
[35] s. IX in. x Cant.
De loc.
Prov.
Comm.
De templ.
Comm.
Mark De tab/ + Laurenziana plut. 16.9 [32] ca 1490 x x x Cath. Ep.
Comm.
[50] s. XII x x x Acts Comm.
Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek 52 [38] s. XII/XIII x [52] s. XII x x Aug. CLIII [41] c. 900 x x lat. 21 [34] s.IX1/3 x x Aug. XLIII [39] s.IX1/4 x x Laurenziana plut. 16.7 [31] ca 1490 x x Shelf-mark Date Comm.
38 [55] s. XI in. x [62] s. IX ex. x Aug. CXXXV [40] s. IX2/3 x Landesbibliothek B 73 [27]
x Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale 387 Manchester, John Rylands Library 107 Geneva, Bibl. publique et universitaire Liège, Bibliothèque de l'Université 73 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale 81 Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek 240 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Düsseldorf, Universitätsund
quaest Tobit Octo Kings Comm. sanctis Quest.
Cant.
De loc.
Prov.
Comm.
[81] s. XI in. x x x med. x x De templ.
Comm.
[69] s. X x Mark De tab/ +
(A. 343) [82]
s. XII x Cath. Ep.
Comm.
Acts Comm.
1347 [79] s. IX in. x
x x [70] s. XII2/2 x x [71] s. XII2/2 x x Shelf-mark Date Comm.
12284 [76] s. IX in. x Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 691 [68] s. XII2/2 x lat. 222 [63] s. XI in. x med. x med. x Reims, Bibliothèque municipale 6 [78] c. 972– Oxford, Jesus College 65 [64] s. XII Oxford, Jesus College 68 [65] s. XII [67] s. XII Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 2360
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 2361
Oxford, Bodleian Library Canon. patr.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 317
Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale 449 Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal 316 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana E. 60
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat.
quaest Tobit Octo 77 [95]
x x x x Kings Comm. sanctis Quest.
Cant.
De loc.
52 [96] s. XII x x x Prov.
Comm.
De templ.
Comm.
Mark De tab/ + Cath. Ep.
Comm.
Urb. lat. 101 [103] 1470– 1480s x x x Trier, Stadtbibliothek 186/1204 4o [93] s. XVI1/2 x x x Acts Comm.
Barb. lat. 581 [97] s. I med. x Landesbibliothek HB VII 40 [90] 1436–37 x [94] s. XII2/2 x x Q.v.I.216 [85] s. XI x x Q.v.I.45 [84] s. X/XI x x Shelf-mark Date Comm.
Nationalbibliothek 934 [107] s. IX in. x St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 259 [86] s. VIII3/4 x St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 260 [87] s.IX3/3 x Landesbibliothek HB VII 41 [91] s. IX2/3 x
(A. 395) [83]
s. XI x Utrecht, Biblioteek der Rijksuniversiteit Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 572 Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale 532 St Petersburg, National Library St Petersburg, National Library Stuttgart, Württembergische Stuttgart, Württembergische Vienna, Österreichische
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
the basis of a tenth-century hymn, Cives celestis patriae (Citizens of the heavenly homeland), possibly composed in England.221
It is not yet possible to sketch a full picture of the reception of Bede's commentary in later exegesis, pastoral and ascetic literature, and art. The appearance of Gryson's critical edition will hopefully make this possible.
The shape of the manuscript record nonetheless suggests some plausible lines of inquiry. The Commentary was 'packaged' both as part of a coherent suite of Bede's exegetical works on the last segment of the New Testament, and as part of a dossier of commentaries on Revelation. Its popularity ascended steadily to the twelfth century, the time of the formation of what would become the Glossa ordinaria,222 dipped during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and revived in the fifteenth, when it was copied for the Medicis in Florence (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana plut.
16.7 and 16.9; Gryson 31–32) and for Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. lat. 101; Gryson no. 103), but also by Carthusians in Utrecht (Utrecht, Biblioteek der Rijksuniversiteit 77;
Gryson no. 95). Indeed, the late medieval interest in this very conservative and patristic approach to Revelation deserves close study; it suggests that the fortunes of Bede's work may hold some surprises for the history of apocalypticism in the West.
5.2 The Commentary in Print The Commentary on Revelation was printed for the first time by the Parisian humanist and printer Josse Bade (Jodocus Badius Ascensius), in the second volume, dated 1 June 1521, of a projected three-volume opera omnia.223
221 Ed. Kitson, part 2, pp. 109–123. Rabanus Maurus's De universo reproduces the exegesis of the twelve precious stones in the foundations of the Heavenly Jerusalem almost verbatim (PL 91.465-71): cf. Kitson, part 1, p. 22. On the influence of Bede's exegesis on the Old English Lapidary (compiled c. 1000), see Concetta Giliberto, 'Stone Lore in Miscellany
Manuscripts: The Old English Lapidary', Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr and Kees Dekker (Paris,
Leuven, Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007), pp. 272–273.
222 See above, p. 4. On the evolution of the Glossa and Bede's contribution, particularly to the marginal gloss, see Kamlah, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, pp. 25–56, esp. 31–38.
Bede's influence is particularly felt on the structure of the text (cf. Bonner, Saint Bede, p. 14;
Christe, 'Ap. IV–VII, 1', pp. 147–149), but this subject requires much more intensive research.
223 On the printing history of the Commentary see Gryson, Bede ed. Introduction, pp.
130–132. The Bade edition is Secundus operum venerabilis Bedae presbyteri tomus, in quo subsequentes continentur eiusdem commentarii…. In Apocalypsim B. Ioannis Apostoli…
([Paris]: V[a]enundatur Iodoco Badio Ascensio, & Ioanni Paruo…, 1521), fols. 119vb–221vb.
INTRODUCTION
Bade, originally from Ghent, was a noted man of letters with a wide circle of learned acquaintances in France and abroad; the volume of Bede containing the Revelation commentary was dedicated to John Fisher, bishop of Rochester. Bade claims to have used two manuscripts, one from SaintGermain-des-Prés and the second from Saint-Victor; these cannot now be located, but his text in the main follows the β family. Its closest cognate is
Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal 316 (s. XII med.; Gryson no. 67).
The set was completed by the printing of volume 1 by Bade's successors Jean de Roigny and Michel Vascosan in 1536; this set was subsequently reprinted by de Roigny in 1544–45. The enterprising Basel printer
Johannes Herwagen the younger (Hervagius) incorporated the de Roigny edition as volumes 4–6 of his eight-volume folio edition of Bede, printing the Commentary on cols. 1058–1138 of volume 5.224 As is typical of the Herwagen editions, this one is replete with typographical errors, and introduces gratuitous changes, notably to the end of the text. That did not prevent it from being reprinted in Cologne in 1611, 1612 and 1688. J.A. Giles used the Herwagen text as the basis of his edition in vol. 12 (pp. 337–451) of his complete works of Bede,225 correcting some obvious mistakes, but introducing further problems by truncating Bede's lemmata to a bare word or two. Migne's Patrologia latina 93, cols. 129–206 reproduced Giles's edition, but introduced fresh errors, including the entire loss of the final sentence.
Roger Gryson's thorough and informative edition of the Commentary on Revelation – the first critical edition of the entire text226 – is the basis for this translation. References to the page numbers of this edition are supplied in bold italics, e.g. /519/. The first complete rendition of the Commentary on Revelation into English was Edward Marshall's 1878 version, which was based on Giles's edition.227 Marshall's work contains some helpful remarks concerning Bede's Biblical citations and explicit quotations from other authors, but it provides few source references. Marshall, like Giles,
224 Opera Bedae venerabilis presbyteri anglosaxonis (Basel, 1563). On Herwagen's use of the Bade edition, see Michael Gorman, 'The Canon of Bede's Works and the World of Ps.-Bede', Revue bénédictine 111 (2001): 404, 406–407, 436.
225 Venerabilis Bedae Opera quae supersunt omnia, nunc primum in Anglia, ope codicem manuscriptorum editionumque optimarum. The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede in Latin
(London: Whittaker, 1843–1844).
226 Prior to the appearance of Gryson's edition, the preface was critically edited by Thomas Mackay, 'Bede's Biblical Criticism', pp. 222–231. On previous attempts to edit the full Commentary, see Gryson, 'Commentaires [part 2]', p. 486.
227 The Explanation of the Apocalypse by Venerable Beda (Oxford and London: James
Parker, 1879).
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
does not reproduce the Biblical lemmata in full, but only the single word or phrase on which he considers Bede to be actually commenting. His translation occasionally omits sections of Bede's text, without explanation.
Excerpts from the Commentary have been translated by William C.
Weinrich for volume 12 (Revelation) of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005). In the autumn of 2011, as the present translation was in its final stage of preparation,
Weinrich's full translation of the Commentary appeared as part of Latin Commentaries on Revelation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011).
I have not been able to carry out a detailed comparison of our two translations. The orientation of its introduction and the scope and contents of the notes indicate that Weinrich's translation is intended for clergy or students of theology. My translation was prepared with the needs and interests of historians in mind. In the house of Bede scholarship there are many mansions, and the presence of two interpretations of this fundamental commentary, from two different perspectives, can only enrich our knowledge of our author's mind, and his world.
5.3 Principles Governing the Present Translation The linguistic problems facing the translator of the Commentary on Revelation are not especially daunting, and the specialized terminology (periocha, discessio etc.) has been addressed above. Some remarks on the treatment of Bede's Biblical citations and his sources are, however, in order.
The lemmata cited by Bede are printed in bold capitals, and identified by the conventional Biblical chapter and verse numbering. Biblical chapter and verse numbers are used for references in the notes and indexes. The portions of the Biblical text omitted by Bede have been included, but in lower case and enclosed in square brackets. This will not only assist the modern reader to grasp the whole structure of the Revelation narrative, but will also reveal those parts of the text which Bede chose not to expound.
Bede's text of the Bible is Jerome's Vulgate, except for the Psalms, where he used the Gallican version, i.e. Jerome's revision of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew. Where Bede's own Biblical text, as found in the manuscripts, departs from the conventional Vulgate text, I have noted this.
The translation of Biblical citations is broadly based on Bishop Challoner's edition of the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate (London: Catholic
Truth Society, 1956), but with numerous silent modifications to bring it into line with Bede's text, to modernize the diction and word order, and to clarify
INTRODUCTION
the meaning. I have also adopted the more familiar Authorized Version form of Hebrew names (e.g. Jeremiah rather than Jeremias) and the titles of books of the Bible (e.g. Chronicles rather than Paralipomenon). There are two exceptions: the books of Kings in the Old Testament are identified by both the Vulgate and the Authorized Version numbering, e.g. '1 Kings/1 Samuel
2.3'. I have also adopted the Authorized Version's title for the book which Bede is commenting on, i.e. 'Revelation' rather than 'The Apocalypse'. This will help to distinguish the book from the concept of 'the apocalypse'. Bible chapters and verses are numbered according to the Vulgate, with divergent
Authorized Version numbering in parentheses where required.
Gryson's edition has made the task of indicating Bede's sources both easier and more difficult. Gryson furnished his edition with an exceptionally circumstantial apparatus fontium, in many cases actually citing the full text of the source or analogue. The notes in this translation endeavour, in the first instance, to digest Gryson's source apparatus in a manner that will make his judgements explicit for the reader, and secondly, to add supplementary, qualifying and occasionally corrective information. The references are to the editions Gryson used; a notable exception is Tyconius, since Gryson's critical edition of his commentary appeared after the publication of his edition of Bede's. Where multiple sources are listed, the first one is the source which was definitely, or most likely, the one Bede used, while the others are included as instructive parallels in the order of their resemblance to Bede. This multiplication of references is particularly needed where the source is identified as Tyconius. Since Tyconius's text has been reconstituted by comparing Bede's commentary with the Turin Fragments, the commentary of Caesarius and Beatus (who came after Bede, but who did not use his work), it is useful for the reader to be able to compare and contrast
Bede's treatment of a given Tyconian passage or motif with those of these 'controls'.
It should be noted that I have sometimes parted from Gryson in the matter of Bede's sources. On rare occasions, Gryson overlooks passages in Primasius or in other sources that are reflected in Bede. Such omissions are normally flagged, lest the reader waste time trying to track the original in Gryson's apparatus. Secondly, I have silently dropped references from Gryson where, in my judgement, there is no meaningful parallel to Bede's text.
In this translation, passages where Bede's text matches its source verbatim are set in italics. Gryson's edition makes no such typographical distinction, for very sound reasons, notably Bede's often intricate manner
BEDE: COMMENTARY ON REVELATION
of weaving together phrases from his source material. Bede sometimes borrows entire sentences from his sources, sometimes merely a word or phrase. But often he compresses or recasts an idea by linking words or phrases selected from more than one source. In a translation intended as a working tool for scholars and students, however, the visual cue of italics is useful, both to alert the reader to the presence of borrowed material, and to convey the subtlety of Bede's methods of compilation.
Bede frequently refers to the author of the Revelation as 'saying' something, 'alluding', 'signifying', 'referring' and so forth. It is sometimes necessary to name this author in square brackets before the relevant verb, in order to distinguish this actor from another within the sentence. However, it is not evident who Bede himself considered to be the person speaking, referring, and so forth. In some cases, it is evidently John, but at other times it would appear to be Christ or the Spirit. As Bede points out in his exegesis of Rev. 1:1, this book is first and foremost the revelation which Jesus received, and only secondarily the one which John was privileged to witness. In that sense, Revelation is the only book of the Bible of which Jesus himself is the author. So when confronted with the necessity of supplying a subject in the cases mentioned above, and where it is not evident that Bede intended us to understand that John was the subject, I have used the term '[(the)
Scripture]'.