3.2 Letter to Helmwald
APPENDIX 3.2: LETTER TO HELMWALD
Translator's note: This appendix contains the opening paragraphs of Bede's letter to Helmwald. The remainder of the text was incorporated by Bede without change into chs. 38^39. Who Helmwald was, or where he lived, is not known.
LETTER TO HELMWALD
/629/ To Helmwald, his most beloved brother in Christ, Bede the servant of Christ [sends] greeting.
I confess that I rejoiced greatly, dearest brother in Christ, to learn that in the place where, at the will of God, you joined the long-desired pilgrimage, you begin to pursue peace and virtue, and even to devote some e¡ort to reading. And therefore I shall not delay to expound plainly to you, as I see it, those things which you inquired of me in [your] letters, desiring with grateful expectation that I may deserve to see you restored to the [heavenly] homeland in the company of the eminent persons of our age, at once endued with the light of spiritual knowledge, and ministering the radiant joys of celestial teaching and life. So you asked to have explained to you, brie£y and plainly, the calculation of the fourth year which is called bissextus, in so far as this is possible, and, if I may so express it, to have opened up to the full view of free and serene understanding the depths of more secret nature by the keys of straightforward writing. Nor do you who ask such things deserve to be refused by my insigni¢cance, whom you decided should be appealed to by [your] letters, and consulted concerning matters of importance to the Church, though such vast distances of land and sea lie between us . . .