I. Bede and the History xvii
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
I. Bede and the History The History of the English Church and Nation, written by the Venerable Bede and finished in the year 731, is probably one of the most popular history books in any language and has certainly retained its popularity longer than any rival. The enthusiasm shown for his writings in the eighth century by English missionaries on the Continent, such as Boniface, Lul, and others, led to the spread of the knowledge of his works not only in England but also in western Europe. It is true that in 736 Boniface had not yet heard of it1 but, some ten years later, he is inquiring for manu scripts of Bede's works though we do not know definitely if the History was amongst those he obtained ;1 2 Lul, writing from Mainz, some little time before 786, clearly has a copy of the History for he quotes from the list of Bede's works which he found at the end of it.3 From then on, as the spread of his manuscripts shows, the History became popular all over western Europe and 160 of them survive to this day in spite of all the wars and other dangers to which manuscripts are always subject, as for instance after the dissolution of the monasteries or during the eighteenth century when vandalism and ignorance played havoc with our ancient libraries.
The reputation of the History rapidly grew in England. In 793 King Offa of Mercia owned a copy,4 while Alfred, less than a hun dred years afterwards, apparently had it translated into English as being, in his opinion, one of the books 'most necessary for all men to know'.5 The earlier sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle made
1 Tangl, No. 33 (E H D f 1. 746). Bpniface asks Nothhelm for the date of the arrival of the Gregory mission which he would have known if he had had a copy of the History.
2 Tangl, No. 76 (E H D 9 1. 759).
3 Tangl, No. 126 .
4 As is shewn in a letter from Alcuin to Offa quoted by W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, p. 245.
5 Cf. King Alfred's prose preface to his translation of Gregory's Regula Pastoralis (E H D t 1. 819), though he does not actually mention the Old English
Bede. Cf. D. Whitelock, 'The Old English Bede*, Proceedings of the British Academy, x lviii (1962), 57-78.
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use of it1 and almost everyone writing about the history of the English people or interested in the lives of the saints borrowed from his work all through the Middle Ages. It is typical that, in the sixteenth century, Bede should be praised on the one hand by Foxe in his Book of Martyrs as a man of sincere and holy life and a diligent student of the scriptures, while on the other hand
Thomas Stapleton, a keen supporter of the old religion, translated the History into English and dedicated his translation to Queen
Elizabeth, hoping that the study of it would turn the queen back again to the old faith.
So deeply are we indebted to Bede for our knowledge of the history of England before the eighth century that it comes as something of a shock to us to realize that if Bede had not written, the names of Chad and Cedd, Hild and Æthelthryth, Edwin and Oswald, Caedmon and Benedict Biscop would be either com pletely unknown or names known only to scholars, around which to spin cobwebs of conjecture; and our knowledge of the greatest of his themes, St. Augustine's mission and the conversion of the English, would be fragmentary. One might contrast our know ledge of England in the seventh century with the history of Ireland and Wales for the same period. Here almost all that is known definitely, depends on chance references in Bede; for the rest, vague tradition written down centuries later gives us a very uncertain foundation on which to build anything like a compre hensive account. On the other hand, many of Bede's stories are familiar to almost every child: the sparrow flying through Edwin's hall, the attack by the assassin, the profaning of the temples by the high priest: the story of Wilfrid teaching the pagans of Sussex to fish, of Caedmon the poet cowherd of Whitby, or the other great Whitby scene when Oswiu at the Council of 664 made his famous remark about St. Peter as he chose the Roman way.2
When Bede came to write his History he found himself faced by a confusing number of alternatives in the matter of chronology.
Was he to use the method of reckoning by indictions ? These were a series of cycles of fifteen years reckoned from a.d. 312 of which there were three variants, the Greek indiction beginning on 1 In the northern recension of the A S C , represented by M SS. D and E (F), a northern writer added a considerable amount of Bede's History (taken from an m-type version) probably about the second half of the tenth century. I owe this information to Professor Dorothy Whitelock. But see p. xli, n. 2.
2 ii. 9, 13; iii. 25; iv. 13, 24.
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XIX i September, the Caesarean or Imperial indiction beginning on 24 September, or the Roman or Pontifical indiction beginning on 25 December. Or was he to use the regnal years of the rulers of the various English kingdoms? And what was to happen when he was referring to an incident, as for instance the synod of Hat field in 679, where because Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, and East
Anglia were represented, the regnal years of each of the rulers of these kingdoms had to be added?1 Bede soon came to the con clusion that the system introduced by Dionysius Exiguus of reckoning from the birth of our Lord, the Incarnation year or year of grace, was not only the simplest way but also the most appropriate for a book dealing with the history of the Christian
Church.2 He still uses the regnal years of the Roman emperors or of the various English kings where appropriate, but it is his system of dating by the year of grace which is his main contribution to historical writing; indeed it is not too much to say that it was to this History more than to any other source that Christendom and most of the world owes its present system of chronology. But it is not merely that Bede's work provided future historians with a method of dating; the book itself became a pattern and gave a new conception of history to western Europe.
11. Bede's Life We know very little about the life of the Venerable Bede, in fact no more than he tells us himself at the end of his History3 where, following perhaps the example of Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks, he adds a short biography and a list of his works.
He tells us that he was in his fifty-ninth year when the History was finished in 731. It follows then that he was born in 672 or 673.
He describes his birthplace as being in the territory of the monas tery of Wearmouth and Jarrow. The Old English version translates
'territorio' as 'on sundorlonde' and Sunderland has consequently often been claimed as his birthplace. But it does not follow that it was that particular 'sundorlond' on which he was born.4 In fact,
1 iv. 17.
2 W. Levison, 'Bede as a Historian*, B LT W , pp. m ff. The whole of this chapter is of the utmost importance to all students of Bede and the present writer gladly acknowledges his heavy debt to it.
3 v. 24.
4 Sundorland means 'land in private possession*, in this case monastery land or later on to become such.
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at the time of his birth neither monastery was yet in existence.
There is a tradition that he was born at Monkton, less than two miles from the church at Jarrow, and in this place there is an ancient wishing-well known as Bede's well. In 680, at the age of seven, the boy was given into the care of Benedict Biscop, the ex-soldier who had become a monk and had founded the new monastery at Wearmouth in 674. It was at the same age that Beowulf was given into the charge of his mother's father to be brought up as a warrior: in fact thesystem of fosterage, parti cularly for boys of noble birth, was popular among the Irish and probably also among the Germanic peoples including the English; so this would be equivalent to putting the boy in charge of fosterparents. About 681 Jarrow, the sister-house, was founded and though the two monasteries had separate rulers, they continued all through Bede's life to be considered as one monastery. Thither he was transferred under the care of Ceolfrith with twenty-two monks,1 and soon after there happened the incident described in the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith; it was a visitation of the plague and none of the monks was left to sing the offices except Ceolfrith and one little boy. After singing the Psalms for a week without antiphons except at vespers and mattins, they disliked the im perfect offices so much that they decided to struggle through the full service as best they could until help was forthcoming.2 There can be no doubt that the little boy was Bede himself. It is typical of Bede's modesty that, in his History of the Abbots, he omits the incident altogether. He remained at Jarrow engaged in his studies all through his youth. He would have his share of menial tasks to perform and may even have taken part in the building of the new church which still survives, and which, according to the original dedication stone still to be seen in the church, was dedicated on 23 April 685.
He must very soon have been outstanding, both as scholar and monk, for as he tells us himself, he was ordained deacon at the age of nineteen, six years before the canonical age. Exceptions were occasionally made in the case of men of outstanding learning and devotion, but the fact that the canonical age was anticipated by six years bears eloquent witness to the esteem in which he was held by Ceolfrith. It was the latter who was responsible for pre-
HA Ay Plummer, i. 391. Bede says 'about seventeen*. H A ß t Plummer, 1.
370* 2 HA Ay Plummer, 1. 393.
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XXI senting him to Bishop John of Hexham, better known as St. John of Beverley, of whom Bede speaks lovingly in the early chapters of his fifth book. He was ordained priest in 703, and the rest of his life was that of a typical scholar-monk. First of all came his observance of monastic discipline and of the daily offices; but amid all these it was ever, he tells us, his 'delight to learn or teach or write'.1 His pupils were indeed fortunate in their teacher, while the result of his writing is seen in the extraordinary list of books which he appends to his History and, not least among them, the History itself.
His life, so far as we know, was a very quiet one and almost devoid of incident, though with the political situation being what it was, it cannot have been without its anxieties. We learn that he paid a visit to Lindisfarne on one occasion and in 733 he went possibly to York to stay with his friend and disciple Egbert the bishop.2 But the incident which seems to have affected him most was the departure of his friend and master Ceolfrith in June
716, to end his days in Rome, taking with him one of the three magnificent Pandects or copies of the Vulgate text of the Bible now known as the Codex Amiatinus3 which had been written in the scriptorium of the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery, a princely gift presumably for the Pope and worth a king's ransom.
But Ceolfrith and his gift never reached Rome; he died at Langres and was buried in the churchyard of the church of the Twin Martyrs two miles from the city. Bede was deeply moved by the loss of one who had been more than a father to him,4 but he continued his quiet way of life until his death, finishing his
History four years before he died. When he had written the last words of this his greatest work, he must have felt that his life's work was done; and so he added to it the brief account of his life and a list of his writings; but one or two other works certainly came from his pen during those last four years, the latest surviving one being the letter he wrote to Bishop Egbert. Unfortunately the translation of St. John's Gospel into English which he finished on his deathbed has not survived. Bede was particularly good at describing the passing of the saints; so it was only fitting that 1 V. 24.
3 Prologue of VP (Two Lives, p. 145) and Letter to Egbert, Plummer, 1. 405.
See also EHD, 1. 735, n. 3.
3 See p. xxvi.
4 H AB, Plummer, 1. 381 and Opp. vm. 162.
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his own death should have been most movingly described by his disciple Cuthbert who later became abbot of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow.1 The story is probably as widely known as any of the incidents from the master's own History. He died on the evening before Ascension Day 735, that is on 25 May according to the civil calendar, though ecclesiastically it counted as Ascension Day, 26 May. This was at first the date of his festival, but owing to the fact that 26 May was also the festival of St.
Augustine of Canterbury, it was ultimately moved to 27 May.
Bede has from very early times been known as 'Venerabilis', a title which from the fourth century was applied to ecclesiastics generally and also sometimes to lay men and women. Bede uses the term frequently of a number of his characters such as Cuthbert,
Daniel, Egbert, Hereberht, James the Deacon, Paulinus, Swithberht, and Willibrord, all of them clerics but of different grades; he also uses it of two women, Eorcengota and Æthelburh, though in each case it was after their death. There was no association of age with the use of the term any more than in the modern title given to an archdeacon. But later on it gave rise to the idea that he lived to a great age and later Lives of the saint assumed that he reached the age of ninety. The origin of the title has been the subject of a number of medieval legends intended no doubt to add more prestige to this very ordinary descriptive adjective. The best known is the story of the angelic insertion of the title when a clerk was writing Bede's epitaph and was unable to supply a fitting word.2 The title 'sanctus' occurs in a number of calendars of the eleventh century and it is clear that a cult of Bede was established fairly early, at any rate by the ninth century. Alcuin in his poem on the bishops and saints of York claims that Bede's relics worked miraculous cures3 and in 819 when the church of the Saviour was consecrated in Fulda, the bones of the martyr Boni face rested in the western apse while in the crypt below were relics of Cuthbert and Bede.4 His bones must therefore have been elevated fairly soon from the north chapel or porch of the church at Jarrow in which they were placed after his death, and his festival was certainly kept there in the early eleventh century; for it is to the year 1020 that the well-known story belongs of their
1 See p. 579.
2 B L T W , p. 38 and notes.
* M G H , Poet. Lat. 1. 198 (11. 1315-17).
4 M G H , Poet. Lat. 11. 208 (Hrabani Mauri Carmina 41, 11).
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xxiii surreptitious removal by a certain Alfred Westou to the new cathedral in Durham, still in process of completion, where they were first placed in the coffin of St. Cuthbert and then removed to the Galilee chapel where they have been ever since.1 But the title
'venerable' has stuck to him all through the ages and it was as 'venerable' that his name was entered in the Prayer Book Calendar of 1559. This probably explains why in the Roman Catholic church he is generally given the title of 'Saint' while in Protestant churches he still remains the Venerable Bede. in . Bede's monasticism A fairly clear picture of the monastic life which Bede lived can be gathered from his writings and those of his contemporaries.
The Rule observed at the Wear mouth-Jarrow monastery was not exactly that of St. Benedict, though Benedict Biscop the founder used it in composing the conflate rule which was observed there.2
It is unlikely that, as in many Gaulish monasteries, they used the Columban rule in addition to that of St. Benedict. This was what probably happened at Lindisfarne, but that monastery was much more influenced by the Irish tradition than Wearmouth-Jarrow.
Benedict Biscop, the founder of the latter, was one of the cham pions of the Roman cause3 and Columban had been a notorious upholder of the Celtic Easter and tonsure against the Gaulish clergy. As the Benedictine rule was strongly opposed to anything in the nature of competition in ascetic feats, it is unlikely that the violent ascetic practices of the Irish and British monasteries would find favour there. Bede in his History and also in the Life of St.
Cuthbert likes to picture some of the saints indulging in such feats as standing up to the neck in water, continued deprivation of sleep, and excessive fasting especially in Lent. Whatever Bede thought of these practices he describes them with much respect, and one might suspect from his later complaints about monastic laxity, especially in his Letter to Egbert, that he almost used the virtues of the Celtic saints as propaganda, feeling it a good thing for his readers and hearers to realize the lengths to which these saints were willing to go, to deepen their spiritual experience. But it is worthy of remark that Bede describes no excessive mortifica tion in his Lives of the Abbots.
1 Symeon of Durham, ed. T . Arnold, 1. 87.
1 H AB, Plummer, 1. 374-5.
3 So too was Ceolfrith. See H AA, Plummer, 1. 388-9.
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Jarrow church had glass in its windows, which to some extent alleviated the rigours of the raw sea mists through which the monks had to make their way from their cells to sing mattins and lauds, but life was certainly not easy in Bede's time. Alcuin, writing to the monks of Jarrow some sixty years after Bede's death, describes his earnestness in performing the solemn duties of the service of the altar and the singing of the canonical hours. 'It is told', says Alcuin, 'that our master and your patron the blessed
Bede said, " I know that angels visit the canonical hours and the assemblies of the brethren. What if they do not find me there among the brethren ? Will they not say, Where is Bede ? Why does he not come to the appointed prayers with the brethren?" '1
Of the actual buildings at Wearmouth and Jarrow w'e know little. Nothing now remains above ground except the original porch and west wall of the church dedicated to St. Peter at Wearmouth and the remarkably well-preserved old church at Jarrow, dedicated to St. Paul, which now forms the chancel of the present church.2 Benedict Biscop took great trouble about the churches, constructing them of stone and getting Gaulish masons and glassmakers to help him, even putting glass into the windows at Jarrow, almost the first glass to be used for this purpose in the north, perhaps in England, in Anglo-Saxon times. He also put glass vessels in the church and, when he returned in 686 from his sixth and last visit to Rome, he brought with him painted panels to put in both churches. Those at Jarrow showed an Old Testament in cident on one wall and opposite it, on the other wall, the incident from the New Testament of which the first was a type or symbol.
For instance, one showed Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice and, on the opposite wall, Christ carrying the cross; another showed Moses lifting up the brazen serpent in the wilder ness and opposite it the Lord on the cross.3 No wonder that Bede became one of the great exponents of that symbolic interpretation which was a feature of biblical exegesis all through the Middle Ages.
The churches at Wearmouth and Jarrow being of stone were 1 M GH, Epp. IV. 443.
2 For a good account of the Anglo-Saxon churches at Escomb, Jarrow, and Monkwearmouth see Taylor, 1. 234-8, 338-49, and 432-46. Miss Rosemary
Cramp's recent excavations at Jarrow have clearly illustrated Benedict Biscop's love of the 'Roman manner' of building— large-scale stone buildings, Roman types of flooring, and contemporary coloured window-glass.
3 H AB, Plummer, 1. 373.