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death of Cuthbert in 687, a saint whom Bede regarded with special veneration. It may well have been that to Bede Cuthbert symbolized the union of the Celtic and Roman churches, the establishment of good relations with Rome again while all that was best of the Irish tradition remained. The two miracles of Cuthbert which form the last two chapters are no more than an appendix to his own earlier Life of the saint and were always so treated in the manuscripts of the Life which have survived.
Finally the fifth book covers the rest of the period from 687 to 731. It is, as we have seen, the most miscellaneous of all the books and the weakest in construction. It contains the biographies of John of Beverley, Willibrord, Wilfrid, and Dryhthelm, while
Bede's friend Egbert hovers vaguely in the background as a sort of champion of the Roman way of reckoning Easter in Ireland and Iona. It is possible that Bede felt some hesitation about going into the history of his own times and discussing his own contemporaries in quite the same way as he had dealt with the preceding period.
But it is difficult to justify the section on the holy places on any count. The very long letter to the king of the Piets on the date of Easter seems tiresome and unnecessary to modern readers but for Bede it sums up the controversy which occupies much space in the History and forms one of its central themes: could the English
Church accept her position as the true and loyal offspring of the Roman Church, free from any taint of heresy or particularist error ?
Or was she to slip back into insular withdrawal and cut herself off from all the spiritual inheritance and cultural influences which Rome stood for ? The letter is, in fact, one of the clearest accounts of the Easter controversy to be found anywhere in writers ancient or modern and forms a fitting and final summary of this allpervasive topic. If Ceolfrith actually wrote it, then he must have been a very able chronologer and master of a clear incisive style.
But there are echoes of Bede's style in it so that it is likely that Bede edited the letter freely if he did not actually write it. At the end of the History, Bede, like Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks, gives a brief epitome of his life and works.
VII. The Miracles Bede's very considerable use of saints' Lives, of the sagas associated with them in tradition, together with the stories supplied by friends
H I S T O R I C A L I N T R O D U C T I O N
XXXV and contemporaries, is responsible for one of the chief difficulties which faces a modern reader of the History. How is it that one who is supposed to be our greatest medieval historian can spend so much time telling wonder tales? It seems strange too when we remember that Bede, borrowing from Gregory the Great, declares that miracles are necessary at the beginning of the history of the Church, just as water is necessary for a plant until it has taken root: then it need be watered no longer.1 It may be that they felt that the new Church in England needed this help. Yet, even so,
Gregory and Bede both fill their writings with every kind of miracle story, some of them being little more than fairy tales.
How can a historian expect to be taken seriously who tells a fantastic tale about a bishop being violently beaten by St. Peter at his shrine in Canterbury, so that the bishop when he leaves the saint's shrine is black and blue ?2 or in what sense are we to take the story of the Northumbrian captive whose fetters fall from him whenever his brother, who is a priest, says a mass on his behalf?3
The answer to this question seems to stem from the historic association in the Graeco-Roman culture of the second and third centuries between a belief in the marvellous and true devotion.
The truly pious person naturally believed strongly in the miracu lous element in his religion. Apostolic Christianity took its own line on this question and maintained that only such marvels as were done in Christ's name were true miracles; and that a belief in the miraculous did not necessarily imply true faith and devotion.
But this was difficult for the ordinary man to accept and so, although the theologians, such as Bede, knew well the difference between true faith and mere faith in the marvellous, yet they seem to have felt that the latter might be a stepping-stone to the former.
Not to have believed in miracles performed by the saints might well seem to the ordinary man to be equivalent to having no faith at all.
And Bede, whatever his opinion of the importance of miracles, freely accepted the stories of the marvels wrought by the saints if related by credible witnesses. Yet to him as to Gregory this faith in the marvellous did not seem to be the highest form of faith nor was the gift of working miracles the only sign of sanctity. Indeed, Gregory in a letter which Bede preserves in his History warns Augustine against the dangers which may assail the worker of miracles. But Bede and Gregory and their contemporaries took it for granted
1 Opp. X. 261.
1 ii. 6.
3 iv. 22.