The Venerable Bede (part 1 of 2)

The entire history of this period is summed up in the Venerable Bede. — His works. — Encyclopaedical character of his genius. — His theological and scientific writings; his love for the classics. — His History of the English. — His scrupulous care to prove its truth. — His soul. — The love of virtue and truth evident in all his writings. — He is himself the type of the noble lives he records. — His life passed entirely in the cloister of Yarrow. — He is spared in his youth by the pestilence which carries oflF the whole community except himself and his abbot His different masters; his diligence in work. — His extensive connections. — His friendship with Abbot Acca. — His works on Holy Scripture. — His celebrated letter to Bishop Egbert of York upon the abuses of ecclesiastical government and monastic life. —His bold freedom does not diminish his authority.— He is accused of heresy in popular drinking-songs. — His intimacy with the monks of Lindisfarne. — Narrative of his death by an eye-witness. — His worship and his relics. — Contrast between the country he lived in and the actual condition of Northumberland.

" O venerable Bede! The saint, the scholar, from a circle freed

Of toil stupendous, in a hallowed seat

Of learning, where thou heardst the billows beat
On a wild coast, rough monitors to feed
Perpetual industry. Sublime Recluse !
The recreant soul, that dares to shun the debt
Imposed on human kind, must first forget

Thy diligence, thy unrelaxing use

Of a long life; and in the hour of death The last dear service of tliy passing breath."

— Wordsworth.

The period of history which we have just recorded is crowned by one of those groat figures which stand out above the sea of ages, and triumph over the forgetfulness as well as over the systematic contempt of frivolous generations. The name of Bede, after having been one of the greatest and most popular in Christendom, still remains invested with an unchangeable fame. Ho is the type of that studious and learned life which, in the eyes of many, sums up the entire mission of the monk. He was the most cultivated man, the greatest intellectual personage of his country and age; but he holds a still greater position in the eyes of those to whom he has been a guide and master throughout a laborious and bewildering task. By the student who has passed several years almost entirely in his company, he is venerated as a saint and loved as a friend, and, without absolving him of his patriotic prejudices and partialities, the spirit does reverence to his character still more than to his glory.

Let us then examine his works, his spirit, and his life. We turn to his works in the first place, which have made him the wonder and honor of his age, as well as a father and doctor of the Church. This Anglo- Saxon, born at the end of the Christian world, and of a race which half a century before his birth was still plunged in the darkness of idolatry, at once reveals himself clothed in the fulness of all enlightenment known to his time. Thanks to the unwearying activity of his mind, and the universal extension of his researches, his fame Ijecame European, and lasted through all the middle ages. It was not only the great historian whom, during his lifetime, and for long centuries after his death, men admired, as we ourselves admire him —it was, in addition to this, the master whose vast erudition embraced all that was then studied and known in the world. The universal character of his genius is that which most astonished his contemporaries, and has even excited surprise among our own.

He was for England what Cassiodorus was for Theuniver- Italy and St. Isidore for Spain. But he had, in telonlh' addition, an influence and echo beyond his own senius. country which has been surpassed by none: his influence upon Christendom was as rapid as it was extensive, and his works, which soon found a place in all the monastic libraries of the West, brought down his fame to the period of the Renaissance. He wrote at his pleasure in prose or verse, in Anglo-Saxon and in Latin; and many of his writings prove that lie was acquainted with Greek.^*^'' The greater part of his works were devoted to theology and its cognate studies. In the list which he himself made out, three years before his death, of the forty-five works which he had written up to that time, he enumerates, in the first place, his commentaries and homilies upon Holy Scripture, specially drawn from the Fathers, so as to form a summary, for the use of his countrymen and of all Christians, of the traditional doctrines of the Church. These Biblical studies occupied him much during his whole life, and he professed a marked preference for that source of human knowledge which, to his eyes, surpassed all others, as much in its antiquity as by its divine origin and moral usefulness.207 He plunged into this study with an ardor so intelligent and persevering, that it won him, in the eyes of the most illustrious of his countrymen, St. Boniface, the reputation of being one of the most sagacious investigators of the Holy Scriptures.208 jj^ ]^\q Martyrology, his historical summaries, and his biographies of the saints, he added a demonstration of the government of God by facts and the lives of meh, to the theoretic exposition of the teachings of the faith. Andscien- But, far from confiuiug himself to theology, he wrote with success upon astronomy and meteorology, physics and music, philosophy and geography, arithmetic and rhetoric, grammar and versification, without omitting medicine, and without disdaining to descend even to orthography and numeration. His treatises have almost always the form of abridgments or catechisms adapted to the education of his monastic disciples. He thus penetrated, with a bold and unwearying step, into all the paths then open to the human intelligence, with a clearness and extent of vision truly surprising for the age and circumstances under which he lived. He thus won the name of Father of English learning,

^® The translation which he had made of the Gospel of St. John from Greek into Latin is unhappily lost Giles, Life of Bede, p. 51. M. Ozanara, in his Etudes Germaniques, quotes a paper from M. Renan, crowned by the Academy, but not published, which pi'oves that the study of Greek was maintained among the Anglo-Saxon monks long after its introduction by the Archbishop St. Theodore.

2"' " Sancta Scriptura cajteris omnibus scripturis, non solum auctoritate, quia divina; vel utilitate, quia ad vitam ducit seternam; sed et antiquitate et ipsa prffieminet." — De Schematihus Scripturce, ap. Act. SS. 0. S. B., t. iii.

p. 506.

208 " Sagacissimi investigatoris Scripturarum monachi Bedae." — S. BoNi- FACii Epist, ad Huethertum Abbatem. given to hira by the greatest of modern Englishraen.^o^ His scientific essays, De Rurum Natura, and De Temjjorum Ratione, contain a first essay towards a universal chronology, and afterwards sura up with method and precision the physical and astronomical sciences, which had, among our ancestors, survived the decay of the Roman empire. Good nisiove judges have even acknowledged that he had gath- lo'^^he ered more actual truths and fewer errors than are to be found in any Roman books upon similar subjects.^^*^ In this region, as elsewhere, our worthy Anglo-Saxon appeals with respectful confidence to the authority of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Pliny. Like all the scholars and writers of Christian ages, he shows a certain satisfaction in exhibiting his familiarity with classic authors. He has left to us, or at least there have been attributed to him, collections of sentences drawn from Plato, Seneca, and, above all, Cicero, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. He often quotes Ovid and Lucan, Statins, Lucretius, and still oftener Virgil, Avhom he quotes even in the tales of the miracles of his Northumbrian saints.'^^i He has also attempted to imitate him in a pretty eclogue on the return of spring.212 He thus presents, in the eighth century, the type of that character of scholar— that is to say, of a man profoundly imbued with classic literature — Mdiich the English of the present day still prize so highly, and which the princes of public eloquence,^!^ not less than the chiefs of the episcopate, esteem one of their highest distinctions. It does not seem, however, that his familiarity with these illustrious heathen weakened him either in Christian feeling or in the monastic spirit; and ²⁰⁹ " Father of English learning" — this is the name given hira by Burke, Essay on English llistorij, p. 229.

^'0 Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 403. According to this author, Bede's work is sufficient of itself to prove that the irruption of the Teutonic nations into the Roman empire was in no way the substitution of barbarism for knowledge.

*" Thus in relating the case of a demoniac at the tomb of the saint and King Oswald at Bardeney, he uses the well-known line —

" Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant."

The illustrious Newman has fully established the absurdity of the supposition made by Milman, the learned Anglican Dean of St. Paul's, that Bede and other monastic doctors knew classical antiquity only at second-hand by extracts or isolated fragments. This idea is contradicted by all tlio monuments of the time, as well as by the very nature of the monastic spirit and studies. —Atlantis, 1859, n. 3, p. 31.

'"^ " Cuculus, sive Veris et Hiemis conflictus," vol. i. p. 35, cd. Giles. Compare p. clxix.

^'^ Mr. Gladstone, commentator, and Lord Derby, translator, of Homer. nothing in his life contradicts the touching prayer with which he ends the hst of his literary labors: " Ob, good Jesus, who hast deigned to refresh my soul with the sweet streams of knowledge, grant to me that I may one day mount to Thee, who art the source of all wisdom, and remain forever in Thy divine presence." ^^'^ jj.^^ J.. This constant thought of God, of the soul, and of the Eng- eternal salvation which is evident in all the works ^'^^' of his laborious life, and manly intelligence, shows itself at the beginning of the great work which still wins for him the attention and gratitude of all friends of the truth. " I entreat," he says in his Preface, " all those of our nation who read this History, or hear it read, to recommend often to the divine clemency the infirmities of my body and of my soul. Let each man in his province, seeing the care which I have taken to note down everything that is memorable or agreeable for the inhabitants of each district, pay me back by praying for me." " Dear and good father," he also writes when sending the first copy of his History to the friend who had suggested it to him, '•' beloved friend in Christ, remember, I beseech you, my weakness, you and all the servants of Christ who live with you; remember to intercede for me with the merciful Judge, and make all those who read my humble work do the same." ^is

This humble work — this pamphlet, as it is called by the great and modest writer— was nothing less than that Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, which has made Bede not only the father of English history, but the true founder of history in the middle ages. The most competent authorities have recognized in him a chronicler well-informed and systematic, an able and penetrating critic, on whom the rigorous precision of his language, and the scrupulous accuracy of his narrative, bestow the full right of being heard and

²¹⁴ u-pgqyg deprecor, bone Jesu, ut cui propitius donasti verba tu£e scientise dulciter haurire, dones etiam benignus, aliquando ad te fontera omnis sapientiae pervenire et apparere semper ante facieni tuani."

215 (4 Omnes... nostra} nationis legentes sive audientes, suppliciter precor ut pro meis infirmitatibus et mentis et corporis... saepius intervenire meminerint: et in suis quique provinciis banc mibi remunerationis vicem rependant, ut qui de singulis provinciis... quae memoratu digna atquc incolis grata credideram diligenter adnotare curavi." — Hist. Eccles., Prafatio gloriosissimo Regi Ceoluidfo. " Semper amantissime in Christo pater optime,... te supplex obsecro ut pro mea fragilitate cum his qui tecum sunt, apud pium judicem sedulus intercedere memineris: sed et eos quos eadeni nostra opuscula pervenire feceris, hoc idem facere monueris." — Epist. ad Albinum Abbat., Op. Minora, p. 229. having his testimony weighed, even upon facts which could not come under his personal observation.^i^ Besides, all his narrative which is not founded upon what he himself saw or heard, is given on the authority of contemporaries always conscientiously quoted and carefully designated or described by him. " I have consulted individually," he says, " in all that refers to Northumbria, innumerable writers in addition to all that I could answer for myself... But I pray ray reader humbly, if he finds that ¹ have written anything which is not the truth, not to blame me severely for it, since, according to the true law of history, I have sincerely labored to put into writing for the instruction of posterity all that I could gather from common report." ^^'^ The rare prudence with which he records those miracles which occupy so exaggerated a place in the annals, or, more strictly, in the habits and necessities of his time, is especially remarkable. He gives none upon his own personal authority, but always names the persons from whom they come, stating whether he has received them at first or second hand.^^^

Thus the most sceptical reader is unable to turn over the pages of Bede without being convinced at once of his sincerity and of his historical discrimination; while the Christian, eager to know and admire the works of God still more in the history of spiritual life than in the history of nations, can never feel sufficient gratitude to the unwearied worker who has endowed us with a book unrivalled among the historical works of Christianity, and who has given to England and its specially historic race the finest monument of national history which any modern people has yet received from its fathers.219

^'' Lappenberg, Ozanam, Varin.

'^'^ " Si qua in his quae scripsimus alitor qiiara se Veritas habet posita reporerit, non lioc nobis imputet qui, quod vera lex historiaj est, simpliciter ea quae fama vulgante collegiaius ad instructionem posteritatis litteris mandare studuinius." — PrcBfatio.

'"^ Not a single miracle is to be found in the biography of the five first abbots of his own monastery, all of whom he had personally known: while they abound in his narrative of the life of St. Cuthbert, which he had from the monks of Lindisfarne. This is remarked by the wise and pious Lingard. —Anglo-Saxon Church, ii. 102, 103.

2'^ All who have had to make researches into medieval historians, and to whom it is of consequence to save their time and eyesight, know the inestimable value of a good, portable, and easily-read edition. Such persons will thank us for pointing out to them, among the numerous editions of the Venerable Bede, that published at Oxford in 184G, by Robert Ilussey, bachelor in theology and professor of history. It contains in one volume all the IHstoria Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, with the lives of the Abbots of Wear- His spirit- This liistoi'ian of souls begins by making us acuai life. quainted with his own; for who does not recognize, by the ftishion in which a man tells the tale of the trials of virtue and truth here below, what he himself would have been capable of doing or suffering for them? The soul which thus betrays itself in his narrative is holy and full of grace. Not only in his beautiful narrations of ceaseless self-devotion, and of all the wonders of which man regenerated by faith is capable, but in the person of Bede himself, we find a complete type of that humility, serenity, and generous fervor which have won him throughout all Christendom the surname of Venerable. The Christian virtues were united naturally in him to that thirst for knowledge, that love of study, that vivifying thirst for v.'ork, that noble thoughtfulness of things divine and human, which make our monk-historian so interesting a personage in the history of the human mind. An esteemed writer ²²⁰ reproaches him with having been more Eoman than English. I consider this reproach quite unfounded; no trace is to be found of the least sacrifice of his patriotism to his orthodoxy. He certainly preferred the Roman to the Celtic spirit; but it was his Anglo-Saxon patriotism, and not his Roman predilections, which dictated to him certain judgments inspired by national prejudice against the vanquished Britons in spiritual as well as temporal affairs. He had, like all other men, his preferences, his weaknesses, his blindness -^ but never has he willingly disguised, mutilated, or betrayed the truth; on the contrary, he served and loved with his best powers not only truth but justice, and, as it has been well said by an upright historian ²²¹ of our own day, impartiality consists in being just, not in being neuter.

His life may be regarded as a faithful mirror of the laborious and holy existence of those vast clois-

mouth and Yarrow, and Bede's letter to Archbishop Egbert. It also contains all the divers readings and notes of the great edition of Smith (1722), rectified and completed with exemplary clearness and sobriety by the editor. If he had added to his volume Bede's life of St. Cuthbert, the letter of the other Cuthbert upon the death of the historian, and a map, this excellent publication would have left nothing to be desired. Justice obliges us to name here by the side of Bede a writer of our own day, M. W. B. Maccabe, who, in his Catholic History of England (London, 1847-49, 2 vols.), has devoted himself to a faithful reproduction of the narratives of Bede and other ancient historians, and, by giving a faithful and minute picture of the three first centuries of English history, deserves the gratitude of those who love to know the truth without being able to seek it at the fountain-head.

2-" Lappenberg.

^"' Eeanz de Champagny, Corresjyondant, vol. xii. p. 785. ters which continued to rise in England under the rule of St. Benedict, and which were not less numerous in the eighth than in the seventh century. It was entirely passed in the monastery which had sheltered his childhood. He was born in 673,2^2 in one of the seventy detached manors of public property (Folc-lands), which King Egfrid bestowed on Abbot Benedict Biscop on his fourth return from Rome. The little Bede, whose name in Anglo-Saxon means^ra^er, was intrusted by his relatives at the age of seven to Benedict, ^^^ who had just completed his monastery of Wearmouth. But the holy and learned abbot soon transferred the charge and education of his young pupil to his coadjutor Ceolfrid, when, with his twenty monks, old and young, the latter removed a short distance off, to found, at the mouth of the Tyne, the colony of Yarrow. They were no sooner installed in their new home than a cruel epidemic seized the colony. It carried off all the ^^^^ monks who could sing in the choir, except the abbot alone and the young Bede, still a child, who was his favorite pupil. These two continued to celebrate, as they best could, among their tears and regrets, the entire canonical service, with obstinate precision, until new brethren joined them."3 There are few who will not be touched by the thought of these two representatives of Northumbrian Christianity and Anglo-Saxon monachism, the one already mature and illustrious, the other an obscure child predestined to fame, singing all alone the praises of God in their cloister depopulated by death, and awaiting the future with resigned yet unconquerable faith!

At the death of Benedict Biscop, when Ceolfrid was called to the head of the reunited monasteries, which now formed but one community ,2-^ the young Bede remained at Yarrow, which he never left. There he received deacon's orders at nineteen, and at the age of thirty the priesthood from the hands of St. John, called of Beverley, who then occupied

^''^ According to Mabillon and Lingard; not in 674, as say Pagi and Stephenson.

2« "Abbas... niultum tristris, praeccpit ut, intemiisso ritu priori, psalniodiam totani, prseter Vosperam ct Matutinas, sine antiphonis transigerent quod cum unius hebdoniadis spatio inter uiultas ejus lacrymas et qucriiuonias esse actitatuin, diutius hoc fieri non ferens rursus statuit: ut antiphonataj psalmodiaj juxta niorem instauraretur, cunctisque adnitentibus, per se et quern prsedixi puerum, qua? statuerat, non parvo cum labore complebat."-- Bede, t. vi., App., p. 421. See note 98 in page 503.

*" See pp. 501 and 505.

556 CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSOe's

the see of Wilfrid at Hexham. And there he passed all the rest of his life, which was dedicated to study and meditation on Holy Scripture, without other amusement than the daily songs of the choir — without other pleasure, as he has himself said, than to learn, to teach, and to write.^^

At the same time, when Bedo tells us that he passed all his life in the same monastery, it must not be supposed that he denied himself the expeditions which occupied so considerable a part in the lives of the principal monks. Notwithstanding the great authority which attached to Benedict Biscop's double foundation, and the number of monks who hastened to it, it is difficult to imagine how the young monk could follow, without leaving his monastery, the lessons of all those whom at various periods he calls his masters. For whether at Yarrow or elsewhere, he received an education ^°^^^ valuable and varied. Among those who introferent duccd him into the study of the Bible, he indicates a monk trained by Ceadda, the humble and earnest rival of Wilfrid, and, in consequence, imbued with all that was purest and most irreproachable in Celtic tradition; ^26 while Greek was taught by monks of the school founded by Theodore in his metropolis of Canterbury ,^27 and ecclesiastical music by the precentor of St. Peter's in the Vatican, whom Pope Vitalianus sent to England with Benedict Biscop.228

From pupil he soon became master, and that of industry. ^j-^g [jighest rank. It is evident from various passages of his works that his days and nights, of which a very moderate part was given to sleep, were divided between the studies and researches which he pursued to his last hour, the instructions which he gave to the six hundred monks of his double community, without reckoning the foreign monks whom he admitted to his lessons, and the composition of the books which have immortalized him. An existence more completely occupied it would be difficult to imagine. Except

^^^ " Cum essem annorum septem, cura propinquorum datus sum educandus... cunctumque ex eo tempus vita? in ejusdem monasterii habitationo peragens, omnem meditandis Scripturis operamdedi; atque inter observantiam disciplinae regularis et quotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere dulce habui." — Bede, Mist. Uccles., V. 24.

22(j «' Prater quidam de eis qui me in Scripturis erudiebant et erat in monasterio ac magisterio illius (Ceaddse) educatus, vocabulo Trumberct." — Hist. Eccles., iv. 3.

227 See p. 354. 228 g^g p 499, during the course of his last illness, he had no assistant in his work. " I am my own secretary," he said; " I dictate, I compose, I copy all myself." Though he was not unconscious of the obstacles which the yoke — or, as he himself says, the servitude of the rule — threw in the way of his work, he never withdrew himself from it; ^^^ and long after his death his scrupulous exactness in fulfilling all its obligations, especially that of singing the common service, was told in his praise.23*'

The laborious severity of this life in the cloister ^^^ p^, did not, however, put any obstacle in the way of tended his extensive and important intercourse with the '^^^^'^'^ '°°" world outside. His friendships were almost all produced or occasioned by the composition of his great historical work. He was urged to undertake it by Albinus, whom we have already remarked as the principal disciple of the Archbishop Theodore and the African Abbot Adrian, the first Anglo- Saxon ever called to govern the great monastery of St. Augustin at Canterbury. Albinus furnished him with memoranda of all that had happened in Kent and the neighboring counties in the time of the missionaries sent by St. Gregory; ²³¹ he even sent a priest of the adjoining diocese of London to Rome, to search in the archives of the Roman Church, with the permission of the reigning pope, Gregory II., for the letters of his predecessors and other documents relative to the mission to England.^^^ ^]\ h^q bishops of England also assisted in the work by transmitting to the author what information they could collect concerning the origin of the faith in their dioceses, and the principal acts of the holy personages who had lived in them. The abbots and monks of the most important monasteries also furnished their contingent. The details given on this subject by Bede himself show that a constant communication was kept up between the principal centres of religious life, and that an amount of intellectual activity as surprising as admirable, when the difficulty of communication and the internal wars which ravaged England are taken into consideration, existed among their inhabitants.

**' " Injuncti mc operis labori supposui: in quo ut innumera monasticae servitutis retinacula prajteream ipse niihi dictator, simul notarius et librarius existorcm." — Epistola ad Accam, Opera, i. 179.

2^" Alccini Opera, i. p. 282.

^' Bede describes him as " vir per omnia doctissimus."

²³² a Perscrutato sanctaj Ecclesiaj Romanae scrinio." — Prolog.

In addition to his great historical work, his correspondence gives evidence of the number of visits he must have paid and received on the subjects of his studies and writings. There is no proof that he was ever at Rome, to which in his day so many Anglo-Saxon monks and princes crowded, though this was long believed.233 But it is known that he was on terms of friendship with the King of the Northumbrians, to whom he dedicated his History of England, and with the King of Kent, to whom he addressed a letter upon the celebration of Easter. Among the bishops of his time his most intimate friend was Acca, the companion and successor of Wilfrid at Hexham. This learned and magnificent prelate took the warmest interest in literature and the arts. After having ornamented with many great works the abbey church built by his master at Hexham, he added a very large and noble library, according to Bede, of which the latter made great use. They were in intimate and constant communication. Bede dedicated several of his works in prose and verse to the successor of Wilfrid; and Acca, who loved, like Bede, to quote from the classics, and who, like Gregory the Great, had a fancy for playing upon words, insisted that his laborious friend, who had given him a commentary upon the Gospel by St. Mark, should add to it a commentary on Luke.234 The correspondence between these two Anglo- Saxon monks, while doing no discredit to their ability, is specially honorable to their hearts, and shows to what a height prayer and study had developed in the Northumbrian cloisters the affectionate sentiments and tender feelings of friendship. In this correspondence Bede lavishes assurances of his regard on him, whom he calls the most loved and longed-for of all bishops.^^s He shows himself to be, as he says, ruled and inspired by that trust and mutual tenderness which believes and hopes everything from the heart it loves.23^ At the same time those pure and noble motives ²³³ Prom a letter written by Pope Sergius, given by William of Malmesbury, but which does not refer to our Bede, according to Mabillon. — Act. SS. 0. S. B., t. iii. p. 609; and Lingard, Antiquities, vol. ii. pp. 410, 415.

23-» " Beatum Lucam luculento sermone expone." — T. i. p. cliii., ed. Giles. See other editions, a;?. Raine, The Priory of Hexham, pp. 32, 33, 34.

2^^ " Diledissime ac desideratissime omnium qui in terris morantur antistitum." And elsewhere: " Bene vale semper, amantissime antistes, nostri memor in Domino.... Domino beatissimo et omnium desideratissimo Accae episcopo Beda humilis presbyter."

236 " Non hffic certa alia quam indubitata mutui fiducia facit amoris, quae de amico pectore omnia duntaxat quas fieri possunt, credit, omnia sperat." —P. 179, ed. Giles. which guided him in his studies and commentaries on Holy Scripture, which lield the greatest place in his life, and have so much contributed to the increase of his influence on Christendom, are fully apparent in his letters. Both here and elsewhere the reader perceives by what a pious and patriotic anxiety he was moved to combat the ignorance and lukewarmness of the new Catholics of England, by making them capable of reading and understanding the Bible.^^''^ To bring to the level of all capacities the most approved explanations of obscure passages; to seek out with scrupulous care the mystic sense and spiritual use of Biblical narratives; at once to go deeply into and to simplify that study of the sacred words which is so dear and so necessary to real piety to draw from it the lessons and especially the consolations pointed out by the apostle St. Paul,^-'^ and of which we have so much need in the sharp anguish of this sombre life, and during the prolonged delays of divine justice; to give thus an answer to the anxiety which filled the minds of the great monks who were the apostles of England, and of other ancient nations; such was the task of our Bede. He gave himself up to it with a fervor which never relaxed; with a perseverance which consumed his nights and days; with touching and sincere modesty; with delicate precautions against the danger of being taken for a plagiarist: --^^ with a courage which sometimes failed him under the greatness of the task, and the multitude of obstacles in his way, but only to spring up again more unconquerable than ever; and, in short, with a solidit}^ and assurance of doctrine which have kept for him, till the present time, a place among the best authorized interpreters of the Catholic I'aith.^'^o

Another bishop with whom Bede had much inter- P'^^^'f". course was Egbert, Bishop of York, a brother of terto ²³⁷ a jjostrae, id est Anglorum gentis, incrtiae consulendum ratus." — Epist. ad Eusebium, p. 193, ed. Giles.

"* See especially Epistola ad Accani de Templo Salomonis, p. 171, ed. Giles.

239 a goiiicitus per omnia ne niajorum dicta furari, et lisec quasi mea propria coniponere.... Qui in legis divine nieditatione ctsi non (ut ipse seripsisti) dies noctcsque pervigiles ducere sufficio... operis imnicnsitate pertcrritus et obstrepentium causarum (quas tu melius nosti) necessitate prjepeditus.... Opusculum velocissinie quantum tempus dederat, no tua sacrosancta voluntas impediretur, emendatum membranulis indideram." —Epist. ad Accara, pp. 180, 184.

^^° An idea of Iiis spirit and style may be attained by reading in the Roman Breviary the service for All Saints' Day and the two days following, in which several of the lessons are taken from his De Sanctis.

^^^ King of Northumbria, and a disciple of Bede himself. Sometimes the prince-bishop would visit ""^ ' his former master at Yarrow; sometimes Bede, in return, went to the episcopal monastery of York, where he occupied himself in superintending the school established by Egbert, or sought out recollections of Paulinus and of Wilfrid, and all the details of that religious history of Northumbria which without him would have fallen into forgetfulness forever. The two friends studied together during these visits. A year before his death, not being able to accept an invitation from Egbert, Bede addressed to him a letter, which has been preserved, and which is a sort of treatise upon the spiritual and temporal government of Northumbria.^^i It displays, in the first place, the manly independence of Bede's judgment and language, and the great authority which this simple monk possessed even in the eyes of the princes and pontiffs of his country. It throws, at the same time, a fresh and full light upon the abuses which had glided into the Anglo-Saxon Church, and specially into the administration of monastic possessions.

He begins by recommending the bishop to study and meditate the Holy Scriptures, especially the epistles of St. Paul to Titus and Timothy, and the Pastoral of St. Gregory; and exhorts him to avoid idle and gossiping conversation and bad company — " for," he adds, " there are bishops who, instead of surrounding themselves with religious and chaste persons, are accompanied only by buffoons or drunkards, who take more thought how to fill their bellies than how to feed and sanctify their souls." ^^ Affainstthe "^^ then continues as follows: "Your diocese is too extensive to permit you to visit all the hamlets ecclesiasti- j • n,^ • -i. ^7- and out-of-the Way corners in it every year. You must then establish, as coadjutors in each village, priests who will preach the Word of God, celebrate the divine mysteries, and baptize. And, above all, let the priests teach

241 " Memini te hesterno dixisse anno, cum tecum aliquot diebus legend! gratia in nionasterio tuo demorarer, quod hoc etiam anno velles, cum in eundeni devenires locum, me quoque, ob commune legendi studium, ad tuum accire colloquium." This letter was written in 734 or 735. Egbert took possession of the see of Wilfrid in 732.

^*'^ " Quod non ita loquor, quasi te alitor facere sciam, sed quia de quibusdam cpiscopis fama vulgatum est, quod... nuUos secum alicujus religionis aut continentiae viros habeant, sed potius illos qui risui, jocis, fabulis, comessationibus et ebrietatibus... subigantur, et magis quotidie ventrem dapibus quam raentem sacrificiis ccElestibus pascant." all your diocesans to know the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer by heart. Those who do not understand Latin ought to be able to sing or say the Pater and the Credo in their own language; and I say this not only for the laity, but also for the clerks and monks who do not understand Latin. It is especially for the use of those uninstructed priests that I have translated the Creed and the Pater into English. When you thus stir up the people of God by frequent and common prayer to understand, love, hope for, and seek heavenly gifts, your paternal solicitude will receive from the Pastor of pastors a reward so much the more noble that it is seldom merited by bishops of our nation." ^43 Bede entreats his friend, in continuation, to neglect no means of giving to the lay population pastors capable of teaching them the doctrines of salvation, the hatred of sins which are odious to the Lord, and the practice of good works; he insists upon frequent and even daily communion, according to the usage of the Church in Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and throughout all the East. " Among us," says Bede, " thanks to the carelessness of the pastors, the most religious laymen dare not communicate except at Christmas, the Epiphany, and Easter, although there are numberless Christians, young and old, of pure life, who might without scruple approach these holy mysteries on the Sundays and feasts of the apostles and martyrs, as you have yourself seen in the holy apostolic Church of Rome." ^**

Having said this, he does not hesitate to point out to the prelate an abuse which was destined to rise throughout all the Church to a lamentable height. " Beware, dear bishop, of the crime of those who think only of drawing earthly lucre from their ministry. It is said that there are many villages in our Northumberland, situated among inaccessible hills or woods, where the arrival of a bishop to baptize, and teach

**" "Etquia latiora sunt spatia... quani ut solus per omnia discurrere et in singulis viculis atque agellis verbum Dei praedicare... sufficias... necessarium est ut plures tibi sacri ordinis adjutores adsciscas.... Idiotas, id est, eos qui propria^ tantuni lingua) notitiain habent, hsec ipsa sua lingua discere ac sedulo decantare facito.... Propter quod et ipse niultis sa^pe sacerdotibus idiotis liaic utraque ... in linguam Angloruni translatam obtuli. Quanto cnim rariora hujus sacratissimi operis in episcopis nostra; gentis exeinpla rcporis, tanto altiora... pramia recipies."

^" " Eorum quoque qui in populari adhuc vita continentur sollicitara to necesse est curani gerere, et suffieientcs eis doetores vita) salutaris adliibere niemincris.... Cum sint innumeri innocentes et castissima) convcrsationia pueri ac pucllae, juvenes et virgines, scnes et anus.... Ipsi etiam conjagati, si quis sibi mensuram continentia; ostendat et virtutem castitatis insiauet, idem et licenter possint et libenter facere velint." the faith, and the distinction between good and evil, has never been witnessed, yet where no one is exempt from payment of the bishop's dues. Thus there are bishops who, far from evangelizing their flock without reward, as our Lord wills, receive, without preaching, the money which He has forbidden them, even while preaching, to accept." ^45

Bede's idea was, that with the help of the good and pious King Ceolwulf, it would be very easy for the Bishop of York, his relative and friend, to find a cure for these troubles by returning to the plan of St. Gregory the Great — re-establishing the metropolis of York, and dividing that diocese, which was still, notwithstanding the divisions which had been forced upon Wilfrid, much too large, among twelve suffragans. With his logical and practical spirit, our historian at once points out the means of arriving at this result without any fear of wounding the interests or exposing the infirmities of his order. " I know very well," he says, " that by the carelessness of the old kings, and their foolish liberality, it is difficult to find unappropriated lands to endow the new bishoprics. For this reason it appears to mo that, after having deliberated on it in the great council, with the advice of the pontiff and the king, some existing monastery should be taken to be erected into a bishopric. And in order that the abbot and monks may not be tempted to opposition, they must be permitted to elect the future bishop among themselves, to be at once the head of the monastery and of the new diocese, or to choose one according to the canons outside their community, if no one suitable can be found within.^^^ It

^*^ •' Attende quid gravissimi sceleris... antistes dilectissime.... Audivimus et fama est, quia mult;e villaj ac viculi nostras gentis in montibus sint inaccessis .ac saltibus dumosis positi, ubi numquam multis transeuntibus annis sit visus antistes... quorum tamen nee unus quidem a tributis antistiti reddendis esse possit inimunis... sicque fit ut episcoporum quidam non solum gratis non evangelizent." Lingard (Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i.

p. 183) believes that we have in this passage the first mention of tithes, of which there is no further notice elsewhere in Bede, and which do not appear to have been regularly established in England before the close of the eighth century.

^2*6 " Et quidem novimus quia per incuriam regum prajcedentium, donationesque stultissimas factum est, ut non facile locus vacans ubi sedes episcopalis nova fieri debeat, inveniri valeat.... Quapropter commodum duxerim, habito majori concilio et consensu pontificali siraul et regali edicto, prospiciatur locus aliquis monasteriorum ubi sedet episcopalis fiat. Et ne forte abbas et raonaclii resistere tentaverint, detur illis licentia, ut de suis ipsi eligant eum qui episcopus ordinetur et adjacentium locorum quotquos ad eamdem dioecesim pertineant, una cum ipso monasterio curam gerat episcopalem: aut si forte in ipso monasterio qui episcopus ordinari dobeat inveniri nequeat, in ipsorum tamen juxta statuta canorum pendeat examine qui de sua dioecesi ordinetur antistes." would be so much the more easy to increase, if there is room for it, the endowment of new dioceses, that there exist, as we all know, numberless places which bear the name of monasteries without keeping up a shadow of monastic observance. To appropriate their possessions, according to the authority of public assemblies, for the endowment of new bishoprics, would be to substitute purity for incontinence, temperance for gluttony, and piety for vanity. Yes, there are vast and numerous establishments which are of use for nothing, neither for the service of God nor man. No monastic rule is observed among them; no advantage is drawn from them by the earls and knights who have the burden of defending our nation from the barbarians. He, then, who should make them into new bishoprics would be neither a usurper nor a prevaricator: he would do a work of salvation and an act of virtue." ²⁴⁷

He then proceeds to forestall the objection which might be drawn from the sanction given by kings and national assemblies to the gifts which had endowed these pseudo-monasteries. " Would it, then, be a sin to correct the unjust decisions of old chiefs by the revision of more enlightened men, and to abrogate the lying formulas of certain scribes by the authority of priests and sages, in imitation of these good kings of Judah of whom Scripture speaks, who repaired the evil done by their impious predecessors? Let their example encourage you, in concert with our religious king, to destroy the unjust and irreligious decrees made by the former chiefs of our nation. You will thus provide at once for the spiritual and temporal necessities of our country. Otherwise we shall see at the same time the love and fear of Him who reads the heart disappear from among us, and the number of warriors diminish who are charged with the defence of our frontiers against the incursions of the barbarians; for you know better than I do, there are so many lands occupied by false monks that nothing remains to be given to the sons of nobles and old warriors; by which they are reduced either to cross the sea— deserting the country which they ought to ^*'' " Sunt loca innumera ... in monasteriorum ascripta vocabulum, sed nihil prorsus nionasticae conversationis habentia; e quibus veliin aliqiia de luxnria ad castitatem... synodica auctoritate transfcrantur.... Maxima et plurima sunt quaj... neque Deo neque liominibus utilia sunt, quia ncque rogularis secundum Deum ibi vita servatur, neque ilia inilites siva comites seculariura potestatum qui gentem nostram a barbaris defendant possident." have defended with their swords — or to consume their manhood in debauchery and idleness, for want of a suitable establishment on which to found a family." ^48