The Venerable Bede: Biography and Introduction to his Writings
Bede was born in Monkton, located near Jarrow in Northumbria, sometime around 672. At the age of seven, Bede's parents placed him in the monastery at Wearmoth under the care of Benedict Biscop. Biscop later transferred him to Wearmoth's sister monastery at Jarrow. The earliest reference to Bede is in an anonymous Life of the Abbots. In 685 there was a serious outbreak of plague, which virtually wiped out the population of Wearmoth as well as the monastery of Jarrow. At Jarrow, all those who could recite the antiphons perished; only the abbot Ceolfrid and a small boy were left. They managed to continue singing the antiphons. It is generally thought that the boy was Bede, and his ability to recite the antiphons at such an early age is an indication of his careful and thorough training under Biscop. Bede became a deacon at the age of nineteen. This was unusual, since cannon law stipulated twenty-five as the minimum age for the deaconate. Bede's "merits [in terms learning and holiness] must have been very great indeed to permit the ecclesiastical authorities to anticipate the canonical age by so much as six years." (1)
Bede was one of the greatest scholars of his age. In many ways, his achievements were a product of the times. Bede lived during the golden age of Northumbrian art and culture. Stone churches were beginning to replace the traditional wooden churches of England. Stone masons were imported from Gaul and other parts of the continent to build them, bringing with them Roman culture and traditions. The number of monasteries was rapidly increasing, and there were great achievements in art such as the Lindisfarne gospels. The archbishop Theodore greatly stimulated learning and scholarship in the Church by encouraging the study of the Greek language and ancient Greek works.
Many churchmen traveled to the continent to study, such as Bede's mentor, Benedict Biscop, who was very much a part of the cultural awakening of England. Biscop had studied on the continent at Lerins from 665 to 667, and had also made several trips to Rome. Biscop was, then, heavily influenced by Roman culture and practices. Under his leadership, Wearmoth and Jarrow were leaders in promoting the unification of the English church through the observance of Roman practices. On his various trips, Biscop brought relics, paintings, and books back to his monasteries. He created a large library at Jarrow which made it one of the cultural centers of Northumbria. Bede had access to important ancient works, which undoubtedly influenced his development as a scholar.
Wearmoth and Jarrow also had the advantage of being located in Northumbria, one of the areas which had been most heavily influenced by the Celtic church. The Celts had Christianized the island long before the Gregorian mission had arrived. The Celtic church was not only rich in learning, but also much more individualistic in nature than the Roman Church. It was organized around the monastery, unlike the parish structure of the Catholic Church. The Celtic Church emphasized monastic life over secular life, and the contemplative and ascetic nature of Irish monastic life heavily colored the Celtic church.
The monasteries at Wearmoth and Jarrow "had the special advantage ... that there met all the main streams of learning, from Rome and from the Celtic church, from Canterbury and from Gaul." (3) These various influences are all evident in Bede's works. Bede had "lucid style of Latin which formed an excellent vehicle for the remarkable narrative powers of its author." (4) His earliest works, De Orthographia and De Arte were intended to serve as manuals for his students in the meaning and grammatical function of words and in different verse forms.
Bede wrote several commentaries on the Bible, the most noteworthy of which was the six volume In Lucae Evangelium Exposito. Bede relied on the use of allegories and numerical mysticism to explicate biblical meanings. For example, in De Templo Salomonis, Bede likened the temple of Solomon to the "holy universal Church", and argued that his use of 30,000 laborers was related to the Trinity. His biblical commentaries also emphasize the need for strict orthodox practices. As mentioned earlier, Jarrow was one of the centers of Roman custom; all of Bede's works, including his History, argue for the supremacy of Roman practices.
Bede was also a skilled hagiographer, and wrote a Life of Saint Cuthbert and Lives of the Saints. The miracle stories found in the Ecclesiastical History are, in many instances, taken from these works.
Several of Bede's works written prior to the History deal with chronology. These works have a significant influence on Bede's development as a historian. The Liber de Temporibus, written in 703, and the de Temporae Ratione, written in 725, both conclude with a chronicle of the six ages of the world. The chronicle in the earlier work is rather sketchy and contains little information on the Gregorian missions.
De Temporae Ratione contains a much more detailed chronicle, which reflects the chronological theories Bede developed within the actual text of the work. In this treatise, Bede provided a detailed explanation of counting on the fingers up to one million. This was the basis for further theories on the division of time from the smallest units to the largest, which culminated in a discussion of problems with calculating time in terms of lunar and solar years.
At the end of the treatise, he included a chronicle of the different ages of the world. Like Saint Augustine and Isidore of Seville, Bede believed that time could be divided into six ages represented by the Creation, the Flood, Abraham, David, the Captivity of Judah, and the Birth of Christ. Most chronologists agreed that the first five ages had lasted for 5,500 years. Bede, however, was not content to accept the work of others and, using Jerome's Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible, proceeded to make his own calculations. He came to the conclusion that the first five ages had lasted only 3, 952 years, which had the effect of denying that Christ was incarnated during the sixth age. To Bede's horror, he was charged with heresy.
De Temporae Ratione is important for understanding Bede's development as a historian. His diligence in making his own calculations is an indication of his preference for primary sources, as opposed to second and third accounts. The chronicle of the sixth age found in this work also shows that Bede was already beginning to collect information for his History. It was an enlarged version of the chronicle in Liber de Temporibus, and "came to enjoy great popularity and frequently copied as an independent work [which] contain[ed] several references to events in the history of the English in Britain." (5)
The skill Bede displayed as a chronologist and his scrupulous attention to sources in this work are the basis for the innovations of the Ecclesiastical History. The History provides one of the few sources of information on early English history. It also established the use of the modern system of chronology, the annus domini. Prior to the Ecclesiastical History, there were several different systems of calculating dates, such as the four year Olympiad, the fifteen year Indiction, and the annus mundi, which all related to the Paschal cycle of 532 years. The correct reckoning of time was important for the Church, not only for determining when to recite the Divine Office each day, but for calculating the proper observance of the major festivals. The liturgical year centered around Easter, which was a "movable" festival. Unlike the Nativity, which was tied to the winter solstice, Easter had originated out of the Passover and was calculated according to the lunar year. The Julian calendar was based on the solar year; hence, the celebration of Easter fell on different days from year to year.
Difficulties in calculating the correct dates for Easter had created conflicts between the Celtic and Roman churches in England. Bede was a strong advocate of Roman orthodoxy, and paid particular attention to this problem in his History. These difficulties with uniform calculations of time prompted Bede to use the annus domini as a method for relating simultaneous event, and events which occurred in different parts of the world. This was a monumental task, since "he had to take account in his various chronological calculations of several different eras of the world with different starting points, of Imperial regnal years from both the eastern and the western empire, of consular years, of Indictions which might begin variously on 1 September, 25 September, or 25 January ... and also of the regnal years of half a dozen Anglo-Saxon kings reigning contemporaneously but succeeding to their several kingdoms at different dates in a year which had no uniform beginning even within England itself." (6)
By recalculating all these various time tables and placing events within a single framework, Bede established modern chronology. This achievement, makes the History one of the most important works of the Middle Ages. Though modern research has uncovered some minor discrepancies in Bede's chronology, in view of the enormous achievement he made, these discrepancies ought to be overlooked. Bede was clearly a conscientious historian who relied on his own calculations and pioneered the modern method of using sources.
In the preface to the History, he describes the process by which he obtained his information. The abbot Albinus form Canterbury provided him with information on the Roman mission from records and from testimony of people with first hand knowledge. Bede also based his narrative on papal archives, and relied on the testimony of "countless faithful witnesses who either knew or remember[ed] the facts." (7) Although he included many miracle stories in the History, he used only those which were verified by several sources or by extremely trustworthy sources. As one historian notes, what is surprising is not that there are such stories in a work of history, but "that there are not more of them." (8) Bede was one of the first historians to look at evidence with a critical eye.
NOTES
1. Whiting, C. E., "The Life of the Venerable Bede" in Thompson, A. H., ed., Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966), 10.
3. Blair, P. Hunter, "The Historical Writings of Bede" in Blair, Anglo Saxon Northumbria (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), 221.
4. Blair, P. Hunter, The World of Bede (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970), 268.
6. Bede, History of the English Church and People (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1955), 35. Future references to this work will be abbreviated as H.E.
7. Colgrave, Bertram, "Bede's Miracle Stories," in Thompson, 201.
8. Brown, Peter, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 287.
Photo by Dr. Vess.
