Bede, the Venerable, Saint

BEDE, the Venerable, Saint. - Doctor of the Church, b. in 672-73 on the site where Benedict Biscop founded, in 674, the double monastery of Jarrow and Wearmouth. He was offered to this monastery by his relatives at the age of seven, and soon afterward passed to Jarrow, where he lived all his life. At the age of thirty he was ordained a priest, nor did he ever hold any other dignity. "In this monastery I have spent my whole life, devoting myself entirely to the meditation of the Scriptures, and between the observance of the regular discipline and the daily care of singing the office in church, I always held most dear study, teaching, and writing" (Hist. eccl., V, 24).

His study was facilitated by the many precious manuscripts that his abbots brought him from their frequent journeys on the continent and to Rome: of these he himself became copyist, collator and corrector. His teaching and the fame of his learning and of his writings procured him many distinguished friendships, such as those of the disciples and later abbots of his monastery, Hwaetberht and Cuthbert, of Nothelm archbishop of Canterbury, Albinus, abbot of the same city, Acca, bishop of Hexham, who spurred him on to compose many works which were afterward dedicated by B. to them, furnished him with materials for his historical studies and kept up an epistolary correspondence with him. To Egbert, bishop of York, besides sending a long friendly letter on the episcopal dignity, he also paid a visit in 734, but returned from it ill, and never recovered. In bed he continued to dictate excerptiones quasdam from the works of Isidore for the use of his monks and the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospel of St. John. He died on 26 May 735, having reached chap. 6, v. 9.

Together with Isidore, B. is the greatest scholarly figure of the early Middle Ages, and became one of the fathers of all later culture. His influence spread especially through the school of York, which with Alcuin transplanted Anglo-Saxon learning into Carolingian civilization and consequently into European civilization. Such was his fame that the year of his death was recorded also in the chronicles of the continent as a memorable event.

B. knew, besides Latin and Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and had some knowledge of Hebrew. He was familiar with the Latin treatise-writers and the authors of the decadence, but he also read a good number of the classics; of the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers he made a continuous study, gathering, from his youth, a very large body of extracts from their works. His writings on sacred matters are almost totally composed with these materials. Partly from personal taste, partly from the needs of the school and the character of the times, he was an encyclopedic temperament and therefore a polygraph. It may be said that he possessed all the sciences cultivated in his times and to such a degree as to be reckoned an exceptional master in them.

His writings, of which he himself left us a catalogue at the end of the Ecclesiastical History (V, 24), have almost all their origin and purpose in his teaching, with the exception of the historical ones.

1. Exegetical works

They form by far the greater part of his production and are commentaries on almost all the books of the Bible (some are lost, such as those on the prophets). In them he usually repeats the interpretations of the Holy Fathers, especially of Jerome and Augustine, chosen with judgment and illustrated by his own observations; but when he attempts to "fly with his own wings" he becomes prolix and immoderately allegorical. He was the first to propose the theory of the four senses: historical, moral, allegorical, mystical, which later became so familiar to the scholastics. Essentially commentaries on passages of the Gospel are also the Homiliae for the various feasts of the year, about fifty of them, divided into two books. To these must be annexed a Libellus precum, prayers composed of passages of psalms according to the Hieronymian Psalter ex hebraeo.

2. Didactic works

Some are of an elementary nature. Such are the De metrica arte, a compendium of precepts drawn from the ancient grammarians and supported with examples from Christian authors; the De schematibus et tropis Sacrae Scripturae, divided into two parts according to the title. Here too the terminology of the ancient rhetoricians is applied to Scripture. The De orthographia is a small dictionary of words with brief grammatical and lexical notes and, above all, synonymic distinctions:

[it] depends especially on Charisius. The De temporibus treats briefly of the various divisions of time, of the lunar cycle and the paschal cycle, and ends with a brief chronicle of the six ages of the world; it depends on the Etymologiae of Isidore, with some borrowing from Pliny and Macrobius. It was composed in 703. On the same sources depends essentially the De natura rerum, which sets forth concisely in 50 chapters celestial and terrestrial cosmography.

Of a scientific character, on the other hand, is meant to be the De temporum ratione, composed for his monks, who found the preceding treatises breviores multo digestos esse quam vellent, maximeque ille de Temporibus (preface). It is of 725. Not only are the preceding sources (Isidore, Pliny and Macrobius) exploited more deeply, but all the Christian chronographers are also used. Thus he composed a broad system of the whole of chronology which became authoritative for the whole Middle Ages, and had also as a result the bringing into common use of the Dionysian era, that is, the calculation of dates from the year of the birth of Jesus. The universal chronicle of the last chapter according to the six ages of the world also takes on great development here and is continued down to 725, forming the obligatory framework for the ancient part of all the universal chronicles of the Middle Ages.

3. Historical works

They form the best, most personal and stylistically most valuable part of his literary legacy. The Historia sanctorum abbatum monasterii in Wieremutha et Giryum, Benedicti, Ceolfridi, Eostervini, Sigfridi atque Hwaetberhti has as its subject the work of foundation of Benedict Biscop and the zeal he displayed to raise his monastery to the level of Italic civilization. It is written with taste, sound historical judgment and, as it is the first history of an English monastery, it gives us a most interesting picture of the state of culture at that time.

The Vita Cuthberti, of the great bishop of Lindisfarne d. in 687, was composed by him first in hexameters between 705 and 726, and then, before 721, more diffusely, in prose. The chapters are, in both redactions, forty-seven, but the matter is in part changed. It deals, however, almost always with miracles worked in life and prodigies after death, and with notices drawn from an earlier anonymous life and from Lindisfarne traditions. The purpose is not so much historical as edifying, and to this is especially to be attributed the emphasis of the tone.

A similar character has the Vita s. Felicis, a prose reduction of the poetic work of Paulinus of Nola, for those who did not read verse, carried out on the example of a similar anonymous reduction of the hymn of Prudentius on St. Cassian. The Liber vitae et passionis s. Anastasii has been lost, "male de graeco translatus et peius a quodam imperito emendatus, prout potui ad sensum correctus". Also the Liber de locis sanctis is nothing but an epitome in 17 chapters of the work of Adamnan (earlier than 731).

The Martyrologium "de natalitiis sanctorum martyrum diebus, in quo omnes quos invenire potui, non solum qua die verum etiam quo genere certaminis vel sub quo iudice mundum vicerint diligenter adnotare studui", is the first of the so-called historical martyrologies, precursors of the present Roman Martyrology. Its primitive form is not known to us, because many soon applied themselves to making additions to it; we know in fact that he left various days blank. However, it may be said that he drew his notices from the passions of the martyrs and from the ancient ecclesiastical writers, and, for the simple mentions of names, depends on the Hieronymian Martyrology and on the liturgical books. In general he gives proof, for his time, of great exactness and prudence in the use of sources.

The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in 5 books, is his principal work, written at the invitation of his friend Albinus and dedicated, in 731, to the king of Northumbria Ceolwulf. It begins with a description of the country drawn from Pliny, Orosius and Solinus, and then follows the history of the origins, first according to Orosius and then according to Gildas and the life of St. Germanus, down to the time of the emperor Maurice. From this point (I, 23) the narrative becomes much more detailed, because the Christianization of the nation was beginning and B. had his own sources at his disposal. It therefore proceeds over a span of 135 years down to the author's own time, combining civil history with ecclesiastical history, with a predominantly biographical and episodic method, and paying the greatest attention to the history of the southern kingdoms and to the work of the missionaries who came from Rome. B. is a declared enemy of the Celtic customs (Easter and tonsure) and therefore leaves in the shadows or even discredits the work, however important, of the Irish and Scottish missionaries.

For all that, B.'s work marks an epoch in modern historiography. Even after the book of Gregory of Tours, by which he was perhaps inspired, it can be called the first true history of a nation worthy of the name. He chose his sources first of all with care, in the very places of which he wrote and from those who could best supply them. He enumerates them scrupulously (add various lives of saints) in his dedication to Ceolwulf, almost for fear of engaging too much his own responsibility, as well as out of a debt of gratitude, and concludes: lectoremque suppliciter obsecro, ut si qua in his quae scripsimus aliter quam te veritas habet posita reppererit, non hoc nobis imputet, qui, quod vera lex historiae est, simpliciter ea quae fama vulgante collegimus, ad instructionem posteritatis litteris mandare studium. Besides this loyalty and frankness, he displays, for his time, a notable historical sense. Every event held to be supernatural is also referred precisely to a source, and what he recounts from his own knowledge hardly ever goes beyond the limits of verisimilitude. His views, for a monk, are broad as regards ecclesiastical and political matters and, in general, sound. He knows how to treat the most diverse events and persons with that delicacy and serenity that belongs to a superior mind. In substance, modern scholarship has not been able to see the ancient history of the Angles in any way other than as he narrated it.

His narrative has the inestimable advantage of being entirely firmly set upon the Dionysian era ab incarnatione; it is clear, well ordered, sufficiently proportioned and does not lack a real unity. For this reason it is easy to read and to follow. The qualities of its style also make it pleasant and often gripping. B. intends and is accustomed to be simple, that is sober and modest, nor does he ever seek rhetorical effects; but often he becomes animated and knows how to paint vividly and narrate effectively scenes that strike one by their freshness and by their character of truth and immediacy, even if still half-barbaric. The notable purity of the language also greatly helps the transparency of the expression. The Historia was promptly diffused: at the end of the 8th century Paul the Deacon was already using it.

B. is already hailed by the Council of Aachen of 836 (Mansi, XIV, 726) as venerabilis et modernis temporibus doctor admirabilis, but, as a fixed epithet of his, the title venerabilis begins to appear only in the catalogues of the 11th century. He was venerated as a saint in his homeland immediately after his death and then received by Baronio among the saints of the Roman Martyrology; in 1879 Leo XIII proclaimed him a doctor of the universal Church. Feast on 27 May.

The works of B. are already found in the 9th century in the great libraries of Reichenau, St. Riquier, Lorsch, St. Gall, etc.; hence the manuscripts of them are very numerous. However, a good complete edition is lacking; the one by Giles, in 6 vols., London 1843, reproduced in PL 90-95, is poor: vol. I, prolegomena and didactic opuscules; II-IV, exegetical works; V, homilies, poems and hagiographical works; VI, the history. Good critical editions are those of the Historia, of the Vita sanctorum abbatum and of the Letter to Egbert by C. Plummer, Baeda opera historica (2 vols., Oxford 1896); of the Metrica and Orthographia in H. Keil, Grammatici latini, VII (Leipzig 1880, pp. 219 and 261); of the De schematibus et tropis in C. Halm, Rhetores latini minores (Berlin 1863, p. 607); of the two forms of the chronicle (in the De temporibus and in the De ratione temporum) by Th. Mommsen in MGH, Auct. antiq., XIII, p. 223 ff.; of the De locis sanctis by P. Geyer in CSEL, XXXIX, p. 301.

The name, originally Baeda, was already preferably written Beda in his own time; afterwards it was often Latinized as Bedanus. Cf. H. Zimmer, Zur Orthographie des Namens B., in Neues Archiv, 16 (1891), p. 599. The data of his life are essentially those left by him at the end of the Historia, inflated in a rhetorical Vita anonima (PL 90, 42) and reworked, after Mabillon and the Bollandists, above all by Plummer in the prolegomena to the edition cited. B. speaks of his works as "annotations drawn ex opusculis venerabilium Patrum" and recommends to copyists that they take account of their citations in the copies with marginal indications (PL 94, 698). Naturally this was done only exceptionally in certain manuscripts, on which cf. E. F. Sutcliffe, Annotations in the Ven. Bedry Commentary on S. Mark, in Biblica, 7 (1926), p. 428 and Some Footnotes to the Fathers, ibid., 6 (1925), p. 205. The sources are usually the four Latin doctors. A list of the citations of profane authors has been drawn up by Plummer, loc. cit. and, for the chronicle, by Mommsen. A. Wilmart has identified a collection of such extracts from St. Augustine for a commentary on St. Paul, La collection de Bède le vénérable sur l'Apôtre, in Rev. bénéd., 36 (1926), p. 16 ff. - On the didactic works and the historical ones see especially M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, I, Munich 1911, p. 70 ff., and the prolegomena of the editions cited, particularly Plummer's. The Historia ecclesiastica was already translated into Anglo-Saxon by king Alfred the Great (849-901); ed. J. Schipper, Leipzig 1899. Nothing, on the other hand, remains of the Anglo-Saxon versions made by B. himself.

B. attests that he composed a Librum hymnorum diverso metro and a Librum epigrammatum heroico metro sive elegiaco. There remains only the abecedarian hymn of 27 distichs for St. Ethelred, inserted by him in the History, IV, 18, two poetic paraphrases of psalms 41 and 42 and other less certain hymns which G. Dreves, Analecta hymnica, 50 (1907), p. 96 ff. raises to sixteen. The De die iudicii (PL 94, 633), in hexameters, stands apart, the most notable of his poems. Cf. Manitius, loc. cit. p. 86; W. Meyer, Poetische Nachlese aus dem sogenannten Book of Cerne in Cambridge und aus dem Londoner Codex Regius 2 A XX, in Gött. Nachr., 1917, p. 598 ff. and J. E. Raby, Christian Latin Poetry, Oxford 1927, p. 145 ff.

The Liber epistularum ad diversos has also been substantially lost. Only sixteen remain, collected in PL

94, 655 ff. - On the Homilies cf. G. Morin, La liturgie de Naple au temps de s. Grégoire et deux évangéliaires du VIIe siècle, in Revue bénéd., 8 (1891), p. 481 ff., and Le recueil primitif des homélies de Bède sur l'Évangile, ibid., 9 (1892), p. 316 ff.; I. Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgata Gospel (Oxford 1908), p. 76 ff. - On the martyrology H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du Moyen Age (Paris 1908) and his article Bède, in DACL, VII, coll. 395-402.

Many works, certainly apocryphal, circulate among those of B. in the manuscripts and in the old editions. They are collected by Giles at the end of each class of those held to be authentic. It should be noted that the four prayers that close the Libellus precum are not by B.; the De ratione computis (PL 90, 579) is a later extract of the De temporum ratione. The commentaries on Matthew and John are likewise later, the first taken from Rabanus Maurus and the second in part from Alcuin, and so too the one In Genesim; cf. Schönbach, Über einige Evangelienkommentare des Mittelalters (Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad., 146, iv), Vienna 1903. On the other hand P. Lehmann, Wert und Echtheit einer B. abgesprochenen Schrift (Abhandl. der Bayr. Akad., iv), Munich 1919, tends to regard as authentic the Liber quaestionum (PL 93, 455), which belongs among the spurious works. Morin, Notes sur plusieurs écrits attribués à B. le vénérable, in Rév. bénéd., 11 (1894), p. 289 ff., recognizes the Capitula lectionum in Pentateuchum Moysi, Iosue, Iudicum in cod. Paris. lat. 2342, simple extracts from Isidore, and inclines to attribute to B. the argumenta and the explanationes contained in the apocryphal In psalmorum librum exegesis (PL 97, 478). De Bruyne, Note sur les uns, et les éditions du commentaire de B. sur les Proverbes, in Journal of Theolog. Studies, 28 (1926-27), p. 182 ff., has recovered B.'s commentary on Prov. (fragments in PL 91, 1051). Bedae Venerab. Expositio Actum et Retractatio ed. M. L. W. Laistner (Medieval Academy of America Publications, xxxv). On B. as interpreter of Scripture see R. Cornely, Introductio in utriusque Testamentibus libros sacros, I, Paris 1885, p. 465, and F. Plaine, s. v. in DB, I, col. 1538.

Antonio Ferrua