Saint Bede the Venerable

Bede, surnamed "the Venerable," must not be confused with another, older Bede, who was a monk of Lindisfarne. He was born in 673 in a village that, shortly thereafter, became part of the property of the monastery of Jarrow.

Saint Benedict Biscop, ha Saint Benoît Biscop Founder of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow and kinsman of Ceolfrid. ving founded the Abbey of Saint Peter at Wearmouth in 674, near the mouth of the Wear, founded the Abbey of Saint Paul at Girvum, or Jarrow, on the banks of the Tyne in 680. Such beautiful harmony reigned between the two houses that they were often governed by the same abbot, and they were referred to by the common name of "Monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul." The holy founder, who possessed as much learning as piety, provided each community with an excellent collection of books that he had brought from Rome and foreign lands. Bede having been entrusted to him by his parents in his seventh year, he took charge of forming him in virtue and the sciences; he later sent him to Jarrow so that he might continue his studies under Abbot Ceolfrid—to Ja rrow, which he l'abbé Céolfrid Abbot of Jarrow under whose leadership Bede studied and survived the plague. was never to leave.

Hardly had he arrived when a cruel plague descended upon the monastery: it carried off all the monks who knew how to sing in choir, except for Abbot Ceolfrid and the young Bede; both continued to celebrate the canonical office to the best of their ability, in its entirety, with stubborn exactitude, until new brethren were sent to them.

Among the skilled masters from whom he took lessons, Bede names the monk Trumbert, a disciple of Saint Chad, Bishop of York and later of Lichfield, who had established a famous school in the monastery of Lastingham, in the county of York. Ecclesiastical chant was taught to him by John, who, from being arch-cantor of Saint Peter's in the Vatican, had become abbot of Saint Martin's in Rome, and whom Pope Agathon had sent to England with Saint Benedict Biscop. He learned Greek from Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, and from Abbot Hadrian, who made this language so familiar to many Englishmen that one would have said it was their mother tongue. Bede gives as an example Tobias, Bishop of Rochester. Had he been less modest, he could have cited himself. Indeed, one can see from his *Ars metrica* and his other works that he knew the Greek language perfectly. The verses we have from him also show that he was a good poet for the century in which he lived; but his sermons, as well as his commentaries on Scripture, prove that he made the meditation of divine books and the writings of the Fathers his principal study.

As his knowledge and piety compensated for his lack of age, Abbot Ceolfrid wished for him to prepare for Holy Orders, even though he was only nineteen years old. He was ordained deacon in 691 by Saint John of Beverley saint Jean de Béverley Bishop of Hexham who ordained Bede as deacon and priest. , then Bishop of Hexham, in whose diocese the abbey of Jarrow was situated. He continued his studies until 702, at which time he received the priesthood from the hands of the same prelate. He is called in an ancient book "the priest of the Mass," because he was tasked with chanting the conventual Mass every day.

The monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow, following the example of Saint Benedict Biscop, devoted a certain amount of time to manual labor. This work consisted of threshing and winnowing wheat, caring for livestock, digging the earth in the garden, baking bread, and preparing what was needed for the community's sustenance. Bede worked with his brothers; but his primary occupation was to study, write, pray, and meditate. He often copied books. Immediately after he was ordained priest, he took up the pen for the honor of religion. Soon he found himself at the head of a numerous school, from which excellent subjects emerged; but he was particularly attached to the instruction of the monks, who numbered six hundred. He tells us himself that he gave himself entirely to the meditation of Holy Scripture, and that after having sung the praises of God in church and fulfilled what the Rule prescribed, his greatest pleasure was to learn, to teach, and to write. "From the time I received the priesthood," he says, "until the time I write this (until the sixty-ninth year of his age), I have composed several books for my own use and for that of others. I have drawn from the works of the Fathers, and I have sometimes made additions to what I found there." He provides a list of forty-five works of which he was the author at that time, most of which had the purpose of clarifying the text of the Old and New Testaments. Subsequently, various other estimable productions flowed from his pen.

Bede exercised himself with success in all branches of literature. He wrote on philosophy, astronomy, arithmetic, the calendar, grammar, ecclesiastical history, etc. Works of piety, however, compose the principal part of his writings. One would seek in vain in his books for the ornaments of rhetoric; in return, one finds much precision and clarity; an amiable simplicity reigns there, with a tone of frankness, piety, and zeal that deeply interests the reader. Candor and a love of truth visibly characterize his historical books; and if it is said that he sometimes carried credulity too far, one must at least agree that no judicious person will ever call his sincerity into doubt. Often he was content to abridge or arrange in methodical order the commentaries of Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Basil, etc., on Scripture; but he did not act in this way to avoid work, nor for lack of genius, as some moderns have claimed. His goal was to adhere more closely to tradition while interpreting the holy books. In what the Fathers had left to be done, he always follows their principles, for fear of departing from tradition in the slightest thing. The best judges admit that, in the commentaries that are entirely his own, he is not inferior in solidity and judgment to the most skillful among the Fathers.

Bale, an apostate Carmelite, the declared enemy of monks and the Fathers, who was Bishop of Ossory under Edward VI and who died a canon of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth, could not help but offer the most magnificent praise of Bede; he even goes so far as to assert that he surpasses Saint Gregory the Great in the eloquence and richness of his style, and that one finds in his writings almost everything that deserves to be read from antiquity. Pitts asserts that Europe has perhaps not produced a man of letters comparable to him, and that, even during his lifetime, his works had such authority that a council ordered them to be read publicly in the churches.

Folchard, who, after having been a monk of Christ Church in Canterbury and of Sithiu, became Abbot of Thorney, speaks thus of Bede in his Life of Saint John of Beverley, cited by Leland: "One is surprised when one considers to what extent this great man succeeded in all the sciences to which he applied himself. He overcame all the difficulties encountered therein and enabled his compatriots to form just ideas of things. The English renounced the coarseness of their ancestors; they became civilized and polished through the study of letters. Not only did Bede teach them, during his lifetime, the road that leads to true knowledge; he also left, for the instruction of youth, writings in which one finds a kind of encyclopedia or universal library. He explained almost the entire Bible, says Fuller; he translated the Psalms and the New Testament into English; and it is especially to him that one can apply these words of the Apostle: He shone like a light in the midst of an ignorant and perverse generation."

What was most admirable in Bede is that he animated all his studies with a rare spirit of piety, and that he always made holy use of his knowledge. He painted himself while tracing the portrait of Saint Chad. Like him, he studied Scripture to prepare himself to meditate assiduously on the mysteries of the faith, to be penetrated by the holy maxims of Christianity, and to fill his heart with the love of all virtues: thus his life was always a model that the most perfect could set before themselves. They wanted to make him an abbot, but his humility led him to refuse this dignity.

Pope Sergius had a singular estee Le pape Sergius Pope reigning at the end of the 7th century. m for our Saint. He wrote him a letter that we still possess, around the time he was ordained a priest. In this letter, he invited him in very honorable terms to come to Rome, so that he might have the satisfaction of seeing him and consulting him on important matters. One cannot admire enough the modesty of Bede, who took great care in his history not to let us know of this circumstance. Moreover, he did not go to Rome, though the reason that prevented him from doing so is unknown. He assures us himself that he never left his monastery to travel, at least not to make significant journeys. His reputation attracted visits from all that was greatest in Britain, among others that of the pious King Ceolwulph.

The glorious and peaceful life of Bede was not without clouds. Jealousy follows merit like a shadow follows the sun. Some narrow minds went so far as to accuse him of heresy, because in his Chronology he had combated the then-widespread opinion that the world was to last only six thousand years, and because he had seemed to adopt for the Incarnation a date other than the one commonly received. This accusation made its way, and it was even mentioned in the drinking songs of the peasants. Bede, who had always taken scrupulous care to remain within the limits of orthodoxy, was as surprised as he was indignant at this imputation: he wrote a lively and proud apologetic letter, which undoubtedly put an end to all these rumors.

Egbert Egbert Disciple of Bede and Archbishop of York. , brother of Eadberht, King of Northumbria, had been a disciple of Bede. He invited his master to come to York, of which this prince was consecrated bishop in 734. The Saint accepted this invitation. He taught for a few months at York, after which he wished to return to his monastery. The school he established in that city became very flourishing, and it is said that he himself had t rained Alcuin Famous abbot under whom Aldric began his monastic life. the famous Alcuin, who was its greatest ornament.

Bede died shortly after Egbert had been raised to the episcopal see of York. Before his death, he wrote a letter to his disciple in which he gave him excellent advice. "Remember," he told him, "that the most essential part of your duty is to place enlightened and virtuous priests everywhere; to apply yourself with tireless zeal to feeding your flock yourself; to ensure that vice disappears; to work for the conversion of sinners; to take care that all diocesans know the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, and that they are perfectly instructed in the various articles of religion. Do not neglect anything so that the laity who lead a pure life may receive communion every Sunday, as well as on all the feasts of the apostles and martyrs, as you have seen practiced in Rome; but warn married persons that they must prepare for communion through continence." This last point was formerly a precept, as we see from several councils. Through disuse, it is now only a counsel; but it is a counsel that Saint Charles Borromeo wished to be strongly recommended to the faithful.

Cuthbert or Antoine Cuthbert ou Antoine Disciple of Bede and author of the account of his death. , one of Bede's disciples, to whom this great man dedicated his book *de Arte metrica*, has left us an account of the death of his dear master; it is in a letter he wrote to the monk Cuthwin, his fellow student. This Cuthbert was later abbot of Jarrow, and he succeeded in this dignity Ruethbert, otherwise called Eusebius, who had also been a disciple of Bede.

The letter of Cuthbert deserves to be reported here; we shall only make slight abridgments.

"Cuthbert to Cuthwin, his dear fellow-disciple in Jesus Christ, eternal salvation in Our Lord. I received with great pleasure the small gift you were kind enough to send me. Your letter also caused me great satisfaction, in that I found in it what I ardently desired, namely that you had taken care to pray and celebrate masses for Bede, that true servant of God, our father and our master. By a consequence of the love I bear him, I send you in a few words an account of the manner in which he departed from this world, an account which I know you are expecting from me.

"He was seized with a difficulty in breathing, without however feeling pain, about two weeks before Easter. He remained in this state, maintaining his ordinary cheerfulness, and giving thanks to God night and day, even at all hours, until the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, which was the 26th of May.

After giving us lessons, according to his custom, he spent the rest of the day singing the psalms. He also spent all the nights in joy and thanksgiving, interrupting this exercise only for a very short sleep. When he awoke, he would return to prayer with his hands extended toward heaven. O truly happy man! He sang these words of Saint Paul: 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,' and several other passages of Scripture. As he was well versed in our language, he recited certain things in English verse; these words, for example: 'A wise man cannot too much consider what he has done of good and evil before departing from this life.' He also sang antiphons, in accordance with what is practiced among us; this one among others: 'O King of glory, God of hosts, who hast ascended today above all the heavens! do not abandon us as orphans without defense, but send us the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of truth whom Thou hast promised us. Alleluia.' While pronouncing these words, 'do not abandon us,' his eyes shed a great abundance of tears. An hour later, he repeated the same antiphon, and we mingled our tears with his. We read and we wept alternately, or rather we never read without weeping.

We spent the time that elapsed from the beginning of his illness until the feast of the Ascension in this way. As for him, he was always filled with joy, and did not cease to thank God for having sent him his infirmity. Often he repeated this passage: 'God scourgeth the children whom He loveth,' and others similar. One also heard him say these words of Saint Ambrose: 'I have not lived in such a way as to be ashamed of living among you, and I do not fear to die because we have a God who is goodness by essence.'

"The lessons he gave us, and the singing of the psalms did not prevent him from composing two works very useful to the Church: he translated the Gospel according to Saint John into English, and provided an extract from the books of notes of Saint Isidore, bishop. 'I do not want,' he said regarding the second work, 'my disciples to read lies after my death, nor to consume themselves in useless labors.'

"On the Tuesday before the Ascension, he felt a greater difficulty in breathing than usual. A little swelling was noticed in his feet. He spent the day with cheerfulness, however; he dictated in his school, saying from time to time: 'Hasten; what do I know if I will live much longer, and if the Lord will not soon take me from your midst?' From these words, we did not doubt that he knew the moment of his death. He spent the night in thanksgiving. The next morning, he told us to write promptly what we had begun; then, according to what is practiced on such a day, we walked with the relics of the saints until the third hour. Then one of us said to him: 'Dear master, we still lack one chapter; would it bother you to ask you new questions?' 'No,' he replied. 'Take your pen, and write quickly'; which the disciple did.

"At the ninth hour, he instructed me to go and fetch all the priests of the monastery. When they had come, he distributed to them pepper, handkerchiefs, and incense that he had in a small box, begging them to remember him before God, and to celebrate masses for his intention: which all promised him. There was no one who did not weep when he announced that soon one would see him no more; but everyone rejoiced upon hearing him say: 'It is time that I return to Him who gave me being, by drawing me from nothingness. My days have been long: my Judge has foreseen and fixed their number. The moment of my freedom approaches. I desire to be freed from the bonds of the body, and to be reunited with Jesus Christ. Yes, my soul desires to see Jesus Christ its king in the splendor of his glory.' He added many other things for our edification.

"Wilberth, that one of his disciples of whom I spoke above, said to him in the evening: 'There is still one sentence that is not written.' 'You only have to write it,' he replied. His disciple having replied that it was done, he added: 'You have spoken well. Everything is finished. Support my head in your hands. I want to have the satisfaction of sitting opposite the oratory where I was accustomed to pray, in order to invoke my heavenly Father in this way.' Having placed himself on the floor of his cell, he said: 'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit'; after which he fell asleep peacefully in the Lord. All those who witnessed his death assure that they never saw more fervor in him than on this day..."

Ranulph Higden adds the following particulars regarding the death of the servant of God. "The swelling of his feet warning him that he was approaching his last hour, he received Extreme Unction, then the holy Viaticum, on the Tuesday before the Ascension; he then gave the kiss of peace to all his brothers, and conjured them to pray for him after his death. On the day of the feast of the Ascension, having lain down on a haircloth spread on the ground, he asked for the grace of the Holy Spirit... He continued to pray until his last breath."

He died in 735, at the age of seventy-two, on Wednesday evening, which was May 26, after the first Vespers of the Ascension. It is for this reason that several authors place his death on the feast of the Ascension, which began at first Vespers among the Saxons.

In some churches of England, Saint Bede was honored on May 26, although only a commemoration of him was made during the office of Saint Augustine. In other churches, his feast was celebrated on May 27, the day on which his name appears in the Roman Martyrology. In the constitution that John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, published for the feasts of his diocese, it is ordered that the office of the blessed Bede be said on March 13, the day of his death being occupied by the office of Saint Augustine. Certain Benedictine congregations long observed it on October 29, perhaps because of some translation. It is on this day that the Catholics of England honor this Saint, and that the priests of the same kingdom who live in foreign lands recite his office by virtue of a privilege granted to them by Benedict XIV in 1754. This privilege, according to the interpretation given to it in Rome, contains a precept, at least for the ecclesiastics and religious who are in England.

Alcuin says that the holiness of Bede was attested, after his death, by a voice from heaven, and that a sick person was suddenly healed by touching his relics. Saint Lull, Archbishop of Mainz, wrote to Cuthbert (the very one we mentioned above), who was then Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, to ask him for a copy of Bede's works. At the same time, he sent him a cloak for his use, with a silk vestment to cover the Saint's shrine. A silk vestment was a gift made at that time to qualified persons, not excluding kings.

Bede was buried at Saint Paul's in Jarrow, where there was a porch to the North that bore his name. In 1020, his relics were carried to Durham, where, having been enclosed in a wooden chest, they were placed in the s Durham Place where the relics of Bede were transferred in 1020. hrine of Saint Cuthbert. In 1155, Hugh, Bishop of Durham, placed them separately in a magnificent shrine enriched with gold, silver, and precious stones, which was looted during the destruction of the monasteries. The ministers of Henry VIII threw what remained of Bede's bones onto a dung heap. The monast Henri VIII King of England during whose reign miracles at the tomb ceased. ic sanctuary of Jarrow, toward which the dying gaze of Bede turned, still exists in part, if highly authorized archaeologists are to be believed! His memory has survived the vicissitudes of time there; an old oak chair is still shown that is claimed to have served him. It is the only material relic that remains of this great Saint. Speed says in his *Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine* that, at the time he was writing, one could see the tomb of the Venerable, made of marble, in the Lady Chapel, which was to the West of Durham Cathedral. Smith had its ruins engraved, which still exist today, as well as the altar of Saint Cuthbert and Saint Bede, based on the paintings of a window that was to the East. The monks of Glastonbury claimed to have the relics of our Saint; but they undoubtedly only had a portion of them.

According to Saint Boniface, Bede was the light of the British Church. Saint Lull, Alcuin, etc., give him great praise for his learning and his holiness. Lanfranc and several other writers call him the Doctor of the English, the father of English science.

In old prints, a water pitcher is given as a characteristic attribute to Saint Bede: the presence of this domestic vessel is not well explained: could it be to signify that Bede drew from all sources for the composition of his works?...

## WRITINGS OF SAINT BEDE.

One of the most significant of Bede's writings i s his *Ecclesiastical H Histoire ecclésiastique Major work by Bede, foundational to English medieval history. istory*. He wrote it in 731, at the request of Ceolwulf, King of the Northumbrians, to whom he dedicated it. This prince, as pious as he was learned, left the crown to his son Eadberht three years after Bede's death and went to become a monk at Lindisfarne, where he died in 740.

*The Ecclesiastical History of the English People*, for such is the exact title of this great work, has made Bede not only the father of English history, but the true founder of the history of the Middle Ages.

The most competent judges have recognized in him a chronicler as methodical as he was well-informed, a skillful and penetrating critic, invested, by the rigorous precision of his language as well as by the scrupulous accuracy of his narrative, with the right to have his testimony counted and weighed, even on facts of which he was not a contemporary.

The most skeptical reader could not leaf through the pages of Bede without remaining convinced of his sincerity, as well as his historical discernment; while the Christian, eager to know and admire the works of God in the history of souls, even more than in the history of peoples, will never have enough gratitude for the tireless worker who endowed us with this book, without rival among the historical works of Christianity, and who gave to England, to the historical race par excellence, the most beautiful monument of national history that any modern people has yet received from its fathers.

2° The *Lives of the First Five Abbots of Wearmouth*, namely: of Saint Benedict Biscop, of Saint Ceolfrid, of Eosterwine, of Sigfrid, and of Hwaetberht.

3° The other works of Bede are commentaries on Scripture, homilies or sermons, and various treatises on poetry, grammar, rhetoric, astronomy, music, the calendar, etc. The hymns and epigrams he composed are lost.

If one is at all versed in the reading of Bede's writings, one sees that he thought like the Roman Church on all points today controversial between Catholics and Protestants, such as prayer for the dead, the invocation of Saints, the veneration of relics and images, etc. He even attributes miracles to these practices. He shows that images are not at all forbidden by the Decalogue, and that God only forbade idols, since He ordered the raising of the bronze serpent, etc. *L. de Templo Salom.*, c. XIX, t. VIII, p. 40. His *Ecclesiastical History*, which is in everyone's hands, would alone suffice to justify him against the imputations of the Protestants. One can see what he says about prayer for the dead, hom. 1, t. V, *Anecdot. Morten.*, p. 239, etc.

There is in Bede's *book on the nature of things*, p. 46, *Op.*, t. II, p. 37, a particularity that deserves to be noted. It is said there that the world and the earth are round in shape.

Although Bede bears witness to the faith of the Church, the Protestants have not been able to refuse him a just tribute of praise. Melanchthon, *de Corrigendis studiis*, admits that he was singularly versed in the Greek and Latin languages, in mathematics, philosophy, and the knowledge of Holy Scripture. Tanner, p. 86, paints the following portrait of him: "He was a prodigy of learning, in a century where one had almost no tincture of letters, and we can never admire his erudition enough. Some mistakes may have escaped him, especially through excess of credulity; but if we examine the whole of his writings, we will agree that he is alone a library and a treasure of all the arts."

Bede's geography, even in the descriptions of foreign countries, is very accurate, although he had never traveled; which shows that he worked from good memoirs. He speaks, in the preface to his history, of the sources from which he had drawn.

Here are the terms in which M. de Montalembert appreciates the literary and scientific talent of Bede:

"All the peoples of Catholic Europe envied England such a great doctor, the first offspring of the barbarian races to have conquered a place among the doctors of the Church. The name of Bede, after having been one of the greatest and most popular in Christendom, remains invested with an ineffaceable notoriety. He is the type of the studious and learned life which, in the eyes of many, summarizes the whole life of the monks. He was the most learned man, the greatest intellectual figure of his country and his century... During his lifetime, and for long centuries after his death, it was not only the great historian that one admired as we admire him ourselves, it was also and above all the master who embraces in his vast erudition everything that was studied and everything that was known in the world. The encyclopedic character of his genius is what most amazed his contemporaries and does not fail to excite the surprise of our own...

"He was for England what Cassiodorus had been for Italy or Saint Isidore for Spain. But he had, more than these two precursors, an action and a resonance outside his country that perhaps no one has surpassed. In his martyrology, his historical summaries, and his biographies of saints, he added the demonstration of the government of God through facts and men to the theoretical exposition of the teachings of the faith.

"But, far from limiting himself to theology, he wrote with success on astronomy and meteorology, physics and music, philosophy and geography, arithmetic and rhetoric, grammar and versification, without omitting medicine and without disdaining to descend to spelling and numeration. All these treatises almost always have the form of abridgments or catechisms adapted to the education of his monastic disciples.

"Like all the scholars and writers of the Christian ages, he shows a certain complacency in displaying his familiarity with the classical authors. He has left us, or at least is attributed to him, collections of sentences drawn from Plato, Seneca, and especially Cicero, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. He often cites Ovid and Lucan, Statius and even Lucretius, and more often still Virgil, whose verses he inserts even into the accounts of the miracles of his Northumbrian saints."

The best, the most complete edition of Bede's works is that of M. Migne, volumes of the Latin *Patrologia* XC to XCVI. It is made from the three main ones that preceded it, that of Cologne, that of Smith, and that of Doctor Giles (12 vol. in-8, collated with the manuscripts; London 1843-1844.) It is said that one will find, for the first time, in the *Spicilegium Solesmense* of Cardinal Pitra, the true commentaries of Bede on the Psalter and on Saint Paul.

A.A. SS.; Godascará; de Montalembert, *Moines d'Occident*.