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Bede

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500 and
before (including Roman Britain); Historians, chroniclers and history books

   Depiction of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
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   Depiction of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.

   Bede ( IPA: [/biːd/]), also Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, or (from
   Latin) Beda ( IPA: [/beda/]), (ca. 672 or 673 – May 27, 735), was a
   monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Wearmouth, today
   part of Sunderland, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in
   modern Jarrow, Great Britain (see Wearmouth-Jarrow). Bede became known
   as Venerable Bede soon after his death, but this was not linked to
   consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, his
   title is believed to come from a mistranslation of the Latin
   inscription on his tomb in Durham Cathedral, intended to be here lie
   the venerable bones of Bede, but wrongly interpreted as here lie the
   bones of the Venerable Bede. His scholarship and importance to
   Catholicism were recognised in 1899 when he was declared a Doctor of
   the Church as St Bede The Venerable.

   He is well known as an author and scholar, whose best-known work,
   Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of
   the English People) gained him the title "The father of English
   history".

   He is the only Englishman in Dante's Paradise ( Paradiso' X.130),
   mentioned among theologians and doctors of the church in the same canto
   as Isidore of Seville and the Scot Richard of St. Victor. He is also
   the only English Doctor of the Church.
   Bede's tomb in Durham Cathedral.
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   Bede's tomb in Durham Cathedral.

Life

   Almost all that is known of Bede's life is contained in a notice added
   by himself when he was 59 to his Historia (v.24), which states that he
   was placed in the monastery at Wearmouth at the age of seven, that he
   became deacon in his nineteenth year, and priest in his thirtieth,
   remaining a priest for the rest of his life. He implies that he
   finished the Historia at the age of 59, and since the work was finished
   around 731, he must have been born in 672/3. He died on Wednesday 25th
   May 735. It is not clear whether he was of noble birth. He was trained
   by the abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid, and probably accompanied
   the latter to Wearmouth's sister monastery of Jarrow in 682. There he
   spent his life, prominent activities evidently being teaching and
   writing. There he also died and was buried, but his bones were, towards
   the beginning of the eleventh century, removed to Durham Cathedral.

Work

   His works show that he had at his command all the learning of his time.
   It was thought that the library at Wearmouth-Jarrow was between 300-500
   books, making it one of the largest and most extensive in England. It
   is clear that Biscop made strenuous efforts to collect books during his
   extensive travels.

   Bede's writings are classed as scientific, historical and theological,
   reflecting the range of his writings from music and metrics to
   Scripture commentaries. He was proficient in patristic literature, and
   quotes Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace and other
   classical writers, but with some disapproval. He knew some Greek, but
   no Hebrew. His Latin is generally clear and without affectation, and he
   was a skillful story-teller. However, his style can be considerably
   more obscure in his Biblical commentaries.

   Bede practiced the allegorical method of interpretation, and was by
   modern standards credulous concerning the miraculous; but in most
   things his good sense is conspicuous and his kindly and broad
   sympathies, his love of truth and fairness, his unfeigned piety and his
   devotion to the service of others combine to make him an exceedingly
   attractive character.
   Saxon chancel of the monastic church of St. Paul, Jarrow, with (right)
   a modern statue of Bede
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   Saxon chancel of the monastic church of St. Paul, Jarrow, with (right)
   a modern statue of Bede

Historia Ecclesiastica

   The most important and best known of his works is the Historia
   ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, giving in five books and 400 pages the
   history of England, ecclesiastical and political, from the time of
   Caesar to the date of its completion (731). The first twenty-one
   chapters, treating of the period before the mission of Augustine of
   Canterbury, are compiled from earlier writers such as Orosius, Gildas,
   Prosper of Aquitaine, the letters of Pope Gregory I and others, with
   the insertion of legends and traditions.

   After 596, documentary sources, which Bede took pains to obtain
   throughout England and from Rome, are used, as well as oral testimony,
   which he employed with critical consideration of its value. He cited
   his references and was very concerned about the sources of all of his
   sources, which created an important historical chain.

   Bede's use of something similar to the anno Domini era, created by the
   monk Dionysius Exiguus in 525, throughout Historia Ecclesiastica was
   very influential in causing that era to be adopted thereafter in
   Western Europe. Specifically, he used anno ab incarnatione Domini (in
   the year from the incarnation of the Lord) or anno incarnationis
   dominicae (in the year of the incarnation of the lord). He never
   abbreviated the term like the modern AD. Unlike the modern assumption
   that anno Domini was from the birth of Christ, Bede explicitly refers
   to his incarnation or conception, traditionally on March 25. Within
   this work, he was also the first writer to use a term similar to the
   English before Christ. In book I chapter 2 he used ante incarnationis
   dominicae tempus (before the time of the incarnation of the lord).
   However, the latter was not very influential—only this isolated use was
   repeated by other writers during the rest of the Middle Ages. The first
   extensive use of 'BC' (hundreds of times) occurred in Fasciculus
   Temporum by Werner Rolevinck in 1474, alongside years of the world
   (anno mundi).

Other historical and theological works

   Bede lists his works in an autobiographical note at the end of his
   Ecclesiastical History. He clearly considered his commentaries on many
   books of the Old and New Testaments as important; they come first on
   this list and dominate it in sheer number. These commentaries reflect
   the biblical focus of monastic life. "I spent all my life," he wrote,
   "in this monastery, applying myself entirely to the study of
   Scriptures." (Bede, Hist. eccl., 5. 24).

   His other historical works included lives of the abbots of Wearmouth
   and Jarrow, as well as lives in verse and prose of Saint Cuthbert of
   Lindisfarne. In his Letter on the Death of Bede, Cuthbert of Jarrow
   describes Bede as still writing on his deathbed, working on a
   translation into Old English of the Gospel of John and on Isidore of
   Seville's On the Nature of Things. (McClure and Collins, p. 301).
   "The Venerable Bede Translates John" by J. D. Penrose
   "The Venerable Bede Translates John" by J. D. Penrose

Scientific writings

   The noted historian of science, George Sarton, called the eighth
   century "The Age of Bede;" clearly Bede must be considered as an
   important scientific figure. He wrote several major works: a work On
   the Nature of Things, modeled in part after the work of the same title
   by Isidore of Seville; a work On Time, providing an introduction to the
   principles of Easter computus; and a longer work on the same subject;
   On the Reckoning of Time, which became the cornerstone of clerical
   scientific education during the so-called Carolingian renaissance of
   the ninth century. He also wrote several shorter letters and essays
   discussing specific aspects of computus and a treatise on grammar and
   on figures of speech for his pupils.

   The Reckoning of Time included an introduction to the traditional
   ancient and medieval view of the cosmos, including an explanation of
   how the spherical earth influenced the changing length of daylight, of
   how the seasonal motion of the Sun and Moon influenced the changing
   appearance of the New Moon at evening twilight, and a quantitative
   relation between the changes of the Tides at a given place and the
   daily motion of the moon. (Wallis 2004, pp. 82-85, 307-312). Since the
   focus of his book was calculation, Bede gave instructions for computing
   the date of Easter and the related time of the Easter Full Moon, for
   calculating the motion of the Sun and Moon through the zodiac, and for
   many other calculations related to the calendar.

   For calendric purposes, Bede made a new calculation of the age of the
   world since the Creation. Due to his innovations in computing the age
   of the world, he was accused of heresy at the table of Bishop Wilfred,
   his chronology being contrary to accepted calculations. Once informed
   of the accusations of these "lewd rustics," Bede refuted them in his
   Letter to Plegwin (Wallis 2004, pp. xxx, 405-415).

   His works were so influential that late in the ninth century Notker the
   Stammerer, a monk of the Monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, wrote
   that "God, the orderer of natures, who raised the Sun from the East on
   the fourth day of Creation, in the sixth day of the world has made Bede
   rise from the West as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth" (Wallis
   2004, p. lxxxv).

Vernacular poetry

   According to his disciple Cuthbert, Bede was also doctus in nostris
   carminibus ("learned in our song"). Cuthbert's letter on Bede's death,
   the Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, moreover, commonly is understood
   to indicate that Bede also composed a five line vernacular poem known
   to modern scholars as Bede’s Death Song (text and translation Colgrave
   and Mynors 1969):

          And he used to repeat that sentence from St. Paul “It is a
          fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and
          many other verses of Scripture, urging us thereby to awake from
          the slumber of the soul by thinking in good time of our last
          hour. And in our own language,—for he was familiar with English
          poetry,—speaking of the soul’s dread departure from the body:

   Facing that enforced journey, no man can be

    More prudent than he has good call to be,
     If he consider, before his going hence,
   What for his spirit of good hap or of evil
   After his day of death shall be determined.
                                               Fore ðæm nedfere nænig wiorðe

                                              ðonc snottora ðon him ðearf siæ
                                                to ymbhycgenne ær his hinionge
                                              hwæt his gastæ godes oððe yfles
                                              æfter deað dæge doemed wiorðe.

   The Death of St. Bede
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   The Death of St. Bede

   As Opland notes, however, it is not entirely clear that Cuthbert is
   attributing this text to Bede: most manuscripts of the letter do not
   use a finite verb to describe Bede’s presentation of the song, and the
   theme was relatively common in Old English and Anglo-Latin literature.
   The fact that Cuthbert’s description places the performance of the Old
   English poem in the context of a series of quoted passages from Sacred
   Scripture, indeed, might be taken as evidence simply that Bede also
   cited analogous vernacular texts (Opland 1980, 140-141). On the other
   hand, the inclusion of the Old English text of the poem in Cuthbert’s
   Latin letter, the observation that Bede “was learned in our song,” and
   the fact that Bede composed a Latin poem on the same subject all seem
   to suggest that his connection to the vernacular poem was stronger than
   mere quotation. By citing the poem directly, Cuthbert seems to be
   implying that its specific wording was in some way important, either as
   a vernacular poem endorsed by a scholar who generally appears to have
   frowned upon secular entertainment (McCready 1994, esp. 14-19) or as a
   direct quotation of Bede’s final original composition (Opland 1980,
   140-141, for a discussion of some of the implications of this passage).

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