If I were asked which historian I would love to meet apart from the Biblical authors, I would say, without hesitation, Bede (c. 673–735).
An English Benedictine monk and scholar, Bede is chiefly known for his Church History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum), a history of England from the Roman occupation to 731, the year that it was completed. In the Middle Ages, though, Bede was equally known for his 20 or so commentaries on various books of the Bible and a work on the Lord’s Prayer. In all, Bede wrote about 40 works, nearly all of which are extant. Regretfully, one that we do not have is his translation of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon.
Bede’s life
Bede lived through momentous times: the Byzantine empire and the Germanic kingdoms in western Europe were threatened by a vast pincer movement of the Muslim advance into the European continent. Two decisive battles saved Europe from Muslim conquest: in 718, when Bede was writing commentaries on the Scriptures, the Muslims were defeated before the walls of Constantinople; and in 732, but three years before his death, the Muslim army was defeated at Tours in France.
Despite such world-shaking events that were going on in his lifetime, his own life was relatively uneventful. He was born near Wearmouth, in northern Northumbria (now Sunderland, England), but we do not know the exact place nor the names of his parents, though he does indicate that he came from ‘noble stock’. His parents had to have been Christians, but his grandparents were probably Anglo-Saxon pagans.
When he reached the age of seven, his parents took him to the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow to be raised as a monk – a common practice in the early Middle Ages. Remaining for the rest of his life in this monastery, he was ordained a deacon in 692/693, when he was 19, and later became a priest around 703, when he was in his 30th year.
He probably never went further south than York and no further north than Lindisfarne. Bede never became an abbot, let alone bishop. He never met any rulers of state. ‘Even his holiness,’ in the words of the medievalist David Knowles, was ‘unobtrusive. He wrote of the wonders worked by others, but none are recorded of him. He described the conversion of England, but he probably never preached to anyone outside his monastery’.
Bede as a scholar
The breadth of Bede’s learning reveals the extensive library available to him and the level of culture achieved in England in his time. He was obviously fluent in Latin as well as his native Anglo-Saxon. And he also appears to have known Greek, which is quite remarkable, since knowledge of this language had been lost throughout most of western Europe. He himself has given us a good description of his literary studies: ‘I ever found it sweet to learn, or to teach, or to write.’
He had little if any help in these pursuits, though. In the prologue to his commentary on Luke, Bede makes clear the difficulties under which he worked. He lacked the assistance of amanuenses and librarians, and his studies had to be fitted into the hours left over after he completed his many monastic chores. As he said: ‘I am my own secretary, I make my own notes. I am my own librarian.’
It is thus amazing that 100 years after the mission of Augustine of Canterbury to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons, the Anglo-Saxon church contained a man who was the most learned scholar in Western Europe. In his Paradiso, Dante placed Bede among the 12 most learned men ‘through whom the word of God was mediated in wisdom to the world’.
Next month, we shall look at Bede as a model historian.
