Happy Bede's Day

25 May is the day the Anglican Church commemorates the Venerable Bede, patron saint of English historians. Here is the collect for the day:

God our maker,
whose Son Jesus Christ gave to your servant Bede
grace to drink in with joy
the word that leads us to know you and to love you:
in your goodness
grant that we also may come at length to you,
the source of all wisdom,
and stand before your face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Celebrating Bede's Day last year, Michelle of Heavenfield, posted an alternative collect and some of Bede's prayers in her blog, Selah.

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI dedicated one of his audiences to Bede. The Vatican has posted an official text of what he said.

The Orthodox Church celebrates Bede on 27 May. Donna Farley, who is a member of that communion, is also promoting Bede on his day this year on Haliwerfolc, one of her many blogs.

Youtube has a brief clip discussing Bede from Channel 4's Christianity: A History. You'll have to watch it on Youtube's site because embedding is disabled.(public domain picture from the Nuremberg Chronicle via wikicommons).

Lindisfarne

The island of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island as it is also known, is a tidal island on the East coast of England near the Scottish-English border.


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A Youtube slideshow of photos from Lindisfarne, with Era's Avemano as soundtrack:



At the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria, St. Aidan came from Iona to build a monastery at Lindisfarne to serve as a basis for the evangelisation of Oswald's pagan subjects. Bede's account of Aidan's work in Lindisfarne and Northumbria can be seen in Book III of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Chapter III describes Lindisfarne and tells how Aidan came there, Chapters V and VI tell us about Aidan's way of life and his relationship with King Oswald. Chapters XIV - XVII give some more anecdotes about Aidan and tell us about his death on 31 August 651.

You can read the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on St. Aidan, an Anglican account, and how he is remembered on Lindisfarne itself.



Another saint closely linked to Lindisfarne is St. Cuthbert. As a young man at the time of Aidan's death, Cuthbert is said to have seen a vision of Aidan's soul being taken up to heaven by angels and decided to enter a monastery, first at Melrose Abbey, and then at Lindisfarne. Cuthbert died in 687. Eleven years after his death his grave was opened and his body was found to be still undecayed. This led Bede to write a Life of Cuthbert.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has an article on Cuthbert, an Anglican view can be read here, and the view from Lindisfarne here. A triptych by Ernest Duez showing episodes from Cuthbert's life is now in the Musee d'Orsay. Haliwerfolc is a blog devoted to St. Cuthbert.


Bede's "Life of Cuthbert" is dedicated to Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, who was the scribe and illustrator for Lindisfarne's most famous product, the Lindisfarne Gospels -- or so a note at the end of the gospels says, though not everyone believes it. The Lindisfarne gospels are now in the British Library, which has information on them online with links to more detailed information and highlights from the book. For more information see this course on the Lindisfarne Gospels. Much later, in 970, Aldred wrote an interlinear translation of the Gospels into Old English. This article discusses Aldred's translation.

The Lindisfarne Gospels' current location in the British Library in London has been a source of some controversy, and a deal has now been worked out whereby the Gospels will now spend some time in their homeland of Northumbria. Here are reports on this issue from the BBC and The Independent.

It was in 793 that the Lindisfarne suffered the first in a series of Viking raids. Eventually, the monks decided their situation on Lindisfarne was untenable and they moved to the mainland, taking the body of St. Cuthbert with them. Eventually his body ended up in Durham cathedral, where it it still is today. (all illustrations in the public domain from wiki commons, unless otherwise noted)

The Codex Amiatinus

In the life of Ceolfrith in his Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Bede says of Ceolfrith:

For, among other arrangements which he found it necessary to make, during his long government of the monastery, he built several oratories increased the number of vessels of the church and altar and the vestments of every kind; and the library of both monasteries, which Abbot Benedict had so actively begun under his equally zealous care became doubled in extent For he added three Pandects of a new translation to that of the old translation which he had brought from Rome; one of them, returning to Rome in his old age, he took with him as a gift; the other two he left to the two monasteries.

One of these bibles Ceolfrith took to Rome still survives as the Codex Amiatinus, which ended up in a monastery (it is not known quite how) on Mount Amiata (hence the name). It stayed there for the best part of a thousand years until the monastery was closed in 1780, when the Codex Amiatinus was taken to the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, where it remains today. This article gives more details about the history of the Codex, including the story of how it was discovered to be one of Ceolfrith's Bibles.

A replica of the Codex was given in to the city of Sunderland in 2004 to commemorate the city's adoption of Benedict Biscop, the founder of the monaster of Wearmouth and Jarrow, as its patron saint. A 2001 congress in Florence called "The City and the Book" included two papers on the Codex Amiatinus, one, with illustrations, from the Director of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, and the other from Lucia Castaldi, arguing, amongst others, for Bede's involvement in the production of the Codex, a view which Michelle of Heavenfield firmly rejects in this blog entry.



This page shows the handwriting in the Codex Amiatinus and another handwritten page is discussed here.

To put the Codex into a wider context, this page comes from a series on insular manuscripts, including the Book of Durrow, which I blogged on earlier. (public domain images from wiki commons)

On January 12 Benedict Biscop is commemorated by the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Benedict Biscop was the founder of the dual monastery of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, where Bede lived, studied, and wrote. The monastery's church survived Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and became a parish church. (picture domain manuscript illustration from wikipedia commons)

As well as making passing reference to Benedict Biscop in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede wrote some biographical notes on Benedict Biscop in his Lives of the Abbots of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, and described the founding of the monastery as follows:

He [Benedict Biscop]came to the court of Egfrid, king of Northumberland, and gave an account of all that he had done since in youth he had left his country. He made no secret of his zeal for religion, and showed what ecclesiastical or monastic instructions he had received at Rome and elsewhere. He displayed the holy volumes and relics of Christ's blessed Apostles and martyrs, which he had brought, and found such favour in the eyes of the king, that he forthwith gave him seventy hides of land out of his own estates, and ordered a monastery to be built thereon for the first pastor of his church. This was done, as I said before, at the mouth of the river Were, on the left bank, in the 674th year of our Lord's incarnation, in the second indiction, and in the fourth year of King Egfrid's reign.

After the interval of a year, Benedict crossed the sea into Gaul, and no sooner asked than he obtained and carried back with him some masons to build him a church in the Roman style, which he had always admired. So much zeal did he show from his love to Saint Peter, in whose honour he was building it, that within a year from the time of laying the foundation, you might have seen the roof on and the solemnity of the mass celebrated therein. When the work was drawing to completion, he sent messengers to Gaul to fetch makers of glass, (more properly artificers,) who were at this time unknown in Britain, that they might glaze the windows of his church, with the cloisters and dining-rooms. This was done, and they came, and not only finished the work required, but taught the English nation their handicraft, which was well adapted for enclosing the lanterns of the church, and for the vessels required for various uses. All other things necessary for the service of the church and the altar, the sacred vessels, and the vestments, because they could not be procured in England, he took especial care to buy and bring home from foreign parts.

Some decorations and muniments there were which could not be procured even in Gaul, and these the pious founder determined to fetch from Rome; for which purpose, after he had formed the rule for his monastery, be made his fourth voyage to Rome, and returned loaded with more abundant spiritual merchandise than before In the first place, he brought back a large quantity of books of all kinds; secondly, a great number of relics of Christ's Apostles and martyrs, all likely to bring a blessing on many an English church; thirdly, he introduced the Roman mode of chanting, singing, and ministering in the church, by obtaining permission from Pope Agatho to take back with him John, the archchanter of the church t of St. Peter, and abbot of the monastery of St. Martin to teach the English. This John, when he arrived in England, not only communicated instruction by teaching personally, but left behind him numerous writings, which are still preserved in the library of the same monastery. In the fourth place, Benedict brought with him a thing by no means to be despised, namely, a letter of privilege from Pope Agatho, which he had procured, not only with the consent, but by the request and exhortation, of King Egfrid, and by which the monastery was rendered safe and secure for ever from foreign invasion. Fifthly, he brought with him pictures of sacred representations, to adorn the church of St. Peter, which he had built; namely, a likeness of the Virgin Mary and of the twelve Apostles, with which he intended to adorn the central nave, on boarding placed from one wall to the other; also some figures from ecclesiastical history for the south wall, and others from the Revelation of St. John for the north wall; so that every one who entered the church, even if they could not read, wherever they turned their eyes, might have before them the amiable countenance of Christ and his saints, though it were but in a picture, and with watchful minds might revolve on the benefits of our Lord's incarnation, and having before their eyes the perils of the last judgment, might examine their hearts the more strictly on that account.

Sutton Hoo

The Oxford DNB has put up the Sutton Hoo ship burial as one of its biographies for the week (available till Thursday). An archaeological dig at Sutton Hoo in the 1930s found a ship burial with splendid grave goods from the early 7th century. (Steven J. Plunkett's picture of model of ship burial used under GNU Free Documentation Licence.)



Location of Sutton Hoo (the site itself is quite visible if you zoom in):

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The Sutton Hoo Society's website has a (not very) interactive map of the site, a good picture gallery and some archaeological information. The goods found were donated to the British Museum by the owner of the land at the time of the excavation, Mrs Edith May Pretty. The National Trust now owns the site and has information for visitors.

The most likely candidate for who was buried at Sutton Hoo is Rædwald, who was king of East Anglia and bretwald (high king of England) and died some time between 616 and 627. Bede has some passing references to Rædwald ( II.12 and 11.15), but nothing that would have led one to suspect the magnificence of this discovery. However, since Rædwald was a king who accepted Christianity and then changed his mind, and a king of East Anglia at that (Bede's focus is on Augustine's first mission to Kent and then on Northumbria), Bede would not have much to say about him. Rædwald was one of the Wuffing dynasty, and Dr. Sam Newton's site on the Wuffings naturally discusses Sutton Hoo in some detail.

The Venerable Bede

The Venerable Bede (672/3 - 735) was given to the monastery of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow by his parents as an oblate when he was seven years old. Apart from short trips he spent the rest of his life in the monastery. In a brief note about himself appended to his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", Bede said

... I was given, by the care of kinsmen, at seven years of age, to be educated by the most reverend Abbot Benedict, and afterwards by Ceolfrid, and spending all the remaining time of my life a dweller in that monastery, I wholly applied myself to the study of Scripture; and amidst the observance of monastic rule, and the daily charge of singing in the church, I always took delight in learning, or teaching, or writing. (Sellar's revision of J. A. Giles translation)(public domain picture from wikicommons of leaf from 8th century manuscript of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", now in St. Petersburg)

Despite its rather dry title, Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" is probably his best-known and most-read work today. Bede also wrote biblical commentaries, biographies, hagiographies, hymns, and works on the Latin language and the calendar, and when he died he was working on a translation of John's Gospel into Old English. Although since Dionysius Exiguus fixed the date of Jesus's birth (and got it wrong!) and used it in tables for calculating the date of Easter each year, Bede was the first historian to use the year of Jesus's conception and birth as a fixed point for dating historical events. In effect, then, he invented the BC and AD system we use today.

Anglican and Catholic biographies of Bede.

The Medieval English Sourcebook has translations of some of Bede's works:
Ecclesiastical History of the English People, probably translated by L. C. Jane,
The Life of Saint Cuthbert, translated by J. A. Giles,
The Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, also translated by J. A. Giles.

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has another translation of the "Ecclesiastical History of the English People".

The Online Library of Liberty has Bede's complete works in J. A. Giles's edition, some in both Latin and English, others only in Latin.

BBC Radio 4's discussion programme "In Our Time" devoted a programme to Bede (although you can still listen to the programme, many of the links on the research page are broken).

There is a museum in Jarrow about Anglo-Saxon Northumbria called Bede's World. I hesitate to say Michelle of Heavenfield's blog is about Bede, because it covers so much more about the people and places Bede wrote about, but anyway, it is well worth exploring.


James Doyle Penrose exhibited this painting titled "The Venerable Bede Translates John" at London's Royal Academy in 1902 but I have not been able to discover where it is now. For other artists' portrayals of Bede, search for Bede in this list of Anglo-Saxon themed paintings from Cambridge University.(public domain picture from about.com's Medieval and Renaissance History Portrait Gallery)


The Youtube clip below has a church choir singing one of Bede's hymns.