Bede the scholar

By Peter Darby

Distilling a decade of research by leading experts on the Venerable Bede, Bede the scholar investigates the Northumbrian monk’s place within the wider intellectual developments of the early medieval world. Demonstrating the centrality of the Bible to his scholarship, chapters focus on Bede’s engagement with scriptural languages, his knowledge and use of earlier works of Latin literature, and a pastoral commitment to teaching and preaching. The book breaks new ground for our understanding of Bede’s self image by investigating his famous Ecclesiastical history of the English people alongside lesser-known works such as the Martyrology, the commentary On Genesis, and the chapter headings he developed for different parts of the Vulgate Bible. Contributors highlight the importance of appreciating Bede’s work within its local setting: the kingdom of Northumbria and the monastery of Wearmouth, whose founders, Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith, inspired Bede in various ways. The monastery provided an environment in which Bede could flourish, and where he contributed to an intellectual enterprise which also generated the Codex Amiatinus, the earliest one-volume Vulgate to survive fully intact.

Combining rigorous scholarly research with a celebration of the depth and complexity of Bede’s work, Bede the scholar deepens our understanding of the scholarly programme undertaken by one of the most important intellectual figures of the early middle ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526153197

Book preview

Bede the scholar

Bede the scholar

Edited by

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2023

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 5320 3 hardback

First published 2023

Cover image: Detail from Alan Younger’s ‘Bede Window’ in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral (photo credit: Harry Mawdsley).

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

In memory of Nicholas Brooks (1941–2014) and Jennifer O’Reilly (1943–2016)

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

List of contributors

Foreword

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

1The autobiographical statement of Bede the scholar in Ecclesiastical history 5:24

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

2Co-heirs of Christ’s glory: deification in Bede

Arthur Holder

3Bede’s biblical capitula and the oriented reading of Scripture at Wearmouth-Jarrow

Celia Chazelle

4Bede and the Gospel of John: theology, preaching, and the Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum

Susan Cremin

5Bede’s perfecti and the Gospel of Matthew

Emily Quigley

6Bede, Ceolfrith, and Cassiodorus: biblical scholarship at Wearmouth and Jarrow

Alan T. Thacker

7Bede and the Hebrew alphabets

Damian Fleming

8Biblical-textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis

John J. Gallagher

9Bede and ‘the nature of things’

Eoghan Ahern

10Revisiting Bede’s miracles: earth, water, and healing in the Ecclesiastical history, commentary On Genesis, and prose Life of Cuthbert

Sharon M. Rowley

11Bede’s Martyrology: a resource and spiritual lesson

Paul C. Hilliard

Bibliography

Index

Figures

Figure 3.1Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Amiatino 1, fols 960v–961r: Codex Amiatinus, capitula for 2 Corinthians, opening of 2 Corinthians. Su concessione del MiBACT. E’vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.

Figure 3.2Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Amiatino 1, fol. 852r: Codex Amiatinus, closing of Gospel of Luke capitula, opening of Gospel of Luke. Su concessione del MiBACT. E’vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.

Figure 7.1St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex Sangallensis 876, pp. 278–80: De inventione, lists of alphabets including Hebrew. Reproduced by kind permission of the Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen.

Tables

Table 3.1Acts of the Apostles, capitula

Table 3.2Canticle of Canticles, rubrics

Table 3.3Bede, Canticle of Canticles, capitula (trans. Holder, with minor emendation)

List of contributors

Eoghan Ahern, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool

Celia Chazelle, Department of History, The College of New Jersey

Susan Cremin, Independent Scholar, Cork

Peter Darby, Department of History, University of Nottingham

Damian Fleming, Department of English and Linguistics, Purdue University Fort Wayne

John J. Gallagher, School of English, University of St Andrews

Paul C. Hilliard, Department of Church History, University of St Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary

Arthur Holder, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California

Máirín MacCarron, School of English and Digital Humanities, University College Cork

Emily Quigley, Department of History, University of Nottingham

Sharon M. Rowley, Department of English, Christopher Newport University

Alan T. Thacker, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Foreword

This book has its genesis in the vibrant community of Bede scholars who gathered for the International Medieval Congress in Leeds over a decade from 2011. The ‘Leeds Bede’ sessions were always popular; rooms were filled, and annual requests were made for larger spaces as the audience increased and the sessions grew in number. More than sixty participants have contributed over the years, with many coming long distances to share new work and ideas with a welcoming group of critical friends. A key feature of the Leeds Bede sessions was the many papers delivered by young scholars new to the discipline, often giving their first conference presentation, speaking alongside established academics with many years of experience of such events. This mixing of expertise and equality of opportunity that was a founding tenet of the group has been central to the dynamism of Bede Studies in recent years, and to the creation of a friendly and open community of scholars who keep finding out new things about the Northumbrian monk and his work.

This combination of scholars, established and new, is reflected in this collection of essays, expertly edited by Máirín MacCarron and Peter Darby who have been the mainstays of the Leeds Bede community. The book is not intended as a résumé of those sessions but has evolved to form a focused set of chapters on Bede the scholar. The theme is carefully chosen, reflecting as it does the way that Bede worked, and the resonance that his writing has with modern modes of study. Bede’s scholarship is famously diverse, and he was acknowledged as an expert commentator throughout the Middle Ages on biblical and patristic exegesis, on the natural world, on chronology and computus, among many other genres. He was also a teacher and a poet, using the Old English vernacular as well as Latin to instruct others, demonstrate his learning, and express his faith. Close study of the Bible defined all aspects of Bede’s scholarship and is, thus, central to the chapters in this collection which are characterised by the scrutiny of texts and their connections, of manuscripts, and of the particularities of Bede’s environment at Wearmouth-Jarrow in the early eighth century, including its scriptorium and famous library. This book stands as a milestone in the journey of Bedan studies, as testimony to the ‘Leeds Bede’ community, and to the continuing vibrance and resolutely international character of early medieval scholarship today.

Jo Story

Leicester, 2022

Acknowledgements

We began working on Bede the scholar in autumn 2019 and are most grateful to everybody involved in the production of this book for their resoluteness during the trying circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sincere thanks to our contributors for allowing us to publish their research, and to the staff at Manchester University Press for their support throughout the editorial process, especially Meredith Carroll, Alun Richards, Deborah Smith, Jen Mellor, Katie Evans, and Laura Swift. We would also like to thank Erin Wiegand and Newgen Publishing UK for their work on our book. Individual chapters, the introduction, and the book as a whole benefitted enormously from the feedback provided by the anonymous reviewers arranged by the press, and we are grateful for their attention to detail and critical engagement. Thanks also to Terence O’Reilly for his support throughout the editorial process and for offering insightful feedback on Chapter 1.

We wish to acknowledge the organisations that have supported this project financially, especially the School of Humanities at the University of Nottingham which funded subvention and copyright permission payments; special thanks are due to Lorna Collison for administering these. We would also like to thank the National University of Ireland for awarding a grant towards scholarly publication in support of the production of this book. We appreciate the role played by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership and the Irish Research Council in funding research published in this volume. Many thanks to Eugenia Antonucci and Prisca Brülisauer for facilitating the publication of our figures, which are reproduced in this book by kind permission of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence and the Stiftsbibliothek in St Gall. Thanks also to Harry Mawdsley for supplying the photograph for the cover image.

We would like to express our gratitude to all participants in the Leeds ‘Age of Bede’ sessions, whether they presented papers, chaired sessions, joined our social events, or attended as audience members. We especially want to thank: James Palmer, Nick Higham, Nicholas Sparks, Chris Grocock, Conor O’Brien, Julia Barrow, Andreas Lemke, Ben Pohl, Eoghan Ahern, Jenny Coughlan, Sarah Foot, Susan Cremin, Sarah McCann, Martin Ryan, Sharon Rowley, Christopher Heath, Diarmuid Scully, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Philipp Nothaft, Immo Warntjes, Masako Ohashi, Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Carolyn Twomey, Jane Hawkes, Meg Boulton, Morn Capper, Carol Farr, Tom Rochester, Elva Johnston, Paul Hilliard, Barbara Yorke, Ian Wood, Phil Booth, Emma Vosper, James Siemens, Rebecca Lawton, Richard Shaw, Katy Cubitt, Joyce Hill, Damian Fleming, John Gallagher, Rory Naismith, Sihong Lin, Francesca Tinti, Elizabeth Mullins, Jason O’Rorke, Ali Bonner, Damian Bracken, Clare Stancliffe, Tomás Ó Carragáin, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Celia Chazelle, Sian Foster, Simon Loseby, Arthur Holder, Stephen Harris, and David O’Mahony. Faith Wallis was instrumental in getting the sessions off the ground in 2011 and continued to support the strand with her time and energy thereafter. Special thanks are due to Alan Thacker who attended every single year and was always willing to speak or moderate. We would also like to thank Jo Story for supporting the Leeds sessions from the very beginning, for being instrumental in developing their collegial atmosphere, and for writing the foreword to this book. Bede the scholar is dedicated to our doctoral supervisors, Nicholas Brooks (Peter) and Jennifer O’Reilly (Máirín), in recognition of their pioneering work on the Age of Bede and generous support for other scholars, especially students and those at the beginning of their careers.

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

July 2022

Abbreviations

Introduction

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

Bede the scholar seeks to build upon landmark publications in the field of Bede Studies, especially the 1976 collection Famulus Christi, which represented state-of-the-art scholarship at the time of its writing.¹ The volume’s editor, Gerald Bonner, acknowledged a debt to an earlier volume by A. Hamilton Thompson, Bede: his life, times and writings, which was published in 1935 and contains a great many erudite essays, some of which are still regarded as essential reading.² Perhaps the most important point of separation between those two collections was the early showcasing in Famulus Christi of the approach, which has come to define modern scholarship on Bede’s works, whereby the various different writings are regarded as inherently connected. This is most clearly articulated in Roger Ray’s essay ‘Bede, the exegete as historian’, but it can also be detected in other studies, not least Paul Meyvaert’s ‘Bede the scholar’, the essay with which the present volume shares its title.³ In 1976, Meyvaert posed three questions to his readers which remain essential to this day: ‘How sharp and shrewd and critical a mind did Bede have? How creative and original was he? In what fields do this sharpness and creativity best manifest themselves?’⁴ Meyvaert’s essay was ahead of its time in that it signalled many of the questions that came to lie at the heart of Bede Studies in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the decades since there have been major developments in our understanding of Bede’s thought and much greater appreciation of his shrewdness and critical acumen. For example, scholars like Jennifer O’Reilly and Alan Thacker, building on the aforementioned essay by Roger Ray, have shown that reading Bede’s Ecclesiastical history alongside his exegesis transforms our understanding of the aims and intentions of his most famous work.⁵ These new insights have been greatly assisted by the publication of high-quality critical editions of almost all of Bede’s writings in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, along with accessible and affordable translations which have succeeded in bringing his scholarship to new audiences.⁶

Much scholarship in the last twenty to thirty years has attended to the second of Meyvaert’s questions concerning Bede’s creativity and originality. Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede, edited by Scott DeGregorio and published in 2006, had its origins in a long-running series of conference panels at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.⁷ This volume represented the most influential historiographical intervention in the field of Bede Studies since Famulus Christi. It stands as a substantial milestone in the field because it disseminated a new understanding of Bede’s approach as a scholar, compelling us to reassess, amongst other things, his relationship with patristic traditions and his self-image. Scholarship since Innovation and tradition has generated close examinations of specific themes across Bede’s corpus of writings, as well as more specific full-length studies of certain individual works.⁸

Given the vibrancy of the field, and the enduring relevance of Bede’s writings to the study of the seventh and eighth centuries, this seems an opportune moment to reconsider the questions posed several decades ago by Meyvaert, the third of which implicitly recognises that Bede was active across several different fields of study at once. Bede the scholar showcases various ways in which scholarship on Bede has developed in recent years and reveals several new avenues for future study. In highlighting the many literary genres in which Bede’s shrewdness and critical acumen are manifestly apparent, the chapters address a series of important issues in the field, which include his attempts to fully Christianise long-established genres of Latin literature, and his interactions with various intellectual traditions, ancient languages, and sources. The book aims to show the breadth and depth of Bede’s remarkable scholarly achievement. Some of the chapters treat familiar works, such as the Ecclesiastical history, but many seek out lesser-known elements of Bede’s catalogue, such as the historical martyrology, or the important work he did around biblical chapter headings. The sophisticated nature of Bede’s engagement with writings by the Church Fathers and his capacity to innovate within tradition are clear in several of the contributions. In addition, it becomes apparent that teaching and preaching were key parts of, and outlets for, the practical application of Bede’s scholarly endeavours.

Chapter 1 attempts to understand how Bede thought of himself by analysing his autobiographical note at the end of the Ecclesiastical history. Particular attention is given to the distinctive phrase famulus Christi, which is assessed in light of its origins in the epistolary culture of Late Antiquity, and the importance of the monastic community of Wearmouth-Jarrow for Bede’s development as a scholar. Bede’s sense of self and understanding of his own role in his people’s story emerges from this passage, and provides a backdrop for what follows in the remainder of the book. In Chapter 2, Arthur Holder examines the theme of deification and argues that Bede’s voice was distinctive within the patristic tradition. He reveals the scholar’s close attention to biblical verses that were rarely treated by others, and demonstrates that Bede saw the Fathers as inspiration, not sources. Holder demonstrates that, for Bede, erudition alone would not ensure entry to the kingdom of heaven, because such gifts are God-given and must be properly applied in the service of the Church.

Similar themes are developed in Celia Chazelle’s treatment of collections of biblical chapter headings associated with Bede, which again highlights the importance of divine inspiration in Christian scholarship. The chapter builds upon important preparatory work by Meyvaert to open up a new vista in the field.⁹ Chazelle argues that Bede’s exegesis and work with capitularies and biblical recensions should be considered as part of the same enterprise and are best understood when examined together. She also addresses the rarely considered question of Bede’s work as an anonymous scholar. In Chapter 4, Susan Cremin reflects upon the extent to which Bede’s life was grounded in Scripture and elucidates his particularly close affinity with the Gospel of John. She considers his relationship with Augustine of Hippo’s extensive output and offers a nuanced theological reading of several sections of the Ecclesiastical history, including those reporting the deaths of saintly figures such as Abbess Hild and Bishop Chad, the famous description of the Synod of Whitby, and the text’s concluding prayer.¹⁰ The fundamental importance of the Gospels to Bede’s scholarship is reiterated in Emily Quigley’s analysis of a key precept from the Gospel of Matthew: Christ’s instructions on how to conduct yourself ‘if you want to be perfect’ (Matthew 19:21). Key themes to emerge in this chapter are Bede’s celebration of the monastic life as a means to achieving perfection, and the simultaneous importance of active engagement with others through teaching. Quigley demonstrates that, for Bede, the founder of Wearmouth-Jarrow Benedict Biscop personified these various qualities through his contributions to the building up of the Church in Northumbria.

Alan Thacker’s re-assessment of Cassiodorus’s influence on Bede and the Wearmouth-Jarrow community argues, counter to the prevailing view of earlier scholars, for Bede’s knowledge of the Institutions of divine and secular learning. Thacker demonstrates, through engagement with the Institutions and Cassiodorus’s Psalm commentary, that Bede, his mentor Abbot Ceolfrith, and their brethren imbibed many important Cassiodorean principles and incorporated them into their own programme of education, scholarship, and biblical emendation. Cassiodorus’s endorsements of certain authors (such as Josephus) were taken to heart, and his interpretations provided frames of reference for the treatment of issues such as the salvation of the gentile nations or the ever-present threat of heresy. Continuing with the library resources of Wearmouth-Jarrow, Damian Fleming considers the possible avenues through which Bede may have encountered Hebrew script. His survey of eighth-century manuscript culture presents an argument that Bede and his fellow monks would have been familiar with examples of what they, at least, would have believed to have been Hebrew writing. Fleming is another author who develops scholarly concerns articulated by Meyvaert.¹¹ In doing so he offers a fresh interpretation of material that has largely gone unchallenged for several decades. Bede’s knowledge of Hebrew is also treated by John Gallagher in his assessment of textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis. He investigates an important aspect of Bede’s exegetical methodology, focusing on his deciphering of language-based problems in Scripture such as etymologies, ambiguous statements, and stylistic anomalies. In the course of such work, spiritual insights are developed from meticulous engagement with the phraseology of sacred text. In keeping with the conclusions advanced by Holder and Chazelle, Gallagher suggests that, for Bede, an advanced level of erudition on its own would not be enough to secure admittance to the kingdom of heaven.

The next two chapters concern the overlapping themes of cosmology and the place of miracles in the natural world. Eoghan Ahern demonstrates that Bede reconciled his biblical inheritance with his knowledge of classical cosmography in a coherent and integrated fashion. This chapter reveals the extent to which Bede innovated within an established field of Christian Latin literature, and it shows Bede’s considerable debt to an understanding of the cosmos developed in earlier classical and patristic Latin writings. In Chapter 10, Sharon Rowley examines a selection of miracle stories from Bede’s Ecclesiastical history, which involve posthumous healing through mixing natural materials and substances acquired from holy relics. Her investigation identifies Bede’s presentation of elemental miracles as an important developmental stage between the cultic practices of Late Antiquity and the actions of later medieval pilgrims and collectors of relics. Rowley investigates the nuances in Bede’s presentation of these miracle stories with reference to the commentary On Genesis; this further demonstrates the coherence of his thought and reinforces connections that exist across his corpus of writings. Such coherency is also evident in Paul Hilliard’s analysis of Bede’s Martyrology in the final chapter of this volume. This treatment of one of Bede’s most under-studied works places it fully in line with the more celebrated parts of Bede’s output. Hilliard assesses the Martyrology in the context of Bede’s other writings, especially the trilogy of Old Testament commentaries On the Temple, On Ezra and Nehemiah, and On the Tabernacle, and finds commonalities between these texts in terms of methods of composition and core themes. Hilliard builds upon earlier work that saw Bede’s historical approach to cataloguing martyrs as a break with tradition and advances the view that the martyrology offers both a spiritual lesson to his readers and a valuable resource to ecclesiastical communities.

Collectively, the chapters in this volume deepen our appreciation of the artistry of Bede’s scholarship while demonstrating the ways in which he harnessed the breadth of his erudition to meet the specific needs of his age through the practical application of scholarly learning. Though some of the Church Fathers who inspired him may have written more, Bede stands out for his extraordinary mastery of so many different fields of literature, from exegesis, homilies, and biblical apparatus to poetry, letters, cosmology, computus, grammar, history, and hagiography. Several of the chapters presented in this volume, as well as a great deal of further research on Bede, were catalysed by a long-running strand of ‘Age of Bede’ conference sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (2011–20).¹² Scholarship concerning Bede the scholar has developed in that time, and it will continue to evolve as new analytical techniques such as digital methodologies and intersectional approaches allow us to devise new answers to old questions and ask new questions of familiar material.¹³ In these endeavours, close attention to the surviving source material, read in context, is key to ensuring a deeper understanding of the societies and cultures that we commit ourselves to studying.

1G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976).

2G. Bonner, ‘Introduction’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 1–4 at 1, referring to A. Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935).

3R. Ray, ‘Bede, the exegete, as historian’, and P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 125–40 and pp. 40–69.

4Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, p. 41.

5A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, in P. Wormald, D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp. 130–53; J. O’Reilly, St Paul and the sign of Jonah: theology and scripture in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2014).

6The most recent translations are M. Lapidge (ed. and trans.), Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019); S. DeGregorio and R. Love (trans.), Bede: On First Samuel (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019).

7S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006).

8P. Darby, Bede and the end of time (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); C. O’Brien, Bede’s temple: an image and its interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); S. Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth: an introduction to Christian Latin poetics (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2016); R. Shaw, The Gregorian mission to Kent in Bede’s Ecclesiastical history: methodology and sources (New York: Routledge, 2018); M. MacCarron, Bede and time: computus, theology and history in the early medieval world (London and New York: Routledge, 2020); E. Ahern, Bede and the cosmos: theology and nature in the eighth century (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).

9P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula lectionum for the Old and New Testaments’, Revue Bénédictine 105 (1995), 348–80.

10Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum 3:25, 4:3, 4:23, 5:24, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

11Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, p. 50.

12Further examples of Bedan publications connected with the strand include: N. J. Higham, ‘Bede’s agenda in Book IV of the Ecclesiastical history of the English people: a tricky matter of advising the king’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 64 (2013), 476–93; P. Darby and F. Wallis (eds), Bede and the future (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Bede’s horologium: observational astronomy and the problem of the equinoxes in early medieval Europe (c. 700–1100)’, English Historical Review 130 (2015), 1079–101; J. Story and R. Bailey, ‘The skull of Bede’, The Antiquaries Journal 95 (2015), 325–50; C. O’Brien, ‘Hwaetberht, Sicgfrith and the reforming of Wearmouth and Jarrow’, Early Medieval Europe 25 (2017), 301–19; J. Barrow, ‘Bede’s wise and foolish virgins: Streanæshalch and Coldingham’, in S. DeGregorio and P. Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints, and communities in early medieval Europe: essays in honour of Alan Thacker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 287–308; J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede and Monotheletism’, in DeGregorio and Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints, and communities, pp. 105–27; S. Lin, ‘Bede, the papacy, and the emperors of Constantinople’, English Historical Review 136 (2021), 456–97.

13See for example: S. D. Prado et al., ‘Gendered networks and communicability in medieval historical narratives’, Advances in Complex Systems 23 (2020), 1–22; E. Wade, ‘The Birds and the Bedes: race, gender, and sexuality in Bede’s In Cantica Canticorum’, postmedieval 11 (2020), 425–33.

1

The autobiographical statement of Bede the scholar in Ecclesiastical history 5:24

Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron

Over the course of an authorial career spanning more than three decades at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria, Bede (c. 673–735) produced a remarkable body of Latin scholarship. The products of his labours are summarised in Book 5, chapter 24 of his best-known work, The Ecclesiastical history of the English people, which documents the gradual Christianisation of Northumbria and its neighbouring kingdoms up to the year 731.¹ He concluded the work with a brief autobiographical statement, following which he drew together the diverse elements of his output in the form of an itemised list to show the harmony in his approach, before ending with a prayer to Jesus for salvation.² Because the Ecclesiastical history circulated so widely in the centuries following his death, the list advertised Bede’s full repertoire, in a format determined by him, to successive generations of scholars across medieval Europe. These readers of the Ecclesiastical history could not have failed to have been impressed by the extraordinary range of Bede’s writing. The list is carefully curated, with Bede’s many biblical commentaries coming first; these are given in something approaching what we would now recognise as canonical order, progressing from the Old Testament to the New, starting with a mid-career commentary On Genesis and ending with an earlier treatment of Revelation. The remainder of Bede’s list groups similar works together. The large collection of exegetical and homiletic works is followed by a book of letters; then come histories (of the saints and martyrs, and of broader themes, both local and national); next is a collection of poems; then we encounter educational works on science, nature, and time, followed by a final group of three works on Latin grammar.

This catalogue is clearly the product of an ordered, organised mind, and it suggests that Bede was attuned to several different genres of Christian literature. Many of the earlier authors whose writings Bede revered had also taken steps to determine their canons, but in choosing to set out his life’s work thematically Bede was diverging from the examples set by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who presented a catalogue of texts in broadly chronological order, and Cassiodorus (c. 485–580), who in a late work referred to his previous writings in a similar manner to Augustine.³ Bede’s practice of grouping by genre is likely to have been inspired by his near-constant engagement with the Holy Scriptures, which he regarded as preserving all of the most essential forms of learning.⁴

The list Bede presents in Ecclesiastical history 5:24 resembles earlier attempts to organise the different parts of the Bible into categories, such as those found in the writings of Cassiodorus, or the diagram pages from the first quire of the Wearmouth-Jarrow-produced single-volume Bible known as the Codex Amiatinus.⁵ In the codex, which was produced during Bede’s formative years and sent to Rome in 716, we encounter categories for groupings of books of the Bible under labels which are similar to some of Bede’s own: on history (In historiam); on letters (In epistulas); and on holy figures (In hagiographis). Bede’s presentation of his own output in like-manner speaks to the centrality of Scripture to all aspects of his scholarship. But though he thought of his own works in terms of thematic categories, this is not to say that he saw those categories as separate and distinct from one another. Bede spent his exegetical career articulating the connections that exist across the various parts of Scripture, and he was extremely adept at this work. Within a generation of Bede’s death, the list was being used as an inventory for scholars keen to track down copies of his various writings.⁶

The autobiographical statement that introduces the list of writings has always been important for all scholars of Bede.⁷ Though certain other works reveal snippets of information about the events of his life, Bede was generally very reserved and revealed little about himself in his writings. The short passage in the final chapter of the Ecclesiastical history is the only place where he directly volunteers any substantial information about his life and career. Despite their undeniable importance to our understanding of Bede’s life and work, his autobiographical words have rarely been subjected to extended critical scrutiny on their own terms.

Bede provides the basic biographical details of his life with characteristic precision. The passage in question follows a year-by-year recapitulation of the Ecclesiastical history’s major events, but comes before the detailed list of works:

I, Bede, servant of Christ and priest of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul, which is at Wearmouth and Jarrow … was born in the territory of this monastery. When I was seven years of age I was, by the care of my kinsmen, put into the charge of the reverend Abbot Benedict and then of Ceolfrith, to be educated. From then on I have spent all of my life in this monastery, applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures; and, amid the observance of the discipline of the Rule and the daily task of singing in the church, it has always been my pleasure to learn or to teach or to write. At the age of nineteen I was ordained deacon and at the age of thirty, priest, both times through the ministration of the reverend Bishop John on the direction of Abbot Ceolfrith. From the time I became priest until the fifty-ninth year of my life I have taken care, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy Scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation. These are the books: …⁸

The image constructed here is of an existence spent almost entirely in service to God, first as a child oblate and then as deacon and priest. Face-value interpretations of this passage were largely responsible for the image of Bede as a modest and humble (and largely derivative) scholar, common in late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship.⁹ Subjecting Bede’s statement to critical scrutiny allows us to deepen our understanding of his scholarly persona in light of recent developments in the field of Bede Studies.

Servant of Christ

Students of Bede recognise Famulus Christi as the title of an influential collection of essays, including Meyvaert’s ‘Bede the scholar’, which was edited by Gerald Bonner and published in 1976.¹⁰ It is noteworthy that the terms of Bede’s self-identification are overtly ecclesiastical; he refers to himself as a servant of Christ and priest and monk at Wearmouth and Jarrow. By the time famulus Christi was adopted by Bede, this epithet was already an established part of the linguistic register of Christian Latin literature. Exploring some of these usages contextualises Bede’s adoption of this characterisation for himself.

Famulus Christi sometimes appears as a descriptor for holy men in Late Antique hagiographical texts. Jonas of Bobbio’s Life of Columbanus, a work produced in an Irish milieu on the Continent before Bede was born, uses the label in its singular form.¹¹ Other variants also exist. The influential preface to the Books of Kings written by Jerome, which commonly circulated as part of the Latin Vulgate, directly addresses an audience of women as famulas Christi.¹² The feminine form also appears in the verse treatise on virginity by Aldhelm, the West Saxon scholar and elder contemporary of Bede (d. 709/10).¹³ There are several further uses of the singular or plural masculine forms of the phrase in works known to Bede, such as the Explanation of the Psalms by Cassiodorus, and the poetry of Paulinus of Nola.¹⁴ However, none of these authors adopted the phrase famulus Christi with quite the same keenness as Bede, for whom the formulation became something of a personal motif. His use of it draws comparison with Gregory the Great’s enthusiastic development of the moniker Servus servorum dei.¹⁵

Earlier Latin letters provide the most important literary context for Bede’s adoption of famulus Christi as a form of self-identification. The earliest known epistolary uses of the term are in letters by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a substantial influence on Bede.¹⁶ In 413 or 414, Augustine was involved in an epistolary exchange with Macedonius, the vicarius of Africa, regarding the responsibilities of bishops towards those guilty of serious sins. Four letters are preserved, two from Macedonius to Augustine, and two replies from Augustine to Macedonius. In the salutation formulae of the two letters sent by Augustine, he styles himself as ‘Augustine, bishop and servant of Christ and his family’ (augustinus episcopus famulus Christi familiaeque).¹⁷ Although not identical, this formulation of name, role, and famulus Christi bears a resemblance to that presented in Ecclesiastical history 5:24: Baeda famulus Christi et presbyter. The current state of our understanding is that Bede was familiar with a reasonably substantial number of Augustine’s letters.¹⁸ In certain cases his own salutation formulae were directly influenced by other examples from the Augustinian correspondence: this is true, for example, of the Letter to Plegwine.¹⁹ The fact that both men used famulus Christi for the purposes of self-identification in epistolary salutations is suggestive. Augustine’s formulation was modified by another North African, Fulgentius, who while bishop of Ruspe in the early sixth century occasionally referred to himself in his letters as ‘servant of the servants of Christ’ (Fulgentius servorum christi famulus), although it is currently not known whether these circulated in Bede’s Northumbria.²⁰

Famulus Christi features several times throughout Bede’s historical, hagiographical, and exegetical writings to refer to others, as well as featuring as a self-referent in the salutations of many of his letters. The two most high-profile epistolary examples are the preface to the Ecclesiastical history, in the form of a letter to the Northumbrian king Ceolwulf (r. 729–37), and the Letter to Ecgberht, in which Bede vented a series of frustrations to the bishop of York in November 734.²¹ Bede also applied the term to himself in the salutation of a letter to Abbot Albinus, before employing it a second time, in plural form, to refer to the monks who served under the abbot at Canterbury.²² Other members of Bede’s network to receive letters from Bede styling himself in such terms were a figure named Helmwald, who leaves no trace in the historical record beyond the information provided in the letter in question, and Acca of Hexham, Bede’s close friend and diocesan bishop from 710 to 731.²³ John of Beverly, Acca’s predecessor in the see of Hexham, is likely the individual named John who was the addressee of the prose epistolary preface to Bede’s verse Life of St Cuthbert, in which Bede once again styled himself as famulus Christi.²⁴

Some of the most revealing uses of the phrase in Bede’s writings are those in which he uses famulus Christi to refer to others. These divide into two categories: generalised usages made in the course of spiritual teachings, and direct references to named individuals from the present day or recent past. A passage in Bede’s homily for the Feast of St John the Evangelist demonstrates some of the general connotations that he attached to the term. It comes within a discussion of the active and contemplative aspects of religious life, both of which he says need attention from Christians engaged in the service of God. These prominent themes in Bede’s work were developed from his deep knowledge of the writings of Gregory the Great.²⁵ Bede explains that the active life requires a zealous servant of Christ (studiosum christi famulum) to devote themselves to righteous labours and keep themselves free from sin.²⁶ In his commentary On the Tabernacle, on the other hand, famulus Christi appears in the context of a discussion of the contemplative life. Here Bede uses the formulation to refer to a group of biblical figures who were given previews of heaven while still mortal beings, naming Isaiah, Micah, the Apostle Paul, and the disciples who witnessed the Transfiguration.²⁷ Elsewhere, the term is used in discussions of those who support the Church through their virtuous lives, the elect who can look forward to future fellowship in Christ because of the Holy Spirit’s gift, and the faithful servants recruited to the Church in place of anathematised or excommunicated heretics.²⁸ All of these references have in common an emphasis on orthodox faith in the steadfast service of God.

Bede’s historical and hagiographical writings identify a great many individuals as servants of Christ. The term is used several times in the prose Life he wrote for Saint Cuthbert.²⁹ The case of Saint Cuthbert is especially interesting in light of the phrase’s connections with the active and contemplative lives because it has been demonstrated that Bede held Cuthbert up to his audience as an example, to be emulated, of someone who managed to balance these two aspects of religious life while serving as bishop, first of Hexham (684–85) and later of Lindisfarne (685–87).³⁰ In the History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, an institutional history of his own monastery from its foundation down to the year 716, Bede described three men as servants of Christ: a monk named Witmer; Benedict Biscop, the monastery’s founder and first abbot (d. 688/9); and Ceolfrith, Benedict’s successor (d. 716).³¹ Connections to monasticism also link together the examples found in the Ecclesiastical history. The monks who came with Augustine of Canterbury on the papal mission to Kent and Laurence, a member of that missionary party who was one of Augustine’s successors in the see, are described as servants of Christ.³² Other groups identified as such are the companions of Hild who were present at the time of her death in 680, and the monks who served under Cedd at Bradwell-on-Sea and Tilbury in the kingdom of the East Saxons.³³ For Bede the term was evidently applicable to those living sound monastic lives regardless of gender, owing to his description of nuns at Barking, Ely, Whitby, and Brie as servants of Christ (famulas Christi).³⁴ Two individuals involved in the Insular Easter controversy whom Bede admired and referred to as servants of Christ were Adomnán, the abbot of Iona (d. 704) who was unable to convince his brethren to observe the Dionysian method for the calculation of Easter championed by Bede, and Ecgberht, the Northumbrian missionary who persuaded the community on Iona to do so a few years after Adomnán’s death.³⁵ Bede’s account of the missionary priests martyred near the Rhine known as Hewald the Black and Hewald the White describes them as sacerdotes et famuli Christi.³⁶ A further group of individuals named as servants of Christ in the Ecclesiastical history are Tuda and Guthfrith from Lindisfarne, and a figure named Herebald who witnessed one of John of Beverly’s miracles.³⁷

The above examples are very informative and they can help us to understand the image of himself that Bede was trying to construct for his correspondents and readers. Its use in the autobiographical statement of Ecclesiastical history 5:24 signals Bede’s faithful observance of the principles of Christianity, and his identity as a monk and priest engaged in faultless standards of communal living. For Bede, the formulation famulus Christi connoted orthodox observance of the faith, an appropriate balance between the active and contemplative lives, monasticism and (in many cases) even individual sanctity. Its use in the autobiographical statement thus signals to the reader an image of obedient monastic servitude of the purest kind, and in doing so he adjoins himself to the community of holy women and men presented in the main text of the Ecclesiastical history as examples for his audience to follow.

The monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow

Following his self-description as famulus Christi et presbyter, Bede underlined his closeness to the religious life by informing the reader that he was not only a monk and priest at the monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Wearmouth and Jarrow, but that he was born in the territory of that monastery and entered it at the age of seven. Bede’s Wearmouth-Jarrow pedigree is impeccable, and it is clear that his sense of self was inextricably bound up with his institution.³⁸ It is significant that Bede presented the monastery as a singular entity. Bede was wholeheartedly committed to the unity of the two locations that comprised the double-foundation.³⁹ However, Jarrow had not yet been established at the time of his birth and entry to the community. He was born in c. 673 and entered the monastery of Wearmouth in c. 680, prior to the foundation of Jarrow, which was dedicated to Saint Paul in 685, when Bede was about twelve.⁴⁰ Bede was first a monk of St Peter’s despite his popular association with Jarrow.⁴¹

Wearmouth was established when King Ecgfrith endowed Benedict Biscop with a substantial area of land on which to found a monastery dedicated to Saint Peter.⁴² Biscop had recently returned to Northumbria after spending many years learning about monastic life and religious practices on the Continent, especially in Rome and in Gaul, and temporarily serving as abbot of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul at Canterbury prior to the arrival of Hadrian.⁴³ Ecgfrith supported Biscop’s desire to build up monastic life in Northumbria and provided him with a substantial area of land. According to Bede this was seventy hides; however, our other early source for Wearmouth-Jarrow, the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith, records that the king bequeathed fifty hides at first, and more land was later granted to Benedict’s foundation from Ecgfrith and other kings and nobles.⁴⁴ Whatever form it may have taken this was a substantial endowment.⁴⁵ Several years later, King Ecgfrith donated another forty hides of land, which led to the foundation dedicated to Saint Paul at Jarrow.⁴⁶ Again Bede and the anonymous author differ slightly in their reporting of this bequest. Bede indicates that the land was donated to Wearmouth a year before Ecgfrith commanded that a new foundation should be established under the leadership of Ceolfrith at Jarrow, while the anonymous author implies this grant was always intended for a church and monastery dedicated to Saint Paul.

The circumstances of the foundation of