Bede the scholar 1526153203, 9781526153203

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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.manche​ster​univ​ersi​typr​ess.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 1 The autobiographical statement of Bede the scholar in Ecclesiastical history 5:24 Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron 2 Co-​heirs of Christ’s glory: deification in Bede Arthur Holder

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

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

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5 Bede’s perfecti and the Gospel of Matthew Emily Quigley 6 Bede, Ceolfrith, and Cassiodorus: biblical scholarship at Wearmouth and Jarrow Alan T. Thacker

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Contents

7 Bede and the Hebrew alphabets Damian Fleming

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8 Biblical-​textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis John J. Gallagher

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9 Bede and ‘the nature of things’ Eoghan Ahern

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

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11 Bede’s Martyrology: a resource and spiritual lesson Paul C. Hilliard

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Bibliography Index

284 314

Figures

Figure 3.1 F  irenze, 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 3.2 Firenze, 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 7.1 St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex Sangallensis 876, pp. 278–​80: De inventione, lists of alphabets including Hebrew. Reproduced by kind permission of the Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen.

60–1

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193–5

Tables

Table 3.1 Acts of the Apostles, capitula Table 3.2 Canticle of Canticles, rubrics Table 3.3 Bede, Canticle of Canticles, capitula (trans. Holder, with minor emendation)

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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

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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

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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

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Abbreviations

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout, 1953–​)

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866–​)

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Leipzig; Hannover; Berlin, 1826–​) Auct. Ant. Auctores antiquissimi Epp. sel. Epistolae selectae SS rer. Germ. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum SS rer. Merov. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum

PL

Patrologia cursus completus, Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1841–​83)

SC

Sources Chrétiennes (Paris, 1942–​)

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

1 G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976). 2 G. 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). 3 R. Ray, ‘Bede, the exegete, as historian’, and P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 125–​40 and pp. 40–​69. 4 Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, p. 41.

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Introduction

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 5 A. 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). 6 The 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). 7 S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006). 8 P. 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).

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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,

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

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

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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

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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.

12 Further 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. 13 See 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, c­ hapter 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

1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum (subsequent references: HE), ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). 2 Bede’s list covers the majority of his works, but there are certain omissions, for example his edition of De locis sanctis, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965). The Epistula ad Egbertum is not in the list because it was written after the completion of the HE; the critical edition of the Epistula is C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), pp. 124–​61. On the closing prayer of the HE, see Cremin’s chapter in this volume.

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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

3 Augustine, Retractationes, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, CCSL 57 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984); Cassiodorus, De orthographia preface, ed. P. Stoppacci, Cassiodoro, De orthographia. Tradizione manoscritta, fontana, edizione critica (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni di Galluzzo, 2010). 4 Bede, De schematibus et tropis 1, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975). 5 Cassiodorus, Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum 1:1–​9, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937). Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1), fols. 5/​VIr and 8/​VIIIr.

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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 6 E.g. Lull, Ep. 125 (to Æthelberht, archbishop of York), and Lull, Ep. 126 (to Cuthbert, Abbot of Wearmouth-​Jarrow), ed. M. Tangl, MGH Epp. sel. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), pp. 263–​4. 7 Charles Plummer began the introduction to his two-​ volume edition of Bede’s historical works with this passage: Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1, pp. ix–​xi. See also N. J. Higham, (Re-​)reading Bede: the Ecclesiastical history in context (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 6–​16; J. M. Wallace-​Hadrill, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people: a historical commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 203–​6. 8 Bede, HE 5:24, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 567 (translation adapted): ‘Baeda famulus Christi et presbyter monasterii beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli, quod est ad Viuraemuda et Ingyruum. Qui natus in territorio eiusdem monasterii, cum essem annorum VII, cura propinquorum datus sum educandus reuerentissimo abbati Benedicto, ac deinde Ceolfrido, cunctumque ex eo tempus uitae in eiusdem monasterii habitatione peragens, omnem meditandis scripturis operam dedi,

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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 atque inter obseruantiam disciplinae regularis, et cotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut discere aut docere aut scribere dulce habui. Nono decimo autem uitae meae anno diaconatum, tricesimo gradum presbyteratus, utrumque per ministerium reuerentissimi episcopi Iohannis, iubente Ceolfrido abbate, suscepi. Ex quo tempore accepti presbyteratus usque ad annum aetatis meae LVIIII haec in scripturam sanctam meae meorumque necessitati ex opusculis uenerabilium patrum breuiter adnotare, siue etiam ad formam sensus et interpretationis eorum superadicere curaui.’ 9 E.g. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 1, pp. ix–​lxxix; H. H. Henson, ‘Introduction’, in A. Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. xiii–​xvi. 10 G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976). 11 Jonas of Bobbio, Vitae Columbani 1:21 (cf. 2:10), ed. B Krusch, MGH SS rer. Germ. 37 (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1905), pp. 144–​294. 12 Praefationes in Bibliam Latinam, III. Libri Regum, sectio 1 (Jerome) p. 25, line 38, ed. D. De Bruyne, Prefaces to the Latin Bible, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 19 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015).

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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 13 Aldhelm, De virginitate (Carmen), verses 1919, 2153, 2202, 2229, 2265, 2335, ed. R. Ehwald, MGH Auct. ant. 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919), pp. 350–​471. Cf. verse 1348. 14 Cassiodorus, Expositio psalmorum 22, line 78; 43, line 367, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 97–​98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958). Paulinus of Nola, Carmina 20, line 30; 21, line 836, ed. W. Hartel, CSEL 30 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1894). On Bede’s knowledge of these texts see M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 205, 221–​2; S. Harris, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, Old English Newsletter 45.1 (2014). 15 F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great: his place in history and thought (London: Longmans Green, 1905), p. 280 note 3; R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his world (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 30–​1; J. Moorhead, Gregory the Great (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 41. 16 A. T. Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: history and figure in sacred text, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2005). For Augustine’s letters see J. V. Ebbeler, ‘The letter collection of Augustine of Hippo’, in C. Sogno, B. K. Storin and E. J. Watts (eds), Late antique letter collections: a critical introduction and reference guide (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017), pp. 239–​53. 17 Augustine, Epistulae 153 and 155, ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 44 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1904). See R. Dodaro, ‘Political and theological virtues in Augustine, Letter 155 to Macedonius’, Augustiniana 54 (2004), 431–​74. 18 Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 201.

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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 19 P. Darby, ‘Heresy and authority in Bede’s Letter to Plegwine’, in S. DeGregorio and P. Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints, and communities in early medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 145–​69. 20 Fulgentius of Ruspe, Epistulae 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 91–​91A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968). On the circulation of the letters of Fulgentius, see Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 303. 21 Bede, HE preface; Epistula ad Egbertum 1. 22 Bede, Epistula ad Albinum, ed. and trans. J. A. Westgard, ‘New manuscripts of Bede’s Letter to Albinus’, Revue Bénédictine 120 (2010), 208–​15. 23 Bede, Epistula ad Helmuualdum, lines 1–​ 2, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980); In Genesim preface (to Acca), lines 1–​2 (‘humillimus famulorum christi’), ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967). On Bede and Acca, see C. Stancliffe, ‘Disputed episcopacy: Bede, Acca, and the relationship between Stephen’s Life of St Wilfrid and the early prose lives of St Cuthbert’, Anglo-​ Saxon England 41 (2012), 7–​39; P. Hilliard, ‘Acca of Hexham through the eyes of the Venerable Bede’, Early Medieval Europe 26 (2018), 440–​61. 24 Bede, Vita metrica S. Cudbercti preface, ed. M. Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 183–​312.

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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

25 On the active and contemplative lives as themes in Gregory’s writings: C. Straw, Gregory the Great: perfection in imperfection (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 20, 36–​7, 52, 91–​2; Markus, Gregory the Great and his world, pp. 25–​6. On Bede and Gregory see P. Meyvaert, Bede and Gregory the Great, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1964); S. DeGregorio, ‘The Venerable Bede on prayer and contemplation’, Traditio, 54 (1999), 1–​39. 26 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 145–​185, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955). 27 Bede, De tabernaculo 1, lines 673–​ 98, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). 28 Bede, De tabernaculo 1, lines 312–​25; In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1963–​82, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); In Cantica canticorum 1, lines 756–​9, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 29 Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti 19, 22 and 37, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 142–​307. Cf. Bede, Vita metrica S. Cudbercti 16, verse 410.

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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 30 See HE 4:28, and cf. Bede, Homiliae 1:9; C. Stancliffe, ‘Cuthbert and the polarity between pastor and solitary’, in G. Bonner, D. Rollason, and C. Stancliffe (eds), St. Cuthbert, his cult and his community to AD 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1989), pp. 21–​44 at 40; S. J. Coates, ‘The bishop as pastor and solitary: Bede and the spiritual authority of the monk-​bishop’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996), 601–​19 at 612–​18; C. E. Newlands, ‘Bede and images of Saint Cuthbert’, Traditio 52 (1997), 73–​109 at 81; DeGregorio, ‘Venerable Bede on prayer and contemplation’, 32–​3. 31 Bede, Historia abbatum (subsequent references: HA) 1, 15, 20 and 21, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. 21–​75. 32 Bede, HE 1:25, 2:2, 2:6. On these men, see N. Brooks, The early history of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984), pp. 63–​7. 33 Bede, HE 3:22, 4:23. 34 Bede, HE 3:8, 4:7, 4:9, 4:19, 4:21. 35 Bede, HE 5:9, 5:15. On Adomnán see 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), pp. 18–​32.

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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

6 Bede, HE 5:10. 3 37 Bede, HE 3:26, 5:1, 5:26. 38 Higham, (Re-​)reading Bede, pp. 12–​15. 39 Bede, HA 15. 40 The process of founding Jarrow was begun a couple of years earlier but the date on the church’s dedication stone is 685. See E. Okasha, Hand-​list of Anglo-​Saxon non-​runic

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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 Wearmouth and Jarrow have been much discussed because of the monastery’s unusual geographical arrangement as two sites seven miles apart. Bede and the anonymous writer both present the establishment of Jarrow as a natural evolution following the success of Wearmouth. The situation may not have been so simple, however, and Ian Wood in particular has argued that their original

inscriptions (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 85–​6; J. Higgitt, ‘The dedication inscription at Jarrow and its context’, The Antiquaries Journal 59 (1979), 343–​74. 41 On Bede’s association with Jarrow, see Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 1, p. xvi. 42 Bede, HA 1 and 4. 43 Bede, HA 3; cf. HE 4:1. 44 Bede, HA 4; cf. Vita Ceolfridi 7, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. 78–​120. 45 On hides, see J. F. McGovern, ‘The hide and related land-​tenure concepts in Anglo-​ Saxon England, AD 700–​1100’, Traditio 28 (1972), 101–​18; H. R. Loyn, The governance of Anglo-​Saxon England, 500–​1087 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), pp. 33–​41. 46 Bede, HA 7; Vita Ceolfridi 11.

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circumstances were very different. He has suggested that Jarrow was a royal foundation in a way that Wearmouth was not, but the situation between the monasteries changed after the unexpected death of Ecgfrith at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685, less than a month after the dedication of Jarrow.47 The second disaster to befall the community at Jarrow in its early years was an outbreak of plague. Both houses lost members, including Biscop’s co-​abbot of Wearmouth, Eosterwine, but it appears that the community of Jarrow was almost entirely wiped out. The anonymous author recorded that all those who could read, preach, and sing the Psalms were carried off by the plague except Abbot Ceolfrith and one small boy. This boy has often been identified as Bede, perhaps influenced by the modern association of Bede with Jarrow, but the anonymous author pays more attention to the situation at Jarrow than Bede did and he may be referring to himself.48 Following the disaster of the plague, the communities appear to have become closer, and this process was confirmed following the death of Biscop and the appointment of Ceolfrith as abbot of the one monastery in two places.49 The precise circumstances of the monastery’s origin notwithstanding, it is clear that both Bede and the anonymous writer eagerly promoted the unity of both houses.50 This seems especially important for Bede’s self-​image, and is further underlined in his account of the community’s history; rather than focusing on the founder or another luminary from the community, as the anonymous author did in his Life of Ceolfrith, Bede wrote a tract about all of the early abbots.51 Most of the work is concerned with the activities of Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith, who appear to have been the 47 I. N. Wood, ‘The origins of Jarrow: the monastery, the slake and Ecgfrith’s minster’, Bede’s World Studies 1 (Jarrow: Bede’s World, 2008); and Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xxix–​xxxii. The Battle of Nechtansmere is dated to 20 May 685 and Jarrow was dedicated on 23 April 685, according to the dedication stone: see Okasha, Hand-​list, pp. 85–​6 and Higgitt, ‘The Dedication inscription at Jarrow and its context’. 48 Vita Ceolfridi 14 (cf. Bede, HA 10). See B. Holsinger, ‘The Parable of Caedmon’s “hymn”: liturgical invention and literary tradition’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106 (2007), 149–​175 at 162; and M. MacCarron et al., ‘Medieval historical, hagiographical and biographical networks’, in R. Kenna, M. MacCarron, and P. MacCarron (eds), Maths meets myths: quantitative approaches to ancient narratives (Cham: Springer, 2017), pp. 45–​69 at 57. 49 Bede, HA 15; Vita Ceolfridi 16–​19. 50 E.g. Bede, HA 15; Vita Ceolfridi 19. 51 Bede’s approach is unusual. Cf. Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid, which was written by a member of Wilfrid’s monastic community, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927). On Stephen’s vita for Wilfrid, see A. T. Thacker, ‘Wilfrid, his cult and his biographer’, in N. J. Higham (ed.), Wilfrid: abbot, bishop, saint (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 1–​16.

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community’s most dynamic leaders and oversaw the monastery’s growth at different times, but Bede also gave due attention to Eosterwine, Sigefrith, and Hwætberht. The unusual nature of this endeavour may be apparent in his differing characterisations of the work. The text opens with a description of the work as a Vita Sanctorum Abbatum monasterii in Vivramvtha et Gyrum (‘Life of the Holy Abbots of the monastery at Wearmouth and Jarrow’) followed by the names of the five abbots. However, in recounting his list of writings in Ecclesiastical history 5:24, Bede called the work Historia and this is the term used in the most recent scholarly edition.52 For Bede then, it seems the monastery itself, rather than its leadership personnel, was of paramount importance. The role of the community in Bede’s life is apparent again when he records that, at the age of seven, he was put into the charge of Benedict Biscop and then of Ceolfrith to be educated. It is intriguing that he named both figures but nobody else here. This reveals Bede’s personal connection to both men, but others must have taught him as well, not least because both Benedict and Ceolfrith were frequently absent from the monastery in the late seventh century. Earlier in the Ecclesiastical history, Bede noted that Trumberht, a monk educated under St Chad at Lastingham, was one of those who had taught him the Scriptures.53 In the History of the Abbots we learn that Abbot Sigefrith had an advanced knowledge of the Scriptures and was involved in the education of one of his successors, Hwætberht.54 We can also reasonably assume that within such a large and prestigious establishment, which had a clear commitment to education, there must have been several others responsible for the formation of the young, whose names have not been preserved.55 Bede’s emphasis on the singular nature of Wearmouth-​ Jarrow raises questions about what he meant by noting that he was born ‘in the territory of the monastery’ (in territorio eiusdem monasterii). We can safely deduct that Bede was from the region of Bernicia, that is, the northern part of the kingdom of Northumbria, north of the River Tyne.56 To be more precise, it seems probable that he was specifically from the environs of Wearmouth. This monastery was established around the time of his birth and its territorial extent as a royal grant would have been clearly demarcated. The

2 Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. 22–​3. 5 53 Bede, HE 4:3. 54 Bede, HA 11 and 20. 55 D. Whitelock, ‘Bede and his teachers and friends’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 19–​39. 56 On the kingdom of Bernicia see D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500–​1100: creation and destruction of a kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 43–​52.

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connection between Bede’s birth and the foundation of Wearmouth may go further, however, because Bede is a rare example of an individual from this period who reveals to us that he knew his own age. He notes later in his self-​ description that he was in his fifty-​ninth year, which is remarkably precise, especially as there was no proper recording of births in the Middle Ages and age-​rounding appears to have been a common practice.57 It seems likely that an individual’s birth could only be calculated accurately if it were associated with an event of greater significance that could be dated; for example, the accession of a king. However, as Ecgfrith became king of Northumbria in 670, the only major occurrence in this region that we know of from around the time Bede was born is the establishment of Wearmouth. As the king endowed the monastery, its foundation would have been an important event in the region’s history. The date was certainly recorded because both Bede and the anonymous writer include almost identical dating formulae for the foundation using Incarnation years, Ecgfrith’s regnal years, and the indiction.58 If Bede was born around the time the monastery was established, it would be an easy matter for a chronographer of his skill to calculate his own age.59 If this association is accurate, it further underlines the importance of the monastery of Wearmouth-​Jarrow for Bede’s sense of self. Bede recording that he was born in the territory of the monastery also raises questions about his origins. The autobiographical statement underlines Ceolfrith’s importance to Bede by naming him twice: first in the context of his education and second as the abbot who put Bede forward for ordination to the offices of deacon and priest.60 It is impossible to determine anything with certainty about his family history and social class.61 Nevertheless, if his family belonged to the territory of the monastery, that could imply they were of lower status and perhaps were somehow included

57 Mark Handley has shown that the majority of recorded ages on grave-​stones in this period end in zero or five, which is statistically impossible. He suggests that this is due to a practice of age-​rounding because accurate information about age was for the most part unavailable: Death, society and culture: inscriptions and epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–​750 (Archaeopress: Oxford, 2003) pp. 74–​95. 58 Bede, HA 4; Vita Ceolfridi 7. See further, M. MacCarron, Bede and time: computus, theology and history in the early medieval world (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 125, 141–​2, and 152 note 44. 59 MacCarron, Bede and time, pp. 157–​60. 60 Bede, HE 5:24. 61 H. Mayr-​Harting, The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St. Benedict, and social class, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1976); Higham, (Re-​)reading Bede, p. 7, and p. 214 note 9. Cf. A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede and the ordering of understanding’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 37–​63, at 39–​40.

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in the royal endowment to Benedict Biscop. Whatever Bede’s original social status, it is also unknown why he was dedicated to the monastic life at the age of seven. Contemporary sources indicate that the age of seven or eight marked the end of infancy and the beginning of boyhood, which could include light work or education.62 Child oblation appears to have been rare in this period, though not unheard of, and different reasons for the practice existed.63Ælfflæd of Whitby (654–​714) was given to the monastic life by her father King Oswiu in thanksgiving for his defeat of Penda of Mercia at the Battle of the Winwæd in 655.64 Saint Boniface (d. 754) also entered the religious life as a child, reportedly because he desired to do so from an exceptionally young age.65 Bede’s is a curious case because he does not offer any specific reasons for his oblation and did not mention his parents, stating instead that his wider kin group presented him to the monastery. However, his parents are not excluded from the wider connotations of the kin group. Boniface entered the monastic life in Exeter only after his father had granted permission, and his biographer makes it clear that he renounced all of his worldly possessions by doing so. It may have been necessary for the extended family to have been involved in any decision to remove a member from the kin group, because alienating a child from their inheritance rights would have had implications for many relatives. The influence of family on what we might deem individual decisions was also evident in marriage arrangements from this period, where the wishes of the couple were frequently subordinated to the needs of their relations.66 After recording his entry to the community at the age of seven, Bede says that he spent all of his life in the monastery thereafter. He therefore underlined the all-​ encompassing nature of his personal connections to the monastery and its founders, it being the place where he lived, learned,

62 See Vita Cuthberti Anonymo 1:3, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 59–​140; and Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti 1; H. Härke, ‘Early Anglo-​Saxon social structure’, in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-​Saxons: from the migration period to the eighth century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 125–​60 at 126. 63 M. De Jong, In Samuel’s image: child oblation in the early medieval west (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 48–​9, 137–​8, 194–​5, 212–​13. 64 Bede, HE 3:24. 65 Willibald, Vita Bonifatii 1–​2, ed. W. Levison, MGH SS rer. Germ. 57 (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1905), pp. 1–​58. 66 On marriage and inheritance rights, see J. Goody, The development of the family and marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 34–​82; J. T. Rosenthal, ‘Marriage and the blood feud in “heroic” Europe’, The British Journal of Sociology 17 (1966), 133–​44; R. Hill, ‘Marriage in seventh-​century England’, in M. H. King and W. M. Stevens (eds), Saints, scholars, and heroes, 2 vols (Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979), 1, pp. 67–​75.

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and worked in the service of God for all but the first seven years of his childhood. In this respect Bede’s career as a scholar contrasts with other high-​profile figures from the period, who moved around different establishments for education and training in their formative years. Boniface moved from his first monastery in Exeter to Nursling, and Aldhelm was educated at the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian but also spent some time in pursuit of learning amongst the Irish.67 Northumbrian examples include Benedict Biscop, who visited Rome and several Frankish monasteries including Lérins, Jouarre, and Vienne, and Wilfrid (d. 710), who had spells in Lindisfarne, Canterbury, Rome, and Lyon. Hild was first attracted to the religious life in East Anglia and had intended to enter the monastery at Chelles before she was recalled to Northumbria by Bishop Aidan (d. 651) and became abbess of Hartlepool and then Whitby.68 Bede’s stationary life is more comparable to that of Ælfflæd, who was given over to Hild as an infant.69 Ælfflæd remained under Hild’s care until the latter’s passing, at which point she was elevated to the position of Abbess of Whitby and presided over the foundation’s remarkable school.70 As a scholar, Bede could have been in few better locations than the monastery in which he was placed. His deep immersion in Christian Latin literature would not have been possible without the substantial resources of the magnificent library assembled by Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith, both of whom travelled extensively on the Continent to secure items and build up its stocks.71 Bede initially wrote for a localised Wearmouth-​Jarrow audience, producing texts for the purposes of education within the monastery, but he benefitted from his position as monk and priest in a wealthy and well-​connected institution and soon attracted attention from a wider circle of interested parties.72 Acca of Hexham is especially important in this regard because he started to commission commentaries from Bede almost immediately after acceding to the see of Hexham in 710. Bede’s posthumous

67 G. T. Dempsey, ‘Aldhelm of Malmesbury and the Irish’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 99 (1999), 1–​22; B. Yorke, ‘Aldhelm’s Irish and British connections’, in K. Barker and N. Brooks (eds), Aldhelm and Sherborne: essays to celebrate the foundation of the bishopric (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), pp. 164–​80. 68 Bede, HE 4:23. 69 Bede, HE 3:24. 70 See P. Hunter Blair, ‘Whitby as a centre of learning in the seventh century’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds), Learning and literature in Anglo-​ Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 3–​32. 71 Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, pp. 34–​7. 72 On the gradual development of Bede’s audience, see P. Darby and F. Wallis, ‘Introduction: the many futures of Bede’, in Darby and Wallis (eds), Bede and the future, pp. 1–​21.

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reputation developed very quickly, and his importance to the intellectual heritage of the Middle Ages was secured by the early and wide circulation of his many works across England and the Continent.73 The importance of the institutional element to this aspect of Bede’s success should not be underestimated. The narrative sources tell us that by 716 the Wearmouth-​Jarrow community had the resources and expertise to produce three large pandect Bibles, which suggests the existence of an effective scriptorium.74 Several additional manuscripts originating in the period spanning the late seventh to early eighth century are associated with the monastery.75 Bede was dependent on a wider community effort encompassing agriculture, horticulture, and husbandry to provide the practical resources that he needed for his writings, such as parchment and other necessary materials. He might also have benefitted directly from practical support, such as that provided by an amanuensis, from junior members of the community.76 Once demand for his writings had been established, Bede relied on teams of scribes who worked in scriptoria (at Wearmouth-​Jarrow and elsewhere) to produce copies for circulation, and messengers to travel from place to place to ensure that his texts arrived at their destinations safely. Substantial resources and a well-​developed machinery of production thus underpinned Bede’s actions within the monastery as pupil, teacher, and author. The fact that Hwætberht, an exact contemporary of Bede’s at Wearmouth-​ Jarrow, spent time as a young man learning and gathering educational materials in Rome leads naturally to questions about why Bede apparently did not do likewise.77 It may be that Bede did not wish to travel great distances or for some reason was unable to do so. He noted in his homily 73 D. Rollason, Bede and Germany, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2001); J. Westgard, ‘Bede and the continent in the Carolingian age and beyond’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 201–​15; J. Hill, ‘Carolingian perspectives on the authority of Bede’, in DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede, pp. 227–​49. 74 Vita Ceolfridi 20; Bede, HA 15. Several styli and book clasps were recovered in the excavations led by R. Cramp, Wearmouth and Jarrow monastic sites, 2 vols (Swindon: English Heritage, 2005–​6), 2, pp. 230, 247–​8, 278–​9, 287–​8, 303–​5. 75 For details see M. B. Parkes, The scriptorium of Wearmouth-​Jarrow, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1982). See further H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-​ Saxon manuscripts: a bibliographical handlist of manuscripts and manuscript fragments written or owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). 76 Bede certainly received practical assistance with writing towards the end of his life: Cuthbert of Wearmouth-​Jarrow, Epistola de obitu Bedae, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people, pp. 582–​6. 77 Bede, HA 18.

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for Benedict Biscop that others were not required to make long journeys because so much had been brought to Wearmouth-​Jarrow by its founder.78 Nevertheless, Bede’s autobiographical statement probably overemphasises the degree of fixity that his life entailed and there is some evidence to suggest that he travelled occasionally, albeit only locally within the kingdom of Northumbria. We can safely assume that Bede often made the seven-​ mile journey between the monastery’s two main sites to access books, for administrative purposes, to preach to his fellow brothers, and to learn from and teach others. It is also evident that he interacted with guests who visited Wearmouth-​ Jarrow such as the messenger referred to in his Letter to Plegwine and Nothhelm, who conducted research in the Lateran archives on Bede’s behalf and visited him in person at least twice.79 The Letter to Ecgberht, written in November 734, reveals that Bede had visited York for the purposes of study in the previous year, and the prefatory letter for the prose Life of St Cuthbert suggests that a considerable amount of interpersonal interaction took place between Bede and the monastic community at Lindisfarne.80 Bede additionally wrote a letter to a figure named Wicthed on technical aspects of paschal calculation which reveals that he had visited the recipient’s community in the past (the location of Wicthed’s monastery is not known).81 In explicating Mark’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem, following which Jesus went to the Temple, Bede writes in such a way as to suggest that he was personally familiar with travelling: he stated that when anyone comes to a town or village that has a church they should go there first, after which they can turn their attention to the worldly reasons for the trip.82 These incidental references to localised travel subtly undermine the image constructed by Bede of a person who spent the entirety of his life in one location from the age of seven onwards. By framing his life in such terms, Bede emphasised the qualities of obedience and service to God prevalent in other aspects of the autobiographical statement. This is likely because stabilitas is 78 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 185–​210. See the comments of C. B. Kendall, ‘Bede and education’, in DeGregorio (ed.), Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 99–​112, at 110–​11. 79 Bede, Epistola ad Pleguinam 1, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980); HE preface. On Nothhelm, see R. Shaw, The Gregorian mission to Kent in Bede’s Ecclesiastical history: methodology and sources (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 12–​13. 80 Bede, Epistula ad Egbertum 1; Vita Sancti Cuthberti preface. 81 Bede, Epistula ad Wicthedum, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980). 82 Bede, In Marci euangelium expositio 3, lines 1296–​1303, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960). See Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 1, p. xiii.

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an ideal commonly championed in monastic rules, including the Rule of St Benedict (which was undoubtedly influential at Wearmouth-​Jarrow, as will be discussed below).

Study of Scripture and observance of the Rule In the autobiographical statement, Bede presents his life in the monastery as consumed by the study of the Scriptures. He adds that two things defined his daily life, observance of the Rule and singing in church, before adding the endearing statement: ‘it has always been my delight to learn or to teach or to write’ (semper aut discere aut docere aut scribere dulce habui). Bede’s emphasis on biblical study as the key focal point for his activities comes as no surprise. Jennifer O’Reilly has remarked that ‘his entire output concerns Scripture and the kinds of knowledge and skills thought necessary for its understanding and application’.83 The centrality of Scripture to Bede’s canon is obvious with regard to his commentaries and homilies, which by their very nature demand direct engagement with specific parts of the Bible, but this principle applies equally to his historical works (in which the narratives he presents are framed by scriptural models, examples, values, and doctrines), and is even evident in the works concerning cosmology or the fundamentals of the Latin language. In the case of the latter category, Bede’s grammatical texts repurposed the classical discipline of grammatica for the monastic curriculum by using examples exclusively drawn from the Bible and later Christian Latin writings, in contrast to earlier contributions to the field, many of which continued to draw on secular works.84 Bede introduces his stellar catalogue of writings in (what may seem to a modern reader) rather understated terms, explaining that his methods involved making brief extracts from the works of the venerable Fathers on the Holy Scriptures and adding notes of his own for clarification. The characterisation of his writings as principally compiled from the works of the Fathers seems most obviously to apply to the biblical commentaries, which duly appear first in the list. In those texts Bede drew heavily on earlier authorities, in particular Augustine, Gregory the Great, Jerome, and

3 O’Reilly, St Paul and the sign of Jonah, p. 1. 8 84 Bede, De arte metrica; De schematibus et tropis, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975). M. H. King, ‘Grammatica mystica: a study of Bede’s grammatical curriculum’, in King and Stevens (eds), Saints, scholars, and heroes, 1, pp. 145–​59; C. V. Franklin, ‘Grammar and exegesis: Bede’s Liber De schematibus et tropis’, in C. D. Lanham (ed.), Latin grammar and rhetoric: from classical theory to medieval practice (London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 63–​91.

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Ambrose, but his contribution amounts to substantially more than compiling a list of excerpts and adding occasional clarificatory statements. How then, should we interpret these autobiographical words? They align well with Bede’s oft repeated presentation of his scholarly endeavours as ‘following in the footsteps of the fathers’ (patrum uestigia sequens), a phrase that was re-​interpreted in the early twenty-​first century to suggest that it should be taken not as a modest statement of deference to the Church Fathers but as staking a claim to a place amongst them.85 That said, it is likely that for Bede the figure of an individual author mattered less than the quality and utility of their texts. Bede would have regarded his role in passing on the wisdom of others as one of the most important aspects of his scholarship, his own contributions adding to a cumulative body of orthodox interpretation designed to deepen people’s understanding of the faith. In this, Bede may have believed that through teaching and writing he was playing his role in the unfolding of salvation history. Paul Hilliard has perceptively argued that Bede’s literary activities, which seem to have begun only after his ordination, were directly linked to his priestly identity.86 The use of the works of the Fathers gave Bede’s own contributions to this enterprise legitimacy by overtly grounding them within much larger traditions. This body of work was not, and could never have been, the fruit of one person’s labours. It was written by multiple named and anonymous commentators from different regions of the world, at different times, and transmitted through Christian communities from the time of the Early Church onwards. One of the Latin phrases that Bede uses to describe his compilation-​based methodology in the autobiographical statement is superadicere curaui (‘I have taken care to add’). This choice of expression is interesting because it reiterates a phrasing used in the preface to Bede’s Commentary on Revelation, where Bede presented his work as a more collective endeavour using the same words: superadicere curauimus (‘we have taken care to add’). That commentary was written early in Bede’s career at around the time that he was ordained priest in 703, making it almost certainly his earliest attempt at long-​form exegesis. Bede explains that much of his Commentary on Revelation was based on an earlier work by Tyconius, with the addition

85 See the essays by S. DeGregorio, ‘Introduction: the new Bede’, and R. D. Ray, ‘Who did Bede think he was?’, in DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede, pp. 1–​10 and 11–​36. 86 P. Hilliard, ‘The Venerable Bede as scholar, gentile and preacher’, in R. Corradini, M. Gillis, R. McKitterick, and I. van Renswoude (eds), Ego trouble: authors and their identities in the early middle ages (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 101–​10, at 107.

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of interpretations drawn from other books, his teachers, and his own understanding.87 The Revelation commentary is indeed highly derivative, much more so than his later works of exegesis such as On the Tabernacle, On the Temple, and On First Samuel.88 But though his exegetical work became more expansive and less dependent on earlier authorities over time, there is a clear linguistic resonance between the preface to the Commentary on Revelation and the statement introducing the list of works in Ecclesiastical history 5:24.89 This is suggestive of a remarkable consistency of purpose across Bede’s exegetical programme from the beginning of his authorial career until the completion of his magnum opus. In his autobiographical statement, Bede underlines the fact that his life in the monastery was governed by conscientious observance of a monastic rule. This emphasis on the Wearmouth-​Jarrow Rule as a guiding influence on his life complements the other features of the autobiographical passage that were designed to establish an image of pious obedience, already discussed, such as the use of the term famulus Christi as a self-​referent and the presentation of his life in terms of the monastic ideal of stabilitas. Wearmouth-​ Jarrow followed a hybrid rule developed from Benedict Biscop’s experiences of seventeen different monasteries encountered on his travels.90 It is not possible to reconstruct the precise terms of the Rule established at Wearmouth-​ Jarrow, but it is likely that the Rule of St Benedict was an important factor, given its popularity in the regions visited by Benedict Biscop in the mid to late seventh century.91 It has sometimes been assumed that Biscop’s adoption of the name Benedict was done in honour of Benedict of Nursia, the figure who pioneered the Benedictine Rule in Italy in the early sixth century 87 Bede, Expositio Apocalypseos preface (to Eusebius /​Hwætberht), lines 126–​32, ed. R. Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). 88 On these works, see S. DeGregorio, ‘Bede and the Old Testament’, in DeGregorio (ed.), Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 127–​41; G. H. Brown, A Companion to Bede (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 45–​50. 89 On Bede’s exegetical methods, see C. Jenkins, ‘Bede as exegete and theologian’, in Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings, pp. 152–​200; A. Holder, ‘Bede and the tradition of patristic exegesis’, Anglican Theological Review 72 (1990), 399–​411; S. DeGregorio and R. Love, Bede: On First Samuel (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), pp. 19–​38. 90 Vita Ceolfridi 8; Bede, HA 11. 91 On Biscop’s regula, see Klaus Zelzer, ‘Zur Frage der Observanz des Benedict Biscop’, Studia patristica 20 (1989), 323–​32, and Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of monasticism: from the desert fathers to the early middle ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 193–​4. See further: P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 141–​69, and C. Cubitt, ‘Monastic memory and identity in early Anglo-​ Saxon England’, in W. O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (eds), Social identity in early medieval Britain (London: Leicester University Press, 2000), pp. 253–​76, at 273–​4.

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and who gave the movement its name.92 In Bede’s lifetime, the Rule of St Benedict was influential in Wessex, on Lindisfarne, and in centres founded by Bishop Wilfrid, and the earliest extant full copy of it was produced in Southumbria in the late seventh or early eighth century.93 The Rule of St Benedict was certainly well known at Wearmouth-​Jarrow in the time of Bede. Benedicta Ward observes that while Wearmouth-​Jarrow was not, strictly speaking, a Benedictine monastery, the Rule presented the community with ‘a greatly esteemed source of wisdom providing a norm for reference’.94 Occasionally the sources bear witness to the Rule’s importance as a guiding influence upon community life.95 When describing the establishment of Jarrow, Bede invokes the example of Benedict of Nursia to legitimise the arrangement whereby Ceolfrith was appointed abbot of Jarrow and Eosterwine abbot of Wearmouth (a custom that would later be abandoned when Ceolfrith assumed control of both locations concurrently).96 In relating the circumstances of Benedict Biscop’s death, Bede assigns to him a speech in which he urges that future abbots be appointed by consensus of the entire community, following the Rule of St Benedict and the decretals of their papal letter of privilege.97 Additionally, there are several direct echoes of the Rule’s precepts in Bede’s own writings, especially his two books of Homilies on the Gospels.98 Adhering to a hierarchical monastic rule had a number of implications for Bede’s life. He was obliged to follow a set of strict regulations and to engage

92 M. Gleason, ‘Bede and his fathers’, Classica et Medievalia 45 (1994), 223–​38, at 223–​4 note 3. 93 F. J. Á. López, ‘The Rule of St Benedict in England at the time of Wilfrid’, in Higham (ed.), Wilfrid: abbot, bishop, saint, pp. 40–​53. The manuscript in question is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 48, on which see P. Sims-​Williams, Religion and literature in western England, 600–​800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 117–​18 and 204–​5; J. Story, ‘The Earliest copy of the Rule of St Benedict’, in C. Breay and J. Story (eds), Anglo-​Saxon kingdoms: art, word, war (London: British Library, 2018), pp. 100–​1. A facsimile edition has been published: D. H. Farmer (ed.), The Rule of St Benedict: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 48, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 15 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1968). 94 B. Ward, The Venerable Bede (London and New York: Continuum, 1998), p. 9. 95 Gleason, ‘Bede and his fathers’, 223–​4 note 3. 96 Bede, HA 7. 97 Bede, HA 11. 98 A. G. P. van der Walt, ‘Reflections on the Benedictine rule in Bede’s homiliary’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1968), 367–​76; G. Bonner, ‘Bede and medieval civilisation’, Anglo-​Saxon England 2 (1973), 71–​90 at 77–​80; S. DeGregorio, ‘Bede and Benedict of Nursia’, in S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. Nelson, and D. A. E. Pelteret (eds), Early medieval studies in memory of Patrick Wormald (Ashgate: Farnham, 2009), pp. 149–​63.

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in communal living with few personal possessions.99 His ability to travel outside the monastery or send a letter to one of his contacts would have been restricted; such things were likely possible only at the discretion of his abbot.100 Bede’s daily routine as a monk provided him with near-​constant exposure to the Bible through collective worship, private prayer, and the three activities he tells us gave him particular pleasure: learning, teaching, and writing.101 Bede states that he spent his life ‘amid the observance of the discipline of the Rule’ (inter obseruantiam disciplinae regularis), thus indicating that he followed its precepts scrupulously.102 Elsewhere, Bede used this same Latin phrase of other figures whom he regarded as paragons of monastic virtue worthy of emulation. Interestingly, the three examples with whom Bede aligns himself in this way are all authority figures: Abbots Hwætberht and Ceolfrith at Wearmouth-​ Jarrow, and Abbess Hildelith at Barking.103 Bede’s presentation of his own life maps especially closely on to the terms he used to define Hwætberht’s. As well as observing the discipline of the Rule from childhood onwards, Hwætberht was also engaged in writing, singing, reading, and teaching (that is: pretty much the same four activities by which Bede characterised his own life in the monastery).104 The author of the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith also states that Hwætberht resided in the monastery from a young age, which would seem to imply that he too was a child oblate.105 Bede’s statement about singing in church is instructive. Such behaviour would have been required of a monk dedicated to the service of God in a communal setting, but it is nevertheless telling that Bede chose to highlight this as one of the defining activities of his life. Singing and chanting were important elements of the mass and other aspects of liturgical worship, though it can be hard to reconstruct these crucial aspects of early medieval religious life.106 Hymns, psalms, and prayers facilitated the immersive engagement of choirs and congregations with doctrines, and through

99 The goods owned by Bede at the time of his death are recorded by Cuthbert of Wearmouth-​Jarrow, Epistola de obitu Bedae. See the comments of D. J. Heisey, ‘Bede’s pepper, napkins and incense’, Downside Review 129 (2011), 16–​30. 100 Regula Benedictus de Nursia 7 and 67, ed. A. de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, SC 181–​2 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971–​2). 101 See C. Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 63–​70. 102 Bede, HE 5:24. 103 Bede, HA 16 and 18; Bede, HE 4:10. 104 Bede, HA 18. 105 Vita Ceolfridi 29. 106 J. Billett, The divine office in Anglo-​Saxon England, 597–​c.1000 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 78–​132.

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repetition those principles could be readily internalised.107 The impact of such activity on framing an individual’s worldview should not be underestimated, especially in the case of Bede who was exposed to music upon his entry to the monastery as a seven-​year-​old child and likely encountered it on a daily basis thereafter. In the Ecclesiastical history, Bede celebrates the advanced proficiency of Wearmouth-​Jarrow as a centre for liturgical music when relating how Benedict Biscop escorted John, chief cantor of St Peter’s in Rome, to Northumbria and invited him to direct the community’s participation in the divine office. John instructed the monks in chanting and singing in the Roman manner and committed his lessons to writing, teaching not only the residents of Wearmouth-​Jarrow but also representatives of monastic communities from across Northumbria.108 The anonymous author of the Life of Ceolfrith also emphasises the importance of singing and chanting when describing life under Ceolfrith at Jarrow.109 Bede himself composed a collection of rarely studied hymns, which concern topics such as the lives of saints, liturgical feast days, and the days of Creation.110 Three metrical psalm adaptions have also been credited to him.111

Conclusion: Bede’s presence in the Ecclesiastical history A driving force of Bedan scholarship in recent decades has been the desire to bring his exegesis to the fore in response to its earlier neglect.112 Increased study of Bede’s exegesis has enhanced our understanding of themes and images in his historical and hagiographical works, as various scholars have shown that these are illuminated by his scriptural commentaries.113 Bede’s

107 According to his biographer, Wilfrid knew several books of the Bible and the entire psalter by heart: Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 2. 108 Bede, HE 4:18. 109 Vita Ceolfridi 12 and 14. 110 Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry, pp. 354–​454. 111 Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry, pp. 340–​6. 112 E.g. Ray, ‘Bede, the exegete as historian’, in Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi, pp. 125–​40; J. O’Reilly, ‘Introduction’, in S. Connolly (trans.), Bede: On the Temple (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), pp. xvii–​lv; DeGregorio, ‘New Bede’, pp. 2–​6; C. O’Brien, Bede’s temple: an image and its interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 113 A. 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. Barrow, ‘How Coifi pierced Christ’s side: a re-​examination of Bede’s Ecclesiastical history, II, Chapter 13’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62 (2011), 693–​706; M. MacCarron, ‘The adornment of virgins: Æthelthryth and

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extraordinary skill in this enterprise is apparent in the subtle ways in which he disseminated his message of Christian salvation across the full range of his canon. His exegetical and didactic works were intended for the initiated; he sent lengthy treatises expounding scriptural problems to the very learned Bishop Acca; his works on time were used in the Wearmouth-​Jarrow classroom and disseminated more broadly to those interested in computus; his homilies are deeply profound theological reflections and appear to have been intended for monastic audiences. However, the dedicatee of the Ecclesiastical history was a secular figure: Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria.114 It is notable that Bede wrote in a different Latin style in the Ecclesiastical history to that employed in many of his scriptural commentaries, using shorter sentences and less elaborate prose.115 The Ecclesiastical history can be appreciated by a variety of readers because it works on multiple levels. It is, first of all, a straightforward narrative of conversion to Christianity concerned with the actions of kings and bishops, for example Æthelberht of Kent and Augustine of Canterbury in the early seventh century, and thereby appropriate for the uninitiated. However, it was also a commentary on declining standards of the Church in Bede’s own day, although this is most apparent only to those who were aware of the situation in eighth-​century Northumbria: thankfully, for modern readers, Bede explicitly revealed his view of the contemporary Church in his Letter to Ecgberht (written three years after he completed the Ecclesiastical history) and similar concerns can be detected in his Old Testament exegesis.116 Most profoundly, the work is a coherent expression of orthodox

her necklaces’, in E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds), Listen, O isles, unto me: studies in medieval word and image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011), pp. 142–​55, and M. MacCarron, ‘Royal marriage and conversion in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum’, Journal of Theological Studies 68 (2017), 650–​70. 114 P. Wormald, ‘Bede, Beowulf and the conversion of the Anglo-​Saxon aristocracy’, in R. T. Farrell (ed.), Bede and Anglo-​Saxon England (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1978), pp. 32–​95; D. P. Kirby, ‘King Ceolwulf of Northumbria and the Historia ecclesiastica’, Studia Celtica 14–​15 (1978), 168–​73. 115 On Bede’s prose style, see D. K. Fry, ‘The Art of Bede: Edwin’s council’, in King and Stevens (eds), Saints, scholars, and heroes, 1, pp. 191–​207; N. Wright, ‘Bede and Vergil’, Romanobarbarica 6 (1981), 361–​79; C. Grocock, ‘Bede and the golden age of Latin prose in Northumbria’, in J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s golden age (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 371–​82; R. Sharpe, ‘The Varieties of Bede’s prose’, in T. Reinhardt, M. Lapidge, and J. N. Adams (eds.), Aspects of the language of Latin prose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 338–​55. 116 Bede, Epistula ad Egbertum. See further: Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’; S. DeGregorio, ‘“Nostrorum socordiam temporum”: the reforming impulse of Bede’s later exegesis’, Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 107–​22; S. DeGregorio, ‘Bede’s

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Christology, for those who have the theological awareness to recognise Bede’s emphasis on the proper practice of faith.117 The more attuned the reader is to Scripture, the more they will recognise Bede’s subtle allusions to biblical and theological precepts in his engaging historical narrative. The author’s skill is most evident in the fact that he rarely explicitly cited the scriptural text to which he was alluding. Scriptural interpretation was Bede’s driving force and his self-​presentation in Ecclesiastical history 5:24 confirms its importance for that work. However, Bede could have made that point, and even included his list of writings, without offering such an intriguing self-​pen-​portrait. That he did so suggests that Bede desired to influence his own legacy and wanted the reader to know who he was and what inspired him. Although Bede wrote many letters, often to close friends, the autobiographical statement in Ecclesiastical history 5:24 represents the most deeply personal paragraph to come down to us from him. The image that Bede constructed of himself emphasises qualities such as obedience and stability, in line with the monastic principles that regulated his life. He was, first and foremost, a servant of Christ and priest, famulus Christi et presbyter, a self-​description with which he opened and closed the book.118 One of the most striking elements of Bede’s self-​description in the final chapter of the Ecclesiastical history is that it exists at all. As noted above, Bede revealed very little of himself in his other works, and writing such an overtly autobiographical passage was a major departure for him.119 Bede’s decision to insert a brief account of himself into his magnum opus was

“In Ezram et Neemiam” and the reform of the Northumbrian Church’, Speculum 9 (2004), 1–​25; S. DeGregorio, ‘Visions of reform: Bede’s later writings in context’, in Darby and Wallis (eds), Bede and the future, pp. 207–​32. 117 J. O’Reilly, ‘The Multitude of isles and the corner-​stone: topography, exegesis, and the identity of the Angli in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’, in J. Roberts and L. Webster (eds), Anglo-​Saxon traces (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), pp. 201–​28; J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter,’ in M. MacCarron and D. Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis: essays on Bede, Adomnán and Thomas Becket (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 165–​83. For the argument that Bede’s anno Domini chronology, with its emphasis on the incarnation, was intended as a succinct credal statement, see MacCarron, Bede and time, pp. 126–​7 and 145–​9. 118 See Bede, HE preface, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 2–​3: ‘Gloriosissimo regi Ceoluulfo Beda famulus Christi et presbyter’; and HE 5:24, quoted above. 119 Cf. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 1, pp. x–​xi. Nicholas Higham has suggested that Bede may have included his autobiographical statement in the Ecclesiastical history to underscore his authority as author: (Re-​)reading Bede, pp. 12–​13.

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not without precedent.120 Various other writers had outlined their authorial processes in their works, for example, Eusebius at the beginning of his Ecclesiastical history, and Rufinus in the preface to his Latin translation of that same work.121 A familiar humility topos opens many early medieval hagiographies.122 The examples closest to Bede, however, seem to be Jerome’s decision to conclude On illustrious men with himself, and the ending of the Ten books of histories by Gregory of Tours.123 Jerome’s self-​ description was shorter than Bede’s, and is primarily concerned with listing his writings. Gregory of Tours included himself in sequence in his list of the bishops of Tours, where he recounted his activities in office and recorded the works that he had written. Bede was very probably influenced by both of these, and perhaps by others, in his decision to conclude the Ecclesiastical history with an account of his own life. However, his self-​description differs from both Jerome’s and Gregory’s. Theirs are not as personal, and do not stand out as interjections in the same manner as Bede’s. Bede followed a chronological recapitulation of the key events of his work with an autobiographical note, essentially becoming a character in his own book. With regard to James Campbell’s oft-​cited description of the Ecclesiastical history as a ‘gallery of good examples’, it is fascinating to observe that the last such example is Bede himself.124

120 Hilliard, ‘Bede as scholar, gentile and preacher’, p. 109: ‘The inclusion of the author’s life then was a permanent witness to the fact that the author was worthy of attention’. 121 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 1:1, ed. G. Bardy, Histoire ecclésiastique, SC 31, 41, 55, 73 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1952–​71); Rufinus, Eusebii Caesariensis Historia ecclesiastica: Rufini continuatio prologue, ed. T. Mommsen, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 9.2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908), pp. 951–​1040. 122 Examples from the Insular world include: Vita Cuthberti anonymo 1:1; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi preface; Adomnán, Vita Columbae preface, ed. and trans. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson, Adomnán’s Life of Columba (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. edn, 1991). 123 Jerome, De uiris illustribus 135, ed. E. Richardson, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 14.1A (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1896), pp. 1–​56; Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X 10:31, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH SS rer. Merov. 1.1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1937). On Bede’s knowledge of these works, see Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, pp. 212 and 217; Harris, ‘Library of the Venerable Bede’. On the comparison with Gregory of Tours, see Wallace-​Hadrill, Historical commentary, p. 203. 124 J. Campbell, ‘Bede I’, in J. Campbell (ed.), Essays in Anglo-​ Saxon history (London: Hambledon Press, 1986), pp. 1–​27 at 25.

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

In a Christmas homily on the prologue in the Gospel of John, Bede offered one of his several recitations of the well-​known patristic ‘exchange formula’ of salvation through the Incarnation of Christ the Word: He was born God from God, and he did not wish to remain only the Son of God; he deigned to become also Son of man, not losing what he had been, but taking up what he had not been, so that by this he might transform human beings into sons of God, and might make them co-​heirs of his glory, and they might by grace begin to possess what he himself had always possessed by nature.1

This sentence does not appear to have been derived from any single source, but Bede would have been familiar with many of the phrases –​and all of the doctrine –​from his reading of the Latin Church Fathers. For example, the description of the incarnate Christ as ‘not losing what he had been, but taking up what he had not been’ is found in Ambrose, Augustine, and John Cassian.2 The idea that Christians are co-​heirs with Christ was a patristic

1 Bede, Homiliae 1:8, lines 189–​94, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: Homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 1, p. 80: ‘Deus ex Deo natus est et noluit Dei tantum filius manere; hominis quoque filius fieri dignatus est non amittens quod erat sed adsumens quod non erat ut per hoc homines in Dei filios transferret gloriae que suae faceret coheredes qui quod ipse semper habebat per naturam inciperent habere per gratiam.’ A more succinct version of the exchange formula appears in Bede, Homiliae 2:10, lines 138–​9: ‘filius Dei hominis dignatus est fieri filius ut nos in se credentes Dei faceret filios’. See also Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 6, lines 1522–​4, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960): ‘propter homines homo factus est ut in hominibus potestatem daret filios Dei fieri’. 2 Ambrose, De fide 2:8, p. 62, lines 24–​5, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 78 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1962); Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 58.1:10, lines 41–​2, ed. D. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956); John Cassian, De incarnatione Domini contra Nestorium 7:28, p. 387, lines 8–​ 10, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 17 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1888), quoting Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 39:13, PG 36, col.

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commonplace, as was the distinction between Christ’s sonship ‘by nature’ and the faithfuls’ adoption only ‘by grace’. The identification of Christians as co-​heirs specifically of the Lord’s ‘glory’ is somewhat unusual, but it is implied in Saint Paul’s confident affirmation of the Spirit’s testimony that believers are ‘co-​heirs with Christ, if yet we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him’ (Romans 8:17). Bede’s language here, and in many other places throughout his exegetical works, shows that he was a fervent proponent of what Christian theological tradition has called ‘deification’ or ‘divinisation’ (Greek theosis) –​a process of transformation in which believers are united with God by participation and share so deeply in divinity that they become like God, taking on the attributes of immortality, incorruptibility, and holiness of life.3 The classic expressions of the patristic exchange formula appear in Greek writers. In the second century, Irenaeus had declared that the Son of God ‘became what we are in order to make us what he himself is’.4 In the fourth century, Athanasius boldly asserted that the Word ‘became human that we might become God’.5 But as recent scholarship has come to appreciate, this doctrine of deification was as pervasive and influential in the Latin West as it has long been acknowledged to have been in the Greek East. The term deificare and its cognates is relatively rare in Latin patristic writings –​and completely absent in Bede –​but the doctrine itself holds what Jared Ortiz has aptly called ‘a place of “structural significance” ’ in the Latin Fathers.6 Some implications of deification as a way of understanding salvation in Christ are that redemption involves a genuine transformation of character, not just the forgiveness of sins; that the locus of transformation is in the body as well as in the soul; and that some degree of intimate union with God

350A. The same idea occurs frequently in patristic literature, but these are the closest verbal parallels to the text of Bede’s homily. 3 Bede’s theology of deification has been noted by G. Bonner, ‘Bede: scholar and spiritual teacher’, in J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s golden age (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 363–​70, at 369, and by S. Cremin, ‘Bede, baptism and his homily for the Octave of Pentecost’, Revue Bénédictine 130 (2020), 74–​111, at 102–​ 8. For the patristic background, see N. Russell, The doctrine of deification in the Greek patristic tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and J. Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin patristic tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019). 4 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 5, preface, PG 7.2, cols 433–​1224, at 1120B: ‘factus est quod sumus nos, etsi nos perficeret esse quod est ipse’. 5 Athanasius, De incarnatione Verbi 54, PG 25, cols 95–​196, at 191 B–​C: ‘Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν’. 6 J. Ortiz, ‘Introduction’, in Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin patristic tradition, pp. 1–​ 8, at 4.

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is possible in this life, not only in the life to come. As the discussion that follows will show, all of these implications of deification are to be found in Bede’s writings.

Bede’s Christology As Norman Russell has noted, the fundamental basis for the doctrine of deification is Christological: ‘Salvation was brought about by the incarnate Word, who not only remedied the effects of the Fall but raised humanity to a new level of existence characterized by communion with the Father and participation in immortality.’7 Given this close connection between divine kenosis (self-​emptying) in Christ and human theosis, it is not surprising that the most frequent and extensive references to deification in Bede’s writings appear in his homilies and commentaries on the Gospels and in his commentary on the Song of Songs, which he read as a typological narrative of Christ’s incarnation.8 It is also in these same works that Bede presents the most fully developed accounts of his Christology, which studiously conforms to the formula of ‘two natures in one person’ that had been adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. There are explicit references to the two natures of Christ (both divine and human) in thirty out of his fifty homilies on the Gospels. In an Advent homily on the Annunciation, Bede notes that the angel Gabriel’s greeting to the Virgin Mary included both a prophecy that she will give birth to a son (thereby acknowledging his humanity) and the declaration that he will be called the Son of the Most High (thus confessing his divinity). Pay careful attention to the order of these words, says Bede, for in them consists ‘the sum total of our redemption’.9 The same homily on the Johannine prologue that contains the exchange formula cited above also includes a lengthy passage refuting a number of Christological heresies one by one: Arianism, modalism, Ebionism, adoptionism, and subordinationism.10 According to Bede, all of those heresies denied the full divinity of Christ. Elsewhere he was equally distressed by other heresies that in his

7 N. Russell, ‘A Common Christian tradition: deification in the Greek and Latin fathers’, in Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin patristic tradition, pp. 272–​93, at 274. 8 For Bede’s Christological interpretation of the Song of Songs, see A. Holder, ‘Christ as incarnate wisdom in Bede’s Commentary on the Song of Songs’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 169–​88. 9 Bede, Homiliae 1:3, lines 82–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 22: ‘tota redemptionis nostrae summa’. 10 Bede, Homiliae 1:8, lines 34–​73.

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view failed to account properly for the union of divine and human natures, including the teachings of Apollinaris (d. c. 390), Nestorius (d. c. 450), and the Manicheans.11 As Jennifer O’Reilly has shown, Bede was particularly concerned to refute the seventh-​century Monothelete heresy that attributed to Christ only one (divine) will –​another disavowal of the Saviour’s full humanity.12 Scholars have suggested a variety of reasons for Bede’s animus against heresy.13 In the case of Christology, one powerful motivation was surely his realisation that a theology of deification required a robust defence of the ‘two natures’ doctrine in order to uphold the Lord’s role as the ‘Mediator between God and humans’ (1 Timothy 2:5).14 Bede made frequent use of the rhetorical devices of antithesis and paradox that patristic authors had commonly employed to highlight the contrasts between divine exaltation and human humility.15 Although he did not write about antithesis in his textbooks on grammar, Bede was immersed in biblical and patristic literature that made use of that stylistic device. According to Augustine, antithesis is ‘the most elegant of the ornaments of speech’; but more than that, it is by divine plan built into the course of world events.16 11 On Mani and Apollinarius: Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistula 2 Petri 2, lines 13–​17, ed. D Hurst, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). On Mani and Nestorius: Bede, Expositio actuum apostolorum 3, lines 72–​3, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 12 J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede and Monotheletism’, in S. DeGregorio and P. Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints and communities in early medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 105–​27. 13 A. Holder, ‘Hunting snakes in the grass: Bede as heresiologist’, in E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds), Listen, O isles, unto me: studies in medieval word and image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011), pp. 105–​14; A. T. Thacker, ‘Why did heresy matter to Bede? present and future contexts’, in P. Darby and F. Wallis (eds), Bede and the future (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 47–​66. 14 Noting Bede’s repeated reference to the two natures of Christ in his commentary on Mark, Trent Foley deemed the reason for this emphasis ‘a provocative question for further study’; W. T. Foley, ‘Bede’s exegesis of passages unique to the Gospel of Mark’, in C. Leonardi and G. Orlandi (eds), Biblical studies in the early middle ages (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni di Galluzzo, 2005), pp. 105–​24, at 115–​6. On the central place of 1 Timothy 2:5 in Bede’s theology, see J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter’, in M. MacCarron and D. Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 167–​85, at 167–​76. 15 H. Maguire, Art and eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 53–​6; A. Cameron, Christianity and the rhetoric of empire: the development of Christian discourse (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 155–​88. 16 Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 11:18, p. 537, line 15–​p. 538, line 11, ed. E. Hoffmann, CSEL 40.1 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1899): ‘antitheta enim quae appellantur in ornamentis elocutionis sunt decentissima’.

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No wonder, then, that so many early Christian theologians found antithesis to be indispensable for their Christological formulations.17 Bede was no exception, as shown by one of the most rhetorically embellished passages in his commentary on the Song of Songs: And surely it pertains to the frailty of his humanity that a child is born to us, but to the power of his divinity that he is born of a virgin and that his birth is proclaimed by angelic voices and celebrated with mysteries; to the power of his divinity that a star shows the wise men where he is to be worshiped, to the frailty of his humanity that he is driven out of his homeland by the plots of a deceitful king; … to the frailty of his humanity that he sleeps in a boat, to the power of his divinity that when awakened he exercises command over the wind and the sea; to the frailty of his humanity that he is crucified and dies, to the power of his divinity that at his death the foundations of heaven begin to tremble, as do also those of earth; to the frailty of his humanity that he is anointed with spices and buried, to the power of his divinity that he arose and ascends into heaven.18

This extended celebration of Christ’s two natures, which may have been modelled on some similar passages from Pope Leo the Great (d. 461), shows how thoroughly Bede had appropriated the language of orthodox Chalcedonian Christology, which provided him with a strong foundation for his theology and spirituality of deification.19 17 K. Anatolios, ‘Oppositional pairs and Christological synthesis: reading Augustine’s De trinitate’, Theological Studies 68 (2007), 231–​53; G. D. Dunn, ‘Suffering humanity and divine impassibility: the Christology in the Lenten homilies of Leo the Great’, Augustinianum 41 (2001), 257–​71; G. D. Dunn, ‘Divine impassibility and Christology in the Christmas homilies of Leo the Great’, Theological Studies 62 (2001), 71–​85; C. Straw, Gregory the Great: perfection in imperfection (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 147–​61. 18 Bede, In Cantica canticorum 4:5, lines 787–​93, 800–​6, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); trans. A. Holder, The Venerable Bede: On the Song of Songs and selected writings (New York: Paulist Press, 2011), p. 166: ‘Ad fragilitatem namque humanitatis pertinet hoc ipsum quod paruulus natus est nobis, ad potentiam diuinitatis quod de uirgine natus est eadem que natiuitas angelicis est praedicata uocibus et celebrata mysteriis; ad potentiam diuinitatis quod indicio stellae monstratur adorandus a magis, ad fragilitatem humanitatis quod insidiis perfidi regis patria fugatur; … ad fragilitatem humanitatis quod in naui dormit, ad potentiam diuinitatis quod excitatus uentis et mari imperat; ad fragilitatem humanitatis quod crucifixus est et mortuus, ad potentiam diuinitatis quod mortem eius elementa cum terrestribus etiam tremuere caelestia; ad fragilitatem humanitatis quod conditus aromatibus ac sepultus est, ad potentiam diuinitatis quod surrexit et ascendit in caelos’. 19 Cf. Leo the Great, Epistula 28:4, PL 54, cols 767B–​ 771A. The First Tome of Leo has not heretofore been identified as one of Bede’s sources, but he does refer to it in De temporum ratione 66, lines 1646–​52, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), where he is dependent on the chronicle of Marcellinus Comes. He certainly knew a similar passage from Leo’s Second Tome, Epistula 165:6,

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Models of deification In a comprehensive study of Augustine’s theology of deification, David Meconi has identified four models of salvation that the bishop of Hippo employed in the passages in his works where he uses the term deificare: recapitulation, divine adoption, the ‘great exchange’ of divine and human natures, and ethical changes in the human person that enable the regenerated Christian to live as God lives.20 Although Bede never uses any form of the word deificare, he does invoke all four of these models, repeatedly and at length. It would be a mistake to suppose that all of Bede’s allusions to the process of deification were derived from Augustine, but he was doubtless the major influence.21 Therefore, Meconi’s four models (which he sometimes refers to as ‘metaphors’) provide an apt schema for categorising the various ways in which Bede develops this theme.

Recapitulation In this model, Meconi explains, ‘two contrary members of an antithesis –​ the former distorted and deficient, the latter perfect and operative –​are joined together by the perfect member’s penetrating that fallen reality and conforming it to itself’.22 Bede sees Christ as accomplishing his salvific work by taking on many different roles that involve humbling himself in order to

PL 54, cols 1163B–​1165A, because it appears in the Latin version of the Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, ed. R. Riedinger, Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, series secunda, volume 1: Concilium Lateranense a. 649 celebratum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 299–​301. For the presence of a copy of this document in the library at Wearmouth-​Jarrow, see Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum 4:18, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). On Bede’s extensive use of the acta of the Lateran Synod, see O’Reilly, ‘Bede and Monotheletism’. 20 D. V. Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s theology of deification (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), pp. 88–​9. See also G. Bonner, ‘Augustine’s conception of deification’, Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986), 369–​86, and R. Puchniak, ‘Augustine’s conception of deification, revisited’, in S. Finlan and V. Kharlamov (eds), Theosis: deification in Christian theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2006), pp. 122–​33. 21 On the extent of Augustine’s influence on Bede, see A. T. Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: history and figure in sacred text, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2005). In some instances, Bede did adopt distinctive Augustinian phrasings; see for example Peter Darby, ‘Heresy and authority in Bede’s Letter to Plegwine’, in DeGregorio and Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints and communities, pp. 145–​ 69, at 157–​61. 22 Meconi, The One Christ, p. 98.

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redeem humankind. Christ is the teacher who accommodates his message to the limited capacity of his disciples so that they will understand; the physician who takes on the infirmities of his patients so that they may be healed; the sinless maker of water who is baptised in the Jordan in order to sanctify the waters in which many sinners will be cleansed.23 Divine condescension is naturally on full display in the Gospel accounts of Christ’s nativity, where the great one became little so that sinners might become just; the one seated at God’s right hand needed to find a place in the inn so that humans might enter the Father’s mansions on high; the invisible one who clothes every creature was wrapped in swaddling clothes so that the original cloak of immortality might be restored to those who had lost it.24 But the pattern continues throughout Christ’s earthly life, and especially in his victory over death and final resurrection: And so the Word became flesh, that is, God became a human being and dwelt among us, so that by keeping company with us in the form of a human being akin to us, he would be able to unite with us; by speaking to us he would be able to instruct us and present to us a way of living; by dying he would be able to struggle for us against the enemy; by rising he would be able to destroy our death.25

Like Augustine, Bede often plays with the recapitulative formula of Christ as both creator and re-​creator. In a homily for the octave of Pentecost, with reference to the promise of eternal life in John 3:16, he says: ‘Thus the one who, through the power of his divinity, had created us to enjoy the happiness of everlasting life, might himself restore us, through the weakness of our humanity, to recover the life we had lost.’26 An important aspect of that recovery is the restoration of the divine image and likeness. Again following Augustine, Bede in his interpretation of Genesis 1:26 did not differentiate between the image and the likeness but equated both with the human

3 Bede, Homiliae 1:19, lines 151–​6; 2:14, lines 47–​61; 1:12, lines 27–​34. 2 24 Bede, Homiliae 1:6, lines 159–​77. 25 Bede, Homiliae 1:8, lines 274–​9; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 83: ‘Atque ideo uerbum caro factum est, id est Deus homo factus est et habitauit in nobis ut per cognatum nobis hominis habitum nobis conuersando congruere nos adloquendo instruere nobis uiuendi uiam praebere pro nobis contra hostem confligere nostram mortem moriendo ac resurgendo posset destruere.’ 26 Bede, Homiliae 2:18, lines 234–​7; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 186: ‘ut qui per diuinitatis suae potentiam nos creauerat ad perfruendam uitae beatitudinem perennis ipse per fragilitatem humanitatis nostrae nos restauret ad recipiendam quam perdidimus uitam’. On Christ as both maker (faber) and restorative physician (medicus) of all things, see Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 2, lines 221–​39. For this theme in Augustine, see Meconi, The One Christ, p. 100.

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being’s possession of a rational soul, although that likeness of the mind was fittingly signified by an upright posture that facilitated the contemplation of things above.27 But he also understood that the image of God entailed a ‘participation in the divine holiness’ that was lost in the Fall until Christ deigned ‘to appear without sin in the likeness of sinful flesh so that he might cleanse us thoroughly from every sin, and form again in us the distinctness of his image’.28 Although the destiny of redeemed humanity was rooted in the original blessing of the divine image, Bede was careful to note that Christ’s incarnation was an act of divine generosity and in no way due to human merit. As the Virgin Mary sang in her Magnificat (Luke 1:54), everyone who has been restored to salvation should humbly give thanks to God for being ‘mindful of his mercy’.29

Divine adoption Several of Bede’s references to God’s adoption of human beings as his sons and daughters appear in relation to the Pauline texts Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:5–​6, both of which connect adoption with the gift of the Holy Spirit.30 Another key text is the account of Jesus’ baptism in which a voice from heaven declares him to be God’s beloved Son (Matthew 3:17). ‘In this way,’ says Bede, ‘human beings are to learn that through the grace of baptism they can, by the reception of the Holy Spirit, be changed from children of the devil into children of God.’31 The association of adoption with baptism appears again in the previously cited homily for the octave of Pentecost, where Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus demonstrates that anyone who is born by the Spirit and renewed by grace ‘becomes spiritual and a child of God, although they appear visibly to all as flesh and the child of a human being’.32 Baptised Christians, then, are adopted as children of

27 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 720–​96, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), including a long quotation from Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 6:12, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 28.1 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1894). 28 Bede, Homiliae 1:6, lines 73, 78–​80; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 55: ‘participatione diuinae sanctitatis … in similitudine carnis peccati sine peccato apparere ut nos emundaret ab omni peccato ac claritatem in nobis suae reformaret imaginis’. 29 Bede, Homiliae 1:4, lines 295–​302. 30 Bede, Homiliae 1:12, lines 154–​61 (on Romans 8:15); 1:11, lines 15–​34 (on Galatians 4:5–​6). 31 Bede, Homiliae 1:12, lines 155–​7; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 119, slightly modified: ‘ut per hoc discant homines per gratiam se baptismatis accepto spiritu sancto de filiis diaboli in Dei filios posse transferri’. 32 Bede, Homiliae 2:18, lines 75–​82; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 181, slightly modified: ‘fit spiritalis et Dei filius cum uisibiliter omnibus caro et filius hominis appareat’.

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God, but they never become equal to Jesus himself. Commenting on Song of Songs 2:3, Bede explains that as the apple tree excels all the other trees in the wood because it is superior in appearance, smell, and taste, so does Christ the God-​man surpass all the saints, since they are children by grace while he alone is a son by nature.33 And yet, even though he is always careful to maintain this qualitative distinction between Christ and Christians, Bede does not hesitate to identify the faithful as those of whom the psalmist says, ‘You are gods and all of you children of the Most High’ (Psalm 81:6 [82:6]). For Bede, this verse, which was one of the main patristic proof texts for the doctrine of deification, is especially appropriate when applied to the disciples whose adopted status had enabled them to grasp the mysteries of Christ’s divinity, thereby becoming ‘more than human’ (supra homines).34

The ‘great exchange’ As in the recapitulation model, patristic articulations of the exchange of divine and human properties in the Incarnation stressed Christ’s humility and self-​giving for the sake of humanity’s redemption. But as Meconi explains, ‘exchange language is much more unificatory and much further reaching in what it accomplishes’.35 If recapitulation restores all that humanity had lost in the Fall (knowledge, health, righteousness, immortality, the image of God, etc.), the divine/​human exchange brings something even greater: union with God through participation in the divine life. Through the Incarnation, human beings come to share in divine holiness, divine power, and spiritual grace.36 As Bede puts it in a homily for the feast of the Purification, the Lord ‘not only deigned for our sake to become a human being, though he was God, but he also deigned to become poor for us, though he was rich, so that by his poverty along with his humanity he might grant to us to become sharers (participes) in his riches and his divinity’.37 In the passage just quoted, there is an allusion to 2 Corinthians 8:9 with St Paul’s chiastic celebration of Christ’s descent into poverty so that humanity See Cremin, ‘Bede, baptism and his homily for the Octave of Pentecost’ for the patristic background to the various themes in this homily. 33 Bede, In Cantica canticorum 1:2, lines 65–​9. 34 Bede, Homiliae 1:20, lines 19–​46; see also: Homiliae 1:23, lines 269–​74, and In Genesim 2, lines 940–​6. 35 Meconi, The One Christ, p. 114. 36 Bede, Homiliae 1:6, lines 71–​4; 1:8, lines 216–​21; 1:25, lines 186–​8. 37 Bede, Homiliae 1:18, lines 48–​51; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 181: ‘non solum homo fieri cum Deus esset sed etiam cum diues esset pauper fieri dignatus est pro nobis ut nos sua paupertate simul et humanitate diuitiarum et diuinitatis suae donaret esse participes’.

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might be raised to become rich. Bede quotes the same verse in three other places, to similar effect.38 Clearly this was another patristic proof text for deification that exerted some significant degree of influence on him. But despite his fondness for the language of participation, there is scarcely a trace in Bede of another verse often cited as evidence for a doctrine of deification, namely 2 Peter 1:4: ‘you may become partakers of the divine nature’ (efficiamini diuinae consortes naturae). The only explicit reference comes in his Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, where Bede simply notes that St Peter is telling his audience of gentile converts that they too have received ‘all the promises and gifts of [Christ’s] divine power’ along with the Jewish Christians.39 The verse had been one of Ambrose’s favourites, but Augustine never used it in reference to deification due to its appropriation by the Pelagian party as the basis for their belief in the possibility of attaining sinless human perfection.40 Whether consciously or not, Bede appears to have followed Augustine’s path on this issue.41 Although it is customary to refer to the exchange model of deification as a ‘formula’, it should not be understood as a fixed form of words to be recited verbatim. When the editor and translators of Bede’s homilies came to passages in which he offers various accounts of the divine/​human exchange in the Incarnation, their footnotes sometimes cite passages from Augustine, Ambrose, or Leo the Great. Those patristic passages certainly contain formulations of the deification theme that are similar to Bede’s, and he is likely to have been inspired by them. But he does not appear to be quoting from any particular text as a source, and there are many other such passages that could also be cited as parallels. This seems to be a case in which Bede has so thoroughly absorbed the earlier writers’ pattern of thought that he is able to reproduce it in a wide variety of contexts, with modifications appropriate to the situation. Even if he was no innovator in the development of deification

38 Bede, In proverbia Salomonis 2:22, lines 180–​ 2, ed. D Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); In Lucae evangelium expositio 1, lines 1287–​92 and 1739–​42. 39 Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistula 2 Petri 1, lines 61–​79; trans. D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: commentary on the seven catholic epistles (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1985), pp. 125–​6; brackets added. 40 B. Dunkle, ‘Beyond carnal cogitations: deification in Ambrose of Milan’, in Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin patristic tradition, pp. 132–​52, at 143–​4; Meconi, The One Christ, pp. 129–​32. 41 On Bede’s concerns about the Pelagian heresy, see A. Holder, ‘The Anti-​Pelagian character of Bede’s Commentary on the Song of Songs’, in Leonardi and Orlandi (eds), Biblical studies in the early middle ages, pp. 91–​103, and A. J. Kleist, Striving with Grace: views of free will in Anglo-​ Saxon England (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 58–​82.

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doctrine and his use of the exchange formula was quite conventional, it is worth noting that for Bede –​as for his Latin predecessors –​this theme played a structurally significant role in his theology and spiritual teaching. This becomes even more evident in relation to the moral, practical, and physical effects of deification in the lives of the saints who have been transformed by divine grace.

Moral changes in the human person In Bede’s understanding of salvation, Christian discipleship begins with divine grace and the forgiveness of sins but must then proceed to amendment of life, the cultivation of virtues, and dedicated service to the neighbour. Moreover, the transformation effected by grace is a change in character –​in one’s very being –​not just in behaviour. All of this is evident in a homily on the calling of Matthew to be a disciple and evangelist. In a phrase that has become famous as the personal motto of Pope Francis, Bede says that Jesus saw Matthew engaged in his worldly work as a tax collector and ‘by having mercy and by choosing’ (miserando atque eligendo) said to him, ‘Follow me.’42 To follow Jesus, Bede explains, means to imitate his way of life: not to aim at earthly things, not to eagerly pursue perishable gains, [but] to flee base honors, to willingly embrace all contempt of the world for the sake of heavenly glory, to do good to all, to inflict injuries upon no one in bitterness and to patiently suffer those brought upon oneself, and to implore pardon from the Lord for those bringing [these injuries], never to seek one’s own glory but always that of our Maker, and to uphold whatever helps one toward love of heavenly things.43

Leaving secular business behind, Matthew followed Jesus and inspired many other publicans and sinners to do the same. Or it would be better to say ‘former publicans and sinners’, because Bede expresses his conviction

42 Bede, Homiliae 1:21, lines 55–​7. This portion of Bede’s homily appears in the Office of Readings in the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours for the feast of St Matthew (21 September), which was the day on which Pope Francis as a young man first felt a call to religious life. See ‘The coat of arms of Pope Francis’, www.vati​can.va/​cont​ent/​ france​sco/​en/​elezi​one/​ste​mma-​papa-​france​sco.html (accessed 15 February 2021). 43 Bede, Homiliae 1:21, lines 60–​6; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 207; brackets in the original: ‘non ambire terrena non caduca lucra sectari fugere honores infimos contemptum mundi omnem pro caelesti gloria libenter amplecti cunctis prodesse amare iniurias nulli inferre ac sibi inlatas patienter sufferre sed et inferentibus a domino ueniam postulare non umquam suam sed conditoris semper gloriam quaerere quotquot ualet se cum ad amorem supernorum erigere’.

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that those who ate at table with Jesus and Matthew that day would not have done so if they had intended to continue in their sins.44 Nor did they share only a bodily feast with the Lord, for in accordance with Christ’s promise in Revelation 3:20, he came to sup with them, to dwell in their hearts, and to restore them with his presence so that they might advance to heavenly desires and be zealous for a heavenly banquet. Throughout his commentaries and homilies, Bede frequently exhorts the Christian faithful to make steady progress in the pursuit of good works and spiritual virtues. Often these exhortations are supported by references to the promise of the divine vision.45 But in his comment on 2 Peter 1:9 Bede states that ‘it is fitting that we reach fellowship with divinity through the increase of spiritual virtues’.46 The Latin phrase translated here as ‘fellowship with divinity’ is consortium … diuinitatis, which is probably meant to refer back to the diuinae consortes naturae (‘partakers of the divine nature’) of 2 Peter 1:4. The implication, then, is that Bede sees participation in Christ as intimately connected with a person’s moral transformation. This is confirmed in a homily in which he clearly states, ‘It is only by participation in the divine goodness that a rational creature is recognized as being capable of becoming good. … This is to point out that those who are themselves evil can become good through receiving the gift of the Spirit.’47 Note that those who were evil not only begin to do good works; they actually become good people as their inner beings are changed by the action of the Holy Spirit within them. In a homily on the circumcision of Jesus, Bede urges his monastic brethren to submit to the circumcision that comes through the daily practice of virtues as the old person is put off and the new person is renewed in the spirit of the mind (Ephesians 4:22–​4). Observing that this circumcision applies to all of the senses of both the exterior and the inner person, he employs a long succession of scriptural verses to explain what it means to

44 The same idea appears in Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 2, lines 912–​4 and In Marcum 1, lines 848–​50, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960). In both cases, Bede is quoting Jerome, Commentarii in euangelium Matthaei 1, lines 1288–​ 95, ed. D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, CCSL 77 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). 45 J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede on seeing the God of Gods in Zion’, in A. Minnis and J. Roberts (eds), Text, image, interpretation: studies in Anglo-​Saxon literature and Insular context in honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 3–​29. 46 Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistula 2 Petri 1, lines 134–​6; trans. Hurst, p. 128: ‘per incrementa uirtutum spiritalium ad consortium nos diuinitatis peruenire conueniat’. 47 Bede, Homiliae 2:14, lines 236–​7, 239–​41; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 132: ‘cum tantum participatione eiusdem diuinae bonitatis rationabilis creatura bona fieri posse cognoscitur. … ut profecto ostendat quia qui ex se ipsis mali sunt per acceptam spiritus gratiam boni possunt effici’.

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be uncircumcised in the eyes, ears, tongue, hands, taste, smell, touch, and steps. But on the other hand, those who keep their heart under every [form of] custody, who turn away their eyes so that they do not see vanity, who hedge their ears with thorns so that they do not hear a depraved tongue, who taste and see how delightful the Lord is and how blessed the person who hopes in him, … who keep their feet from every evil way so that they guard the word of God –​all these show that they have senses which are circumcised with the rock of spiritual practice. We read that circumcision was done with knives made of rock, and the rock was Christ.48

Although this passage and the others cited in this section do not explicitly refer to deification, they show that Bede’s understanding of salvation involved a moral and spiritual transformation of the human person that was both interior and external, made possible by the initiative of divine grace and realised over time by the assiduous practice of asceticism and good works. This transformation is at once a participation in Christ and an imitation of the pattern of his own sanctified life. In practical terms, the way in which that participation and imitation come to fruition is through the sacraments of faith.

The sacraments of the Incarnation When Bede uses the term sacramenta, it is often difficult to determine exactly what he has in mind. Sometimes the reference is clearly to the Christian rites of initiation and communion, as when he says of the blood and water that came forth from Christ’s side at the crucifixion, ‘These are indeed the sacraments by which the Church is born and nourished in Christ, namely the water of baptism by which she is cleansed from sins, and the blood of the Lord’s chalice by which she is confirmed in her gifts.’49 But as

48 Bede, Homiliae 1:11, lines 201–​5, 209–​13; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, pp. 110–​11, slightly modified; brackets in the original: ‘At qui omni custodia seruant suum cor qui auertunt oculos suos ne uideant uanitatem qui sepiunt aures suas spinis ne audiant linguam nequam qui gustant et uident quam suauis est dominus quam beatus uir qui sperat in eum … qui ab omni uia mala prohibent pedes suos ut custodiant uerbum Dei isti omnes suos sensus petra spiritalis exercitii se ostendunt habere circumcisos. Petrinis quidem cultris circumcisionem fieri legimus; petra autem erat Christus.’ As the editor and translators note, this passage appears to have been influenced by Jerome’s interpretation of the circumcision of the senses in Commentarii in Hiezechielem 13:44, lines 1292–​1340, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964). 49 Bede, Homiliae 2:15, lines 140–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 140: ‘Haec sunt etenim sacramenta quibus ecclesia in christo nascitur et nutritur aqua uidelicet

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Charles Plummer observed, ‘More often it signifies generally the mysteries and doctrines of the Christian faith.’50 This is especially true of his frequent use of terms such as sacramenta incarnationis (‘sacraments of the incarnation’), sacramenta eius humanitatis (‘sacraments of his humanity’), and sacramenta dominicae passionis (‘sacraments of the Lord’s passion’). Clearly Bede intends to refer to Christ’s life and death not simply as past historical events; rather, the emphasis is on the way in which the salvation effected by those events has been revealed to the Church and conveyed to its members in tangible forms. Thus, he can declare in a homily on the Ascension, ‘When our Lord ascended into heaven, he left the sacraments of the humanity he had assumed to his disciples, to the entire Church in fact, so that it could be sanctified by them, and warmed by the power of his love.’51 Bede often says that the Church’s members have been ‘imbued’ (imbuti) with the sacraments of the Incarnation. Through these sacramental mysteries (which include the preaching of the word as well as baptism and Eucharist), first the apostles and then all the faithful have come to know that Christ is united with the Father in his divinity, to know themselves to be in Christ, and to know that Christ is in them because they keep his commandments.52 Bede’s sacramental theology is in line with his understanding of deification because the movement is always from an apprehension (and imitation) of Christ’s humanity towards the beatific vision of his divinity. Perhaps his most extensive discussion of this theme comes in a homily on the Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:42–​52).53 In this biblical passage, the boy Jesus at the age of twelve is found sitting with the Temple elders, asking them questions and astonishing them with his own insights. When his parents find him at last after three days of searching, Jesus tells his mother that he must be about his Father’s business; but then he returns to Nazareth with his parents and is subject to them. As might be expected, Bede rings the changes on all these antitheses of youthful humanity and eternal divinity in which Christ is revealed as both the humblest of students and the wisest of teachers, as the majestic Son of God and at the same time the obedient son of

baptismatis qua abluitur a peccatis et sanguis calicis dominici quo confirmatur in donis.’ 50 C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1, p. lvii, note 1. 51 Bede, Homiliae 2:15, lines 316–​8; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 146, slightly modified: ‘ascendens in caelum dominus sacramenta humanitatis adsumptae discipulis immo omni ecclesiae quibus sanctificaretur et in uirtute dilectionis calefieret reliquit’. 52 Bede, Homiliae 2:17, lines 123–​31. 53 Bede, Homiliae 1:19.

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Mary and Joseph.54 Reflecting on the humility of his incarnation, Christians should find there a medicine to cure the wounds of sin. Likewise, as for the divinity of our Lord and Savior (which we have heard about and believed in and confessed), by which he always continues to be consubstantial and coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, let us hope that through the sacraments of his humanity with which we have been imbued, we may be able to attain the contemplation of the glory of his divinity … Let us follow the path of his human way of life if we take delight in looking upon the glory of his divinity, if we want to dwell in his eternal home in heaven all the days of our lives, if it delights [us] to see the Lord’s will and to be shielded by his holy temple.55

For Bede, this story of Christ’s humble attitude towards both the Temple elders and his own parents offers a particularly apt lesson for those who are teachers. It is hard not to hear the voice of direct observation –​perhaps even a note of personal compunction –​when Bede laments ‘what we in our pride do’ when those who are in the act of teaching disdain the simpler brothers who fail to comprehend the secrets (archana) of the Scriptures. We boast about our erudition, as though it were unique in its magnitude, as though there were not very many [others] much more learned than we are; … and we do not care to call to mind that the right of entry to the kingdom is open not to those who perceive the mysteries of faith or the commands of their Maker only by meditating, but it is open instead to those who carry out what they have been able to learn in their deeds.56

Rather than being filled with pride about their own powers of understanding, teachers should follow the example of Jesus the incarnate Son of God by accommodating themselves and their teaching to the limited abilities of

54 Cf. the similar treatment of divine/​human antitheses in the Finding in the Temple story in Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 1, lines 2038–​168. 55 Bede, Homiliae 1:19, lines 13–​17, 42–​6; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, pp. 187–​9; brackets in the original: ‘Item audita credita et confessa diuinitate domini saluatoris qua patri et spiritui sancto consubstantialis semper et coaeternus perseuerat speremus nos per humanitatis eius sacramenta quibus inbuti sumus usque ad contemplandam diuinitatis eiusdem gloriam posse pertingere … Sequamur iter humanae conuersationis eius, si diuinitatis gloriam delectamur intueri, si optamus inhabitare in domo eius aeterna in caelis omnibus diebus uitae nostrae, si iuuat uidere uoluntatem domini et protegi a templo sancto eius.’ 56 Bede, Homiliae 1:19, lines 142–​9; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 192; brackets in the original: ‘de nostra nos quasi singulari ac perplurima eruditione iactamus quasi non sint perplures etiam nobis multo doctiores … neque reminisci curamus quia non eis qui uel mysteria fidei uel sui praecepta conditoris tantum meditando percipiunt sed his potius qui ea quae discere potuerunt operando exercent regni aditus patet’.

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their students.57 In this way, the whole Church is made worthy of divine grace so that they may understand heavenly mysteries and ultimately come to contemplate the glory of Christ’s divinity.

‘Their eyes will see the King in his beauty’ For Bede, the ultimate goal of human life is nothing less than the vision of God. Although a few more advanced souls may occasionally be granted a partial and transitory glimpse of God in this life, the fullness of the divine vision is reserved for the saints in heaven who will at last come to ‘see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2).58 When the faithful acknowledge Christ as both consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit and a sharer in their own humanity, their fervent prayer must be, ‘Grant that what we at present venerate with devout faith we may contemplate with full vision in the future. This indeed is the only health and life of our soul –​to discern your countenance, your light, forever.’59 Bede’s theology of the beatific vision is intimately connected with the theme of deification in three ways. First, the spiritual senses of the saints must be healed or otherwise transformed before they are able to see God. Augustine seems to have been the only Latin father to refer to the ‘deified eyes’ (oculis deificatis) of the vision’s recipients.60 But the same idea is present when Bede imagines Jesus as Light of the World, saying, ‘Let them heal the eyes of their minds, let them purify their ears, with faith, so that they may be worthy to look upon me.’61 Second, the divine vision is more than simply beholding God from afar; it necessarily involves a ‘sharing’

57 For an example of the need for such accommodation, see the story of Aidan’s chastisement of the first Irish bishop sent as missionary to the Northumbrians for failing to offer them ‘the milk of simpler teaching’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:2). Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 3:5. 58 See A. Holder, ‘Bede’s perfecti, the vision of God, and the foretaste of Heaven’, in DeGregorio and Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints and communities, pp. 265–​85, at 268–​74. 59 Bede, Homiliae 2:24, lines 77–​9; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 244: ‘da ut quod interim pia fide ueneramur plena in futuro uisione speculemur; haec est etenim unica animae nostrae salus et uita tuum perpetuo uultum tuam cernere lucem.’ 60 Augustine, Sermones ad populum 126:14, PL 38, cols 698–​705, at 704. See the discussion of this text in Meconi, The One Christ, pp. 123–​4. 61 Bede, Homiliae 1:25, lines 174–​5; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 251: ‘Sanent oculos mentis fide purificent corda sua ut me ipsum mereantur intueri.’ See also: Homiliae 1:8, lines 98–​112 and In primam partem Samuhelis 3, lines 2819–​21, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962).

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(participium) in God’s goodness, beauty, and truth.62 And third, the vision of God is thoroughly grounded in the Incarnation so that Christ’s humanity remains integral to the vision rather than being merely instrumental to its fulfilment. While Bede holds that recipients of the beatific vision will see all three persons of the Trinity at once, he often puts the emphasis on contemplation of Christ’s glorified humanity.63 Thus when Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured so that his body was shining like the sun and his garments were white as snow, they were being given a preview of both his resurrection and the future hope of heavenly bliss: The disciples indeed saw him coming in his kingdom, for on the mountain they saw him shining in that brightness with which he will be seen in his kingdom by all the saints when the judgment has been brought to completion. But since the eyes of the disciples were still mortal and corruptible, they were then unable to sustain what the whole church of the saints will have the power to look upon when she has become incorruptible through resurrection. Concerning this it is written, ‘Their eyes will see the King in his beauty.’64

The biblical allusion at the end of this passage is to Isaiah 33:17, which is cited at least thirteen other times in Bede’s writings, always with reference to the beatific vision.65 Apart from Jerome’s brief exegesis in his commentary

62 Bede, Homiliae 1:6, lines 280–​ 3; In Cantica canticorum 1:1, lines 707–​ 8; 1:2, lines 15–​8. 63 Contemplation of the Trinity: Bede, Homiliae 1:2, lines 174–​86; 2:25, lines 256–​9, 270–​9. Vision of Christ’s glorified humanity: Homiliae 1:7, lines 64–​7; In Cantica canticorum 5:8, lines 174–​9. The Maiestas Christi painting in the Codex Amiatinus is evidence for the centrality of the glorified humanity of Christ in the piety of the monastic community at Wearmouth-​Jarrow. As Celia Chazelle has noted, ‘Interpreted through the lens of Bede’s exegesis, the Amiatinus illustration directs the viewer’s thoughts toward the future joy of beholding Christ in the form in which he ascended, at his return and then for eternity with the angels, “from face to face” (facie ad faciem) in the celestial Jerusalem (1 Cor. 13:12)’: The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019), p. 391. 64 Bede, Homiliae 1:24, lines 55–​61; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 236: ‘Venientem quippe in regno suo uiderunt discipuli quia in ea claritate uiderunt fulgentem in monte in qua peracto iudicio ab omnibus sanctis in regno suo uidebitur. Sed quod mortales adhuc et corruptibiles discipulorum oculi sufferre nequiuerunt tunc per resurrectionem iam facti incorruptibiles potenter tueri sufficiet omnis ecclesia sanctorum de qua scriptum est: regem in decore suo uidebunt oculi eius.’ See also: In Lucae evangelium expositio 3, lines 1523–​42 and In Marcum 3, lines 40–​3. 65 In Genesim 3, lines 1244–​5; In primam partem Samuhelis 4, line 1602; De templo 1, lines 1175–​6; 2, lines 1387–​8, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); In Cantica canticorum, capitula 13; 1:1, lines 550–​1; 2:2, lines 707–​8; 2:3,

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on Isaiah and two passages in Gregory the Great, this verse appears to have received virtually no attention in Latin patristic literature.66 But for Bede it was such a favourite that he was reported to have invoked it on his deathbed, saying, ‘The time of my departure is at hand, and my soul longs to see Christ my King in his beauty.’67 This emphasis specifically on Christ’s beauty was another Augustinian legacy that Bede adopted with enthusiasm and developed in his own fashion.68 For example, it seems likely that a lengthy passage in which Bede rhapsodises about Christ’s human nature as ‘altogether desirable’ (totus desiderabilis; Song of Songs 5:16) from his conception right through to his crucifixion was inspired by a similar passage in Augustine’s homily on Psalm 44 (45) celebrating Christ the bridegroom of the Church as ‘beautiful’ (pulcher).69 Augustine’s exposition is structured in part as a series of antitheses, with a logic of progression based on the places where Christ was to be found: with God in heaven before the Incarnation, and then in the Virgin’s womb, in the manger, on the cross, in the tomb, and in heaven again after his ascension. Bede’s much longer exposition takes the form of a catalogue of people to whom Christ was desirable: to his mother; to the angels, shepherds, and wise men at his birth; to Simeon and Anna; to the elders he taught in the Temple at the age of twelve; to the disciples, the tax collectors, and all the people who heard his teaching; to Peter at the Transfiguration; to the repentant thief on the cross; to the Prophets who had longed to see him; and finally to those who treasure the Lord’s promise to prepare a place where he will take them to himself (John 14:3). While Augustine’s praise for Christ’s beauty had stretched from before the Incarnation to after the Ascension, Bede explicitly notes that he is focusing on the desirability of the Lord’s humanity on earth, even before it was glorified. The Christocentric lines 466–​7; In Marcum 3, lines 32–​3; In Lucae evangelium expositio prologue, line 68; 1, lines 1114–​15; 3, lines 1516–​17; Homiliae 1:19, lines 23–​4; 2:17, lines 171–​2. 66 Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam 10:33.20, lines 28–​35, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963); Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 31:51, lines 28–​58, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 143B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985); Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam 2:10, lines 554–​5, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 142 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971). Bede’s frequent use of Isaiah 33:17 was probably inspired by Gregory’s discussion in the Moralia. 67 Epistola de obitu Bedae, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people, pp. 584–​5, translation slightly modified: ‘Tempus uero absolutionis meae prope est; etenim anima mea desiderat Regem meum Christum in decore suo uidere.’ 68 See C. Harrison, Beauty and revelation in the thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), esp. ­chapter 5, pp. 192–​238, on the beauty of the incarnate Christ. 69 Bede, In Cantica canticorum 4:5, lines 941–​75. Cf. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 44:3, lines 46–​57, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956).

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theology is the same, but Bede has adapted Augustine’s exercise in rhetorical lyricism to suit his own purposes.

Conclusion If Bede’s enthusiastic adoption of the theology of deification has received relatively little attention until now, the reasons for this oversight are probably the same in his case as for the Latin patristic tradition generally. Like many of his predecessors in Western Christianity, Bede did not employ the word deificare or its cognates at all. Nor did he find it necessary to defend the doctrine with elaborate argumentation or devote any extended discussion to it as he did with regard to the contested topic of nature and grace. Nevertheless, the Chalcedonian formula of Christ’s divine and human natures inseparably united in one person was integral to Bede’s understanding of salvation, to his own devotional piety, and to his work as a preacher, teacher, and scholar. As the ‘mediator between God and humans’, Christ has acted not only to save Christians from sin but also to sanctify their lives so that by grace they could attain the holiness and likeness to God that was Christ’s by nature. In his commentaries, and especially in his homilies on the Gospels, Bede employed a wide variety of models for deification, including recapitulation, divine adoption, formulae of divine/​human exchange, and the spiritual transformation of human capabilities and moral behaviour. Participation in what he called ‘the sacraments of the incarnation’ (principally baptism and the Eucharist, but also preaching) is seen to lead the Church from contemplation of the Lord’s humanity to the recognition of his divinity, and ultimately to the beatific vision that is fully realised only in heaven. While acknowledging that recipients of the divine vision behold nothing less than the undivided Trinity, Bede is at his most eloquent when celebrating the beauty of Christ’s glorified humanity. This spirituality of deification in Bede’s writings continues themes found in his Latin patristic predecessors, especially Augustine. In this case, however, it is perhaps better to think of the Fathers not as his sources, but rather as his inspiration. He borrows their models of deification, some of their theological vocabulary, and their rhetorical styles of antithesis and encomium. But the multi-​coloured threads of deification are seamlessly woven throughout his own exegetical tapestry. He is quite ready and able to improvise, to creatively adapt the complex language of deification to fit the context of his argument. And when he finds something in the tradition that is particularly appealing –​such as Gregory’s discussion of what it means to ‘see the King in his beauty’ –​he can by repetition and embellishment make a simple biblical allusion into his own distinctive signature.

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Given Bede’s stress on the vision of the glorified Christ as humanity’s ultimate goal, it may seem somewhat incongruous that he chose to conclude his Ecclesiastical history with a prayer asking not to see Jesus, but only to be in his presence: ‘Grant that I may come at length to you, the fount of all wisdom, and stand before your face for ever.’70 But in Bede’s understanding of the heavenly life to come, there is no difference between seeing and being seen. As he explains in a homily on Jesus’ farewell discourse in John 16, when the Lord promises the disciples that he will see them again, it means that he will appear before them in order to be seen. This is the hope and comfort of those who in this life face many trials as they weep for both their own mistakes and the sorrows of their neighbours: ‘The Lord will see us again; that is, he reveals himself to be seen by us in the future, he who once deigned to see us by bestowing on us recognition of himself through faith. … This is the true and unique prize for those who become sorrowful for God’s sake, to rejoice in seeing him forever.’71 Here it is clear that Bede’s theology of deification was never intended as an exaltation of humanity for its own sake or an excuse for spiritual complacency. To be restored to the divine image and likeness, to become like gods, to enjoy the bliss of life immortal –​all of these were for Bede promises yet to be fulfilled in a process that was not yet complete. The faithful are co-​heirs of Christ’s glory now, but they will receive their inheritance only after a long struggle, and even then, only by the grace of God.

70 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5:24, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 570–​1, translation modernised: ‘dones etiam benignus aliquando ad te, fontem omnis sapientiae, peruenire, et parere semper ante faciem tuam’. 71 Bede, Homiliae 2:13, lines 156–​9, 161–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 123: ‘uidebit nos iterum dominus, id est uidendum se nobis ostendit in futuro qui quondam nos uidere fidei suae nobis agnitionem largiendo dignatus est; … quia haec est uera et unica merces eorum qui secundum Deum contristantur de perpetua eius uisione gaudere’.

3 Bede’s biblical capitula and the oriented reading of Scripture at Wearmouth-​Jarrow Celia Chazelle* Among the writings by Bede listed at the close of his Ecclesiastical history, completed c. 731, are a group of distinctiones capitulorum and two groups of capitula lectionum. The passage identifies the distinctiones capitulorum and the first set of capitula lectionum with books of the Old Testament; the second group of capitula lectionum concerns, the entry states, ‘all the New Testament except the Gospels’.1 The meaning of these terms in this passage remained obscure to modern scholars until Paul Meyvaert demonstrated, in 1995, that all the noted works likely consisted of series of chapter headings or summaries of the designated Scripture.2 Some of Bede’s biblical ‘capitula lists’ or ‘capitularies’ –​as such texts are also called –​survive as prefatory matter in commentaries he wrote. In addition, as Meyvaert showed primarily

* I am very grateful to Drs Peter Darby and Máirín MacCarron for the invitation to contribute this essay to their volume and for their careful editing as well as suggested improvements; also to Drs Conor O’Brien, Alice Rio, and Alan Thacker for hosting a workshop seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London (24 February 2021) at which I presented a draft of this paper via Zoom. My thanks to them and audience members for comments that guided my preparation of the final version. Thanks are owed as well to Drs E. Ann Matter, Stephen Jaeger, and Marilyn Lavin for sharing their expertise on Canticle of Canticles exegesis electronically and in person. 1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum 5.24 (henceforth cited as HE with book and chapter numbers from Plummer’s edition, unless otherwise indicated), ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1: ‘In Isaiam, Danihelem, XII prophetas, et partem Hieremiae, distinctiones capitulorum ex tractatu beati Hieronomi excerptas … Item, Capitula lectionum in Pentateucum Mosi, Iosue, Iudicum; In libros Regum et Uerba dierum; In librum beati patris Iob; In Parabolas, Ecclesiasten, et Cantica canticorum; In Isaiam prophetam, Ezram quoque et Neemiam. [Item in libro Tobiae Iudith et Aester] … Item, Capitula lectionum in totum nouum testamentum, excepto euangelio’. On the text in square brackets see B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (ed. and trans.), Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 568 note c. 2 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula lectionum for the Old and New Testaments’, Revue Bénédictine 105 (1995), 348–​80, esp. 348–​52.

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through stylistic and linguistic analyses, Bede was the probable author of the capitularies prefacing Exodus through Judges in the Codex Amiatinus, a Vulgate full Bible made for his monastery of Wearmouth-​Jarrow (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1), and of other capitularies in the large collection of anonymous writings in this genre compiled by Donatien De Bruyne from medieval biblical codices, in the early twentieth century, to assist preparations of the Biblia Sacra, Rome’s Vulgate critical edition.3 Although Meyvaert’s article appeared more than twenty-​five years ago, Bede’s biblical capitula lists have attracted only intermittent scholarly attention since then, usually as a secondary issue in studies of his exegetical treatises.4 To Meyvaert, the capitula appeared to be less significant compositions, and this may have been Bede’s opinion: the survey of his works in the Ecclesiastical history records each group of capitularies only after several commentaries, and the capitularies are described in a more cursory manner. Nonetheless, it is uncertain that the survey is hierarchically ordered, while if it is, the capitularies’ relative importance to Bede is implied by their listing

3 Sommaires, divisions et rubriques de la Bible latine, première partie: Les sommaires, ed. D. De Bruyne (Namur: Godenne, 1914); Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam uulgatam uersionem ad codicum fidem (henceforth cited as Biblia Sacra), ed. H. Quentin et al., 18 vols (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1926–​96); Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 349 note 4, and 352–​72. A digitised facsimile of the Codex Amiatinus is freely available online at: www.wdl.org/​en/​item/​20150/​view/​1/​1/​ (accessed 18 December 2022). Amiatinus’ capitularies for Exodus through Judges were not included in De Bruyne’s collection but published as Series F in volumes 1–​4 of the Biblia Sacra. De Bruyne’s compilation has been reprinted with new introductions as D. De Bruyne, Summaries, divisions and rubrics of the Latin Bible: introductions by Pierre-​Maurice Bogaert and Thomas O’Loughlin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). COVID restrictions to library access prevented me from accessing the latter volume; a digitised facsimile of the 1914 edition is freely available online at: https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​ark:/​12148/​bpt6k​8537​228/​f8.item (accessed 18 December 2022). For more recent scholarship on New Testament capitula, see VetusLatina.org: resources for the study of the Old Latin Bible: prefaces, prologues and capitula to the Latin New Testament, online at www.vetu​slat​ina.org/​parat​ext (accessed 18 December 2022); and H. A. G. Houghton, ‘Chapter divisions, capitula lists, and the Old Latin versions of John’, Revue Bénédictine 121 (2011), 316–​56. 4 Exceptions include articles by Michael Gorman: e.g., ‘Source marks and chapter divisions in Bede’s Commentary on Luke’, Revue Bénédictine 112 (2002), 246–​90, esp. 263–​7; and, written before Meyvaert’s article appeared (above note 2), ‘Wigbod and the Lectiones on the Hexateuch attributed to Bede in Paris lat. 2342’, Revue Bénédictine, 105 (1995), 310–​47. The present article draws on this scholarship as well as my discussions of select capitula of the Codex Amiatinus and by Bede in The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019), esp. pp. 148–​51, 220–​1, 293–​304. Further scholarship analysing capitula by Bede is identified in notes below.

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with his commentaries and homilies in the first half, before his letters or any of his non-​exegetical writings.5 Most Ecclesiastical history manuscripts are classified in two groups known as c and m on the basis of some textual differences; the c-​text is thought to be the earlier version.6 The set of distinctiones capitulorum appears only in the m-​text; a reference to the Books of Tobias (Tobit), Judith, and Esther with the first set of capitula lectionum occurs exclusively in the m manuscript in St Petersburg, which dates no later than 747 and was probably copied at Wearmouth-​Jarrow (St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. 1. 18).7 Meyvaert suggested that Wearmouth-​Jarrow monks might have added the items just noted to the original survey after Bede died. In this case, the interpolations signal that his brethren similarly appreciated his capitularies and wanted their record to be as complete as possible. All told, Meyvaert estimated that during his career, Bede composed some 1,400 individual capitula of Scripture.8 Since each capitulum consists of at most a few sentences, often only a single phrase or sentence, entire capitula lists are never long; yet there is no doubt that writing so many summaries was time-​consuming. Given the number and the care taken to recall them in the Ecclesiastical history, it seems worthwhile to consider, beyond Meyvaert’s analysis, the possible motivations and aims behind this work. In particular, by analysing a selection of Bede’s biblical capitularies in conjunction with existing evidence –​albeit limited –​of the circumstances in which he composed these texts, it may be possible to shed new light on the strategies by which he sought to guide other religious and clergy in their engagement with Scripture. The present chapter proceeds from Meyvaert’s identification of capitularies that Bede likely authored. The first two sections offer general observations about Latin biblical capitula and the compositions in this genre assigned to him; some of Meyvaert’s reasoning for these attributions is reviewed in the second of these sections.9 As a first case study, De Bruyne’s Series Tur capitulary of Acts, which Meyvaert ascribed to Bede, is then compared with De Bruyne’s Series C capitulary copied in Amiatinus (fols. 904r–​ 905v; Appendix, Table 3.1) and aspects of Bede’s exegesis of this Scripture.10 Gorman, ‘Wigbod’, 311. 5 6 Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history, pp. xl–​xlvi. 7 Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 348 note 2, 362–​ 3 and note 48; for the texts, see note 1. On the St Petersburg manuscript: Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history, p. xliv. 8 Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 372. 9 I refer the reader to Meyvaert’s article for more detailed arguments in favour of Bede’s authorship: ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 348–​75. 10 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 371–​81.

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Capitularies precede most biblical books in Amiatinus.11 The anonymous Vita Ceolfridi, written c. 717–​20, reports that two other full Bibles made for Wearmouth-​Jarrow were kept in its main churches, ‘so that it would be easy for all who wished to read any chapter from each Testament to find what they desired’.12 The surviving leaves from, probably, these ‘sister’ Bibles of Amiatinus are written with Scripture divided into chapters (London, British Library, Additional 37777, Additional 45025, and Loan 81); these fragments and the statement just quoted are strong clues that the sister Bibles, too, likely contained capitularies.13 No manuscript trace of these Bibles’ capitula lists themselves has yet been discovered, however. Apart from one set of Gospel capitularies belonging to a different De Bruyne series noted below, Amiatinus’ lists represent the only known capitula that we can be presently confident were read at Wearmouth-​Jarrow besides the lists Meyvaert accredited to Bede. Amiatinus was sent towards Rome in 716, but most of its capitula were copied or adapted from exemplars that Bede could likely still consult in later years.14 While their exemplars have also disappeared, the versions of the same capitula in Amiatinus provide useful comparative material in exploring why he chose to compose new lists. The chapter then turns, for a second case study, to Bede’s commentary on the Canticle of Canticles (Song of Songs). Although Amiatinus’ Canticle lacks prefatory capitula, the codex attests the ancient and medieval tradition of including rubrics that divide the poem into sections assigned to different ‘voices’ (fols. 443v–​447r; Appendix, Table 3.2).15 Bede’s commentary has three prefatory

11 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 148–​ 51; R. Marsden, The text of the Old Testament in Anglo-​ Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 142–​4. 12 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 20, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), pp. 78–​121, at 98: ‘… ita ut inter alia tres pandectes faceret describi, quorum duo per totidem sua monasteria posuit in ecclesiis, ut cunctis qui aliquod capitulum de utrolibet Testamento legere uoluissent, in promtu esset inuenire quod cuperent; tertium autem Romam profecturus donum beato Petro apostolorum principi offerre decreuit’. Trans. Grocock and Wood, with emendation. 13 Digitised facsimiles of Additional 37777 and 45025 are freely available online at: www.bl.uk/​manu​scri​pts/​Vie​wer.aspx?ref=​add​_​ms_​3777​7_​f0​01r (Additional 37777) (accessed 18 December 2022); www.bl.uk/​manu​scri​pts/​Vie​wer.aspx?ref=​ add_​ms_​4​5025​_​fs0​01r (Additional, 45025) (accessed 18 December 2022). Colour reproductions of both sides of Loan 81, a single folio, are available in Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, plates 29, 30; see pp. 35–​44, 226, 283–​93 for analysis of why, though it is probable that all these leaves originally belonged to the sister Bibles, earlier scholarship has wrongly assumed certainty on this issue. 14 Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, p. 144. 15 J. R. Jones, ‘The Song of Songs as a drama in the commentators from Origen to the twelfth century’, Comparative Drama 17 (1983), 17–​39, at 24–​5, 38–​9. The practice

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sections: (1) a book attacking works that he attributes to the Pelagian bishop Julian of Eclanum (d. c. 455); (2) a capitulary; and (3) a rubricated text of the Canticle (Appendix, Tables 3.2, 3.3).16 I will briefly review Bede’s arguments against Julian, but my principal goal is to explore how his rubrics, which differ somewhat from those in Amiatinus, as well as his capitula of this Scripture coincide with the exegesis in his commentary, and the significance of that coincidence. Bede’s exegetical writings usually follow the Amiatinus recensions, yet at times he privileged other versions of the Scripture. Richard Marsden speculated that Bede might have sometimes emended the Amiatinus exemplars to reflect the alternate readings he favoured while writing his exegesis.17 With at least two biblical books and quite possibly more, Scripture that he likely revised or helped revise was copied afresh. It is important to bear this work in mind in assessing Bede’s biblical scholarship: he was not only an exegete but also apparently an editor. One book thus treated was Apocalypse: to judge from the lemmata in his commentary on Apocalypse, finished c. 703, the redaction of the Scripture written with Bede’s capitulary in a separate libellus was a revision of the Amiatinus text.18 Similarly, as I discuss in my second case study, the rubricated Scripture prefacing his commentary on the Canticle of Canticles appears to have been an emended version of that in Amiatinus. For Bede, in short, writing exegesis, composing new capitularies, and emending the Amiatinus recensions where he deemed necessary were probably conjoined endeavours to orient readers along what he perceived to be correct interpretive paths.19 merits comparison to that of placing Christological tituli in medieval Psalters; my thanks to Dr Sinead O’Sullivan for this observation: email correspondence, March 2021. See P. Salmon, Les ‘Tituli Psalmorum’ des manuscrits latins (Rome: Abbaye Saint-​Jérome, 1959). On the considerable variety among medieval Canticle rubrics: D. Reilly, The art of reform in eleventh-​century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-​Vanne and the Saint-​Vaast Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 230–​2. 16 Bede, In Cantica Canticorum, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), at pp. 167–​80 for the book against Julian (henceforth cited as Cant., Praef.), pp. 181–​ 4 for the capitulary (henceforth cited as Cant., Cap.), pp. 185–​9 for the rubricated Scripture (henceforth cited as Cant., Cant. Canticorum), pp. 190–​375 for Bede’s commentary (henceforth cited as Cant. with book number). 17 Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 217–​19. See also M. L. W. Laistner, ‘The Latin versions of Acts known to the Venerable Bede’, Harvard Theological Review 30 (1937), 37–​50; and –​for a telling illustration of the differences among versions of a biblical text often quoted by Bede –​J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede on seeing the God of Gods in Zion’, in A. Minnis and J. Roberts (eds), Text, image, interpretation: studies in Anglo-​Saxon Literature and its Insular context in honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 3–​29, at 12. 18 R. Gryson, Bedae presbyteri Exposito Apocalypseos, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 136–​41, 179–​92; see Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 217–​21. 19 See Gorman, ‘Source marks’, 267. A third possible case of Bede’s involvement in textual revisions is Amiatinus’ Book of Tobias: Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 171–​9.

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Ancient and medieval biblical capitularies Until the modern system of dividing Christian Scripture into chapters and verses began to prevail in the thirteenth century, a wide array of biblical division systems were employed throughout Latin Europe.20 Different medieval biblical manuscripts present the same Scripture broken into disparate numbers of chapters, with different beginning and end points. Many, though not all, such codices include prefatory capitularies that list the designated chapters’ headings or summaries –​the texts I identify here as capitula. Michael Gorman pointed to a scholarly ‘assumption’ that new division systems and capitularies were frequently prepared as Scripture was emended.21 Yet capitularies could be transmitted independently of the recensions for which they were originally composed, and they were easily modified. Thus capitula from Old Latin sources were copied into Vulgate manuscripts, summaries were edited, broken up, or combined to accord with different divisions of the Scripture, and capitularies originally written for commentaries (such as Bede’s) could be inserted in biblical codices.22 Because such changes were common, a capitulary prefacing a biblical text may witness to one division system while the numbering of chapters in the Scripture witnesses to another. These kinds of discrepancies imply that capitula were sometimes read, and were perhaps expected to be read, without reference to accompanying scriptural material.23 Comparison of the capitulary of Romans in the Codex Fuldensis, a sixth-​century southern Italian New Testament that belonged to Boniface of Mainz (d. 754), with the Romans capitularies in Amiatinus and the 20 See H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament: a guide to its early history, texts, and manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 105–​8; R. Gameson, ‘Durham’s Paris Bible and the use of communal bibles in a Benedictine cathedral priory in the later Middle Ages’, in E. Poleg and L. Light (eds), Form and function in the later medieval Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 67–​104, at pp. 67–​9; P.-​M. Bogaert, ‘La Bible latine des origines au moyen âge: Aperçu historique, état des questions III’, Revue théologique de Louvain 19 (1988), 276–​311, at 286–​7; and on the Amiatinus capitula and their sources, B. Fischer, ‘Codex Amiatinus und Cassiodor’, in B. Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandscriften im frühen Mittelalter (Freiburg: Herder, 1985), pp. 9–​ 34, at pp. 26–​8. 21 Gorman, ‘Source marks’, 263, quoting, to the same effect, D. De Bruyne, ‘Cassiodore et l’Amiatinus’, Revue Bénédictine 39 (1927), 261–​6, at 263–​4. 22 See Houghton, Latin New Testament, pp. 14, 88–​9, 97, 156–​7; Houghton, ‘Chapter divisions’, 316–​56; Gameson, ‘Durham’s Paris Bible’, pp. 67–​9; Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 364. 23 My thanks to Dr Alice Rio for this observation: oral communication, 24 February 2021. See Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, p. 35; B. Fischer, ‘Bibelausgaben des frühen Mittelalters’, in Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandscriften, pp. 35–​100, at pp. 39–​41.

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late eleventh-​century Stavelot Bible illustrates some of these tendencies. Fuldensis contains an anti-​Pelagian list of capitula numbered 1–​23 covering the first part of Romans (De Bruyne’s Series Antipel), but the entries do not correlate with the placement of chapter breaks in the Epistle. Following these capitula, twenty-​eight entries numbered 24–​51 of a different type, De Bruyne’s Series M, agree with the Epistle’s divisions and summarise the rest of the text (Fulda, Bonifatianus 1, fols. 189v–​193v).24 Amiatinus’ capitulary of Romans (fols. 937v–​938r), which also has a total of fifty-​one summaries, belongs to Series M in its entirety. In the Stavelot Bible, Romans is prefaced by a different version of the Series M list with sixty-​three capitula (London, British Library, Additional 28107, fols. 205r–​v).25 Despite such irregularities, like the Eusebian canon tables prefacing many early medieval Gospel books, capitularies at least in principle mediated the related Scripture visually as well as textually.26 In the Codex Amiatinus, for instance, both the capitula and the Scripture are written in two columns, but the capitula are visually distinguished by a slightly smaller, simpler form of uncial, the frequent indentation of entries, and red numbering in margins (Figure 3.1).27 The Utrecht Gospelbook Fragment, also a Wearmouth-​ Jarrow manuscript, contains the same capitula series for Matthew with a similar layout (De Bruyne’s Series C; Utrecht, Universiteits-​Bibliotheek, 32, fols. 94–​105, at fols. 100v–​103v).28 The Burchard Gospels, a sixth-​century Italian codex with Wearmouth-​Jarrow provenance, has capitula lists with some similarities of layout but representing a different series (De Bruyne’s Series In; Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.p.th.f.68, fols. 16r–​21r).29 24 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 314–​19; E. W. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul: ancient editorial practice and the corpus Paulinum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 199–​209, esp. p. 200. A digitised facsimile of the Codex Fuldensis is freely available online at: https://​ful​dig.hs-​fulda.de/​vie​wer/​image/​PPN32​5289​808/​1/​ (accessed 18 December 2022) . 25 Digitised facsimile freely available online at: www.bl.uk/​manu​scri​pts/​Vie​wer. aspx?ref=​add_​m​s_​28​107_​fs00​1ar (accessed 18 December 2022). 26 B. Kitzinger, ‘Eusebian reading and early medieval gospel illumination’, in A. Bausi, B. Reudenbach, and H. Wimmer (eds), Canones: the art of harmony: the canon tables of the four Gospels (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 133–​71, at 150. 27 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 140–​1, 148–​51, 158–​64. The analogous use of a hierarchy of scripts in some of Amiatinus’ prefatory matter is analysed in P. Darby, ‘The Presentation of Jerome’s first letter to Paulinus of Nola in the Codex Amiatinus Pentateuch diagram’, Peritia 31 (2020), 59–​87, esp. 77–​80. 28 Digitised facsimile freely available online at: http://​obje​cts.libr​ary.uu.nl/​rea​der/​index. php?obj=​1874-​284​427&lan=​en#page//​79/​00/​78/​79007865769​4167​1486​9363​8592​ 3154​6962​380.jpg/​mode/​1up (accessed 18 December 2022). 29 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 270–​311; digitised facsimile of the Burchard Gospels freely available online at: http://​vb.uni-​wuerzb​urg.de/​ub/​mpth​f68/​pages/​mpth​f68/​ 8.html (accessed 18 December 2022).

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

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

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None of these capitula or other lists would have been read publicly in liturgies, yet a distinctive mise-​en-​page as seen in these examples, with more or less concordant divisions in the Scripture, must have facilitated the efforts of clergy to locate pericopes for Masses. Amiatinus’ capitularies of John and Luke imply this purpose through rubrics copied next to four summaries; the rubrics direct the reading of the indicated chapters in Masses at Eastertide, in Lent, for commemoration of the dead, and at any time (fols. 852r, 882r; see Figure 3.2).30 Bede’s Gospel homilies also point to this function of the division systems: the pericopes behind most of his homilies seem to conform to chapter divisions in Amiatinus.31 For the continuous reading of Scripture beside the Gospels that was probably Wearmouth-​Jarrow practice in the Night Office, capitularies and chapter numbers would have helped lectors determine where to start and stop within a given biblical book each night.32 Capitularies and coinciding breaks in the Scripture doubtless aided religious and clergy to locate discrete passages for reading or study outside the liturgy, as well. This is most likely the context that the author of the Vita Ceolfridi had in mind when he recalled the ability of ‘all who wished’ to find ‘any chapter from each Testament’ in Amiatinus’ sister Bibles.33 Additionally, the summaries in capitula lists could themselves be read non-​ liturgically as introductions to the Scripture and guides to its significance. Some anonymous lists in De Bruyne’s edition seem comparable to Bede’s in ‘literary quality’, as described below, but a large number are simpler affairs. Individual capitula commonly present very condensed synopses of the Scripture. Vocabulary is frequently repetitive; clauses introduced by ‘about’ (de) or ‘ubi’ (where) regularly occur, as do idiosyncratic grammar forms. With certain exceptions, especially in lists for the Prophets, capitula typically refer only to the Scripture’s literal sense; allusions to figurative meanings are scarce.34 Still, even highly abbreviated, literal capitula represent the Scripture according to particular hermeneutics. The choices made as to

30 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 144–​6 and Pl. 24; see P.-​M. Bogaert, ‘Les particularités éditoriales des Bibles comme exegèse implicite ou proposée: Les sommaires ou capitula donatistes’, in Lectures bibliques: Colloque du 11 novembre 1980 Bruxelles (Brussels: Institutum Iudaicum, 1985), pp. 7–​21, at 7–​8. The Burchard Gospels has marginal annotations inserted in the Gospel texts to indicate pericopes. Particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, there is frequent agreement between these indications and Amiatinus’ chapter divisions: see J. Chapman, Notes on the early history of the Vulgate Gospels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. 51–​65. 31 Compare Chapman, Notes, pp. 51–​65 with D. Hurst, Bede Venerabilis: Opera homelitica. Opera rhythmica, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), pp. ix–​xvi. 32 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 264–​70, 276–​9. 33 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 20 (above note 12). 34 For Prophets capitula: De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 184–​238.

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Figure 3.2.  Firenze, 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.

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which biblical episodes or themes to recall, which to pass over in silence, what details to emphasise –​these and other decisions affected how readers understood both the capitula and the corresponding Scripture.35 As readers proceeded from the capitula to the Scripture or the reverse, or back and forth between them, such interwoven experiences shaped responses to both.

Bede’s biblical capitula: general observations The Ecclesiastical history reports that Bede wrote distinctiones capitulorum or capitula lectionum for the following biblical books: Genesis through Judges, 1–​4 Kings, 1–​2 Paralipomenon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Isaias, Daniel (possibly a mistake for Ezechiel), part of Jeremias, the Minor Prophets, Job, Judith, Esther, Tobias, 1–​2 Esdras, and, as mentioned earlier, all the New Testament apart from the Gospels.36 Lists that he composed for 1 Samuel (that is, 1 Kings) and Esdras, as for the Canticle of Canticles, preface his commentaries on those books.37 Meyvaert identified capitula by Bede for all the remaining books indicated above in De Bruyne’s collection, Rome’s Biblia Sacra, and Amiatinus (for Exodus through Judges) except 2–​4 Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Daniel (unless Ezechiel was meant), the Epistle to Philemon, and a portion of Romans. A second capitulary for Esdras probably by Bede was also found in De Bruyne’s edition.38 His treatises On the Tabernacle, On the Temple, Thirty questions on the Book of Kings, and On eight questions are prefaced by short capitula for diverse parts of Scripture, mainly Old Testament, which Meyvaert ignored.39 Certain traits of Bede’s writings in this genre, some pointed out by Meyvaert, are usefully outlined here. First, the majority of his capitula concentrate on the ‘letter’ of the Scripture. Even the lists for 1 Samuel and Esdras, Old Testament histories on which Bede wrote largely figurative commentaries, summarise

35 Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul, pp. 175–​81, 202–​9. On the contingency of literal or historical interpretations of Scripture: K. Shuve, The Song of Songs and the fashioning of identity in early Latin Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 5, 9, and note 16, quoting D. Dawson, Allegorical readers and cultural revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), p. 8. 36 HE 5.24; text quoted above note 1. On the problem of Daniel vs. Ezechiel, see Meyvaert, Bede’s capitula, 361–​2. 37 Bede, In primam partem Samuhelis, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); In Ezram et Neemiam, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); Cant., pp. 167–​375 (above note 16). 38 Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 360–​5; De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 141–​3. 39 Bede, De tabernaculo, ed. D. Hurst; De templo, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); In Regum librum xxx quaestiones, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); M. Gorman, ‘Bede’s viii quaestiones and Carolingian biblical scholarship’, Revue Bénédictine 109 (1999), 32–​74, at 62–​74 (critical edition of viii quaestiones).

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the literal or historical sense. As modern scholarship on his work has often remarked, his allegorical commentaries typically contain some discussion of the Scripture’s literal meaning or historical background: the circumstances in which it was written, the etymology of words, the chronology and locations of events, and so forth.40 Still, relative to his exegetical treatises, most of his capitularies are exceptionally focused on this interpretive level. Second, nonetheless, allegorical refrains sometimes emerge. Scattered figurative allusions appear in Bede’s lists for the Prophets, while his capitula of Job echo Christological themes of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, which Bede used as a source. His capitula of Apocalypse, much like his commentary on that book, affirm the literal truth of John’s prophecies of the end times but incorporate symbolic interpretations linking the visions with the history of the Church.41 His Canticle capitula centre entirely on figurative interpretations again more fully expounded in his commentary.42 Third, while some capitularies assigned by Meyvaert to Bede divide the Scripture into fewer chapters than do other lists for the same biblical books, with certain books this situation is reversed.43 In general, it seems from the capitula lists I have most closely studied, in choosing where to place the breaks, Bede was less concerned about the length of chapters than that they should end with the resolution of the main episode or thematic development; a few examples will be considered shortly.44 This may be a clue that when composing capitula for biblical codices, he was partly mindful of liturgical needs. Clergy and religious who followed his chapter divisions in selecting passages for mass pericopes or arranging the Night Office lections would have faced little risk of closing a lection with a cliff-​hanger –​a sense that a narrated episode or theme was left unresolved.

0 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, esp. pp. 78–​80, with references to earlier scholarship. 4 41 Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 355–​8, 361–​4; De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 155–​7 (Bede’s Job capitula =​Series Carth), 185–​238 (Bede’s Prophets capitula =​Series Eln), 393–​7 (Bede’s Apocalypse capitula =​Series Tur). Bede’s Apocalypse capitula are edited and discussed in Expositio apocalypseos, pp. 136–​41, and they are discussed with English translation in F. Wallis, Bede: Commentary on Revelation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 60–​6, 287–​91. 42 See final part of chapter (The Canticle of Canticles). 43 E.g., the lists for Genesis through Judges assigned to Bede (Biblia Sacra, Series F) tend to break the Scripture into fewer units; for 1–​2 Paralipomenon, Esdras, Tobias, Judith, and Esther (De Bruyne’s Series Carth), and some of the Prophets (Series Eln), Bede’s lists indicate more divisions than most corresponding lists in De Bruyne: Sommaires, pp. 124–​53, 184–​238. Bede’s composition of the Genesis capitula of Biblia Sacra Series F likely postdated writing of Amiatinus’ biblical text. This would explain why Amiatinus lacks that capitulary by Bede, though it contains his capitularies of Exodus through Judges: Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 221–​3. 44 On this feature in Bede’s commentary on 1 Samuel and its prefatory capitula: S. DeGregorio and R. Love, Bede: On First Samuel (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), esp. pp. 12–​15.

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Fourth, as Meyvaert observed, most of Bede’s capitula possess notable ‘literary qualities’.45 The lists in On the Tabernacle, On the Temple, Thirty questions on the Book of Kings, and On eight questions are unusual among his writings in this genre since they mainly consist of no more than brief headings.46 Scattered capitula in other of his lists offer similarly abbreviated references to isolated topics in the Scripture. But frequently, his capitularies summarise the biblical texts in complete sentences or long clauses with varied structures and carefully worded transitions between entries, which give the sequences a certain eloquence as well as coherence. Most of his capitularies provide enough information, with sufficient clarity, for readers to gain from the entries alone a basic understanding of the letter of the Scripture, as interpreted by Bede. These features, especially the fourth set just sketched, make it reasonable to wonder whether Bede expected his longer capitula to serve at times as stand-​alone devotional, pedagogical, or memory aids. The preface of his Apocalypse commentary asserts that he ‘compressed’ the Scripture –​possibly a reference to the capitula included with the biblical recension in the libellus –​ for the sake of lazy readers.47 It is conceivable that he envisaged religious or clergy who lacked the energy or skill to read an entire biblical book on their own with comprehension, or who had no access to good quality scriptural codices, turning instead to some of his capitularies. His writings in this genre may therefore merit comparison with not only the many anonymous capitula lists copied in medieval biblical codices, but also the varied abbreviated and epitomised versions of exegetical and other writings that circulated in medieval Europe separately from the works on which they were based.48 Bede’s biblical capitularies only survive in manuscripts that contain the related Scripture or commentary, yet since each list covers no more than a few folios, autonomous copies could well have been lost. Despite the lack of manuscript evidence, the thematic and literary coherence, clarity, and detail of many of his capitula provide grounds for such speculations. While staying broadly within traditional parameters for the design of capitularies, in terms of both style and content he seems to have refined the range of conventional approaches and possibly introduced new functions. 5 Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 349–​70, esp. 353, 355. 4 46 Above note 39. 47 Bede, Expositio apocalypseos, preface, lines 134–​46, esp. lines 140–​5: ‘Nostrae siquidem, id est Anglorum gentis inertiae consulendum ratus, quae et non dudum, id est temporibus beati papae Gregorii, semen accepit fidei, et idem quantum ad lectionem tepide satis excoluit, non solum dilucidare sensus, uerum sententias quoque stringere disposui.’ 48 I am grateful to Drs Conor O’Brien and Alice Rio for this suggestion: oral communication, 24 February 2021. The analogies were one reason for historians’ previous uncertainty as to the meaning of capitula lectionum in HE 5.24, before Meyvaert’s article appeared: see Gorman, ‘Wigbod’, 311–​15.

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Capitula of Acts Bede’s capitulary of Acts of the Apostles, part of De Bruyne’s Series Tur, offers a good illustration of his ability to craft lucid synopses expressing lines of thought about the Scripture that harmonise with his exegesis (Appendix, Table 3.1).49 As with his work on Apocalypse, differences between the Amiatinus text of Acts and the lemmata of his Expositio, the first of his two treatises on Acts, completed c. 710, reveal passages in the Amiatinus recension that he may have emended while preparing the commentary.50 Amiatinus’ capitula of Acts shed light on why Bede saw it as also necessary to compose new summaries. The thematic analogies between his capitula and Expositio suggest that they were likely contemporaneous productions. Amiatinus is the only known witness of its Acts capitulary, De Bruyne’s Series C (Table 3.1).51 As is common in early medieval capitula lists, most of its seventy entries are framed as clauses introduced by ‘where’ (ubi). Many summaries only review part of the action in the chapter, often a single episode. Clausal transitions between summaries are rare; sequences appear to jump abruptly from one event or topic to the next, and seemingly significant events are left unreported –​such as the Ascension, to point out one striking example (Acts 1:9–​10). The outcome of those events that are recorded is also sometimes omitted. For instance, while Amiatinus’ capitulum 9 refers to the incarceration of Peter and John, there is no mention of the council that heard their case the next day, though this was the context in which the unidentified group recalled in capitulum 10 marvelled at their illiteracy (Acts 4:1–​22). Bede’s capitulary divides Acts into sixty-​three chapters. Like the Amiatinus capitula, his synopses concentrate on the Scripture’s literal sense. As the different number of entries in the two lists reveals, however, Bede’s chapters are often –​though not invariably –​longer than those of Amiatinus: the first eleven Amiatinus capitula comprise the same portion of the biblical text (to Acts 4:31) as Bede’s first eight capitula. Even when chapter lengths are comparable, each of Bede’s capitula usually gives a clearer idea of the narrative development and has more to say about the designated biblical passage. His first capitulum reports the Ascension as part of a broad-​brush

9 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 371–​81. 4 50 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, p. 68 and note 15, pp. 77, 214–​16, 290–​1; Bede, Expositio Actuum Apostolorum, ed. M. L. W. Laistner, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). Bede’s second commentary on Acts is Retractatio in Actus Apostolorum, ed. M. L. W. Laistner, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). My thanks to my research assistant, Andrew Holland, for collating lemmata in Bede’s commentaries on Acts with the Amiatinus recension. 51 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 371–​81; Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s Capitula’, 355–​8.

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review of Jesus’ post-​resurrection appearances. The first naming of the faithful as Christians (Acts 11:26), an event omitted from Amiatinus’ capitulum 31, is mentioned in Bede’s twenty-​fifth capitulum. His attention to clarity and detail leads him at times to insert non-​biblical information that elucidates potentially obscure aspects of the Scripture, such as his explanation in capitulum 42 that Cenchreae is a port of Corinth, a fact unnoted in the text of Acts. In capitulum 6, where he summarises an exceptionally long unit of Scripture (Acts 3–​4:4), he evokes its thematic scope by alluding to events at both the start and the end of the passage. The narrative then proceeds smoothly into the next (seventh) summary, thanks to its opening subordinate clause: ‘Having returned to the council ….’ Furthermore, as in other of his capitula lists, in his Acts capitulary it appears that Bede sought to position chapter breaks where they would not significantly interrupt actions or themes. For example, c­hapter 32 in Amiatinus’ Acts encompasses the account of Agabus’ prophecy of famine through Peter’s imprisonment at Herod’s command; Peter’s release by an angel falls within the frame of c­hapter 33 (Acts 11:27–​12:17). In Bede’s capitulary, summary 26 covers the prophecy of Agabus and the ensuing journey of Barnabus and Saul with alms, a positive outcome of the prophecy ignored in the Amiatinus capitula. Reports of James’s death, then Peter’s incarceration open Bede’s capitulum 27, but that chapter and its summary continue through the account of Peter’s release and visit to John Mark’s mother. Again, the action’s positive resolution occurs within the chapter.52 Bede’s capitulum 28 reports Herod’s death, another event overlooked in Amiatinus’ capitulary, and closes with the claim that the king’s demise freed the way for apostolic preaching (Acts 12:18–​25). This assertion does not directly mirror the Scripture’s literal sense, but it evokes a broad refrain in Acts emphasised throughout Bede’s list: the Church’s steady growth as the apostles evangelised and baptised gentiles and Jews, drawing them into a unified community. His two treatises on Acts develop this theme through their interplay of historical and allegorising exegesis. In his capitulary, the same theme is foregrounded through references to episodes of apostolic preaching, teaching, and other acts of ministry that the Amiatinus capitula largely ignore (Bede, e.g., Acts cap. 4, 7, 8, 25, 26, 28, 29). Yet while, overall, Bede’s capitula of Acts are more informative than those in Amiatinus, there are notable lacunae that seem likely strategic. The description of Peter and John as illiterate and ignorant in Acts 4:13, for one, is the main topic of Amiatinus’ tenth capitulum. This statement falls within the scope of Bede’s capitulum 7 but is unmentioned there, possibly because it conflicted with his interest in the apostles as models for contemporary educated monks and clergy to emulate. His Expositio alludes to the apostles’ 52 Compare the final capitula in the two lists as well: Amiatinus, Acts cap. 68–​70; Bede, Acts cap. 60–​3 (Appendix Table 3.1).

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empowerment by the Spirit eighteen verses later (Acts 4:31), an event that his capitulary does report, in its eighth summary. As the Expositio passage explains, the gift of the Spirit affirmed that divine power, not human learning, inspired their preaching.53 In these passages, we surely discern the influence of Bede’s understanding of the force that underlay his own prodigious scholarship and dedication to the pedagogical craft. A further example relates to Bede’s capitulum 29, which recalls the blinding of Elymas (Acts 13:8–​11). No other name for this magician is indicated; Bede ignores the reference to apparently the same man as Bariesu a few verses earlier in Acts (13:6), the only name given for him in Amiatinus’ thirty-​fifth summary. In the Expositio, Bede argues that the Acts passage must be corrupt. Since Bariesu means ‘son of Jesus’, it cannot be the name of a magician; the correct rendering is Berieu, Bede asserts. The corresponding lemma in the Retractatio, his second treatise on Acts, simply refers to Berieu, with no mention of Bariesu. By the time Bede wrote this commentary in the later 720s, Amiatinus was in Italy, while the exemplar of Acts that he consulted for the Expositio and presumably the capitulary had been perhaps revised or an emended copy made.54 The name ‘son of Jesus’, it seems from the Retractatio, had essentially disappeared from the version of Acts read at Wearmouth-​Jarrow.

The Canticle of Canticles My second case study, Bede’s treatise on the Canticle of Canticles, was probably finished by 716.55 His capitula for this Scripture appear to have only circulated as part of his commentary’s prefatory matter. In David Hurst’s critical edition and three of the four ninth-​century manuscripts listed in his apparatus, all accessible through online digitised facsimiles, the capitulary is placed between the opening book against Julian of Eclanum and the redaction of the Canticle.56 Though not reproduced in Hurst’s edition, 3 Bede, Expositio Actuum Apostolorum, 4, lines 36–​40 and 61–​8. 5 54 Bede, Expositio Actuum Apostolorum, 13, lines 11–​ 16; Retractatio in Actus Apostolorum, 13, lines 20–​4. 55 See note 16. On the date, see DeGregorio and Love, Bede: On First Samuel, pp. 8–​9; DeGregorio and Love here refine and add to the arguments of Arthur Holder as set out in The Venerable Bede on the Song of Songs and selected writings (New York: Paulist Press, 2011), p. 28. Bede’s Canticle commentary is carefully analysed in a recent study by H. Matis, The Song of Songs in the early middle ages (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 23–​58. 56 Cant., Sigla codicum et editionum, p. 166: Vatican City, BAV latin 285; Paris, BnF, lat. 12276; Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, 434. The fourth listed ninth-​century manuscript, Paris, BnF, lat. 9569, lacks the book against Julian; the opening section is the rubricated Canticle (fols. 1v–​5r) followed by Bede’s capitulary (fols. 5r–​6v), then his commentary starting on fol. 7r. Hurst’s list also includes a later eighth-​century manuscript that has no digitised facsimile and for which I have been unable to obtain

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the chapter numeration is repeated next to the Scripture. While the chapter numbers were copied next to the commentary as well in only one of these manuscripts (Vatican City, BAV, latin 285), thematic and topical interconnections imply that Bede coordinated writing of the commentary and its prefatory matter.57 Before examining Bede’s Canticle rubrics and capitulary, it is important to briefly review his attack on Julian. This preliminary book of the treatise is directed against three writings ascribed by Bede to the fifth-​century bishop, two genuinely by him: a two-​book treatise called On love (De amore) and a tract called On the good of persistence (De bono constantiae). Both tracts are lost, aside from the passages Bede quotes which probably represent only a fraction of each original.58 The third work, which he erroneously assigns to Julian, is the letter of Pelagius to Demetrias. Bede implies that monks in his milieu thought Jerome was the letter’s author and agreed with doctrines set out in all three texts.59 As far as can be discerned from Bede’s discussion of On love, its second book centred on exegesis of the Canticle that supported Julian’s belief in the goodness of marital procreation. Already in antiquity, the convention of reading the Canticle of Canticles as an allegory of divine−human relations

detailed information: Paris, Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, 63. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Dunning, R. W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and his associates for examining the one eleventh-​century manuscript noted by Hurst: Oxford, Jesus College 54. Dr Dunning answered my questions by email and sent a photograph of a sample page (January 2021). This manuscript contains the book against Julian followed by the capitula but lacks a prefatory copy of the Canticle; instead, the rubrics are set in the commentary margins. 57 A. Holder, ‘The Anti-​Pelagian character of Bede’s Commentary on the Song of Songs’, in C. Leonardi and G. Orlandi (eds), Biblical studies in the early middle ages: proceedings of the conference on biblical studies in the early middle ages (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni di Galluzzo, 2005), pp. 91–​103, esp. pp. 93–​6. For comparison, capitula numbers are repeated beside Bede’s exegesis in the ‘better’ of the two earliest surviving copies of his commentary on 1 Samuel: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 335, of the ninth century. On this manuscript: DeGregorio and Love, Bede: On First Samuel, p. 92. My thanks to Dr Joshua O’Driscoll, Assistant Curator of the Pierpont Morgan Library, for studying this codex at my request and emailing replies to my queries along with photographs of leaves (January 2021). 58 Cant., Praef., lines 15–​270, 274–​332. The surviving passages have been excerpted and edited as Commentarius in Canticum Canticorum and De bono constantiae in Julian of Eclanum, Expositio libri Iob, Tractatus prophetarum Osee, Iohel et Amos, Operum deperditorum fragmenta, ed. L. De Coninck, CCSL 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977). De Coninck’s edition generally concurs with the passages in Hurst’s edition of Bede’s commentary. 59 Pelagius, Epistula 1 ad Demetriadem, PL 30, cols 15–​45; Cant., Praef., lines 334–​6; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 122–​31.

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was firmly established in Christian exegesis.60 The bridegroom was understood as a figure of Christ or God, whereas interpretations of the bride were more diverse. The Greek theologian Origen (d. 254) wavered between identifying her with the Church and the faithful soul.61 Fourth-​and fifth-​ century Latin writers, among them Tyconius and Augustine, emphasised her connection with the Church, though in different ways.62 Jovinian drew on the Canticle to support his doctrine that within the Church, signified through the bride, married Christians and the chaste held equal status. For Ambrose of Milan, who valued chastity, the Canticle bride was a figure of the Church, holy souls, and virgins, especially the Virgin Mary.63 Bede criticises four passages from Julian’s exegesis of the Canticle, two quoted and two cast in indirect speech. One quoted excerpt indicates that Julian identified the bridegroom with Christ; less certainly, it seems he understood the bride as a figure of the soul striving to grow in virtue.64 As Bede’s broader attack reveals, the bishop of Eclanum agreed with Pelagius that human souls possessed innate goodness despite the Fall and, as a result, were capable of freely willed virtue. ‘Holy and generous love’ –​apparently meaning love from heaven or God –​is present in every soul from birth, Bede claims that Julian taught.65 Accordingly, while Augustine maintained that the Fall tainted all sexual love, Julian drew a distinction between temperate marital procreation and unbridled fornication. Although he accepted that love for another human was sinful insofar as it came from the body, it was good to the extent that it came from the soul. Sin resulted from bad habits that each person may strive to overcome.66 Divine grace assisted those efforts, but both the move towards virtue and tenacity in its pursuit –​a theme of On the good of persistence –​was possible before divine grace was

60 E. Ann Matter, The Voice of my beloved: the Song of Songs in western medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), esp. pp. 20–​41; Shuve, Song of Songs. 61 Matter, Voice of my beloved, pp. 25–​31. 62 Shuve, Song of Songs, pp. 61–​78. 63 Shuve, Song of Songs, pp. 17–​ 18, 138–​ 72, 203–​ 4, 210–​ 12; Jerome, Aduersus Iovinianum, PL 23, cols 211–​338; Ambrose, De institutione virginis, PL 16, cols 305–​34. 64 Cant., Praef., lines 151–​69 (to Cant. 1:1); lines 221–​7 (to Cant. 1:9, quoted exegesis by Julian: the bride as virtuous soul?); lines 228–​39 (to Cant. 8:2); lines 539–​48 (to Cant. 5:11, quoted exegesis by Julian: the bridegroom as Christ). See Shuve, Song of Songs, pp. 212–​18. 65 Cant., Praef., lines 34–​6: ‘Dicit sanctum nobis ac generosum amorem ab ipso lucis exordio natura conciliante insitum et ad ultimam usque senectutem solis animi uiribus innixum …’ 66 Cant., Praef.; Shuve, Song of Songs, pp. 215–​6.

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received.67 Pelagius’ letter to Demetrias presents analogous lines of thought. Two passages quoted by Bede refer to the good attributes of ancient philosophers and Old Testament saints like Job as proof that grace is not essential to virtue. Since the philosophers and Job lived before the Incarnation and therefore, the passages imply, before grace was available, they must have achieved goodness on their own.68 Although Bede deviated in certain respects from Augustine’s doctrine of grace and free will, Bede followed the bishop of Hippo and more closely Gregory the Great in holding that throughout history, grace was required before any sustained growth in faith or virtue could occur.69 The attack on Julian is rooted in this premise. Sin is congenital, Bede insists, and therefore only when grace is present can the soul truly love God, the highest form of love.70 Philosophers were unable to possess even a ‘taste of wisdom’ or an ‘image of virtue’ without grace, Bede indicates in refuting the letter to Demetrias.71 Occasionally, Bede’s commentary on the Canticle alludes to interpretations in older works that troubled him besides Julian’s On love, such as Tyconius’ Book of Rules.72 Like Tyconius and other early Christian authors, though, Bede consistently reads the Canticle allegorically, both in his commentary and in other writings in which he quotes or echoes its language. The bridegroom is always understood as Christ or God, the bride usually as the Church; while Bede at times identifies the bride with the faithful soul, he emphasises the soul’s membership in the ecclesiastical community.73 Recalling another related, ancient interpretive tradition, his short treatise On the art of metre (De arte metrica) describes the Canticle as a ‘dramatic

7 Cant., Praef., lines 277–​326. 6 68 Cant., Praef., lines 350–​64; Pelagius, Epistula 1 ad Demetriadem, PL 30, cols 16–​23. 69 A. J. Kleist, Striving with grace: views of free will in Anglo-​ Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 50–​ 7, 60–​ 1, 65–​ 77; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 127–​31. 70 Cant., Praef., lines 54–​98, and esp. lines 384–​91; Matter, Voice of my beloved, pp. 98–​9. 71 Cant., Praef., lines 410–​13: ‘In quantum uero uel gustum aliquem sapientiae cuiuslibet uel uirtutis imaginem habebant totum hoc desuper acceperunt non solum munere primae conditionis uerum etiam cotidiana eius gratia …’ 72 See note 90. 73 E.g., Cant. 1 (2.10), lines 391–​2: ‘Habet ergo sponsa Christi ecclesia uidelicet uel anima quaeque electa tempus quiescendi habet item tempus surgendi ad laborem’; Cant. 5 (7.5), lines 336–​41: ‘In capite sponsae recte mens accipitur animae fidelis … Quod autem de una anima electa dicitur hoc de tota ecclesia intellegendum prudens lector meminerit….’

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or active’ poem ‘in which speaking persons are introduced’ and ‘the manifest voice of Christ alternating with that of the church is found’.74 A critical concept for Bede that emerges from diverse writings by him, but with particular clarity from his commentary on the Canticle, is the Church’s existence before as well as since the Incarnation. Ecclesiastical membership, in his belief, encompasses not only Christian but ancient Jewish elect, all of whom are or will be redeemed through grace.75 Some passages in his commentary identify the pre-​Incarnation Church as the synagogue; elsewhere, he uses the term ecclesia for the Church in both its pre-​and its post-​ Incarnation forms. ‘The whole congregation of the elect in general is called the church,’ he explains in the commentary prologue, ‘yet now, for the sake of distinction, that portion of the faithful which preceded the time of the Lord’s incarnation is particularly named “the synagogue” and that which followed it “the church”.’ Grace, the key to salvation, is fundamental to their union.76 Since no one can be saved except through grace, Bede clarifies in Book 5, the synagogue safeguarded the Jewish elect until the Ascension. Apparently, he envisaged Christ bestowing this gift retroactively on the elect who died before his advent.77 Further exegetical themes of the commentary will be indicated as I compare Bede’s rubrication of the Canticle with the rubrics in Amiatinus, De Bruyne’s Series A (fols. 443v–​447r), then discuss his capitula (Appendix, Tables 3.2, 3.3).78 His decision to preface a commentary on the Canticle with a capitulary and the complete text of the poem seems to have been

74 Bede, De arte metrica 1:25, lines 7–​ 14, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), borrowing from Diomedes, Artis grammaticae: ‘… “poematos genera sunt tria” … “Dramaticon est uel actiuum in quo personae” loquentes introducuntur “sine poetae interlocutione …” Quo apud nos genere Cantica Canticorum scripta sunt, ubi uox alternans Cristi et ecclesiae, tametsi non in hoc interloquente scriptore, manifesta reperitur.’ 75 E.g., Cant. 4 (4.8), lines 380–​416; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, p. 131. 76 Cant. 1, lines 4–​7, 20–​5; trans. Holder, Venerable Bede on the Song of Songs, p. 37: ‘… omnis electorum congregatio generaliter ecclesia uocatur, et tamen nunc causa discretionis specialiter ea fidelium portio quae incarnationis dominicae tempora praecessit sinagoga quae uero hanc secuta est ecclesia nuncupatur … Nam sicut et nos peracta iam dominica incarnatione passione et resurrectione saluari speramus et credimus ita et prior ecclesiae pars eandem domini ac redemptoris incarnationem passionem et resurrectionem futuram adhuc expectans per eius se gratiam quem magnopere aduenire cupiebat saluandam esse credebat.’ 77 Cant. 5 (7.13), lines 826–​33. 78 De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 559–​61; Cap., Cant. Canticorum, pp. 181–​4; Cant., Cant. Canticorum, pp. 185–​9. It should be noted that Amiatinus’ Series A Canticle rubrics, which I follow in Appendix Table 3.2, show minor deviations from the series as edited by De Bruyne.

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unprecedented.79 As with his treatise on Apocalypse, which was paired with the separate libellus containing Bede’s capitulary and apparently revised Scripture, one motivation probably lay in his worry that flawed recensions could encourage doctrinal and exegetical errors.80 Although I do not have space to discuss this here, it should be noted that the lemmata of his commentary on the Canticle occasionally seem a more accurate window on his redaction of the Scripture than that presented by Hurst in the prefatory matter. Bede’s lemmata mostly follow the Amiatinus recension, but there are points at which they diverge.81 Most deviations are insignificant; some may have resulted from paraphrasing of the Scripture. Yet in some passages, whether his source was an older non-​biblical work in which the variant was quoted or a biblical codex besides the Amiatinus exemplar, his exegesis reveals that the different reading was deliberately chosen. One example is found at Canticle 8:13. The Amiatinus version (fol. 446v) reads, Qui habitas in hortis (‘You [male] who dwell in the gardens’). According to the Amiatinus rubric, the speaker is the Church addressing Christ. The corresponding entry in Bede’s capitulary, his rubric, and his exegesis all depend on the version that begins, Quae habitas..., the version in the modern Vulgate.82 In all these texts, Bede interprets the speaker as Christ addressing the Church: ‘You [female] who dwell in the gardens’ (Appendix, Table 3.2: Amiatinus rubric 42, Bede rubric 43).83 79 F. Ohly, Hohelied-​Studien: Grundzüge einer Geschichte der Hoheliedauslegung des Abendlandes bis um 1200 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1958), p. 66; Matter, Voice of my beloved, pp. 99–​100; Matis, Song of Songs, pp. 35–​8 (above note 55). 80 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 94–​ 110. See F. Wallis, ‘Why did Bede write a Commentary on Revelation?’ in P. Darby and F. Wallis (eds), Bede and the future (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 23–​45; Wallis, Bede: Commentary on Revelation, pp. 39–​57. 81 Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 212–​ 13; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus, pp. 288–​9. Bede’s version also presents deviations from the modern Vulgate critical editions. For comparison, I have relied on Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 5th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 997–​1002. 82 Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 1002. 83 See Cant., Cap., p. 184 (cap. 38); Cant., Cant. Canticorum, p. 189, line 207. Although Hurst’s edition has ‘Quae habitas …’ in the prefatory Scripture, he gives the opening as, ‘Qui habitas …’ in the commentary lemma (Cant. 5 (7.13), lines 706–​7). However, his note to line 706 (p. 355) indicates that in five of the six manuscripts consulted for his edition, the lemma opens with, ‘Quae habitas…’ Note also the grammatically implausible ecclesiam at line 729 (p. 356); the sense of the passage indicates that the correct reading is ecclesia (nominative), as found in the manuscripts I have examined: Paris, BnF, lat. 9569, fol. 106v; Vatican City, BAV, lat. 285, fol. 138r; Paris, BnF, lat. 12276, fol. 211r; Reims, Bibl. mun., 434, fol. 121v. In his translation of Books 1–​ 5 of Bede’s commentary, Holder (Venerable Bede on the Song of Songs, pp. 37–​249) helpfully inserted the capitula at appropriate points in the exegesis.

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Table 3.2 compares select rubrics from Bede’s series with their correspondents in Amiatinus. The final rubric that I indicate for Bede is hypothetical, not found in Hurst’s edition or the manuscripts I have been able to consult, yet Bede’s capitulary and exegesis clearly refer to the shift in speaker at this point. The Canticle rubrics were regularly modified as the Scripture was copied; a rubric may have fallen from his series at an early stage in its transmission.84 As in Table 3.2, rubrics for the same sections of the poem in different medieval series frequently agree –​understandably, since the Canticle itself often unambiguously assigns speech to the bride or bridegroom.85 Where Bede departed from the Amiatinus rubrication, one evident factor was his attentiveness to clarity. Amiatinus lacks rubrics for Canticle 1:1–​3. The manuscripts of Bede’s commentary show some variation, yet his exegesis makes plain that he intended two rubrics for this passage: Canticle 1:1–​2 was assigned to the synagogue, Canticle 1:3 to the Church.86 For Canticle 2:15a and 3:10, Amiatinus has rubrics that do not name the speakers; Bede identifies the speaker of Canticle 2:15a as Christ, and Canticle 3:10 falls in a longer passage attributed to the Church (Amiatinus rubrics 11, 16; Bede rubrics 13, 19). But a more pervasive concern on Bede’s part was that his rubrics conform to his interpretation of the Scripture; some Amiatinus rubrics are markedly at odds with how he understood the Canticle dialogue to unfold. Friedrich Ohly pointed out that Bede was the first exegete since Origen to establish a distribution of identified speakers throughout the poem.87 Every unit of Bede’s commentary assumes the speaker indicated in his corresponding rubric and interprets the biblical text from that perspective. The opening rubrics assigning Canticle 1:1–​3 to the synagogue and the Church correlate with exegesis that celebrates the union of the Church’s two parts, thanks to their shared devotion to Christ and the gift of grace to both.88 The next rubric, for Canticle 1:4, and Bede’s exegesis identify the speaker as again the Church. His commentary lemma here follows the Vulgate: ‘I am black but beautiful’ (Nigra sum sed formosa),89 whereas Amiatinus has the Old Latin, 4 Reilly, Art of reform, pp. 230–​2. The numbering in Appendix Table 2 is my own. 8 85 Compare also the varied series in De Bruyne, Sommaires, pp. 558–​61. 86 The first rubric, Synagogae uox ad sponsum, corresponds with Bede’s capitulary and exegesis and is found in Paris, BnF, lat. 12276 (fol. 15r), but not BAV lat. 285 or Reims 434. The rubrication of the Scripture in Paris lat. 9569, fols. 1v–​5r is not Bede’s; it seems to correspond to De Bruyne’s Series A, the series in Amiatinus (Sommaires, pp. 559–​61). 87 Ohly, Hohelied-​Studien, p. 66. 88 Cant. 1 (1.1, 1.2, and 1.3), lines 31–​144. 89 Cant. 1 (1.4), line 202; Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 997 (‘Nigra sum sed formonsa’).

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‘I am black and beautiful’ (fol. 443v: Nigra sum et formonsa) with a rubric attributing the passage to the synagogue. In his commentary, Bede criticises a belief of ‘certain people’ that the Amiatinus/​Old Latin version signifies the Church’s mixture of false (black) with spiritual (beautiful) brethren, an idea expressed in Tyconius’ Book of Rules. Bede’s reference to a group and use of a present-​tense verb may be clues that he was aware of reverberations in his milieu. Against this interpretation, he argues that the Church is black not from sinners but from trials and sufferings.90 Also rejected by Bede is the convention attested in Amiatinus of assigning Canticle 3:1–​4 to Mary Magdalene (Amiatinus rubric 13).91 Bede’s rubrics and commentary restrict the speakers throughout the Canticle to the Church, the synagogue, and Christ.92 Canticle 3:1–​3a is assigned to the ‘church elected from the gentiles’ (uox electae de gentibus ecclesiae: Bede rubric 15), and the rest of the passage to the Church speaking about Christ (Bede rubric 16). In his commentary, Bede acknowledges the passage’s connection with the Magdalene but explains that she is a type of the Church.93 Conversely, while Amiatinus’ rubric 38 attributes Canticle 8:9 to the Church speaking to Christ, Bede’s rubric 39 assigns this passage to Christ speaking about the Church. His lemma reads: ‘If (she) is a wall, let us build upon her bulwarks of silver; if (she) is a door, let us seal it with boards of cedar’ (Si murus est aedificemus super eam propugnacula argentea, si ostium est conpingamus illud tabulis cedrinis). In Amiatinus (fol. 446v), the first pronoun is masculine: super eum.94 Interpreted with its rubric, the Amiatinus version implies that the bulwarks will rest upon Christ or the wall. Bede’s exegesis explains that although Scripture often designates Christ as the ‘wall’ or ‘door’, these terms may be used for the Church, since Christ ‘has also given her a share in his own title, so that she may be called both wall and door …’95 90 Cant. 1 (1.4), lines 249–​58, esp. lines 249–​52: ‘Quidam hanc sententiam ita legentes: “Nigra sum et formosa”, dicunt quod ecclesia nigra sit in carnalibus suis uel falsis fratribus “sicut tabernacula Cedar” formosa autem in spiritalibus “sicut pelles Salomonis”.’ Cf. Tyconius, Liber regularum 2.10, ed. and trans. (into French) J.-​M. Vercruysse, SC 488 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004); Shuve, Song of Songs, pp. 51–​ 2, 61–​5. 91 De Bruyne, Sommaires, p. 559 (Series A, where this rubric is numbered 14 –​see above note 78); D. De Bruyne, ‘Les anciennes versions latines du Cantique des Cantiques’, Revue Bénédictine 38 (1926), 97–​122, at 100. 92 Bede’s Canticle rubrics 1 and 21 designate the interlocutor simply as the bridegroom (sponsus); the exegesis shows that Christ is meant: Cant., Cant. Canticorum, p. 185, line 1; p. 187, line 101. 93 Cant. 2 (3.4), lines 107–​9. 94 As in the modern Vulgate: Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 1002. 95 Cant. 5 (8.9), lines 484–​6 and 496–​8: ‘ “Si murus est aedificemus super eam propugnacula argentea, si ostium est conpingamus illud tabulis cedrinis”: Solet autem

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Accentuating the bond that Bede’s rubrics thereby forge between the Scripture and his exegesis are numerous passages in his commentary worded as continuations of the Canticle dialogue, cast allegorically. The invented speeches are assigned to the same interlocutors named in the rubrics –​ Christ, the Church, the synagogue. To give one example: according to Bede’s interpretation of Canticle 8:9, when Christ instructs that bulwarks of silver be built upon the Church, it is as if he were saying openly, ‘Even though the church of the gentiles has the capacity in some of her members to oppose the teachings of those who have gone astray, having men who are sharpened for speaking either because they are skilled as a result of natural talent or because they are versed in philosophic training, I [Christ] by no means wish the ministry of speaking upon them. Rather, let us lift them up, [or] better, let us aid them by giving them pages of the holy scriptures, by means of which they can more stoutly and easily protect the weak and unlearned from the assaults of deceptive teaching or corrupting example …’.96

Scott DeGregorio and Rosalind Love have aptly described this interpretive method, which Bede also employed in his commentary on 1 Samuel, as ‘impersonation exegesis’. In both commentaries, the impersonations articulate key moral and doctrinal themes of the exegesis. In the treatise on the Canticle, the imagined speeches also inscribe the exegesis with some of the poem’s dramatic impact, underscoring their essential unity.97 Bede’s capitulary of the Canticle similarly primes readers to appreciate his exegesis –​in this instance, as Ann Matter has observed, by muri nomine uel ostii dominus ipse saepius in scriptura sacra designari … Verum qui apparendo in carne ecclesiam sibi sororem facere dignatus est ipse ei etiam sui participium nominis donauit ut et murus uidelicet diceretur et ostium …’ Trans. Holder, p. 239. Two manuscripts give super eum for the above lemma, as does Hurst in the prefatory Scripture (Cant., Cantica Canticorum, p. 189, line 199; see Cant. 5, p. 350, note to line 484). Yet Bede almost certainly intended super eam; he repeats this version shortly thereafter, when he again identifies the wall as ‘our sister’, that is, the church (lines 513–​21): ‘ “Si ergo murus est”, inquit, soror nostra “aedificemus super eam propugnacula argentea”, ac si aperte dicat, “Si idonea est ecclesia gentium in aliquibus suis membris peruersorum contraire doctrinis habens … nequaquam his uelim dicendi ministerium tollamus quin potius iuuemus eos datis scripturarum sanctarum paginis quo fortius possint ac facilius infirmos quosque atque indoctos ab insidiis custodire uel doctrinae fallentis uel exempli corrumpentis…” ’ 96 Latin above, previous note; trans. Holder, pp. 239–​40, with minor emendation. 97 DeGregorio and Love, Bede: On First Samuel, pp. 33–​8. Gregory the Great used an analogous technique in his Canticle commentary and Moralia in Job. The former work appears to have been unknown to Bede, but he knew the Moralia well. It was a source for his capitula of Job (above, at note 41), and excerpts were included in Book 6 of his Canticle commentary, a compilation of passages interpreting the poem

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presenting summaries that ‘presuppose’ the treatise’s figurative interpretations (Appendix, Table 3.3).98 The virtual absence from the capitula of any reference to the Canticle’s literal sense testifies to the weight of the tradition of reading the poem allegorically. The notion of the Canticle as a celebration of love between God and humanity was so embedded in Latin thought by the eighth century that its mortal bride and bridegroom were largely lost from view. The allegorical meaning had become the Scripture’s literal truth. In addition, the capitula were almost certainly informed by Bede’s association of the Canticle with dramatic poetry. His summaries read much like the scenario of a play.99 Compared with his commentary, the capitula sharpen the focus on the poem’s dramatic structure, even as they move away from the letter of its text to clarify how the scriptural dialogue spiritually transpires in Christian time. Like his commentary, Bede’s capitulary’s synopses imply that the conversation between the synagogue, Christ, and the Church takes place within the mystical frame of all ecclesiastical history. Both the opening capitulum and the commentary identify the dramatic setting of the first verse with the era before the Incarnation, when the synagogue yearns for Christ’s advent. In the second and third capitula, the action shifts to the time of the primitive Church. Capitula 27 through 29 keep the present age in view but look forward to the battles at the Eschaton and the final conversion of Jews. Intermediary capitula centre on the Church’s relationship with Christ in the present. As described in the summaries, their dialogue in this portion of the Canticle touches on divine grace (no. 3); Christ’s life, passion, and resurrection (no. 4); the struggle against heresy (no. 9); and the value of preaching, prayer, and ascetic discipline (nos. 9, 11, 12), among other topics. In the preface of his Apocalypse commentary, Bede remarks that Tyconius’ rules of scriptural interpretation ‘do not apply only to Apocalypse … but [will be found] in all canonical scripture and especially prophetic scripture’. In keeping, Bede’s capitulum 33 of the Canticle adopts Tyconius’ drawn from Gregory’s homilies, Regula Pastoralis, and Moralia that balances the exegesis by Julian refuted in Bede’s preliminary book: Cant. 6. Julian may have used a similar exegetical method; see Cant. 3 (5.11), lines 539–​48 (quoting, it seems, from De amore). Stephen Jaeger discusses the use of a comparable technique by Bernard of Clairvaux in, ‘Chapter 10: Voice of the Dove: Bernard of Clairvaux’, The sense of the sublime in the middle ages: freely accessible online at www.acade​mia.edu/​48900​ 461/​The_​Sense_​of_​the_​Sublime_​Chapter_​10_​The_​Voice_​of_​th​e_​Do​ve_​B​erna​rd_​o​f_​ Cl​airv​aux (accessed 18 December 2022). I am grateful to Dr Jaeger for sharing his typescript with me prior to publication. 98 Cant., Cap., pp. 181–​4; Matter, Voice of my beloved, p. 99. 99 Matter, Voice of my beloved, pp. 99–​100; see Bede, De arte metrica 1.25, lines 7–​14 (above note 74).

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sixth rule of ‘recapitulation’ (recapitulatio).100 The designated chapter opens with Canticle 7:13b, ‘All fruits new and old, my beloved, I have kept for you’ (Omnia poma noua et uetera dilecte mi seruaui tibi). According to Bede’s summary, ‘beginning from a new beginning’, the Church here ‘wishes for the Lord to become incarnate...’.101 We have returned to the historical period of the synagogue. The remaining summaries interpret the rest of the dialogue as focused on the needs of the primitive Church, the love and care she receives from Christ, the membership of gentiles with believing Jews, and the importance of preaching and teaching to her spiritual prosperity.

Conclusion Bede’s impressive output of biblical capitularies and their listing among his exegetical works in the Ecclesiastical history allow little doubt that he was mindful of their devotional and pedagogical value. Capitularies would not have been read publicly in the liturgy, but by indicating where chapter breaks occurred and the chapter topics, they assisted religious and clergy to locate suitable pericopes for Masses and to organise the Night Office lections. Outside the liturgy, no matter how perfunctory were biblical capitula or how closely they adhered to the letter of the Scripture, they had the potential to orient readers towards particular interpretations of those texts, literal or figurative. Whether readers moved back and forth between a biblical book and a prefacing capitulary, or read a capitula list without turning at all to the Scripture or an exegetical tract, the synopses invited notice of certain topics or refrains of the Scripture, while encouraging neglect of other elements or a view of them as less worthy of consideration. Depending on where chapter breaks were placed and the manner in which the chapters were summarised, different capitularies could lead readers to different ideas about how the same biblical book should be understood. Bede’s capitula reveal his skills with this textual genre. He evidently thought carefully about the appropriate narrative and thematic points in the Scripture at which to set chapter divisions. Most of his lists consist of lucidly worded, detailed summaries; although, as is typical in medieval capitularies, he usually foregrounded the Scripture’s literal sense, he was adept at moulding synopses at any interpretive level to correlate with his 100 Bede, Expositio apocalypseos, Praef., lines 96, 114–​25: ‘Has igitur regulas non in Apocalypsi tantum … uerum in omni quoque scriptura canonica et praecipue prophetica easdem uigere regulas quisque uigilanter intenderit inueniet.’ On Tyconius’ influence on Bede, despite disapproval of aspects of his doctrine and exegesis: Wallis, Bede: Commentary on Revelation, see pp. 14–​30, 59–​73. 101 Cf. Cant. 5 (7.13), line 813.

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exegetical interests. Some of this effort likely coincided with his writing of commentaries and, it would appear, editing of the Amiatinus recensions. His endeavour to orient readers towards Scripture in ways that conformed with his knowledge of the Bible and conception of its meaning was thus multifaceted. Bede’s treatise on the Canticle of Canticles illumines this quality well: its prefatory capitulary was probably composed alongside emendations of the rubricated Amiatinus text of the Canticle; and both Bede’s capitulary and his rubrics were worded to align with the figurative exegesis in his commentary. Modern historians of Bede’s biblical exegesis have extensively analysed his commentaries, exegetical letters, and homilies. Much work remains to be done on those texts, of course, yet my hope is that the two case studies examined here have shown how closer attention to his capitularies and their connections with other of his exegetical writings may also provide intriguing insights into his strategies and techniques of biblical scholarship. Bede’s capitula were important enough to him that he dedicated considerable time to their crafting, often with a remarkable degree of care. They should therefore be important to us.

Appendix The Acts capitula in both columns of Table 3.1 below are translated from the Latin edition in Sommaires, divisions et rubriques de la Bible latine, première partie: Les sommaires, ed. Donatien De Bruyne (Namur: Godenne, 1914), pp. 371–​89. A digitised facsimile of this edition is freely available online at: https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​ark:/​12148/​bpt6k​8537​228/​f8.item (accessed 29 December 2022). With Amiatinus’ capitula, I have indicated the locations of chapter breaks (by modern chapter and verse) based on the chapter divisions in the Amiatinus text of Acts (fols. 905v–​934v). As the reader will observe, these placements do not always match the contents of the related summaries. The chapter breaks indicated with Bede’s Acts capitula represent my best guesses based on his synopses. My translation of both sets of capitula has been guided by the Douay-​Rheims translation of Acts. The selection of Canticle rubrics in Table 3.2 is transcribed directly from Codex Amiatinus, fols. 443v–​447r (=​De Bruyne, Sommaires, Series A, pp. 559–​61) and Bede, In Cantica canticorum, CCSL 119B, ed. David Hurst (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), pp. 185–​9. The English translation of a selection of Bede’s Canticle capitula in Table 3.3 (Amiatinus has no corresponding capitula) is taken, with minor emendation, from the full set in The Venerable Bede on the Song of Songs and selected writings, trans., ed., and introduced by Arthur Holder (New York: Paulist Press, 2011). For the Latin, see Bede, In Cantica canticorum, CCSL 119B, pp. 181–​4.

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1. Where it is said to Theophilus that the first speech was already made about the works and doctrine of Christ. (Acts 1:1–​14)

1. The Lord appears to the disciples after his passion, by many proofs, and having spoken to them, on the fortieth day he ascends into heaven. When the angels promise that he will come just as he is, they return to Jerusalem. (Acts 1:1–​12)

2. Where Peter, rising up in the middle 2. To fulfil the Psalmist’s prophecy, of the brethren, spoke concerning the Mathias is ordained in place of the crowd of almost 120. (Acts 1:15–​26) traitor Judas as the twelfth apostle. (Acts 1:13–​26) 3. Where, when the days of Pentecost were accomplished, they were all gathered and the Holy Spirit came over them. (Acts 2:1–​13)

3. When the day of Pentecost is accomplished, the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples bestows on them knowledge of diverse tongues. Hearing them, the Jews claim that they are full of young wine. (Acts 2:1–​13)

4. Where Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and spoke. (Acts 2:14–​21)

4. Peter standing with the eleven offers testimony about Jesus; and those who hear, having compunction, believe and are baptised, and about three thousand souls are joined to the Church. (Acts 2:14–​41)

5. Where Peter speaks testimony about Jesus of Nazareth to the people. (Acts 2:22–​35) 6. Where the men said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, do penance. (Acts 2:36–​40) 7. Where those who received his speech 5. The most beautiful life of the Church were baptised. (Acts 2:41–​7) born in Jerusalem is described, where, with the apostles doing many signs, the number of believers increases daily. (Acts 2:42–​7)

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8. Where Peter and John went up into the Temple at the ninth hour of prayer, and about the lame man. (Acts 3:1–​26)

6. Peter and John heal the lame man at the entrance of the Temple and, with the people marvelling at this, they [Peter and John] declare him healed in the name of Jesus. Coming upon them, the priests and Sadducees hand them over to prison, while from the crowd the believers [are] five thousand men. (Acts 3–​4:4)

9. Where Peter and John [were] speaking to the people; the priests and the officer of the Temple came upon them; they held Peter and John in custody because they would announce the resurrection in Jesus. (Acts 4:1–​12)

7. Having returned to the council, they faithfully preach that the only way of salvation for all is in the name of Jesus Christ, and they condemn with apostolic authority the princes [chief priests], forbidding them to teach in this name. (Acts 4:5–​22)

10. Because Peter and John were illiterate and unlearned men, they knew and wondered at them. (Acts 4:13–​22) 11. Where Peter and John having been let go came to their own company. They said to them how the princes of the priests and ancients spoke to them. (Acts 4:23–​31)

8. They [the two apostles] report to their company the threats of the princes. Soon, while they are lifting up [their] voice to God, the Holy Spirit comes and bestows on them greater confidence to preach. (Acts 4:23–​31)

12. Where the multitude of believers 9. Likewise the unanimous life of the was one heart and soul and all primitive Church is reported, where, things were common to them. (Acts since Joseph faithfully leaves behind 4:32–​7) [his] possessions, he receives from the apostles a name fitting to his faith. But Annanias and Sapphira, since they were trying to lie to God, atone the guilt of perfidy with a quick death. (Acts 4:32–​5:11) 13. Where Annanias and Sapphira deceived concerning the price [of] what they had sold and died. (Acts 5:1–​11)

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14. Where by the hands of the apostles many signs and prodigies were made among the people. (Acts 5:12–​16)

10. While the signs of the apostles are shining forth, a multitude of other citizens also flocks to Jerusalem to be healed. (Acts 5:12–​16)

15. Where the prince of the priests, rising up, and those who were with him, filled with zeal, held the apostles and put them in the common prison; but led out by an angel, they preached Jesus Christ. (Acts 5:17–​39a)

11. An angel leads the apostles sent into prison out by night to preach. The princes having investigated this try to frighten them with words, nor are they able; they think to kill them, but they are prevented when Gamalihel intervenes; they kill, and they threaten; nor do they restrain them from evangelising. (Acts 5:17–​42)

16. Where, calling in the apostles, they charged them that they should not speak concerning the name of Jesus, and they dismissed them. (Acts 5:39b–​42) 17. Concerning the increasing number 12. With the number of disciples having of disciples and the murmuring of multiplied, seven deacons are the Greeks against the Hebrews and ordained; and as the word of God the election of the seven deacons. increases, a sizeable crowd of priests (Acts 6:1–​7) is subjugated to the faith. (Acts 6:1–​7) 18. Concerning Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, and he did signs and great wonders among the people. (Acts 6:8–​7:2 [Qui ait])

13. Stephen shines forth in Jesus Christ’s name with great signs; since the faction of unbelievers is unable to defeat him with truth, it seeks the aid of false witnesses and drags him to the council. (Acts 6:8–​15)

19. Where Stephen confounded the Jews 14. The same, when questioned by the with testimonies of the law, but they prince of the priests, argues that they raged against him. (Acts 7:2 [Viri have forever been rebels against the fratres]–​53) law of God; they who killed both earlier the prophets and recently Christ. (Acts 7:1–​53)

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20. Where Stephen, filled with the Holy 15. The same, while his listeners are Spirit, looking up into heaven, saw clamouring against him, witnesses the glory of God and Jesus standing that he sees Jesus standing at the on the right hand of God, and they right hand of God; and he prays stoned him. (Acts 7:54–​9) forgiveness for those stoning him. With Saul urging, the Jerusalem Church is dispersed. (Acts 7:54–​8:4) 21. Concerning the persecution which 16. As the deacon Philip preaches Christ was done against the Jerusalem in Samaria and makes signs, many Church and the devastation of Saul, believe and are baptised: among them and Philip preaching in Samaria. Simon, having also been baptised, (Acts 8:1–​8) adheres to Philip. (Acts 8:5–​13) 22. Concerning Simon Magus seducing 17. Descending to Samaria, Peter and the people of Samaria. (Acts 8:9–​17) John lay hands on the believers, so that they may receive the Holy Spirit; Simon, wanting to buy with money, is condemned with anathema. (Acts 8:14–​25) 23. Where Simon wanted to give money to the apostles saying, give me also this power that the one on whom I shall lay a hand may receive the Holy Spirit, and they rebuffed him. (Acts 8:18–​25) 24. Where an angel of the Lord speaks to Philip saying arise, go towards the south, and as he went away a certain Ethiopian eunuch met him whom he baptised. (Acts 8:26–​40)

18. Philip, as the angel orders, seeks the way to Gaza, where, with the Ethiopian taught and baptised, he consecrates the first of the gentiles to the Lord. (Acts 8:26–​40)

25. Where Saul, receiving letters from 19. Saul, continuing to Damascus to the prince to Damascus that he hold persecute the Church, is restrained Christians bound, and where light by heavenly lightning; baptised from heaven shone around him. by Annanias after a delay, he (Acts 9:1–​21) immediately preaches Jesus in the synagogues. (Acts 9:1–​22)

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26. Where Saul confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus and where he was conveyed away by the wall in a basket. (Acts 9:22–​31)

20. The same, as the Jews were seeking to kill him, is led away in the night by the wall, and coming to Jerusalem, with Barnabus as leader, he is joined to the apostles. But having also suffered plots by the Greeks there, he is transferred by the brothers to Tarsus. With the anger calmed, the Church through all Judea, Galilee, Samaria enjoys free peace. (Acts 9:23–​31)

27. Where Peter, walking through, came 21. Peter in Lydda, which is now called to the saints who were at Lydda, to Diospolis, raises up the paralytic a certain man named Aeneas, who, Aeneas, and in Joppe he rouses paralysed for eight years, he healed, Tabitha from death. (Acts 9:32–​43) and in Ioppe he raised a woman named Thabita [sic] from the dead. (Acts 9:32–​43) 28. Concerning the centurion Cornelius, 22. Cornelius the centurion, advised by who lived in Caesarea, who, warned an angel, invites Peter to instruct him; by an angel, summoned Peter to soon Peter comes to him, having also him that he might teach him, and been himself advised by a heavenly where, as Peter prays, he saw vision. (Acts 10:1–​23) the heaven opened and a certain vessel descending to earth in which were quadrupeds and fowls. (Acts 10:1–​24a) 29. Where Cornelius, running to Peter, advancing, adored him, and Peter lifted him up from the ground, asked him why he sent for him, and Cornelius indicated everything which had been said to him by the angel. (Acts 10:24b–​33) 30. Where Peter, opening his mouth, taught him all things concerning Christ Jesus and the calling of the gentiles. (Acts 10:34–​48)

23. When Peter comes to Caesarea, Cornelius recalls the vision of the angel; and when the word of God is heard by him, the grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out [on him] with his followers even before reception of baptism. (Acts 10:24–​48)

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31. Where the apostles heard that the 24. While the Jews are contending with gentiles also received the word of him [as to] why he preaches to the God, and Peter declared to them the gentiles, Peter shows that these things vision that he had seen concerning have been divinely administered. the linen sheet. (Acts 11:1–​26) (Acts 11:1–​18) 25. The word of the Gospel is disseminated up to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch; and while Barnabus and Paul are teaching in Antioch, the disciples are first called Christians. (Acts 11:19–​26) 32. Where the prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named Agabus rose up and signified through the Spirit a great future famine, and Herod the king killed James the brother of John and put Peter into prison. (Acts 11:27–​12:5)

26. When Agabus prophesises famine, Barnabus and Saul are sent from Antioch to Judea with alms. (Acts 11:27–​30)

33. Where an angel leads Peter from prison. (Acts 12:6–​17)

27. Herod, with James killed, thrusts Peter into prison. Led from there by an angel, he comes to the house of Mary the mother of John. (Acts 12:1–​17)

34. Where the soldiers [were] confounded about what became of Peter. (Acts 12:18–​25)

28. Likewise Herod, when Peter is not found, goes down to Caesarea; where, struck by an angel, he leaves the route free for those preaching the word. (Acts 12:18–​25)

35. Where the prophets and doctors convened in the church which was at Antioch and about the false prophet Bariesu [Bar-​jesu]. (Acts 13:1–​12)

29. Barnabus and Saul having returned to Antioch, with the Holy Spirit ordering, are ordained apostles; and soon, sailing to Cyprus, when the magician Elymas is blinded, they illumine the proconsul Sergius Paulus with the doctrine of faith. (Acts 13:1–​12)

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36. Where Paul sailing, coming to Antioch, evangelised there [preaching] Christ Jesus the son of the living God. (Acts 13:13–​25)

30. Peter and Barnabus, coming to Antioch of Pisidia, preach in the synagogue; many among both Jews and proselytes, believing, follow them. (Acts 13:13–​43)

37. Where Jews filled with zeal contradicted those things which were said by Paul, and the gentiles heard him. (Acts 13:26–​52)

31. Again many from the gentiles come to hear the word; zealous Jews eject Paul and Barnabus from their coasts. (Acts 13:44–​50)

38. Where Paul and Barnabus, coming 32. The same preaching in Iconium for to Iconium and preaching in the a while, many among both Jews and synagogue, a very great multitude of gentiles convert to the faith, but, Jews and Greeks did believe. (Acts repulsed by the assault of unbelievers, 14:1–​6) they seek Lystra and Derbe. (Acts 13:51–​14:5) 39. Where Paul in Lystra cured a man lame from his mother’s womb, and where they called Paul Mercury and Barnabus Jupiter [Jove]. (Acts 14:7–​27)

33. The same teach in Lystra, where, when a lame man is cured by Paul, they are considered gods, and scarcely do they restrain the crowds from sacrificing to them. (Acts 14:6–​17) 34. Stirred up by the Jews, the Lycaonians stone Paul; revived by his men, he nonetheless continues to roam in teaching all things. (Acts 14.18–​27)

40. Some, descending from Judea, 35. With pseudo-​apostles teaching in taught that unless you are Antioch that believers from the circumcised you cannot be saved, gentiles ought to be circumcised, whence, when a contest arose with Paul and Barnabas head to Jerusalem Paul and Barnabas, they went up about this question; where, when the to Jerusalem where Peter and the same question has been raised, an other apostles were, to consider this assembly of the apostles takes place, matter. (Acts 15:1–​21) and letters sent to the brethren teach what the truth of the Gospel holds. (Acts 15.1–​35)

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41. Where it pleased the apostles and ancients to choose men and send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, writing letters. (Acts 15:22–​16:1a)

36. Barnabus, departing from Paul on account of John, sails to Cyprus; and Paul, choosing Silas, arrives in Lystra, where, taking Timothy, he circumcises [him]. (Acts 15:36–​16:3)

42. Where Paul wanted a certain 37. Paul is forbidden to speak the word disciple named Timothy to go along in Asia or Bythynia, and he is ordered with him; he circumcised him. (Acts rather to evangelise in Macedonia, 16:1b–​6) where, arriving, he first converts Lydia, a seller of purple, to the Lord. (Acts 16:4–​15) 43. Yet passing through Phrygia and Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia, and they tried to go to Bythynia; the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them. (Acts 16:7–​13) 44. Where a certain woman named Lydia attended to those things which were said by Paul. (Acts 16:14–​15) 45. Where Paul expelled the python’s spirit from a girl and as Paul and Silas were cast into prison, the keeper of the prison believed and was baptised. (Acts 16:16–​17:4)

38. The same expels a python from a girl, and, having been beaten when the city was agitated, he is given to the prison with Silas; released by the Lord, they baptise the catechised keeper of the prison. (Acts 16:16–​40)

46. Where Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica declaring from the scriptures and insinuating that it was necessary for Christ to suffer; and the zealous Jews held Jason. (Acts 17:5–​15)

39. As Paul and Silas are preaching in Thessalonica, many believe; but the Jews trouble the city; drawing Jason to the princes. Going away, they preach in Berea, but pushed from there by persecuting Jews as well, they transfer to Athens. (Acts 17:1–​15)

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47. Where Paul was coming to Athens, and both Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were discussing with him. (Acts 17:16–​34)

40. Paul disputes with Athenian Jews and worshippers, with Epicureans and Stoics, and, speaking in the Areopagus about God, he makes some his followers. (Acts 17:16–​34)

48. Paul, having departed from Athens, 41. The same exercises the tent-​making came to Corinth, to a certain Jew trade in Corinth with Aquila and named Aquila. (Acts 18:1–​11) Priscilla, and while Jews deny the word, many Corinthians believe and are baptised, while the Lord admonishes him not to grow weary in preaching. (Acts 18:1–​11) 49. Where the proconsul Gallio did not 42. The Jews try to rise up against Paul wish to hear the Jews accusing Paul. but are repulsed by the proconsul (Acts 18:12–​23) Gallio. About to proceed into Syria, he [Paul] shaves his head in Cenchreae, a port of the Corinthians. (Acts 18:12–​23) 50. Where Apollo, coming to Ephesus, preached Christ and Paul, arriving in Ephesus, also baptised there in the name of Jesus Christ those who had received John’s baptism. (Acts 18:24–​19:12)

43. Apollo coming to Ephesus, learns the mystery of the Lord’s baptism from Priscilla and Aquila. (Acts 18:24–​8)

44. Paul arriving there baptises certain disciples in the name of Jesus Christ, and having delayed two years in Asia, he illumines all things in teaching. (Acts 19:1–​12) 51. Where some of the Jews going 45. A demoniac (?) seizes the sons of about attempted to expel evil spirits Sceva, trying to expel demons in in the name of the Lord Jesus and Jesus’ name. Magicians, believing, were confounded. (Acts 19:13–​22) burn their books; and Paul, having passed through Macedonia and Achaia, arranges to go to Jerusalem. (Acts 19:13–​22)

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52. Where Demetrius was making silver 46. Demetrius the silver-​worker, disturbs temples for Diana. (Acts 19:23–​40) the city of the Ephesians for the sake of defending Diana. (Acts 19:23–​40) 53. Where Paul, taking his leave from 47. Paul, journeying again into Syria, the disciples, set out in Macedonia, comes to Troas; where by praying he and where he raised a dead boy raises up a youth from falling dead. who in deep sleep had fallen from a (Acts 20:1–​12) window. (Acts 20:1–​38) 48. The same, coming in order to Miletus, speaks to the ancients of the Ephesians, contesting that he has set forth for them an example of virtue. (Acts 20:13–​38) 54. Where Paul, travelling around eight 49. The same comes, in order, to Tyre cities by ship, came into the house and Caesarea, where, when Agabo of Philip the Evangelist, who had prophesies, he [Paul], fearless, four prophesying daughters. (Acts hears about his future chains. (Acts 21:1–​9) 21:1–​14) 55. Where Agabus prophesied to Paul that he would suffer persecution from Jews for Christ in Jerusalem. (Acts 21:10–​14) 56. Where Paul went up to Jerusalem, then in Jerusalem to the brothers. (Acts 21:15–​25)

50. The same, coming to Jerusalem, recalls to James and the ancients his deeds in order; and in order to avoid scandalising the Jews, the next morning he enters the Temple having been purified. (Acts 21:15–​26)

57. Where Paul, purifying himself, entered the Temple, and the Jews laid hands against him; and Paul expounded to [the people] how the Lord Christ had called him and Annanias had baptised him. (Acts 21:26–​22:22)

51. The Jews draw Paul, praying in the Temple, outside; the tribune overcoming him, certainly rescues him from death, but binds [him] with chains. (Acts 21:27–​36)

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58. Where the Jews sought to kill Paul and he said that he was a Roman citizen. (Acts 22:23–​30)

52. Paul, having addressed the people, and reporting about his heavenly vocation, is judged by them to merit death; the tribune, ordering him to be tortured, sends him away when he hears that [Paul] is Roman. (Acts 21:37–​22:29)

59. Where Paul slandered the prince 53. Led back to the council, Paul refutes [high priest] Annanias because he the pontiff judging him unjustly; and had struck his jaw, and the plots of with the Pharisees fighting for him, the Jews to kill Paul. (Acts 23:1–​22) he is led back by the tribune into the castle, and he is strengthened through the night by a divine vision. (Acts 22:30–​23:11) 60. And where Claudius Lysias wrote to Felix the governor in Caesarea and commends Paul to him. (Acts 23:23–​30)

54. The Jews vow that they will kill Paul; the tribune, mindful of this, sends him at night to Felix the governor of Caesarea. (Acts 23:12–​35)

61. Where the soldiers did the command [and] led Paul to Caesarea. (Acts 23:31–​5) 62. Where the prince Annanias went up after five days so that they might accuse Paul to Felix the ruler [caesar]. (Acts 24:1–​21)

55. The orator Tertullus, accusing Paul before Felix the governor; he is convinced at his first response that he spoke false things; and yet he [Paul] is still not freed, but retained until at the governing office of Festus in Caesarea. (Acts 24:1–​27)

63. Where Felix the ruler [caesar] put off their accusations. (Acts 24:22–​25:12)

56. When Festus comes to Jerusalem, the Jews accuse Paul; but afflicting him also in Caesarea with most grievous questions, they gather (?) to appeal to Caesar. (Acts 25:1–​12)

64. Likewise where Festus explains to King Agrippa about Paul, that he was accused by the Jews. (Acts 25:13–​27)

57. Festus reports to King Agrippa concerning Paul both first in secret, and after in council. (Acts 25:13–​27)

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65. King Agrippa says to Paul to speak for yourself and Paul makes his answer. (Acts 26:1–​23)

58. Paul, with Agrippa permitting, makes answer for himself, and it is decided by the judgement of all that he is innocent. (Acts 26:1–​32)

66. Where Festus says, Paul, you are beside yourself. (Acts 26:24–​32) 67. Where Paul was given into custody 59. Paul is handed over to the centurion to a certain centurion named Julius, Julius to be led into Italy; and where who also sailed with him. (Acts he arrived at Crete, with the sailors 27:1–​26) seeking to divert to Phoenice for the winter, a blinding storm having arisen strikes them back into the deep. (Acts 27:1–​19) 68. Concerning the affliction of Paul and the centurion who was with him; their wandering in the ship. (Acts 27:27–​28:1)

60. Paul, his comrades despairing, is consoled by angelic prayer; as he predicts, all of them escape to land on the fourteenth day, with all their goods ruined. (Acts 27:20–​44)

69. Where Paul pulled his hand, the 61. Paul, entering Melita, throws the viper hanging, from the fire and viper attacking him onto the hearth, the barbarians thought him to have and he heals the father of the chief been killed, and where he healed the man of the island of fever and a father of Publius from fevers. (Acts bloody flux. (Acts 28:1–​9) 28:2–​10) 70. Where Paul, sailing again through 62. The same, when winter has Alexandria, came [to] Rome, where passed, comes to Syracuse with having been led, he remained. (Acts his companions and the men from 28:11–​31) Peteoli; and when he enters Rome he is allowed to remain with a soldier guarding him. (Acts 28:10–​16) 63. The same, when the chief of the Jews assembled to him, teaches why he has been brought, and on the appointed day he expounds to the many coming to him concerning faith in Jesus, and remaining two years in his hired lodging, he preaches the kingdom of God to all coming to him. (Acts 28:17–​31)

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Table 3.2:  Canticle of Canticles, rubrics Amiatinus, Canticle rubrics, selection

Bede, Canticle rubrics, selection

[no rubric]

1. sinagogae uox ad sponsum: Osculetur me … dilexerunt te (Cant. 1:1–​2)

[no rubric]

2. uox ecclesiae: Trahe me … diligunt te (Cant. 1:3)

1. uox synagogae : nigra sum et formonsa … non custodiui (Cant. 1 :4–​5)

3. item ecclesia[e]‌: Nigra sum sed formosa … sodalium tuorum (Cant. 1:4–​6)

2. uox ecclesiae: indica mihi … sodalium tuorum (Cant. 1:6) 3. uox Christi : si ignoras te o pulchra … argento (Cant. 1 :7–​10)

4. uox Christi: Si ignoras te o pulchra … argento (Cant. 1 :7–​10)

4. uox ecclesiae : dum esset rex … Engaddi (Cant. 1:11–​13)

5. uox ecclesiae : Dum esset rex … Engaddi (Cant. 1:11–​13)

5. uox Christi : ecce tu pulchra es … columbarum (Cant. 1 :14)

6. uox Christi : Ecce tu pulchra es … columbarum (Cant. 1 :14)

6. uox ecclesiae : ecce tu pulcher es … amplexabitur me (Cant. 1 :15–​2.6)

7. uox ecclesiae : Ecce tu pulcher es … cypressina (Cant. 1 :15) 8. uox Christi: Ego flos campi … inter filias (Cant. 2:1–​2) 9. uox ecclesiae: Sicut malum … amplexabitur me (Cant. 2:3–​6)

****

****

11. uox aduersus hereses: capite … uineas (Cant. 2:15a)

13. u  ox Christi aduersus hereticos: Capite … floruit (Cant. 2:15)

12. uox ecclesiae: nam uinea nostra floruit …Bether (Cant. 2:15b–​17)

14. u  ox ecclesiae : Dilectus meus mihi … Bethel [or Bether] (Cant. 2:16–​17)

13. uox mariae magdalenae ad ecclesiam: in lectulo meo … genetricis meae (Cant. 3:1–​4)

15. u  ox electae de gentibus ecclesiae: In lectulo meo … custodiunt ciuitatem (Cant. 3:1–​3a) 16. e cclesia de Christo: Num quem dilexit … genetricis meae (Cant. 3:3b–​4)

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Amiatinus, Canticle rubrics, selection

Bede, Canticle rubrics, selection

14. uox Christi : adiuro uos … pigmentarii (Cant. 3:5–​6)

17. u  ox Christi : Adiuro uos … ipsa uelit (Cant. 3:5) 18. s inagoga de ecclesia : Quae est ista ascendit … pigmentarii (Cant. 3:6)

15. uox synagogae : en lectulum Salomonis … Libani (Cant. 3:7–​9)

19. u  ox ecclesiae : En lectulum Salomonis … cordis eius (Cant. 3:7–​11)

16. de Christo dicit: columnas eius … filias Hierusalem (Cant. 3:10) ****

****

38. ecclesia ad Christum dicit: pone me … cedrinis (Cant. 8:6–​9)

39. u  ox Christi : Si murus est … cedrinis (Cant. 8:9)

39. respondit ecclesia: ego murus … repperiens (Cant. 8:10)

40. e cclesia: Ego murus … repperiens (Cant. 8:10)

40. synagoga ecclesiae dicit: uinea fuit … argenteos (Cant. 8:11)

41. C  hristus dicit ecclesiae: Vinea fuit … argenteos (Cant. 8:11)

41. Christus dicit: uinea mea … fructus meos (Cant. 8:12)

42. C  hristus: Vinea mea … fructus meos (Cant. 8:12)

42. ecclesia Christo dicit: qui habitas in 43. u  ox Christi: Quae habitas in hortis … hortis … aromatum (Cant. 8:13–14) uocem tuam (Cant. 8:13) [44. u  ox ecclesiae: Fuge dilecte mi … aromatum (Cant. 8:14). See above, p. 75.] END

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Table 3.3:  Bede, Canticle of Canticles, capitula (trans. Holder, with minor emendation)   1. The synagogue desires the Lord to come in the flesh and runs with devoted love to meet his coming. (Cant. 1:1–​2)   2. The primitive Church laments that she has been darkened by persecution from unbelieving Jews and, trembling, calls upon the assistance of her beloved Redeemer. (Cant. 1:2–​6)   3. Chiding the fearful Church, the Lord reminds her that she has been given grace against all assaults of her enemies. (Cant. 1:7–​10)   4. Comforted by the Lord’s words, the Church calls to mind his manner of life in the flesh, his passion, and his resurrection. (Cant. 1:11–​13)   5. The Lord praises her whom he has comforted. Responding to him with a twofold praise, she desires to enjoy this present life in a little peace with him. (Cant. 1:14–​16) ****   9. Appearing in the flesh, the Lord rouses the Church to preaching since the long winter of infidelity is over, and with portents of what is to happen he commands her to apprehend and refute the foul crafts of heretics. (Cant. 2:10–​15) 10. Being well-​disposed towards the Lord’s commands, the Church very frequently prays for him to come to her aid through the grace of secret inspiration. (Cant. 2:16–​17) 11. The Church of the gentiles relates how she in turn came to faith in Christ. Rejoicing in her prayers, he commands the faithful not to disturb her repose. (Cant. 3:1–​5) 12. The synagogue marvels at the Church’s faith, which is unexpectedly devoted to the mortification of the flesh and the virtue of prayer. (Cant. 3:6) *** 27. Hearing the Church being praised by the Lord, the synagogue is aroused to admire her also, especially because she is terrible before all her enemies in that unconquerable battle of powers that the Apostle teaches is coming at the end of the world. (Cant. 6:9) 28. The Church replies, declaring that in her teachers lies the cause of her preparation for battle –​namely, the care of all the churches out of which she is composed as one and catholic. (Cant. 6:10)

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29. But the synagogue says that she had not known these things, confessing that she had been suddenly disturbed from her stupor by the preaching of the Gospel. Rejoicing over the beginnings of her [the synagogue’s] salvation, the Church bids her to return to the knowledge of her Redeemer. (Cant. 6:11–​12) **** 33. Beginning from a new beginning, the Church wishes for the Lord to become incarnate so that with the help of his taking on human [nature] (as it were, through the sustenance of his left hand), she might deserve to ascend to the contemplation of divine glory (as it were, to the embrace of his right hand). (Cant. 7:13b–​8:3) 34. Rejoicing in her desires, he adjures the believers from the Jews not to disturb the faith of the gentiles. Complying with his commands, they marvel with an admiring mind at her sudden conversion. (Cant. 8:4–​5a) 35. He [Christ] also reminds her [the synagogue or church of the Jews] of his love for the Church which he redeemed through the tree of the cross, and he commands that she always bear his memory in her heart and work. (Cant. 8:5b–​7) 36. He [Christ] also asks the synagogue what should be done about the primitive Church from among the gentiles, since she does not yet possess those from her own people who are able to be ordained as teachers, and he goes on to say that if anyone among them is distinguished in life or in speech, they should be instructed in divine writings and then they can be promoted to that position. But those who are simpler in nature should have laid upon them the examples of the saints, by which they may be more fully strengthened in faith. (Cant. 8:8–​9) 37. She replies that it is by his gift that she has been raised up and made fit in her more perfect men for the position of teacher. In order to show that the nations of the gentiles belong to her, he adds that the Church is called to hold many peoples in the peace of her creator. (Cant. 8:10–​11) 38. Being well-​disposed towards them, the Lord declares that he has concern for the whole Church. He commands that those who have learned well should also undertake the ministry of preaching. (Cant. 8:12–​13) 39. Obedient to his commands, the Church prays that he will very often make himself present in the hearts of the faithful in order to assist their spiritual endeavours. (Cant. 8:14)

4 Bede and the Gospel of John: theology, preaching, and the Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum Susan Cremin Historians of the early medieval period have remarked on the special status accorded to St John and his Gospel within the Insular ecclesiastical milieu.1 John the Evangelist’s distinguished standing both as apostle and Gospel writer received substantial expression in Insular art.2 Bede’s homiliary attests to the prestige of this Gospel for him; out of fifty homilies,

1 For example, see K. Hughes, ‘The Book of Deer’, in D. N. Dumville (ed.), Celtic Britain in the early middle ages: studies in Scottish and Welsh sources by the late Kathleen Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1980), pp. 22–​37, at 35; M. Werner, ‘The Book of Durrow and the question of programme’, Anglo-​Saxon England 26 (1997), 23–​39, at 30–​2 and note 38; M. P. Brown, ‘ “In the beginning was the Word”: books and faith in the Age of Bede’, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2000), pp. 11–​12; I. Henderson, ‘Understanding the figurative style and decorative programme of the Book of Deer’, in K. Forsyth (ed.), Studies on the Book of Deer (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), pp. 32–​66, at 32; C. Breay and B. Meehan, ‘Introduction’, in C. Breay and B. Meehan (eds), The St Cuthbert Gospel: studies on the Insular manuscript of the Gospel of John (London: British Library, 2015), pp. 1–​12, at 2–​3; B. Meehan, ‘Irish pocket gospel books’, in Breay and Meehan (eds), The St. Cuthbert Gospel, pp. 83–​102, at 93. 2 The subject was discussed a number of times by Jennifer O’Reilly in her illuminating work on Insular art and exegesis and Anglo-​Saxon art, and her collected essays have been recently published in three volumes: M. MacCarron and D. Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis: essays on Bede, Adomnán and Thomas Becket (London: Routledge, 2019), C. A. Farr and E. Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image 1: the Insular gospel books (London: Routledge, 2019), C. A. Farr and E. Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image 2: the Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-​Saxon art (London: Routledge, 2019); see particularly J. O’Reilly, ‘St John as a figure of the contemplative life: text and image in the art of the Anglo-​Saxon Benedictine reform’, in N. Ramsay, M. Sparks, and T. Tatton-​Brown (eds), St Dunstan, his life, times and cult (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), pp. 165–​85, repr. in Farr and Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image 2, pp. 243–​75; also J. O’Reilly, ‘St. John the Evangelist: between two worlds’, in C. Hourihane (ed.), Insular & Anglo-​Saxon art and thought in the early medieval period (Pennsylvania: The Index of Christian Art, Princeton University and Penn State University Press, 2011), pp. 189–​218, repr. in Farr and Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image 1, pp. 205–​44. Additionally, see

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twenty-​one are on readings from the fourth Gospel.3 In a homily on John’s transcendent Gospel prologue, Bede used the conventional patristic symbol of John as the eagle who flew to the loftiest height and gazed intently on the sun when he expounded that it was as if John ‘were flying to heaven with the Lord’, so impressively did that apostle give utterance to the creative power of the Lord’s perpetual divinity.4 Bede also advanced the biblical image of John’s posture on Christ’s bosom at the Last Supper (John 13:23, 25), a Johannine representation consistently reprised in both patristic and Insular biblical commentary, to explain John’s singular apprehension of the sacred mysteries of Christ’s divinity: ‘For it was not mentioned without reason that at supper he leaned upon the breast of the Lord Jesus, but through this we are taught typologically that he drank the draught of heavenly wisdom from the most holy font of [Jesus’] breast in a more outstanding way than the other [evangelists].’5 Bede returned to this theme in his homily for the beloved disciple’s feast day. The spiritual sense and consequence of John’s position on Jesus’ breast was clearly conveyed: ‘John, however, wrote very little about [Christ’s] human acts, and instead applied himself to explaining the hidden mysteries of his divine nature, unmistakably suggesting [by this] what great matters of heavenly teaching he had imbibed from Jesus’ breast, and which he was pouring forth for us.’6 This leitmotif of John drinking from Christ’s breast

M. Krasnodębska-​D’Aughton, ‘Decoration of the In principio initials in early Insular manuscripts: Christ as a visible image of the invisible God’, Word & Image 18 (2002), 105–​22; Meehan, ‘Irish Pocket gospel books’, pp. 93–​101. For a wider medieval timeframe, see J. F. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: the deified evangelist in medieval art and theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 3 Bede, Homiliae, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: Homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991); some topics in this chapter are based on my doctoral thesis, S. Foley, ‘Bede, St. John and the liturgical year: studies on the Homilies on the Gospels’ (PhD Dissertation, University College Cork, 2010). 4 Bede, Homiliae 1:8, with citation at line 18; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 74: ‘quasi ad caelum uolat cum domino’. 5 Bede, Homiliae 1:8, lines 8–​11; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 73: ‘Neque enim frustra in caena supra pectus domini Iesu recubuisse perhibetur sed per hoc typice docetur quia caelestis haustum sapientiae ceteris excellentius de sanctissimo eiusdem pectoris fonte potauerit.’ S. Cremin, ‘St. John and the bosom of the Lord in patristic and Insular tradition’, in J. E. Rutherford (ed.), The beauty of God’s presence in the Fathers of the Church (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014), pp. 177–​205. 6 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 90–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 88: ‘Iohannes autem perpauca de humanis scribens actibus potius se exponendis diuinae naturae indidit archanis patenter insinuans quanta de pectore Iesu fluenta doctrinae caelestis quae nobis ructaret hauserit.’

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was derived from and iterated several times by Augustine.7 In relation to John, Bede used the noun haustus, meaning a draught or drink; he also used the related verb haurire, whose meanings include to draw water, draw out or drink. This is vocabulary to which we will later return. Interactions with the fourth Evangelist bookended Bede’s scholarly life as an exegete and theological writer. The Commentary on Revelation is regarded as Bede’s earliest work of exegesis and in it he lauded John’s excellent merit. He proposed that John received the prophetic disclosures due to the privilege of an eminent virginal purity, and in his Gospel John testified to God’s eternal Word embodied in Christ whom he had seen: ‘he is the one who bore witness to the eternal Word of God, and him incarnate, whom he had seen, saying, “we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-​begotten of the Father” ’.8 Over the course of his final illness, Bede was translating John’s Gospel into his native language according to Cuthbert the Deacon, a former student.9 The scene of the dying Bede and John’s Gospel was described by Gerald Bonner as ‘one of the unforgettable incidents of English History’.10 There is a Johannine sensibility in Cuthbert’s portrait that coheres with Bede’s engagement with the Johannine Gospel in his exegesis. Cuthbert mentioned that Bede’s translation ceased at John 6:9, and while William McCready proposed that Bede aimed to translate beyond this, he nonetheless indicated opinions that suggested a deliberate theological cessation at this point.11 In his homily on John 6:1–​14, Bede’s Cremin, ‘St. John and the bosom of the Lord’, pp. 180–​1, 188. 7 8 Bede, Expositio apocalypseos 1:1, lines 18–​ 20, ed. R. Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); trans. F. Wallis, Bede: Commentary on Revelation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), p. 108 and note 5: ‘ipse est qui uerbo dei aeterno et eidem incarnato, sicut uidit, testimonium perhibuit dicens: “Cuius gloriam uidimus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a patre” ’; on the question of Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, see R. A. Culpepper, John, the son of Zebedee: the life of a legend (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), pp. 95–​102, 104–​6. For references to John’s writing of the Apocalypse by Latin authors in Antiquity and the medieval period, see A. Volfing, John the Evangelist in medieval German writing: imitating the inimitable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 17, 23–​4, 41–​4 and note 55. 9 Cuthbert, Epistula de obitu Bedae, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 580–​7. 10 G. Bonner, ‘The Christian life in the thought of the Venerable Bede’, Durham University Journal 63 (1970), 39–​55, at 42, repr. in G. Bonner, Church and faith in the patristic tradition (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), number 10. 11 Cuthbert, Epistula de obitu Bedae, pp. 582–​3; W. D. McCready, ‘Bede, Isidore, and the Epistola Cuthberti’, Traditio 50 (1995), 75–​94, at 91–​2 and note 60 concerning discussions of A. S. C. Ross, ‘A Connection between Bede and the Anglo-​Saxon gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels?’, Journal of Theological Studies 20 (1969), 482–​94, at 491–​ 2 and U. Schwab, ‘Æ-​æfter: Das Memento Mori Bedas als christliche Kontrafaktur,

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exposition of Andrew’s statement in John 6:9, ‘There is a boy here that hath five barley loaves, and two fishes’,12 provides a rich exegetical source on the spiritual interpretation and nourishment of Scripture.13 Further on in this sermon, he preached on the obligation of scriptural teachers and interpreters to provide ‘nourishment of the word’ (alimenta uerbi) to the less learned in keeping with the Church’s tradition of biblical scholarship that went back to the apostles and Gospel writers.14 This belief coalesces with Cuthbert’s portraiture of the dying Bede translating John’s Gospel including mention of John 6:9 and permits enhancement of the tableau with symbolic impact. Bede, as an inheritor of the apostolic responsibility to disseminate the Word, persevered in providing the sustenance of divine Scripture for his people.15 According to Cuthbert, Christ’s final words of completion from the cross, John 19:30, ‘It is finished’ (consummatum est), were cited by Bede not long before he died. Cuthbert observed of his one-​time teacher taking his last breath: ‘And well may we believe without hesitation that, inasmuch as he had laboured here always in the praise of God, so his soul was carried by angels to the joys of Heaven which he longed for.’16 This heavenly culmination after a life of pious toil, including reference to John 19:30, has a parallel in Bede’s commentary On Genesis. Explaining Genesis 2:3, ‘And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it’, Bede combined interpreting the sixth and seventh day of the Creation narrative, the directives and Creation reference in Exodus 20:8–​11, and Christ’s work of salvation over the Easter Triduum including citation of John 19:30; he submitted that having toiled virtuously we strive for the blessed repose of heaven ‘in which we may enjoy his eternal sanctification and blessing’.17 It is biblical commentary that readily bears

eine philologische Interpretation’, in Studi di letteratura religiosa tedesca in memoria di Sergio Lupi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1972), pp. 5–​134, at 40–​53. 12 Unless cited as part of a primary source, biblical quotations in English are from The Holy Bible: Douay-​Rheims Version (London: Baronius Press, 2005). 13 In this instance the biblical text is not cited but references to elements of it are integrated into Bede’s preaching, Bede, Homiliae 2:2. 14 Bede, Homiliae 2:2, lines 177–​86 and 193–​5; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 20; see broader discussion in Foley, ‘Bede, St. John and the liturgical year’, pp. 241–​3. 15 For H. Mayr-​Harting, Bede’s translation of John reflected ‘a clear example of the pastoral motivation which informed his whole activity’, The coming of Christianity to Anglo-​Saxon England (London: B. T. Batsford, 1972), p. 217. 16 Cuthbert, Epistula de obitu Bedae, pp. 584–​5: ‘atque sine dubio credendum est quod, pro eo quia hic semper in Dei laudibus laborauerat, ad gaudia desideriorum caelestium anima eius ab angelis portaretur’. 17 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 1074–​5, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); trans. C. B. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), p. 100: ‘in qua aeterna eius sanctificatione et benedictione perfruamur’.

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out the depiction in Cuthbert’s letter of Bede’s death, where the monk and scholar works to the end in the service of the Word and is then called to his reward. Deacon Cuthbert recorded that Bede’s translation of John’s Gospel was ‘to the great profit of the Church’.18 It is a perception which places the endeavour within the remit of the universal Church whose missionary mandate brought the Christian faith to Bede’s own people over a century earlier. The missionaries to early medieval Britain would have brought with them a heritage of patristic biblical scholarship and commentary. Focusing on his Ecclesiastical history of the English people,19 this chapter is concerned with Bede’s reception of this patristic inheritance; it explores his references to John the Evangelist and employment of the fourth Gospel and observes his informed adaptation of transmitted traditions of Johannine theology, noticeably Augustine of Hippo’s.

Johannine reference and the Ecclesiastical history If we consider citations from John’s Gospel in the Ecclesiastical history, we see they are not manifold and two are not cited by Bede but occur in papal communications to Augustine of Canterbury and to King Edwin of Northumbria (r. 616–​33).20 When charting the early vicissitudes of primary evangelisation, Bede introduced the Johannine image of the good shepherd (John 10:12) along with the Matthean notion of sheep among wolves (Matthew 10:16) to underscore the purpose of St Peter’s castigation of Laurence, who was about to leave his flock and follow his fellow missionaries Mellitus and Justus to Gaul subsequent to apostasy among the East Saxons.21 Not long before his death, Bede had recourse to John 10:12–​ 15 and 21:17 for ministerial imagery when he impressed upon Archbishop Ecgberht that prelate’s pastoral responsibilities and his appointment not as hireling but as shepherd to protect his flock from the dangers of ‘ravening wolves’.22

8 Cuthbert, Epistula de obitu Bedae, pp. 582–​3: ‘ad utilitatem ecclesiae Dei’. 1 19 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum (subsequent references: HE), ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history, pp. 2–​571. 20 Bede, HE 1:27 (John 14:6), 2:10 (John 3:5). 21 Bede, HE 2:6. 22 Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum Episcopum 14, ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1, pp. 405–​23, at 417; trans. J. McClure and R. Collins, Bede: The Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 343–​57, at 353: ‘irruentium luporum’.

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The Synod of Whitby Very famously, reference is made to the Apostle John in the charged circumstances of the Synod of Whitby.23 Dramatically located midway through in the Ecclesiastical history, it was a vivid moment for Northumbrian orthodoxy when the Roman system of calculating Easter was adopted.24 The text of the fourth Gospel is not overtly cited, but rather the person of John the Evangelist is referred to nine times. In his presentation of the Irish system of keeping Easter, Bishop Colmán twice referred to John. He cited him as a revered practitioner of the Columban Easter method, utilising the Johannine image of the beloved disciple: ‘the disciple whom the Lord specially loved’ (discipulus specialiter Domino dilectus).25 Colmán rejected Wilfrid’s charge of foolish obstinacy in relation to his community’s Easter observance by reaffirming John as the source of their practice, drawing for validation on the Last Supper portrayal of John ‘who was reckoned worthy to recline on the breast of the Lord’.26 Colmán’s references have a devotional inflection, informed as they are by descriptions of John from the fourth Gospel. Bede’s record of Wilfrid, spokesman for those championing the Roman Easter, has him refer to John seven times. Responding to Colmán’s call on the authority of John, Wilfrid unequivocally associated John’s Easter celebration with the statutes of the Mosaic Law four times. He explained how John ‘literally observed the decrees of the Mosaic law when the Church was still Jewish in many respects’ in this period, for fear of dismaying Jewish converts with an abrupt termination of Mosaic compliance.27 John’s paschal custom, ‘in accordance with the custom of the law’, initiated celebration of the feast in the evening of the stipulated day and month regardless of whether the following day was a Sunday or not.28 Wilfrid noted that similarly Peter at Rome also waited for moonrise on the fourteenth evening of the first month, ‘in accordance with the custom and precepts of the law, just as John did’, although Peter waited to begin the paschal celebration 23 HE 3:25. For an erudite exploration of the Synod of Whitby, see J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter’, in MacCarron and Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis, pp. 167–​85. 24 B. Ward, The Venerable Bede (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990), p. 123; J. Moorhead, ‘Bede on the Papacy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009), 217–​ 31, at 219 and note 10 where he observes Ward’s opinion on the critical positioning of Whitby. 25 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 298–​300. 26 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 300–​1: ‘qui super pectus Domini recumbere dignus fuit’, referring to John 13:23, 25. 27 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 300–​ 1: ‘cum scita legis Mosaicae iuxta litteram seruaret, iudaizante adhuc in multis ecclesia’; O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter’, p. 180. 28 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 302–​3: ‘secundum legis consuetudinem’.

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on the evening before a Sunday.29 He identified the crux of the Columban adherence to John: ‘For John who kept Easter according to the decrees of the Mosaic law, took no heed of the Sunday’.30 Johannine observance did not honour Sunday whereas Colmán and his brethren did celebrate Easter on a Sunday although they began their celebration on the evening of the thirteenth if the fourteenth day of the moon in the first month fell on a Sunday.31 Wilfrid refuted Colmán by twice rejecting the Irish procedure as following neither John nor Peter, both symbolising respectively the Mosaic Law and the Gospel: ‘So it is plain, Colman, that you neither follow the example of John, as you think, nor of Peter, whose tradition you knowingly contradict; and so, in your observance of Easter, you neither follow the law nor the gospel.’32 Nevertheless, in Bede’s record Wilfrid took care to ascertain apostolic and catholic liturgical cohesion. He advocated Peter’s Easter praxis as evangelical and apostolic together with fulfilling the Mosaic Law and he added concerning John: ‘All the successors of St John in Asia since his death and also the whole church throughout the world have followed this observance.’33 Bede’s report of Whitby need not be read as a triumph for the apostolicity of Peter over John contrary to some perspectives.34 As discussed at the

29 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 302–​3: ‘secundum consuetudinem ac praecepta legis … aeque sicut Iohannes’. It necessitated a timespan between the fifteenth to twenty-​first day for the Easter Sabbath, the Dionysian Easter system which Bede supported; there is no need to rehearse here the numerous computistical factors that related to the Easter controversy, but for a succinct overview of the Easter dispute and Bede, see M. MacCarron, Bede and time: computus, theology and history in the early medieval world (Oxford: Routledge, 2020), pp. 2–​19. 30 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 302–​3: ‘Iohannes enim, ad legis Mosaicae decreta tempus paschale custodiens, nil de prima sabbati curabat’. 31 This practice was consistent with the limits of the Irish Easter system, MacCarron, Bede and time, pp. 5–​10. 32 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 302–​3: ‘Vnde constat uos, Colmane, neque Iohannis, ut autumatis, exempla sectari neque Petri, cuius traditioni scientes contradicitis, neque legi, neque euangelio in obseruatione uestri paschae congruere.’ Shortly afterwards Wilfrid repeated the criticism. 33 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 302–​3: ‘in quam obseruantiam imitandam omnes beati Iohannis successores in Asia post obitum eius, et omnis per orbem ecclesia conuersa est’. 34 It was proposed that Peter and John stood for competing Roman and Celtic groups in the seventh century and that this conflict ‘forms the substance’ of Bede’s description of the Synod of Whitby, M. Walsh and D. Ó Cróinín (eds), Cummian’s letter De controversia paschali and the De ratione conputandi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988), pp. 69–​70 note 89. D. P. McCarthy proposed the ascendancy of John over Peter in relation to Insular support for an Easter limit supported by the Liber Anatolii, a treatise on dating Easter ascribed to a third century bishop of Laodicea and he argued that this was played out in the factional nature of the dispute

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outset, Bede’s writings reveal the great veneration that he always had for John.35 An informative instance is found in his sermon for John’s feast day on John 21:19–​24, which records the exchange between Christ and Peter concerning ‘that disciple whom Jesus loved’. Having preached on the implications concerning the historical fate of both Peter and John, where the former was martyred but John would die peacefully in old age, Bede then discerned a moral and mystical understanding of the apostolic lives. He preached that the lives of Peter and John had a symbolic function in that individually they represented the active and the contemplative state respectively; yet he confirmed that outside of the symbolic role, both apostles were equal in terms of the grace and perfection of their own lives, both active and contemplative: However, mystically speaking we can take these things which were predicted by the Lord to Peter and John, and which [later] took place, as designating the two ways of life in the Church which are carried out in the present, namely the active and the contemplative. […] And although it is a fact that both apostles (namely, both Peter and John) held a high place among human beings for their outstanding grace, and each was perfected in both [types of] life, nevertheless, one life is designated by Peter and the other by John. 36 at the Whitby synod as recounted by Bede, ‘The Origin of the Latercus paschal cycles of the Insular Celtic churches’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 28 (1994), 25–​49, at 35; however, T. M. Charles-​Edwards proposed that McCarthy went ‘beyond the evidence’ in assuming that John’s imprimatur was put in opposition to Peter, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 400 note 25. It was put forward regarding Whitby that ‘Bede skilfully creates a dichotomy’ between the supporters of Peter and John who are distinguished by keeping Easter on a Sunday or with the date of the Jewish Passover respectively, see M. Herren and S. A. Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the fifth to the tenth century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 62–​3. For analogous perspectives, see D. Bracken, ‘Rome and the Isles: Ireland, England and the rhetoric of orthodoxy’, in J. Graham-​Campbell and M. Ryan (eds), Anglo-​Saxon /​Irish relations before the Vikings (Oxford: Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 2009), pp. 75–​ 97, at 94–​6; also D. A. E. Pelteret, ‘The Issue of apostolic authority at the Synod of Whitby’, in I. Warntjes and D. Ó Cróinín (eds), The Easter controversy of late antiquity and the early middle ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 150–​72, at 167–​9. 35 Foley, ‘Bede, St. John and the liturgical year’, pp. 25–​43 for Bede and Johannine themes within a wider Insular context; also Cremin, ‘St John and the bosom of the Lord’, pp. 188–​91, 193–​7. 36 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 145–​8 and 176–​80; trans. Martin and Hurst, pp. 90, 91–​ 2: ‘Possumus autem mystice in his quae Petro et Iohanni a domino praedicta atque in eis sunt gesta duas ecclesiae uitas quibus in praesenti exercetur actiuam scilicet et contemplatiuam designatas … Et quidem utrumque apostolum et Petrum uidelicet et Iohannem quamuis inter homines positum pro excellentis culmine gratiae constat in utraque uita fuisse perfectum at tamen una uita per Petrum alia designatur per Iohannem.’

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For this Bede drew from Augustine’s Tractate 124 on the same reading.37 He reworked and restated elements of Augustine’s ideas in his homily and it is worth examining the wider panoply of Augustine’s thought on Peter and John in this tractate as it provides a context-​sensitive lens through which to view Bede’s mention of the apostles in his Whitby narrative.

Augustine, Peter, and John In Tractate 124 on John 21:19–​25, Augustine sought to decipher why Jesus called Peter to ‘follow me’ (John 21:19, 22) and mandated concerning John: ‘So I will have him to remain till I come, what is it to thee?’ (John 21:22). In a typically nuanced schema of analysis he explored the apostles’ relationship with Christ and some of his ideas claim our consideration here. Augustine set forth that because of redemption, Christians could look forward to the heavenly life but while on earth they would never be exempt from ‘the weakness of this life’.38 This rationale was extended to include the Church, which Augustine saw symbolised by Peter: ‘on account of the primacy of his apostleship’; though a human being in receipt of Christian grace, when endowed with the keys to the kingdom of heaven and the power to loose and bind on earth and in heaven (Matthew 16:19), Peter ‘signified the whole Church’.39 In justification, Augustine drew from the theologically crucial conversation from Matthew 16:16–​19 where Christ recompensed Peter’s confession of him as the Son of God (Matthew 16:16) by appointing him the rock (petra) on which he would build his Church (Matthew 16:18). Peter was the appointed perpetual representative of the Church through time amidst the present mortal life of good and evil; Christ’s behest to Peter to follow Him (John 21:19) applied to the universal Church who ‘by loving and following Christ is delivered from evils’.40 John is implied when Augustine referred to the life that is to come: ‘But there is another life, an immortal one, which is not amidst evils: there we shall see face to face what is seen here through a glass and in a dark manner

37 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124, ed. D. R. Willems, CCSL 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954). 38 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:5, line 44; trans. J. W. Rettig, St. Augustine: tractates on the Gospel of John, 5 vols (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1988–​ 95), p. 88: ‘huius uitae infirmitate’ (amended English translation). 39 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:5, lines 49–​ 56; trans. Rettig, p. 89: ‘propter apostolatus sui primatum … uniuersam significabat ecclesiam’. 40 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:5, line 73; trans. Rettig, p. 89: ‘amando et sequendo Christum liberatur a malis’.

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[even] when one makes much progress in discerning the truth.’41 Therefore two lives are divinely proclaimed and delegated for the Church, the present mortal life ‘in faith’ (in fide), and the future immortal life ‘in direct vision’ (in specie). Regarding the emblematic role of the two apostles, Peter received Christ’s sovereign authority (Matthew 16:19) on behalf of the Church ‘for the sake of the piloting of this most stormy life’.42 The Lord’s saying about John, that he wished him to remain until he comes, indicated the beginning of eternal contemplation when Christ was to come again.43 It was a contemplation presaged in John’s repose on Christ’s breast.44 Augustine was adamant that the apostles were not to be evaluated divergently against each other. Both disciples had led the active life and now awaited the contemplative state, and the universal Church participated in this ongoing and future trajectory: Nevertheless, let no one separate these distinguished apostles. Both in what Peter signified they both were and in what John signified they both were going to be. In respect to signifying the former followed, the latter remained, but in respect to believing both were enduring the present evils of this misery, both were waiting for the future goods of that happiness. And not they alone, but the whole Holy Church does this … And these two lives Peter and John represented, each a particular one; but in this [first one] they both walked in time by faith, and that other they will both enjoy forever by direct vision.45

As mentioned, Bede retold Augustine’s sense of the equality of both apostles in his homily on St John. This sermon projects the North African Father’s view of 41 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:5, lines 79–​ 82; trans. Rettig, p. 90: ‘Est autem alia uita immortalis, quae non est in malis; ibi facie ad faciem uidebimus, quod hic per speculum et in aenigmate uidetur, quando multum in conspicienda ueritate proficitur.’ Augustine then rhetorically lists a series of opposite circumstances pertaining to both lives. 42 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:7, lines 12–​ 13; trans. Rettig, p. 93: ‘propter huius uitae procellosissimae gubernaculum’. 43 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:5. 44 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:7. 45 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:7, lines 1–​ 11; trans. Rettig, pp. 92–3: ‘Nemo tamen istos insignes apostolos separet. Et in eo quod significabat Petrus, ambo erant; et in eo quod significabat Iohannes, ambo futuri erant. Significando sequebatur iste, manebat ille; credendo autem ambo mala praesentia huius miseriae tolerabant, ambo futura bona illius beatitudinis exspectabant. Nec ipsi soli, sed uniuersa hoc facit sancta ecclesia … Quas duas uitas Petrus et Iohannes figurauerunt, singuli singulas; uerum et in hac temporaliter ambulauerunt ambo per fidem, et illa in aeternum fruentur ambo per speciem.’ This balanced Augustinian perspective is communicated in Eriugena’s later discernment between Peter and John in his homily on John, J. J. O’Meara, Eriugena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 159–​60; however, see Breay and Meehan, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.

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John’s exemplification of contemplative virtue which is perfected after death.46 It concludes in acclamatory fashion as it lauds the transcendent fourth Gospel and its exalted writer; there is an intuitive echo of Augustine’s closing remarks about John when that Father noted the elevated teachings of the Apostle’s Gospel and the significance of his chastity.47

John and the historical record If we return to Bede’s representation of Whitby, Augustine’s view of Peter’s continuous custodianship of the entire Church is presumed in Wilfrid’s concluding summary where Petrine decree is equated with the universal Church and confirmed with citation of Matthew 16:18–​19 which drew King Oswiu’s conformity to the Roman method.48 Yet it does not suppose a lesser degree of eminence for John. Considering Bede’s high regard for John, it seems unlikely that he would assemble a narrative where the intention was to have conflicting saints. How then is John signified at the Whitby synod? John’s apostolic credentials are not under critique; rather his liturgical habitude is situated within the environment of the nascent Church and Johannine mission which encompassed a significant Jewish dimension including Judaic religious patterns.49 I have elsewhere maintained that this historical recounting is perceptible in the layout and content of entries pertaining to this period in Bede’s world chronicle in The Reckoning of time.50 Three entries document in succession John’s exile to Patmos, his return to Ephesus and writing of his Gospel, and finally his death.51 Prior to this, Bede recorded the martyrdom of James, the Lord’s brother (frater Domini) and included that he governed the Jerusalem Church for thirty years.52 Within the entry for John’s death, Bede chronicled the crucifixion of Bishop Simeon

6 Bede, Homiliae 1:9. 4 47 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 124:7. 48 Bede, HE 3:25, pp. 306–​7; O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter’, pp. 184–​5. 49 O’Reilly, ‘Bede and the dating of Easter’, pp. 180–​1; on Bede and the early Church, see G. Olsen, ‘Bede as historian: the evidence from his observations on the life of the first Christian community at Jerusalem’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982), 519–​30; A. Holder, ‘Bede and the New Testament’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 142–​55, at 150–​1. 50 Bede, De temporum ratione 66, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). In what follows I expand upon a note made in Cremin, ‘Bede and the bosom of the Lord’, pp. 187–​8 note 67. 51 Bede, De temporum ratione 66, s.a. 4049, 4050, 4069, pp. 498–​9. 52 Bede, De temporum ratione 66, s.a. 4021, p. 497.

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of Jerusalem, the second bishop there, and also Jewish agitation in another place and its deadly repression. In the next entry he recorded the Jewish defeat following the Bar Cochba rebellion (AD 132). Here, the last piece of information he documented was the accession of Mark, the first non-​Jewish bishop of Jerusalem, and he observed the conclusion of a series of Judaeo-​ Christian bishops of that see, over one hundred and seven years proceeding from the time of Christ’s Passion.53 As recorded by Bede, the Whitby references to Peter and John did not constitute a measurement of apostolic discipleship; such a view would not reflect Bede’s reverence for John and his knowledge and application of Augustine’s exegesis. In addition to matters of theology and exegesis, there are persuasive factors in relation to Bede’s work on time to consider. In his scholarship on chronology and computus, Bede set aside the dating system of Victorius of Aquitaine’s Easter tables (AD 457) which incorporated a timeline that dated the Passion of Jesus after only some months of public ministry, a schedule indicated by the synoptic Gospels.54 Bede followed Jerome’s chronicle (which translated and extended the older chronicle of Eusebius) which calculated that Jesus’ public ministry continued for over three years, a time sequence conveyed by the Gospel of John.55 Therefore, in the essential matter of the duration of Christ’s public ministry, Bede gave precedence to the Gospel of John in his computations of time.56 Wilfrid’s reference to Peter in Bede’s rendering of Whitby assigned authority to what was then regarded as the correct method of Easter calculation and it communicated the importance of ecclesial unity.57 Bishop Colmán’s Johannine references were biblically rooted, and it might be reasonable to submit that naming John as an authority for the celebration of Easter would have included the Evangelist’s excellence as a splendid model of the monastic virtues of virginity and proximity to Christ. Indeed, the deaths of two virtuous people in monastic life in the Ecclesiastical history are unfolded with descriptions that include citations from John’s Gospel. 3 Bede, De temporum ratione 66, s.a. 4090, p. 500. 5 54 For what follows, I rely on discussion in M. MacCarron, ‘Bede, Irish computistica and Annus Mundi’, Early Medieval Europe 23 (2015), 290–​307, esp. 294–​6, 304–​7 for the points highlighted here; see also MacCarron, Bede and time, p. 81. 55 MacCarron, ‘Bede, Irish computistica and Annus Mundi’, 304–​7. 56 I am grateful to Dr MacCarron for bringing my attention to this point. 57 C. G. Hartz, ‘Bede and the grammar of time’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (2007), 625–​40, at 627: ‘The Roman method is correct because God says so, not because Peter says so.’ For a similar remark, and for Bede’s concern with Catholic unity, see Moorhead, ‘Bede on the Papacy’, 222, 229–​30 and notes 59–​60. Regarding the concept of universality in early Christian writing, and in relation to the Insular Easter dispute as a means of underlining orthodoxy, see Bracken, ‘Rome and the Isles’, pp. 86–​94.

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The death of saintly people In the Ecclesiastical history, the approaching death of Bishop Chad of Lichfield is described in words drawn from the fourth Gospel. Bede records about Chad: ‘his own hour was at hand when he must pass from this world to be with the Lord’ (ueniret hora ipsius, ut transiret ex hoc mundo ad Dominum).58 The phraseology comes from John 13:1: ‘Before the festival day of the pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to the Father …’ (ante diem autem festum paschae sciens Iesus quia uenit eius hora ut transeat ex hoc mundo ad Patrem).59 In relating the death of Abbess Hild, Bede describes how ‘she joyfully saw death approach or rather, to use the words of the Lord, she “passed from death into life” ’ (laeta mortem uidit; immo, ut uerbis Domini loquar, de morte transiuit ad uitam).60 The citation is from John 5:24: ‘Amen, amen I say unto you, that he who heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting; and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death to life’ (Amen amen dico uobis quia qui uerbum meum audit et credit ei qui misit me habet uitam aeternam et in iudicium non uenit sed transit a morte in uitam). This John 5:24 text is part of an annotated segment, one of four, that is specified as a reading for the dead in the ‘St Cuthbert Gospel’, a beautiful pocket Gospel of St John and a manuscript associated with Wearmouth-​Jarrow.61 In this manuscript, the opening words of both John 5:24 and 13:1 begin with a larger letter and red is used for the opening of John 13:1.62 This scribal pattern is also found in the magisterial ‘Codex Amiatinus’, a complete Bible produced at Wearmouth-​Jarrow (one of three)

8 Bede, HE 4:3, pp. 338–​9. 5 59 Unless cited as part of a primary source, biblical quotations in Latin are from Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 5th edn. 2007). 60 Bede, HE 4:23, pp. 412–​3. 61 London, British Library, Additional MS 89000, fol. 20v; R. Gameson, ‘Material, text, layout and script’, in Breay and Meehan (eds), The St Cuthbert Gospel, pp. 13–​39, at 24. For manuscripts connected to Wearmouth-​Jarrow, see R. Marsden, The text of the Old Testament in Anglo-​Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 80; on this Gospel book, see essays in Breay and Meehan (eds), The St Cuthbert Gospel; T. J. Brown (ed.), The Stonyhurst Gospel of Saint John (Oxford: University Press for the Roxburghe Club, 1969), pp. 1–​44, 56–​62; C. Breay and J. Story (eds), Anglo-​Saxon Kingdoms: art, word, war (London: British Library, 2018), number 32, pp. 122–​3. 62 London, British Library, Additional MS 89000, fols. 20v, 59v; R. Gameson, ‘Appendix 7. Textual subdivisions’, in Breay and Meehan (eds), The St Cuthbert Gospel, pp. 177–​83, at 178, 180.

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during the abbacy of Ceolfrith and the oldest copy of a complete Vulgate Bible that is extant.63 In both the Chad and Hild narrations, the resurrection of life after death is educed by the verb to pass or pass over (transire). This is a theological construct and is founded in Augustine of Hippo’s conception of Easter, based on his interpretation of John 13:1 as a passing over (transitus) of Christ from death to life.64 In his exegesis of John 13:1, Augustine explained the etymology of pascha, a word which referred to the feast of Passover and to Easter. He highlighted that its origin was not in the Greek word πάσχειν, meaning to suffer, but derived from the Hebrew ‘passing over’ (transitus) that happened in the Exodus events of deliverance from Egypt,65 and passage through the Red Sea.66 He perceived these occurrences as a ‘prophetic figure’ (figura … prophetica) of the redemptive Passion of Christ.67 The attainment of this saving transitus is manifest ‘when we pass over from the devil to Christ, and from this tottering world to His most solidly established kingdom’.68 The analysis is reiterated in Letter 55 to Januarius, a work Bede knew. In the letter, Augustine gave the Hebrew etymology of pascha and cited John 5:24 in support. He then expounded that this ‘passing over’ (transitus) from death to life was most definitely enunciated by the Evangelist at John 13:1 and was consecrated within the Easter events of Passion and Resurrection.69 63 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-​Laurenziana MS Amiatino 1, fols. 887v, 896v; Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, p. 76; R. Marsden, ‘ “Ask what I am called”: the Anglo-​ Saxons and their bibles’, in J. L. Sharpe III and K. Van Kampen (eds), The Bible as book: the manuscript tradition (London: British Library, 1998), pp. 145–​76, at 151–​3; on this biblical codex, see essays by Jennifer O’Reilly in Farr and Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image 2; see also C. Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 64 For the implications of Augustine’s paschal thought within the Latin Church, see R. Cantalamessa, Easter in the early church, trans. J. M. Quigley and J. T. Lienhard (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 16–​21. 65 Exodus 12 relates the prescriptions for eating the Passover lamb and the Lord’s passing over (Exodus 12:11, 27), the Hebrew houses, and the passing through of the destroying angel killing the Egyptian first-​born; the verb transire in alternative forms appears several times. 66 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 55:1. For an in-​depth study of the origin and meaning of the word pascha, C. Mohrmann, ‘Pascha, passio, transitus’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 66 (1952), 37–​52, and at 42–​4, 47–​52 for Augustine’s commentary and understanding of transitus in his writing. 67 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 55:1. 68 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 55:1, lines 19–​ 21; trans. Rettig, p. 4: ‘cum a diabolo transimus ad Christum et ab isto instabili saeculo ad eius fundatissimum regnum’. 69 Augustine, Epistola 55:1.2, PL 33, cols 204–​23, at 205; Mohrmann, ‘Pascha’, 48.

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For our purpose, we note the two Johannine texts that were cited by Bede with regard to Hild’s and Chad’s deaths. Incorporated within Augustine’s conception of the Christian Pasch as a transitus were the redemptive consequences for humanity; they were enabled to pass from vice to virtue and pass from this world to the next.70 This exegesis is restated in Bede’s homily on John 13:1–​17 for Holy Thursday. On John 13:1, Bede preached the allegorical connection between the Lord’s ‘passing over’ in the Hebrew exodus from Egyptian servitude and the Lord’s passage to the Father through his death and resurrection.71 Augustine’s moral exegesis is expounded in Bede’s understanding that Christians can follow the example of Christ by repudiating vice with unremitting virtue after which they ‘should pass over to their promised heavenly fatherland’.72 By way of the Johannine transitus citations in the report of their holy deaths, this teaching is concentratedly communicated in the accounts of the diligently virtuous Chad and Hild.73

Easter and transitus The spiritual concept of transitus is further expounded in The Reckoning of time where Bede explained the relationship between the Old Testament feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread, and the Easter events of Passion and Resurrection in a way that corresponded to the Dionysian Easter limits of the fifteenth to the twenty-​first day.74 The moral dimension in relation to transitus is highlighted. For instance, the Easter event is enacted through baptism which entails that we ‘pass over from spiritual darkness’,75 or, for the duration of our pilgrim journey in this life: ‘we are enjoined to pass over to better things by daily progress’.76 In the next chapter, Bede gave an allegorical interpretation of Easter which treated the order of time governing the changes in light from the heavenly bodies. He recognised the ways

70 Mohrmann, ‘Pascha’, 49: ‘Le déroulement même du drame de la rédemption est pour Augustin un transitus’. 71 Bede, Homiliae 2:5. 72 Bede, Homiliae 2:5, lines 15–​16; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 44: ‘transire debeant ad promissionem patriae caelestis’. 73 Transitus or transire is used when mentioning the deaths of Eorcengota, Cuthbert and Herbert, and Wilfrid, Bede, HE 3:8, 4:29, 5:20. 74 Bede, De temporum ratione 63; see cogent commentary in F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp. 349–​51. 75 Bede, De temporum ratione 63, line 53; trans. Wallis, p. 151: ‘spiritales transeundo tenebras’. 76 Bede, De temporum ratione 63, lines 61–​2; trans. Wallis, p. 151: ‘quotidiano profectu ad meliora transire praecipimur’.

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that Eastertide also offered a ‘moral meaning’ (moralem … sensum), and he observed that the term ‘Passover’ signified ‘that we may daily make a spiritual passage over from vice to virtue’.77 For further knowledge on Easter, Bede recommended Augustine’s letter to Januarius, writing: ‘But if anyone wishes to know more about the mystery of the Paschal season, let him read the letter of St Augustine to Januarius on the calculation of Easter.’78 Returning to the Ecclesiastical history, John 13:1 is cited on two occasions where the sacramental celebration of Easter and correct paschal calculation are mentioned. In his letter to King Nechtan, Ceolfrith outlined in great detail the scriptural directives and the symbolic cosmic shifts of light belonging to the sun and moon which governed the timing of Easter. The Old Testament calendrical ordinances regarding Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread commemorating Israelite deliverance out of Egypt had to be recognised within the Easter time frame for celebrating the resurrection and Easter Sunday, a programme that corresponded to the paschal limits of the fifteenth to the twenty-​first day.79 Augustine and Bede’s moral understanding of John 13:1 is expressed in Ceolfrith’s proposal that we can only truly celebrate the Easter feast if we keep Passover with Christ in virtue: ‘because we only celebrate the solemn festival truly if we are careful to keep the Passover with him, that is, His passing from this world to His Father, with faith, hope and love’.80 The following chapter records the Iona community celebrating Easter Sunday mass on the canonical date with Ecgberht, the Northumbrian monk who converted them to the proper Easter cycle.81 On Ecgberht’s death that same day, Bede observed that he had not merely ‘passed from this world to the Father on Easter Day’, but on an Easter date previously never kept on Iona, thus blending paschal theology and computistical rectitude.82 This

77 Bede, De temporum ratione 64, lines 88–9, 90–​1; trans. Wallis, p. 154: ‘ut de uitiis ad uirtutes transitum quotidie faciamus spiritalem’. 78 Bede, De temporum ratione 64, lines 127–​9; trans. Wallis, p. 155: ‘Verum de mysterio temporis paschae, si qui plenius scire uult, legat beati Aurelii Augustini ad Ianuarium epistolam de ratione paschali.’ 79 Bede, HE 5:21; on the Dionysian Easter calculation and this letter, see MacCarron, Bede and time, pp. 126–​7. 80 Bede, HE 5:21, pp. 544–​5: ‘quia nos … ita solum ueraciter eius sollemnia celebramus, si per fidem spem et caritatem pascha, id est transitum de hoc mundo ad Patrem, cum illo facere curamus’; on Ceolfrith’s observation, see 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, 2018), repr. in MacCarron and Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis, pp. 113–​44, at 143–​4. 81 Bede, HE 5:22; see O’Reilly, ‘St Paul and the sign of Jonah’, pp. 142–​4. 82 Bede, HE 5:22, pp. 554–​5: ‘in pascha transiuit de hoc mundo ad Patrem’.

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uplifting chapter concludes with Christ’s words at John 8:56: ‘he saw it and was glad’.83 If we consider a case of Bede’s employment of this Johannine text in his exegesis, we see that it imports a moral framework. The appearance of three celestial visitors to Abraham at Mambre is recorded in Genesis 18. Commenting on Genesis 18:6–​7, where Abraham adjures Sarah to make bread swiftly and his servant hastens to prepare a calf for the guests, Bede indicated that it was a divine party whom Abraham wanted to serve quickly. This was confirmed by Christ’s words at John 8:56: ‘so that it is clearly revealed that the blessed Abraham, in accordance with the words of the Lord, truly “rejoiced that he might see” his “day; and saw and was glad” ’.84 A tropological interpretation followed: ‘But also all who are touched in their heart out of respect for divine grace immediately leap forward with joyful steps of good works and thoughts in submission to the divine will, and rouse themselves and their followers with zealous exhortation to hasten carrying out the heavenly commands.’85 It is a moral explication that intones the spiritual ideals of grace-​filled obedience and exhortation of one’s neighbour to the good and bespeaks qualities conducive to a holy monastic life. Bede’s narrative of resolving the celebration of Easter on Iona communicates principles that are congruent with his moral understanding of Genesis 18:6–​7. Ecgberht instructed the Columban brethren zealously, and Bede describes him as ‘most gracious teacher’ (doctor suauissimus), who by ‘earnest exhortations’ (sedulis exhortationibus), led the Columban brethren to the accurate calculation of the Easter date and fitting tonsure.86 In conclusion, the brothers were glad of Ecgberht by whom they had been reformed (correcti), and in turn, this Father when he was certain of the brethren’s correction (correctione), went joyfully to his reward.87 Accordance with divine will and command is implicit in Bede’s observation about what happened 83 Bede, HE 5:22, pp. 554–​5: ‘uidit, et gauisus est’; O’Reilly, ‘St Paul and the sign of Jonah’, p. 144. 84 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 683–​5; trans. Kendall, p. 291: ‘ut patenter innotescat quia beatus Abraham ueraciter, iuxta uocem Domini, “Exultauit ut uideret diem eius, et uidit et gauisus est” ’. 85 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 685–​9; trans. Kendall, p. 291: ‘Sed et omnes qui respectu diuinae gratiae tanguntur in animo, confestim in obsequium supernae uoluntatis letis [sic] bonorum operum et cogitatuum passibus exiliunt, seque ac suos auditores ad accelerandam obseruationem mandatorum celestium sedula exortatione prouocant.’ For discussion of Mambre and Bede’s commentary on Genesis, see C. W. Jones, ‘Some introductory remarks on Bede’s Commentary on Genesis’, Sacris Erudiri 19 (1969–​ 70), 115–​98, at 184–​91, repr. in W. M. Stevens (ed.), Charles W. Jones: Bede, the schools and the computus (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), number 4. 86 Bede, HE 5:22, pp. 552–​3. 87 The word correctione is translated as ‘conversion’ in most modern English translations of the HE (J. A. Giles, The complete works of Venerable Bede: Ecclesiastical

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on Iona: ‘It is clear that this happened by a wonderful dispensation of divine mercy’.88

Bede’s prayer Two chapters after telling about Iona adopting the canonical Easter date, Bede concludes the Ecclesiastical history. After a brief recapitulation of dates and events, he gives a short autobiographical profile, a bibliography of works and closes with a prayer: And I pray thee, merciful Jesus, that as Thou hast graciously granted me sweet draughts from the Word which tells of Thee, so wilt Thou, of Thy goodness, grant that I may come at length to Thee, the fount of all wisdom, and stand before Thy face for ever.89

Some time ago M. T. A. Carroll wrote that Bede’s personal prayers, which were few in his writings, reflected the words and ideas of Scripture.90 Comparable to the prayer that concluded his commentary On Ezra and Nehemiah,91 and the prayerful petition that completed his exegesis of the Book of Revelation,92 it is possible to surmise that the closing supplication of the Ecclesiastical history was also informed by Scripture. Moreover, as a monastic writer, Bede’s life of prayer, meditation, and the liturgy was grounded in and structured with Scripture; it inspired a mentality that history, books IV and V (London: James Bohn, 1840), p. 289 has ‘standing corrected’) and in the French edition, ed. M. Lapidge, trans. P. Monat, Bède Le Vénérable: Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, 3 vols (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005), 3, p. 171. However, P. Chiesa’s Italian translation of Lapidge’s edition has ‘correzione’, Beda. Storia degli Inglesi, 2 vols (Rome, Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, Arnoldo Mondadori, 2008–​10), 2, p. 465. In the context of a religious community reforming an errant practice, I agree with Chiesa’s translation. Corrigere is used six times in the Rule of St Benedict, predominantly in the context of a person who refuses to reform, which casts the decision of the Iona community in a positive light of monastic obedience and humility, Regula Sancti Benedicti 2:28, 23:4, 28:2, 45:2, 62:9, 65:20, ed. T. Fry, RB 1980: the Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with notes (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1981). 88 Bede, HE 5:22, pp. 554–​5: ‘Quod mira diuinae constat factum dispensatione pietatis’. 89 Bede, HE 5:24, pp. 570–​1: ‘Teque deprecor, bone Iesu, ut cui propitius donasti uerba tuae scientiae dulciter haurire, dones etiam benignus aliquando ad te, fontem omnis sapientiae, peruenire, et parere semper ante faciem tuam.’ 90 M. T. A. Carroll, The Venerable Bede: his spiritual teachings (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1946), p. 209. 91 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 2108–​ 15, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). 92 Bede, Expositio Apocalypseos 3:38, lines 101–​8.

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spiritually enunciated itself in ‘a biblical vocabulary’ as Jean Leclercq termed it.93 The following evaluation considers the imagery and vocabulary of the fourth Gospel as a conceivable source for Bede’s prayer. Bede prays that Jesus has kindly allowed him ‘to drink sweetly’ (dulciter haurire).94 The verb haurire in assorted forms is variously cited in Scripture in the literal sense of drawing water, for example the Genesis story of Rebecca drawing water for Abraham’s servant and his camels (Genesis 24:11, 13, 19, 20, 43–​5). It sometimes has other connotations such as to drink (Genesis 27:25), to take (Leviticus 4:5), to put (Numbers 16:7), and it has a didactic function in Proverbs (Proverbs 8:35, 12:2, 18:22, 20:5). Overall, it is predominantly associated with drawing water and the majority of citations are in the Old Testament. Proverbs 8:35, ‘He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord’ (qui me inuenerit inueniet uitam et hauriet salutem a Domino), might suggest itself as a credible source for Bede’s prayer; nonetheless, in his commentary on Proverbs 8, Bede completed the chapter without opting to expound this verse.95 Another evocative text is the poetic Isaiah 12:3: ‘You shall draw waters with joy out of the saviour’s fountains’ (haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus saluatoris), containing, as in Bede’s prayer, a mention of fons. The verse was expounded by Jerome and availed of by Gregory of Nyssa in conjunction with Christ’s advocacy of alleviating thirst with living water at John 7:37–​8.96 Jerome made a further link to John 4:13–​14 from Christ’s talk with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.97

93 J. Leclercq, The love of learning and the desire for God, trans. C. Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961; New American Library, 1962), p. 81; on the spiritual and monastic orientations of Bede’s writing, see S. DeGregorio, ‘The Venerable Bede on prayer and contemplation’, Traditio 54 (1999), 1–​39; S. DeGregorio, ‘Bede, the monk, as exegete: evidence from the commentary on Ezra-​ Nehemiah’, Revue Bénédictine 115 (2005), 343–​69. 94 Bede, HE 5:24, p. 570; more precise than in the Colgrave and Mynors edition, this English translation is from G. Bonner, ‘Bede: priest and scholar’, Milltown Studies 39 (1997), 66–​77, at 75–​6: ‘And I pray thee, good Jesus, that thou wilt of thy goodness also grant to him, whom thou hast most graciously permitted to drink sweetly the words of thy knowledge, to come at last to thee, the fountain of all wisdom, and to appear before thy face for ever.’ 95 Bede, In Prouerbia Salomonis 1:8, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 96 Jerome, Commentariorum in Isaiam prophetam 4:12, PL 24, cols 17A–​678B, at 152D–​153A; Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio 19, PG 44, cols 123D–​256C, at 195CD; trans. R. L. Wilken, with A. R. Christman and M. J. Hollerich, Isaiah interpreted by early Christian and medieval commentators (Grand Rapids: William. B. Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 155–​6, 157. 97 Jerome, Commentariorum in Isaiam prophetam 4:12, PL 24, col. 153A; trans. Wilken, Christman, and Hollerich, p. 155. Bede was well acquainted with Jerome’s

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Discounting Hebrews 9:28 where the cognate exhaurienda is used to different signification, the Gospel of John is the only New Testament text to have haurire. The verb is used twice in the Marriage of Cana narrative, referring to drawing wine and water from water pots (John 2:8–​9). However, there are appealing correspondences when considering Bede’s prayer and Christ’s interaction with the Samaritan woman in Sychar at Jacob’s Well, a location Bede described in On the Holy Places.98 This encounter received spiritual exposition from early Johannine commentators including Augustine, who postulated the woman as symbolic of the Church from the gentiles.99 During Christ’s dialogue with the Samaritan woman (John 4:6–​26), the verb to draw (haurire) is cited three times. The woman came there ‘to draw water’ (haurire aquam: John 4:7). The Lord tells her of the ‘living water’ he has to offer, and she replies: ‘thou hast nothing wherein to draw’ (neque in quo haurias habes: John 4:10–​11). When Christ proclaims that the water He can give is the water of eternal life, the woman looks for this water so she ‘may not thirst, nor come hither to draw’ (non sitiam neque ueniam huc haurire: John 4:15). Another link pertains to Bede in his prayer calling Christ: ‘the fount of all wisdom’ (fontem omnis sapientiae). Meaning fountain, source or well, fons is mentioned three times in the biblical story. Christ came to Sychar: ‘Now Jacob’s Well was there’ (erat autem ibi fons Iacob), and being tired, Jesus ‘sat thus on the well’ (sedebat sic super fontem: John 4:6) and He promised to whoever received the water He had to give, ‘a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting’ (fons aquae salientis in uitam aeternam: John 4:14). Certainly, Bede is operating within the theological contours of the Gospel message in his prayer as he prays that he has been granted ‘to drink sweetly’ (dulciter haurire) the words of the Lord’s knowledge and that he be granted to come forever before ‘the fount of all wisdom’ (fontem omnis sapientiae). A further detail, as illustrated earlier, is that Bede used the related words haustus and haurire in homiletic sketches of John taking a draught or drinking heavenly doctrine from the fount of Christ’s breast.100 It is language that is imbued with Johannine significance

commentary on Isaiah, see R. Love, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in R. Gameson (ed.), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain: volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 606–​32, at 630. 98 Bede, De Locis Sanctis 14, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965). 99 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 15:10.33; M. F. Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: the interpretation of the fourth gospel in the early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960, repr. 2006), pp. 45–​9; B. A. Stewart and M. A. Thomas (ed. and trans.), John: interpreted by early Christian and medieval commentators (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2018), pp. 115–​16. 100 See above notes 5 and 6.

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for him as is indicated in the preface of the metrical Life of St Cuthbert where he describes John’s preaching as ‘regurgitating the mystical teachings which he had drawn from the breast of the Lord’ (hauserat e Domini quae pectore mystica ructans).101 Another lexical connection concerns the verb dono in the prayer; the second person singular forms ‘granted’ (donasti) and ‘grant’ (dones). The noun donum is part of the same word-​family and is cited in John 4:10 where the Lord says to the woman that if she knew about the ‘gift of God’ (donum Dei), and who was asking her for water, she might have asked Him and would have received living water. It brings us parenthetically to a verbal echo of Augustine’s exegesis. Augustine explained ‘gift of God’ (donum Dei) as the Holy Spirit, but he preached that Christ was circumspect here in his words to the Samaritan woman: he was gradually influencing her heart and gaining her interest. Referring to Christ speaking at John 4:10, Augustine asked: ‘For what is sweeter and kinder than this exhortation?’ (Quid enim ista hortatione suauius et benignius?)102 Augustine’s appeal elicits a linguistic resonance with Bede’s exhortation: ‘so wilt Thou, of Thy goodness, grant that I may come at length to Thee’ (dones etiam benignus aliquando ad te … peruenire). Both authors use the adjective benignus meaning kind or kindly, although it is used in the comparative form by Augustine.103 While such a comparison with Augustine may be coincidental, it is interesting to recall Gerald Bonner’s assessment of Bede’s use of the phrase ‘good Jesus’ (bone Iesu) in his prayer, that Augustine was the only writer from the early Christian Latin tradition to use it.104 To summarise with regard to the prayer, Scripture was the foundational constant of Bede’s life as a monk and scholar, and across the corpus of his writings this is articulated in biblical cross reference, imagery and vocabulary. His concluding prayer to the Ecclesiastical history has Johannine overtones when assessed within the context of biblical language, decidedly John 4, and his references to John the Evangelist elsewhere. If one takes into account verbal and theological correspondences with Augustine’s exegesis of the fourth Gospel, the Johannine register of the prayer becomes stronger.

101 Bede, Vita metrica S. Cudbercti, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019), pp. 184–​313, at 188–​9. 102 Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 15:12, lines 8–​9; trans. Rettig, p. 85. 103 Modern English translations of Bede’s prayer treat benignus as a noun; however, Chiesa’s Italian translation uses the adjective ‘benigno’, Beda. Storia degli Inglesi, p. 485. For examples of the adjective benignus in Scripture, see Joel 2:13, Luke 6:35. 104 Bonner, ‘Bede: priest and scholar’, 76, 77 note 44.

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Conclusion A formation in received Johannine tradition underlies Bede’s belief that the fourth Gospel proclaimed the heavenly mysteries ‘more copiously and profoundly’ (uberius atque altius), than the rest of Holy Scripture.105 This conviction is further reinforced for us when we consider the position of the fourth Evangelist at the polar points of the Northumbrian author’s life of Christian scholarship. The Book of Revelation, attributed traditionally to John, was the subject of Bede’s first work of biblical commentary and in it he posited that John’s reception of the apocalyptic communication was linked to the Apostle’s outstanding moral purity. Bede’s erstwhile student Cuthbert the Deacon described how his former teacher in his final days sought to translate John’s Gospel for his people to have in their own language. In the Ecclesiastical history, John and his Gospel are cited at fundamental moments, for example, conspicuously in the record of Whitby or unobtrusively in the documentation of holy deaths. Bede’s Johannine thought reflects the paradigmatic exegesis of Augustine’s commentary, including that Father’s paschal theology, informed by the fourth Evangelist, of Easter being a ‘passing over’ (transitus) from death to life in its soteriological consequences. For both Fathers, John’s Gospel was divine testimony imbibed from the Saviour’s breast and as his personal prayer in the Ecclesiastical history would seem to indicate, the fourth Gospel was a well-​spring of language and spiritual imagery for Bede. The Wearmouth-​Jarrow writer’s engagement with Augustine’s exegesis enabled a discerning employment of Johannine theology and Scripture and reveals a scholar who judiciously selected from his sources and proficiently used that material for his own writing objectives.

105 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, line 84; trans. Martin and Hurst, p. 88.

5 Bede’s perfecti and the Gospel of Matthew Emily Quigley*

Even in Bede’s earliest years he was exposed to a monastic environment. He was born on the land of Wearmouth approximately a year before its foundation in 674. He was then only seven years old when he was given as an oblate to Benedict Biscop and became physically immersed in the monastic world.1 Through his use of the Wearmouth-​Jarrow library over the course of his life, a range of patristic and monastic sources influenced Bede’s understanding of his vocation.2 Various important studies have sought to elucidate the material reality and intellectual environment of Bede’s monastery, but how did he conceive of his vocation in a scriptural context?3 The sheer impact of the Gospels on Bede cannot be overemphasised.4 Of all Scripture, it was these four books which underpinned all Christian life. The huge Insular interest in the Gospels pays testimony to this, demonstrable in the elaborate decoration found in surviving Gospel books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the St Chad/​St Teilo Gospels, and the Book of Kells. Particularly among the synoptic Gospels, Matthew had primacy in the early Church. Both the Eusebian canon tables and Augustine’s On the harmony of the Gospels use Matthew as the base text for comparisons with the other Gospels. Early Christian authors believed Matthew was the first to write a

* This chapter was made possible by funding from the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. 1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5:24, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). 2 On the breadth of Bede’s textual resources, see M. L. W. Laistner, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in A. H. Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 237–​66. 3 For an archaeological perspective, see Rosemary Cramp’s extensive excavation reports: Wearmouth and Jarrow monastic sites, 2 vols (Swindon: English Heritage, 2005–​6). 4 For Bede’s approach to the New Testament, see A. Holder, ‘Bede and the New Testament’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 142–​55.

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Gospel, attributing the authorship to Matthew the Apostle, an eyewitness to Christ’s ministry.5 This was the tradition that was passed on to Bede.6 Monasticism was at the core of Bede’s life, yet the scriptural roots of his vocation have not been assessed in the scholarship. It is in Matthew’s Gospel that these roots can be most firmly traced. Matthew’s Gospel played a major role in monastic hagiography throughout Late Antiquity and the medieval era. For example, in Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin, Matthew 25:40 is referenced in the famous account of Martin cutting his cloak in half to share with a poor man.7 Matthean readings also acted as conversion stimuli for the likes of Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and Francis of Assisi (d. 1226).8 Most significant is the conversion narrative of St Antony, often dubbed the father of desert monasticism. The Life of Antony was written in Greek by Athanasius of Alexandria around AD 360, then shortly afterwards translated into Latin by Evagrius of Antioch. The Life of Antony was hugely influential on Insular hagiography.9 Bede was familiar with Evagrius’ translation.10 Both the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert and Bede’s prose Life of Cuthbert were influenced by the Evagrian model of hagiography.11 Upon hearing a reading of Matthew 19:21, Antony was inspired to immediately abandon all his possessions because he ‘realized how that passage had been read for his sake’.12 5 Jerome, De viris illustribus 3, PL 23, cols 601–​720A, at 613; Augustine, Contra Faustum 17:3–​4, 28:2–​4, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 25 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1891). 6 Bede, Homiliae 1:21, lines 217–​45, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955). 7 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 3, ed. J. Fontaine, SC 133 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1967). Bede makes no reference to the Vita Martini according to M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 8 On Francis of Assisi and Matthew 10:9 see G. Melville, The world of medieval monasticism: its history and forms of life, trans. J. D. Mixson (Collegeville, Min: Cistercian Publications, 2016), p. 158. On Basil of Caesarea and Matthew 22:36–​9 see M. Dunn, The emergence of monasticism: from the desert fathers to the early middle ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 36–​7. 9 B. Colgrave, The earliest life of Gregory the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 1–​71, at 48–​9. Colgrave identifies the Latin Vita Antonii as the primary hagiographical influence in western Europe, but also highlights the importance of other early saints’ lives, especially Jerome’s Vita Sancti Pauli primae eremitae and theVita Martini. 10 Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 196. 11 B. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert: a life by an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s prose Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 1–​58, at 11–​12, 16. 12 Athanasius, Vita Antonii 2, line 12, ed. P. H. E. Bertrand and L. Gandt, CCSL 170 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018); trans. A. N. Athanassakis and T. Vivian, Athanasius of Alexandria: the Life of Antony (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2003), p. 59: ‘ueluti propter se haec esset Scriptura recitata’.

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If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me (Matthew 19:21).

The fact that Matthew 19:21 was used as an immediate source of ascetic fervour indicates its sheer importance in shaping monastic discourse at such an early date. The Gospel advice to sell all and give to the poor had obvious appeal in a monastic context, but the Matthean addition of perfectus strengthened this. A version of this reading features in all three synoptics, but only Matthew’s account includes perfectus.13 This seemingly minor difference, in fact, made authors show preference for the Matthean version; for example, it is frequently cited by Cassian and Jerome, both of whom felt a strong attachment to more extreme forms of asceticism.14 Various monastic authors and hagiographical texts influenced Bede, but ultimately his primary understanding of his vocation came from his own perusal of Scripture. While Bede was far from the Egyptian desert, he shared with Antony a profound appreciation of Matthew 19:21. Bede’s conception of Matthew’s perfecti and their role is crucial for elucidating his conception of what it meant to be a monk. In a fascinating exploration of Bede’s understanding of the vision of God, Arthur Holder touches upon the idea of Bede’s perfecti, but does not make the connection to this Matthew passage.15 Holder explains how in Bede’s theology only a select few among the perfect receive even an imitation of the vision of God in the present life.16 Building upon this, Bede’s engagement with Matthew further indicates how, at its core, the notion of aspiring to perfection exemplified the monastic ideal of achieving spiritual closeness to God. To Bede, the perfecti were simply a higher level of the earthly Christian community –​all the faithful would be equal in heaven. He was eminently practical about the different types of faithful who occupied his society. After

13 Matthew 19:21: ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ (si vis perfectus esse vade vende quae habes et da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelo et veni sequere me). Mark 10:21: ‘ “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” ’ (unum tibi deest vade quaecumque habes vende et da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelo et veni sequere me). Luke 18:22: ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ (adhuc unum tibi deest omnia quaecumque habes vende et da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelo et veni sequere me). 14 See esp. Jerome’s Letters and Against Jovinian, and John Cassian’s Conferences. 15 A. Holder, ‘Bede’s perfecti, the vision of God, and the foretaste of heaven’, 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. 265–​85. 16 Holder, ‘Bede’s perfecti, the vision of God, and the foretaste of heaven’, p. 266.

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all, Christ’s advice concerning perfection comes directly after his injunction to the wider body of followers: ‘If you want to enter life, keep the commandments’ (Matthew 19:17).17 Bede’s ideal monk was not totally removed from society; this was simply not practical in his Christian environment. For Bede the perfecti and the average followers were intrinsically linked by networks of teaching and pastoralism.

Bede’s perfecti: virgins who teach The Matthean concept of being ‘perfect’ is deeply embedded in monastic hagiography. It is not easy to define exactly what medieval authors took it to mean, and this is especially true of Bede’s frequent references to perfecti.18 At one point Bede’s conception of the ‘perfect’ is highly simplistic: those who sell all their belongings and give them as alms to the poor.19 However, in the same breath he provides a more allegorical interpretation: ‘it is a mark of the perfect (namely of those who wholly keep the precepts of the Decalogue in the love of God and neighbour) to draw near in mind to the heavenly secrets and, so to speak, to imitate the peace of highest blessedness amidst the whirlwinds of this transient life.’20 Although Bede frequently refers to individuals occupying a temporal space as ‘perfect’, no one could be truly perfect on earth.21 True perfection could only be seen in the kingdom of heaven, so the earthly perfect were those who were successfully imitating ‘the peace of highest blessedness’.22

17 This wording –​‘if you want to enter life, keep the commandments’ –​ is unique to Matthew. In the other synoptics it is simply ‘you know the commandments’ (Luke 18:20; Mark 10:19). 18 S. DeGregorio, Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), p. 17 note 1: ‘Bede often uses the designation ‘the perfect’ (perfecti) in speaking of a select group among the faithful, but only rarely does he explain what this term means’. 19 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1415–​ 7, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); trans. DeGregorio, On Ezra and Nehemiah, p. 204: ‘Qui uero perfecti esse uolentes omnibus suis uenditis atque in elemosinas pauperum distributis sic dominum sequuntur.’ 20 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1406–​10; trans. DeGregorio, p. 204: ‘nimirum perfectorum est eorum uidelicet qui praecepta decalogi ad integrum in dei et proximi dilectione custodiunt archanis caelestibus mente proximare atque ut ita dixerim summae pacem beatitudinis inter turbines uitae labentis imitari quamuis.’ 21 Holder, ‘Bede’s perfecti, the vision of God, and the foretaste of heaven’, p. 268. 22 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1406–​10; trans. DeGregorio, p. 204: ‘summae pacem beatitudinis’. See also, Bede, De templo 1, lines 653–​7, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969).

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This perhaps suggests that ‘the perfect are those in monastic and clerical states who strive to attain a level of holiness higher than that sought by the laity’.23 Holder describes Bede’s perfecti as more virtuous than the ordinary followers but emphasises that they were not ‘morally without fault’.24 These are good representations of Bede’s conception of the perfect, but our understanding of the formulation can be deepened by exploring the connection to Matthew 19:21. Scriptural references to perfectus all refer to the perfection of God or Christ, except for Matthew’s.25 His is the only instance of broadening the scope to bring devout followers closer to God. Christ’s original advice on perfection in Matthew 19:21 consists of three elements: ‘sell what you have’ (vende quae habes), ‘give to the poor’ (da pauperibus), and ‘follow me’ (sequere me). Bede occasionally conflates the synoptics in his quoting of Matthew 19:21.26 He sometimes quotes ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell everything you have and give to the poor’ (si vis perfectus esse, vade et vende omnia quae habes et da pauperibus), which matches Matthew 19:21 in the Vulgate except for omnia. The equivalent passage in Luke 18:22 reads ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor’ (adhuc unum tibi deest omnia quaecumque habes vende et da pauperibus), so the addition of ‘everything’ (omnia) stems from here. Bede was likely quoting from memory, so it is possible that these conflations were accidental. However, the Lucan advice to sell all gives an added intensity to Matthew’s notion of perfection, which would have had appeal in monastic discourse aimed at expressing totality of commitment to God. Christ’s first two provisions alone are insufficient to achieve perfection in the eyes of Bede, or indeed his patristic predecessors.27 ‘Sell’ and ‘give’ are limited in their interpretations, but ‘follow’ allows a degree of flexibility that authors adapted to their personal and societal circumstances. One

3 DeGregorio, On Ezra and Nehemiah, p. 17 note 1. 2 24 Holder, ‘Bede’s perfecti, the vision of God, and the foretaste of heaven’, pp. 266–​7. 25 For examples of references to the perfection of God, see Psalm 18:30; Romans 12:2. Similarly to Matthew 19:21, Matthew 5:48 evokes an ideal of imitation: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ 26 For example, see Bede, In Cantica canticorum 5:7, lines 480–​1, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); In Lucae evangelium expositio 5, lines 1586–​7, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960); In Marcum 2, lines 1660–​1, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960). 27 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 7–​ 13. See also Jerome, Commentarii in euangelium Matthaei 3, lines 911–​25, ed. D. Hurst and M. Adriaen, CCSL 77 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); Jerome, Epistula 66, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910); Cassian, Conlationes 3:7, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 13 (Vienna: C. Geroldi, 1886).

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important factor is the geographical context of Bede’s monastic landscape. Bede did not attach the idea of following Christ to a strictly hermitic lifestyle. Comparatively, in a seething letter to the monk Heliodorus, who had chosen to abandon the solitary asceticism of the desert, Jerome wrote that ‘a monk cannot be perfect in his own country’.28 He adopted a more flexible approach later in his career29 but the vitriol of this earlier letter highlights a significant cultural difference between Bede’s and Jerome’s conceptions of what it meant to be perfect. Following tradition, Bede consistently emphasises that the Matthean notion of perfection is ‘not a commandment but counsel’.30 He describes it as a ‘voluntary offering’, believing individuals had the capacity to choose to be perfect.31 However, he ultimately subscribed to the Augustinian notion that any ‘voluntary’ progression in faith was assisted by divine grace.32 Matthew Delvaux has emphasised that Bede saw God’s grace working in tandem with ‘the pursuit and practice of monastic discipline’.33 So while sanctity was ultimately bestowed by God, Bede did place value in an individual’s personal efforts to reach perfection, through commitment to chastity, almsgiving, and prayer. Owing to its voluntary nature, fewer Christians numbered among the perfect.34 Bede emphasises that those who choose this life can ‘expect a special reward beyond that of the rest of the faithful in return for

28 Jerome, Epistula 14:7; trans. W. H. Fremantle, Jerome: letters and select works, Nicene and post-​Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1995), pp. 50–​692, at 84: ‘monachum in patria sua perfectum esse non posse’. 29 Jerome, Epistula 58. 30 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 1, lines 709–​10; trans. DeGregorio, p. 34: ‘non praeceptum sed consilium’. See also, In Ezram et Neemiam 1, lines 1140–​2; In Cantica canticorum 3:4, lines 718–​ 21. For examples from earlier authors, see Jerome, Epistula 130:14, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 56 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1918); Cassian, Conlationes 21:5. 31 Bede, De tabernaculo 1, lines 748–​52, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); trans. A. Holder, Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), p. 24: ‘uoluntariae oblationis’. In Cantica canticorum 3:4, line 720; trans. A. Holder, The Venerable Bede: on the Song of Songs and selected writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2011), p. 129: ‘oblatione uoluntaria’. See also, In Ezram et Neemiam 1, lines 1141–​2, where Bede similarly presents Matthew 19:12 (interpreted as relating to celibacy) as advice not an order. This further shows the importance of Matthew to Bede’s conception of core monastic principles. 32 For Augustine’s approach, see De gratia et libero arbitrio, PL 44, cols 881–​912 written against the context of Pelagianism, which taught that perfection could be achieved without divine grace. 33 M. C. Delvaux, ‘From virtue to virtue: diverging visions of sanctity and monasticism in two lives of Cuthbert’, Early Medieval Europe 27 (2019), 226–​50, at 249. 34 Bede, De templo 2, lines 1343–​6.

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their voluntary offering’.35 This reward was to join the rank of judges at Christ’s side at the Last Judgement.36 Perhaps by highlighting the voluntary nature of the perfect life, Bede sought to highlight the sacrifice involved in his own profession and demarcate it as worthy of a special heavenly reward. Crucially though, while an individual’s merits affected their reward, eternal life itself was equal to all. Bede followed Augustine’s stance: ‘For that will not be longer to one, and shorter to another, which is alike everlasting; that which hath no end will have no end either for thee or me.’37 Bede was primarily concerned with establishing a clear and realistic framework of good behaviour for a society that he saw to be in need of instruction.38 He sought to emphasise that it was unrealistic for the average follower to aspire to the ‘perfect’ life, but more pertinently that the perfecti should be holding themselves to a higher standard. In his explanation of the top storey of the Temple of Solomon in On the Temple, Bede gives an insight into the qualities he saw as requisite to imitating heavenly perfection. The top storey is the narrowest because ‘the higher profession of virtue ought to follow a higher way of life’.39 He then states:

35 Bede, De tabernaculo 1, lines 748–​52; trans. Holder, p. 24: ‘de illorum potest praemio recte intellegi qui generalia scripturae sacrae mandata spontanea uitae perfectioris electione transcendunt ideo que specialem prae ceteris fidelibus retributionem uoluntariae oblationis expectant.’ 36 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 35–​8. 37 Augustine, Sermo 87:6, line 28, ed. B. Coppieters ’t Wallant and L. De Coninck, CCSL 41Ab (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019); trans. R. G. MacMullen, Augustine: Sermon on the mount, harmony of the Gospels, homilies on the Gospels, Nicene and post-​Nicene Fathers, 1st series, 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1995), pp. 783–​92, at 786: ‘Non enim alteri erit longius, alteri breuius, quod pariter sempiternum est: quod non habet finem, nec tibi habebit, nec mihi.’ Bede similarly emphasises the equality of eternal life: ‘they all, each man according to his own calling, praise and confess the grace of their Creator, and they are children of the everlasting kingdom’ (In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1474–​6; trans. DeGregorio, p. 206: ‘omnes pro sua quisque uocatione gratiam conditoris sui laudat et confitetur filii que sunt regni perennis’). 38 See A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, in P. Wormald (ed.), Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-​Saxon society: studies presented to J. M. Wallace-​Hadrill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp. 130–​ 53; S. DeGregorio, ‘Bede’s “In Ezram et Neemiam” and the reform of the Northumbrian church’, Speculum 79 (2004), 1–​25; S. DeGregorio, ‘ “Nostrorum socordiam temporum”: the reforming impulse of Bede’s later exegesis’, Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 107–​22; S. DeGregorio, ‘Visions of reform: Bede’s later writings in context’, in P. Darby and F. Wallis (eds), Bede and the future (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 207–​32. 39 Bede, De templo 1, line 646; trans. S. Connolly, On the Temple (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), p. 26: ‘altior professio uirtutis altiorem debet uitam tenere uiuendi’.

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For those who have renounced the bond of marriage and consecrated their virginity to the Lord ought to give evidence of behaviour consonant with virginity, abstain from useless talk, anger, quarrelling, detraction, immodest dress, carousing, drinking, strife and jealousy, and earnestly give themselves instead to holy vigils, prayer, divine readings and psalms, to doctrine and almsgiving and the other fruits of the Spirit.40

Bede then explains that the remaining two storeys represent the other categories of the faithful, emphasising that the bottom storey was the widest because ‘married people are not told, “Go, sell what you possess and give it to the poor”; but, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments…” ’.41 This passage is a rare occasion where Bede omits si vis perfectus esse when quoting Matthew 19:21. This omission removes the distinction between Matthew and the other synoptic accounts, but in quoting si vis ad vitam ingredi, which is distinct to Matthew 19:17, it is clear that the Matthean version was nevertheless at the forefront of his mind. While Bede does not directly quote perfectus, this passage gives a clear insight into how he conceived of the ‘perfect’ faithful. At multiple points in this section, Bede refers to the highest storey being occupied by a ‘profession’ (‘professio’, ‘professione’).42 Since the top storey here consists of virgins, it seems he viewed this ‘profession’ as monastic. His list of expectations for this ‘perfect’ profession is highly instructive, setting out in detail what a monk should and should not do. Following Bede’s categorisations in On the Temple then, his hierarchy of the faithful would consist of coniugati, continentes, and virgines (married people, those who practise continence, and virgins).43 These levels are ‘distinguished according to the loftiness of their profession but all of them belonging to the house of the Lord and intently clinging to him by reason

40 Bede, De templo 1, lines 647–​53; trans. Connolly, p. 26: ‘Nam quicumque abrenuntiato uinculo coniugali uirginitatem suam domino consecrauerunt mores simul oportet uirginitate condignos ostendant, abstineant ab otiosis eloquiis ira rixa detractione habitu impudico comesationibus potationibus contentione et aemulatione et e contrario uigiliis sanctis orationibus lectionibus diuinis et psalmis doctrinae et elemosinis ceteris que spiritus fructibus operam impendant.’ 41 Bede, De templo 1, lines 657–​61; trans. Connolly, p. 26: ‘At uero infimum tabulatum amplioris erat latitudinis quia non dicitur coniugatis, vade uende quae habes et da pauperibus, sed, si uis, inquit, ad uitam ingredi, serua mandata, non homicidium facies, non adulterabis, non facies furtum, non falsum testimonium dices, et cetera.’ 42 Bede, De templo 1, lines 646, 654; trans. Connolly, p. 26. 43 Bede, De templo 1, line 638; trans. Connolly, p. 25.

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of their fellowship in the same faith and truth’.44 However, Bede’s presentation of this hierarchy is complex and variable, so it cannot simply be stated that his perfecti equated to virgins. This tripartite division of the faithful is a concept of great antiquity, believed to originate from the parable of the Sower.45 In this parable the seed which falls on the good soil produces a crop yield of a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.46 Exegetes interpreted this as designating the heavenly reward of the different types of the faithful. Originally martyrs occupied the top tier (the hundred) but in the post-​persecution Church the categories were amended.47 A common interpretation was to designate virgins the hundredfold, widows the sixty, and married people the thirty, as advocated by Jerome.48 Authors shaped this division to suit their own religious environment. Sinéad O’Sullivan has identified how Aldhelm designated the middle category as chastity rather than widowhood in a gesture towards the Barking nuns who had left marriages to join the community.49 Bede was familiar with Aldhelm’s treatise, praising it as ‘a most excellent book’ (‘librum eximium’).50 While Aldhelm’s treatise is specifically addressed to the Barking nuns, Bede never wrote an individual treatise on virginity. However, he also manipulated this tripartite hierarchy for his own means, albeit in a different way to Aldhelm. Bede is largely consistent in designating coniugati as the lowest tier and continentes as the middle across his writings, but his highest tier is variable.51 44 Bede, De templo 1, lines 638–​41; trans. Connolly, p. 25: ‘designant distinctos quidem altitudine professionis sed societate fidei et ueritatis eiusdem omnes ad domum domini pertinentes ei que fixa mente inhaerentes’. 45 Matthew 13:1–​23; Mark 4:1–​20; Luke 8:4–​15. See M. MacCarron, ‘Brides of Christ, royal marriage and the conversion of the English in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’ (PhD dissertation, University College Cork, 2007), pp. 152–​72. 46 The Lucan version of the parable only mentions a crop yield of a hundred times what was sown. 47 For example, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (d. 258), designated martyrs to the top tier in De habitu uirginum 21, ed. L. Ciccolini and P. Mattei, CCSL 3F (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). 48 Jerome, Aduersus Iovinianum 1:3, PL 23, cols 211–​ 338, at 213B–​ 214A; Commentariorum in Matheum 2, lines 805–​14, ed. M. Adriaen and D. Hurst, CCSL 77 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). Contrastingly, Augustine follows the traditional assignment and emphasises that martyrs are superior to virgins: see Augustine, De sancta uirginitate 45, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 41 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1900). 49 Aldhelm, De virginitate 19, ed. S. Gwara, CCSL 124A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); trans. M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Aldhelm: the prose works (Ipswich: D. S. Brewer, 1979), pp. 59–​132, at 75–​6. See S. O’Sullivan, ‘Aldhelm’s De virginitate –​patristic pastiche or innovative exposition?’, Peritia 12 (1998), 271–​95, at 280–​95. 50 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5:18; trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 515. 51 One slight deviation is ‘bonorum coniugum’ for the lowest tier in In Lucae evangelium expositio 5, lines 1019–​26.

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His highest order consists of virgines in homily 1.14 and his commentaries on Luke and the Temple, praedicatores (preachers) in his commentary on Luke, doctores (teachers) in his commentary on 1 Samuel, and rectores (rulers) in his commentaries on Luke and the Tabernacle.52 This variation firstly highlights the range of patristic material Bede had consumed; he was evidently aware of a range of interpretations. Bede never mentions martyrs in the top tier, as this was simply a less relevant signifier for Bede and his milieu. Gregory the Great’s top tier consists of a preacher class, the ordo praedicantium.53 Gregory believed his three groups were equal in eternal life, but in the temporal hierarchy the preachers outranked the abstinent and the virtuous wedded.54 The purpose of this hierarchy was not to sort society into the damned and the saved, but rather to rank the saved.55 Barbara Müller describes Gregory’s preacher class as ‘a third, blended way of life’, blended in the sense that their preaching role necessitated worldly engagement, but they were always abstinent as per the monastic model.56 The immense impact of Gregory on Bede is well known, and this comes through in Bede’s use of a preacher class.57 Crucially though, there is no one tradition that Bede firmly follows in his tripartite divisions. At times he chooses to emphasise virginity over preaching, more in the vein of Jerome. He clearly valued a range of qualities in the perfecti. He places virgins in the highest category so evidently visualised monks among the 52 Virgins: Homiliae 1:14, lines 9–​11; In Lucae evangelium expositio 4, lines 1590–​1; De templo 1, line 638. Preachers: In Lucae evangelium expositio 5, lines 1019–​26. Teachers: In primam partem Samuhelis 1, line 404 and 2, lines 1222–​3, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962). Rulers: De tabernaculo 1, lines 1048–​9; In Lucae evangelium expositio 5, lines 1019–​26. 53 Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem Prophetam 2:4.5, lines 165–​84, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 142 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971). See also, Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 1:14, lines 26–​48, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 143 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979). 54 Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem Prophetam 2:4.6, lines 185–​214. B. Müller, ‘Gregory the Great and monasticism’, in M. J. Dal Santo and B. Neil (eds), A companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 83–​108 at 102. 55 Albeit authors varied in the language they used to describe their lowest categories. Bede actively chose to emphasise the salvation of each level, but Cassian suggests that those who only follow the commandments are destined for a ‘wretched and miserable’ middle state: Cassian, Conlationes 21:6, p. 579, line 21–​p. 580, line 2: ‘Lex enim consummantes praecepta sua in utriusque meriti uelut quodam meditullio conlocauit, quantum a transgressorum damnatione secernens, tantum separans a gloria perfectorum. Quod quidem quam infimum quam que miserabile sit.’ 56 Müller, ‘Gregory the Great and monasticism’, p. 103. 57 For the impact of Gregory on Bede, see P. Meyvaert, Bede and Gregory the Great, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1964); S. DeGregorio, ‘The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great: exegetical connections, spiritual departures’, Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010), 43–​60.

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perfecti, but his consistent prioritisation of teaching makes it clear he saw it as a necessary undertaking for achieving a higher level of spirituality. On some occasions, the perfecti were virgins who taught.

Teaching and perfection At its essence, to be perfect was to imitate Christ’s perfection. For Bede, this was not just a case of emulating his virtues, but also his role as a teacher.58 Of the Gospels, it is Matthew that has the most acute focus on Christ’s pastoral teachings.59 Bede’s letter to Ecgberht raises significant concerns about the provision for teaching available in the Northumbrian church. Bede is not always clear on the relationship between the perfecti and preaching –​sometimes Bede says only the perfect can preach the Gospel, while elsewhere any who ‘live well’ can do so.60 In his homily on Luke 2:15–​20, Bede emphasises that ‘It is not only bishops, presbyters, deacons, and even those who govern monasteries, who are to be understood to be pastors, but also all the faithful, who keep watch over the little ones of their house, are properly called “pastors”, insofar as they preside with solicitous watchfulness over their own house.’61 Elsewhere he sets teaching out as a job for the perfect.62 Bede held the belief that ‘it is proper that those in charge of the Holy Church should surpass the common people in the merits of their life by as much as they surpass them in the greatness of their power.’63 In order to be capable of instructing others on Christian virtues, Bede clearly felt 58 Bede’s interest in teaching has become a popular theme in Bedan scholarship. See C. B. Kendall, ‘Bede and education’, in DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 99–​112; Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, pp. 130–​53; L. T. Martin, ‘Bede and preaching’, in DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 156–​69; G. H. Brown, Bede the educator, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1996). 59 R. T. France, The gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 18–​20; E. J. Goodspeed, Matthew: apostle and evangelist (Philadelphia, PA: Winston, 1959), p. 40. 60 DeGregorio, On Ezra and Nehemiah, p. 17 note 1. 61 Bede, Homiliae 1:7, lines 104–​ 8; trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 1, p. 69: ‘Non solum pastores episcopi presbyteri diaconi uel etiam rectores monasteriorum sunt intellegendi sed et omnes fideles qui uel paruulae suae domus custodiam gerunt pastores recte uocantur in quantum eidem suae domui sollicita uigilantia praesunt.’ 62 Bede, De tabernaculo 3, lines 340–​2; De templo 2, lines 160–​71. 63 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1396–​ 8; trans. DeGregorio, On Ezra and Nehemiah, p. 203: ‘Decet namque praesules sanctae ecclesiae quantum culmine potentiae plebem transcendunt tantum eam et uitae meritis transcendere.’

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that teachers must first have mastered those virtues. Considering that Bede perceived the state of teaching in Northumbria to be so dismal, it is unsurprising that he is imprecise in his definitions of who exactly could be a teacher. Exclusivity would only serve to deter his efforts to expand teaching provisions. Furthermore, his broad definition of the household pastor was clearly envisaged as an informal form of teaching. He is purposefully inclusive in emphasising the universal ability to preach the Word but is clear that the average faithful could only be pastors within the limited boundaries of their own homes. He was not envisaging any greater teaching role for the multitudes, nor was he anticipating these pastors of the home to be God’s ‘perfect’. Rather, Bede’s wish was that all the faithful would be motivated to contribute towards collective spiritual welfare. In his homily on John 6:1–​14, Bede uses Matthew 19:21 to establish continuity from the teaching of Christ to his present: ‘Later, when he was seeking more, and longing, so to speak, to ascend the mountain of the virtues (Jesus) said, “If you wish to be perfect…” Our Lord not only displayed this (sort) of discerning guidance when he was teaching alone in the flesh, but now too he does not cease to display (it) (as he teaches) through the ministers of his word.’64 Bede seemingly viewed a responsibility of the modern teacher to be guiding the perfect through the ascension of virtues, as Christ did during his ministry. In the Life of Ceolfrith, the anonymous author explains that Ceolfrith ‘was himself at hand to bring to perfection his novices in case they needed correcting or teaching in any way’.65 Bede’s interest in teaching did not exist in a vacuum –​it would seem there was a culture of emulation and correction at Wearmouth-​Jarrow. Bede’s emphasis on teaching partly reflects patristic influence, but also pays testimony to the academic environment he inhabited, which clearly valued teaching as a tool for monastic progression. At points then, Bede details how teachers instruct ‘the perfect’ and the little ones.66 In his commentary on the Song of Songs, for example, he explains that teachers preach lowly and sublime things to the little ones and the perfect respectively.67 This evokes the Gregorian preacher class, classifying 64 Bede, Homiliae 2:2, lines 70–​6; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 16: ‘Cui postmodum maiora quaerenti et uelut ad montem uirtutum ascendere cupienti: si uis, inquit, perfectus esse, uade uende omnia quae habes et da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelo et ueni sequere me. Cuius discretionem moderaminis non per se solum dominus in carne docens exhibuit uerum nunc quoque per uerbi sui ministros exhibere non cessat.’ 65 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 11, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), pp. 78–​121, at 91: ‘quatinus si qua corrigenda, si qua nouitios essent docenda, praesens ipse perficeret’. 66 Bede, In primam partem Samuhelis 2, lines 703–​10. 67 Bede, In Cantica canticorum 5:7, lines 473–​82.

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teachers above the other levels of the faithful. Yet elsewhere Bede only distinguishes between ‘teachers’ who fulfil the guidance if you wish to be perfect and ‘the multitude of peoples’ who simply follow the commandments.68 In his commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah, Bede states: Rightly then is it reported that the leaders of the fathers freely offered gifts to rebuild God’s house, for the more that any abstain even from permissible things with the restraint that is proper to formally prohibited actions, the more effectively do they build God’s Church, since all who learn of the examples of their perfection are going to be that much more afraid to descend into forbidden things…69

In this commentary, Bede consistently equates ‘the leaders of the fathers’ with contemporary teachers in the Church, so here he is suggesting that the ordinary followers should be learning from the perfection of their teachers. So, sometimes Bede separates the teachers from the perfect and the ordinary followers, while elsewhere the teachers are the perfect. Compare, for example, Augustine, who, in reference to Matthew 19:28 states that ‘it seems certain, then, that those who will judge beside Christ are the principal members of the Church, the ones who are perfect.’70 Bede certainly echoes this sentiment, as seen above, but he is less emphatic in the association. Perhaps he was less keen to explicitly link perfection to the heads of the Church due to their perceived failings. Considering the variability of Bede’s tripartite divisions, evidently Bede envisaged the perfecti as both teachers and students. After all, no one could truly attain perfection on earth, so there was always more for even the most outstanding teacher to learn. As an activity, teaching was an essential aspect of the active life. Bede discusses the difference between the active and contemplative lives in his

68 Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3:4, lines 486–​96; trans. Holder, p. 121: ‘Diximus supra in oculis ecclesiae uel spiritales eius sensus uel eos qui spiritalia eius uidere ac demonstrare solent doctores intellegi, porro in capillis multitudinem plebium accipi quae etsi altitudinem adtingere illius sermonis nequeunt quod dominus ait: Si uis perfectus esse…, eo tamen actionum bonarum itinere ad caelestia tendit de quo praemisit dicens: Si uis ad uitam ingredi… .’ 69 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 1, lines 723–​30; trans. DeGregorio, p. 35: ‘Recte ergo principes patrum donaria ad construendum domum dei sponte obtulisse referuntur quia quo amplius quique cum continentia interdictorum etiam a licitis abstinent eo efficacius ecclesiam dei aedificant cum omnes qui exempla perfectionis eorum cognouerint tanto magis in illicitis defluere.’ 70 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 90.1:9, lines 37–​ 8, ed. D. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956); trans. M. Boulding, in J. E. Rotelle (ed.), Saint Augustine: Expositions of the Psalms, 6 vols (New York: New City Press, 2000–​4), 4, p. 324: ‘qui ergo iudicabunt cum christo, principes ecclesiae sunt, perfecti sunt.’

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homily on John 21:19–​24.71 The active life is ‘the way of living common to (all) the people of God’ while the contemplative is for those who have achieved ‘perfection in good deeds’.72 From this, it seems Bede conceptualised the perfecti in a contemplative frame, compared with the ‘active’ ordinary people. But he also refers to ‘the perfection of the active way of life’.73 This indicates that Bede did not view the perfect in a strictly contemplative context. Bede’s description of the active life contains a number of scriptural allusions, but the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–​46) is a key one.74 This parable explains how Christ will separate all peoples into the sheep on his right (the saved) and the goats on the left (the damned) at the Last Judgement. The sheep are judged favourably because they cared for their neighbours in need. The goats neglected this task, so do not merit eternal life. The core principle of the parable is that by caring for one’s neighbour, one shows love for Christ: whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40). While Bede conceives of the active life as not just for monks but for all God’s people, the Matthean notions of charity and compassion are also necessary for monks.75 These are the core tenets of monasticism without which any contemplative efforts are hollow. Much work has been done on Bede’s conception of the active and contemplative lives, particularly on his presentation of Cuthbert successfully acting as the active pastor and contemplative ascetic simultaneously.76 In the Ecclesiastical history Bede emphasises that Cuthbert is acting entirely out of love in his work as bishop. Crucially, Cuthbert ‘held that to give the weak brethren help and advice was a fit substitute for prayer’. Bede then quotes the two great commandments, first to love God and second to love one’s neighbour as oneself.77 Bede is clear that the active instruction of the

1 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 145–​209. 7 72 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 149–​51; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, pp. 90–​1: ‘actiua communis populo dei uia uiuendi est; ad contemplatiuam uero perpauci et hoc sublimiores quique post perfectionem piae actionis ascendunt.’ 73 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 182–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 92: ‘perfectionem exprimit actiuae conuersationis’. 74 Other allusions are 2 Corinthians 7:1; Isaiah 58:7; Sirach 7:32–​5; Psalm 35:10; James 1:27 and 5:19–​20. 75 Bede, Homiliae 1:9, lines 175–​6. 76 Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’; Delvaux, ‘From virtue to virtue’; S. J. Coates, ‘The bishop as pastor and solitary: Bede and the spiritual authority of the monk-​bishop’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996), 601–​19. 77 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:28, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 439: ‘hoc ipsum quoque orationis loco ducens, si infirmis fratribus opem suae exhortationis tribueret’. Matthew 22:35–​40; Mark 12:28–​34; Luke 10:27.

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teacher is a worthy alternative to the dedicated prayer of the contemplative. Aiding in the progression of your neighbour’s spiritual journey in itself showed love for God, thus fulfilling the two great commandments. Bede’s conception of the relationship between the perfecti and teaching was complex and multivalent, but there is no doubt that he would have liked to have seen his contemporary monks engaging in teaching. Any who had the capacity to lead by example and contribute to the salvation of others surely should do so.

Benedict Biscop as exemplar Bede’s conception of the ‘perfect’ life is most striking in his commemorative homily on Biscop, which is centred on Matthew 19:27–​9: Peter answered him, ‘We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.’

This homily has received much scholarly attention owing to its importance in elucidating the life of Wearmouth’s founder, but little interest has been given to its scriptural basis in Matthew.78 Patrick Wormald has highlighted that while Bede extrapolates and omits details of Biscop’s life, he generally offers a ‘faithful likeness’.79 Biscop was born c. 628 to a noble Northumbrian family. After a period of working for King Oswiu, Biscop went on pilgrimage to

78 For details of Biscop’s life, see Bede, Homiliae 1:13; Bede, Historia abbatum 1–​14, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. 22–​75; Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 5–​18; Eddius Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi 3, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). See also, P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 141–​69; E. Fletcher, Benedict Biscop, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1981); I. N. Wood, ‘The Foundation of Bede’s Wearmouth-​Jarrow’, in DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 84–​96; C. Grocock, ‘Separation anxiety: Bede and threats to Wearmouth and Jarrow’, in Darby and Wallis (eds), Bede and the future, pp. 67–​92. 79 Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, p. 154. On a similar vein, see S. J. Coates, ‘Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh-​and eighth-​ century

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Rome with Wilfrid (c. 653). He took monastic vows and adopted the name Benedict while at Lérins. He was well-​travelled on the Continent and a keen bibliophile, amassing an impressive collection of books abroad for the Wearmouth-​Jarrow library. Biscop created a mixed Rule for Wearmouth-​ Jarrow, based upon the rules he had seen in place across seventeen different monasteries on the Continent.80 To Bede, Biscop exemplified the perfect life. Bede perceived that Biscop ‘most perfectly fulfilled’ the gist of Matthew 19:27–​9.81 While the homily is centred on this later reading, the notion of perfectus from Matthew 19:21 is a central concept in the text. Bede makes sure to emphasise the consistency with which Biscop maintained his perfect behaviour throughout his life. He recounts how Biscop ‘left everything behind’ and ‘followed Christ’ after ‘he had rejected those things which he had acquired while he was the king’s thane’.82 Wormald indicates how Bede thought of Biscop as a successful version of the rich young man of the Gospels –​instead of going away sad, he wholeheartedly took up Christ’s advice.83 At the end of the homily, Bede makes the overt point that he and his brethren must be diligent in following in Biscop’s footsteps: ‘it is necessary that as good children worthy of such a parent we should take care to observe his example and commands in all things, and that no allurements of the soul or of the flesh should call us back from following in the footsteps of such a teacher.’84 Bede then goes on to emphasise that he and his brethren had also ‘left behind fleshly affection and earthly goods’, and so too ‘rightly deserve’ both hundredfold and eternal life.85 Bede had earlier emphasised the sacrifices

Wearmouth–​Jarrow’, Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999), 69–​86, for how Bede shaped Ceolfrith in Historia abbatum. 80 Bede, Historia abbatum 11. It is unknown whether the Rule was written or transmitted through oral tradition. See C. Cubitt, ‘Monastic memory and identity in early Anglo-​Saxon England’, in W. O. Frazer and A. Tyrell (eds), Social identity in early medieval Britain (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), pp. 253–​76, at 273–​4. 81 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 99–​100; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 128: ‘totum lectionis huius tenorem uidemus perfectissime conpleri’. 82 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 101–​3; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, pp. 128–​9: ‘Derelictis enim omnibus secutus est christum quando spretis eis quae in ministerio regali adquesierat.’ 83 Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, p. 152. 84 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 199–​203; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 132: ‘Vnde necesse est, fratres carissimi ut tamquam boni filii et tanto parenti digni exempla ac praecepta illius in omnibus seruare curemus neque ulla nos a uestigiis tanti doctoris sequendis animae uel carnis inlecebra reuocet.’ 85 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 203–​10; trans. Martin and Hurst, 1, p. 132: ‘quatenus et ipsi qui carnales affectus substantiam que reliquimus terrenam qui uxores ducere ac filios carnaliter procreare angelicae conuersationis amore fastidiuimus augescente

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Biscop had to make in spurning material wealth and choosing not to take a wife –​he was under no illusion that it was an easy path to follow. In the context of apparently erring churchmen in Bede’s Northumbria, it suited Bede to stress how deeply Biscop exemplified the Matthean calling to the perfect life, in a bid to urge his brethren to remain steadfast in following his example. In this way, Bede’s presentation of Biscop mirrors his depiction of Cuthbert and other contemporary monastic figures as models for emulation.86 The homily’s attachment to Biscop’s feast day acts as a reminder of the temporal nature of earthly life and the need to look ahead to eternal rewards. As a deceased saint, Biscop acted as a useful model of a completed journey to perfection, reminding those still on the path that they were to be judged for all their earthly endeavours. The Anonymous Life of Ceolfrith, written by a monk of Wearmouth-​ Jarrow seemingly not before the spring of 717, discusses Biscop’s involvement in the Northumbrian court, details which Bede omits.87 According to the Life of Ceolfrith, ‘Benedict himself used often to be summoned to the king because of his innate wisdom and the maturity of his advice, and he did not always have the time to be caught up in the cares of guiding and regulating the monastery.’88 This suggests a degree of detachment from the daily workings of the monastery, which contrasts Bede’s presentation of the founder’s involvement in the community. According to Bede, even as Biscop and Sigefrith were dying, they strove ‘to spend their time praising God or encouraging the brothers (semper Dei laudibus fraternisue hortatibus uacare)’.89 Sigefrith was the current abbot of Wearmouth-​Jarrow, elected while Biscop was on his final journey abroad in c. 684.90 The anonymous uirtutum spiritalium merito et in praesenti centuplum accipere de societate sanctorum et in saeculo uenturo uitam possidere mereamur aeternam praestante gratia redemptoris nostri qui uiuit et regnat cum patre in unitate spiritus sancti deus per omnia saecula saeculorum.’ 86 Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’; S. DeGregorio, ‘Monasticism and reform in Book IV of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical history of the English people”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (2010), 673–​87. 87 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 12. Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xiii–​cxx, at xviii–​xxi. Wood and Grocock suggest this date due to the Anonymous’ inclusion of details about the monks returning from Rome with a papal letter after Ceolfrith’s death. This is information that does not feature in Bede’s Historia abbatum, so it seems that Bede’s text predated theVita Ceolfridi. 88 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 12; trans. Grocock and Wood, p. 91: ‘ipse pro insita sibi sapientia et maturitate consiliorum sepius ad regem solebat euocari, nec uacabat eum semper gubernandis disponendisque monasterii curis implicari.’ 89 Bede, Historia abbatum 11, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood, p. 47. 90 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 13; Bede, Historia abbatum 10. Scholars have debated the possibility that Biscop did not approve of Sigefrith’s election, based on later

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author also shows Biscop engaging in teaching after returning from Rome to a plague-​stricken community, but their emphasis differs. The anonymous author emphasises how Biscop commanded Sigefrith to commit to the running of the monastery and ‘himself assisted with teaching and prayers’.91 Bede’s Biscop is as equally involved in teaching as Sigefrith is. These differences arguably reflect Bede’s narrative purpose in discussing Biscop. Biscop only features in the History of the Abbots and the dedicated homily, as well as brief references in the Ecclesiastical history.92 In both the History of the Abbots and the homily he acts as a modern model of Matthew’s perfecti, purposefully framed in a scriptural context. To mention Biscop’s secular activities perhaps would have undermined his evocation of Matthew 19:29, which emphasises abandonment of the world and its attachments. Bede likely deemed Biscop’s courtly activities necessary, considering Wearmouth would never have been founded without Biscop’s secular links, but they did not fit the narrative he sought to frame Biscop within. Eric Fletcher has argued that Biscop likely had minimal involvement with Bede in the ten years between Bede joining Wearmouth and Biscop’s death, and as such Bede’s homily places no special emphasis on Biscop’s role as a teacher.93 The extent of their relationship cannot be known, but Fletcher perhaps underestimates Bede’s visualisation of Biscop as a teacher. Family is a key theme in the homily; Bede repeatedly refers to Biscop as ‘our father’ and the brethren as his ‘children’. In concluding with the assertion that the brethren should be ‘following in the footsteps of such a teacher’, it seems Bede did see doctor as an important identifier for their magnanimous father figure. After all, Biscop’s teaching endeavours affected all areas of Wearmouth-​Jarrow life. According to Bede, Biscop not only personally encouraged the brethren, but also acquired materials in Rome to further education, and even brought back John the Archcantor to instruct the community.94 Bede could have chosen to frame either Ceolfrith or Eosterwine as his scriptural model of perfection, but he chose Biscop. As the founder of Bede’s institution, Biscop was the figure who loomed largest in Wearmouth-​ Jarrow’s short history. The anonymous author includes in Ceolfrith’s departing speech many of the ideas about unity that Bede assigned to Biscop in his

comments made by William of Malmesbury –​see Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, p. xxxiii; C. O’Brien, ‘Hwaetberht, Sicgfrith and the reforming of Wearmouth and Jarrow’, Early Medieval Europe 25 (2017), 301–​19, at 306. 91 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 15; trans. Grocock and Wood, p. 95: ‘ipso quoque in doctrina et orationibus iuuante’. 92 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:18, 5:19, 5:24. 93 Fletcher, Benedict Biscop, pp. 7–​8. 94 Bede, Homiliae 1:13, lines 172–​85; Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:18.

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dying speech.95 It is telling that Bede chose to attach this message to Biscop, fitting into his wider scriptural role as a unifying model for the brethren to emulate. To Wormald, Biscop’s significance to Bede was that he had ‘achieved the requisite social dislocation in the entirely stable environment of the monastery’.96 Bede’s exaltation of Biscop is perhaps more nuanced than that. After all, Biscop was widely travelled and socially involved in both ecclesiastical and royal circles. Jennifer O’Reilly argued that, to Bede, Biscop’s ‘primary and predestined role was to raise up spiritual sons for Christ’.97 Arguably, Bede was less interested in Biscop’s achievement of peregrinatio and more in the practical framework he left behind. Returning to the importance of following Christ in achieving perfection, it seems Biscop’s true significance for Bede was that his legacy allowed for monastic emulation. He founded institutions that gave physical dwellings for those aspiring to perfection and he instituted a Rule that provided clear instruction on the necessary behaviour required to get there. Further, the homily clearly indicates that Bede perceived the inhabitants of Wearmouth-​Jarrow to be on track in the perfect life. Through his own writings, he sought to present his home as a model monastery that was successfully embodying Matthew 19:21, by maintaining the legacy that Biscop had started. This may be what Bede wished to portray, but his writings and the Life of Ceolfrith betray that there were tensions in the inner workings of the monastery surrounding familial and political relations.98 After all, Wearmouth-​ Jarrow was a large institution, home to some six hundred individuals, potentially including those who lived on and worked the land.99 Jarrow, 95 Bede, Historia abbatum 13; Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 25. Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xxxvii–​xxxviii. 96 Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, p. 152. Wormald explains how Bede sought to demonstrate that an ascetic did not need to leave England in order to achieve separation from their kindred. He avoided using Genesis 12:1 –​‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you’ –​with its connotations of physical displacement. 97 J. O’Reilly, ‘Bede on seeing the God of gods in Zion’, in M. MacCarron and D. Scully (eds), History, hagiography and biblical exegesis: essays on Bede, Adomnán and Thomas Becket (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 65–​87, at 66–​7. 98 For an exploration of these issues, see Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xxxii–​lxi; I. N. Wood, ‘The origins of Jarrow: the monastery, the slake and Ecgfrith’s minster’, Bede’s World Studies 1 (Jarrow: Bede’s World, 2008). 99 Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 33; Bede, Historia abbatum 17. Thacker has pointed out that some of these fratres could have been those resident on the monastic estates: A. T. Thacker, ‘Monks, preaching and pastoral care in early Anglo-​ Saxon England’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds), Pastoral care before the parish (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 137–​70, at 141. See also, P. Darby and F. Wallis,

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where it is thought that Bede was based, was founded primarily for the salvation of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (d. 685) and was located in close proximity to the port.100 The monastery had overt secular connections, standing distinct from Antony’s extreme solitude in the desert. In the geographical context of eighth-​century Northumbria, a desert retreat was not a feasible option for an aspiring ascetic, although in an Irish context the ocean perhaps took on the role of the desert.101 Wearmouth-​Jarrow was firmly connected to its surrounding world and the tensions that came with that. Bede’s portrayal of Biscop thus served as a form of propaganda for the monastery, presenting a unified community held together by the scripturally-​grounded memory of their perfect founder. Christopher Grocock and Ian Wood have emphasised that the image of Wearmouth-​Jarrow presented by Bede and the anonymous author offers an insight into how the community wished to portray itself in the 710s while facing fears of disunity and external threats.102 Even in a model monastery there was turbulence; Bede saw this as a natural consequence of earthly life.103 But in his depiction of Biscop, literary licence allows him to push past the various tensions to celebrate the inner perfection of an esteemed leader for the brethren to emulate. It is in his discussion of Biscop that Bede most directly links an individual to the Matthean notion of perfection, but there are others that he uses this language about. In the Life of Cuthbert he not only refers to Cuthbert’s perfect behaviour, but also that of St Benedict of Nursia, Marcellinus of Ancona (the sixth-​ century Italian bishop), and the monk Sigefrith.104 Examples from the Ecclesiastical history include Gregory the Great and Wihtberht the monk.105 Sarah Foot has argued that Bede especially holds  ‘Introduction: the many futures of Bede’, in Darby and Wallis (eds), Bede and the future, pp. 1–​22 at 5. 100 Wood, ‘The foundation of Bede’s Wearmouth-​Jarrow’, pp. 91–​4. On the foundation of Jarrow, see further, Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xxv–​xxxii. See also, S. Foot, ‘Church and monastery in Bede’s Northumbria’, in DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede, pp. 54–​68 at 54. Foot also notes Jarrow’s proximity to other Northumbrian monasteries. 101 This may underlie Cuthbert’s retreat to Farne. On the concept of Iona as an oceanic counterpart to the Egyptian desert, see D. Scully, ‘The third voyage of Cormac in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae’, in A. Minnis and J. Roberts (eds), Text, image, interpretation: studies in Anglo-​Saxon literature and its Insular context in honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 209–​30, at 226. 102 Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, pp. xxxviii–​xxxix. 103 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 3, lines 1406–​10. 104 Bede, Vita Cuthberti 6; 14, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 141–​307, at 172–​5; 200–​3. Marcellinus was known for saving his city from a fire with his prayers, a miracle which was recorded in Gregory’s Dialogi 1:6. 105 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 2:1, 5:9.

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up northern saints as exempla for emulation in his historical writings.106 It certainly seems that Northumbrian pride impacted Bede’s written record of the ‘perfect’ life, his most prominent examples being close to home. The likes of Biscop and Cuthbert provided such fitting models of the ‘perfect life’ precisely because Bede felt such models were lacking in his homeland at present.

Conclusion Bede never sought the contemplative solitude of the desert or the ocean. This was perhaps largely practical, as he required the resources of the monastery and access to a network of sources to facilitate his level of written output. But this in itself is indicative of his priorities. He chose to stay within the ‘active’ environment of the monastery and produce materials to educate others in the faith. So far as we know, he never went on pilgrimage to Rome like Biscop, Ceolfrith, or Hwætberht. Bede valued following Christ using the skills given to each individual by God, evident in his emphasis that the poet Caedmon ‘received the gift of song freely by the grace of God’.107 For Bede himself, writing was his primary skill. It cannot be explicitly proven whether his homilies were delivered orally, or more pertinently if Bede delivered them himself, but what we do know is that Bede’s works were being requested from the likes of Bishop Acca of Hexham.108 He was aware of the demand for his services. It was seemingly through his writings that he best saw himself emulating heavenly perfection and thus being worthy of the hundredfold. The Matthean model of monastic perfection was pliable. Although originally associated with Antony the hermit, Bede adapted it to his own local monasticism. In attaching this model to Biscop, Bede expresses the scriptural legitimacy of an active, communal lifestyle. Biscop sold all and gave to the poor, but, unlike Antony, following Christ took on the form of founding Wearmouth. By nature, the contemplative was not making a material

106 S. Foot, ‘Bede’s northern saints’, in M. Coombe, A. Mouron, and C. Whitehead (eds), Saints of north-​east England, 600–​1500 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2017), pp. 19–​40, at 31. 107 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:24, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 415: ‘diuinitus adiutus gratis canendi donum accepit’. 108 Martin, Bede the Venerable: homilies on the Gospels, 1, pp. xi–​xxiii, at xi–​xii. Bede dedicated many works to Acca, for example: On Genesis, On 1 Samuel, On the Temple, On Ezra and Nehemiah, On Luke, and On the Acts of the Apostles.

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contribution to their Christian world.109 Perhaps in a climate where Bede saw significant spiritual issues, both within and outside the monastery, the active model was simply more useful for the spiritual preservation and progression of the gens Anglorum. Bede hoped that he and his brethren were on track to join Biscop in gaining the ultimate heavenly reward for their perfection, but would he have felt so if he did not think he was contributing to the education of the faithful? After all, the great commandment was to love God and one’s neighbour, and Bede felt his neighbours were in desperate need of spiritual guidance. In this way, Bede’s conceptualisation of Matthew 19:21 was of a non-​elitist monastic perfection which was interconnected with the wider Christian community.

109 P. Hunter Blair, The world of Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 203.

6 Bede, Ceolfrith, and Cassiodorus: biblical scholarship at Wearmouth and Jarrow Alan T. Thacker* The relationship between the scholarly activities of Wearmouth-​Jarrow in the early eighth century and the community of Vivarium, founded by Cassiodorus in the far south of Italy at Squillace (Scyllacium) in the later sixth, has long been discussed, with especial emphasis on the biblical scholarship of those monasteries. While seeking to contribute to that vigorous debate, this chapter will first approach the subject from a slightly different perspective. It will examine how material produced in the older community may have affected the intellectual life of the scholars based at Wearmouth and Jarrow, above all, of course, Bede. Although other works will be considered, the paper will look primarily at Cassiodorus’s two most significant compositions: the Explanation of the Psalms (Expositio psalmorum), and the Institutions of divine and secular learning (Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum). Of these the former was certainly known to and used by Bede, while the latter is now widely held not to have been in the library of Wearmouth and Jarrow.

Cassiodorus and his writings Cassiodorus, who died aged over ninety around 580–​85, was the scion of a senatorial family with estates at Squillace. He occupied distinguished pos­ itions at the court of the Gothic rulers of Italy, rising to the position of praetorian prefect in 533, but had given up that office or had been dismissed in 537 or 538. He remained in Ravenna until shortly before its capture by the forces of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 540, but by 550 he was in Constantinople, in the circle of the exiled pope Vigilius (resident there

* An earlier draft of this essay was given as the first Jennifer O’Reilly Memorial Lecture in April 2017 and this published version is for her.

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547–​55).1 While in Constantinople he wrote his treatise on Psalms, much admired and quoted by Bede. In the mid-​550s he returned to his estates in Squillace and then, if not earlier, founded Vivarium, so named from its loc­ ation at the beloved fishponds that he had himself constructed.2 Cassiodorus had long before intended to establish a major Christian school and library in Rome together with Pope Agapetus (535–​36) but these plans had come to nothing, frustrated by Justinian’s invasion of Italy. At Vivarium, however, the project was realised. There, besides establishing a remarkable library, Cassiodorus recruited scholars to edit the Scriptures, to copy and provide digests of patristic writings, and to translate important Greek texts into Latin. He sought to preserve and transmit Christian culture and to provide ‘a complete and well-​rounded Christian education.’3 To quote Mark Vessey, he promoted ‘a system of thought and expression centred on the Bible, incorporating elements of classical learning, capable of being diffused beyond the monastery’.4 In the Psalm commentary, his earliest exegetical text, written in the 540s or 550s,5 Cassiodorus provided ‘the only formal commentary on the entire psalter surviving from the patristic era’.6 He drew especially on Augustine

1 For Cassiodorus, see A. van de Vyver, ‘Cassiodore et son oeuvre’, Speculum 6 (1931), 244–​92; M. Cappuyns, ‘Cassiodore’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 32 vols to date (Paris, 1912–​), 11, cols 1349–​1408. For the most recent biography, placing Cassiodorus in his Catholic Christian context, see J. J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), on which see the review by Peter Brown in University Publishing (1980), 3–​4 and, more critically, A. Cameron, ‘Cassiodorus deflated’, Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981), 183–​6. See also F. Troncarelli, Vivarium: i libri, il destino (Turnhout: Instrumenta Patristica, 1998); G. Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian gentes: social metaphors and the language of identity in Cassiodorus’s Expositio Psalmorum’ in W. Pohl and G. Heydemann (eds), Strategies of identification: ethnicity and religion in early medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 143–​208, esp. 145–​9; M. Vessey, ‘Introduction’, in J. W. Halporn (trans.), Cassiodorus: Institutions of divine and secular learning and On the soul (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), pp. 1–101, esp. 3–19. 2 Cassiodorus, Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum (subsequent refs: Cassiodorus, Inst.) 1:29.1, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937). 3 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 177–​ 222; M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​ Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 16–​ 18; Cassiodorus, Inst. preface; 2:5.10. 4 Vessey, ‘Introduction’, p. 90 note 253. 5 Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15, 18; G. Heydemann, ‘The orator as exegete: Cassiodorus as a reader of Psalms’, in J. Nelson and D. Kempf (eds), Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 19–​42, 178–​99, at 21–​2; Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, trans. P. G. Walsh, 3 vols (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990–​1), 1, p. 5. 6 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, p. 136.

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of Hippo’s enormous corpus of homilies on the Psalms (the Enarrationes), as well as on other patristic authors such as Jerome. But he also added much of his own –​in particular a distinctive four-​fold structure for the treatment of each psalm: first, a section which explains the meaning of the psalm-​ heading; second, the ‘division’ (divisio psalmi) which looks at the identity of the psalm’s purported speaker or speakers and offers some appreci­ation of its structure and literary art, including where relevant discussion of the diapsalms, the pauses or breaks in the flow marking changes of topic; third, the ‘explanation’ (expositio psalmi), a verse-​by-​verse analysis of the meaning of the psalm; and finally a conclusion (conclusio psalmi), offering a summary of the overall significance of the psalm and its relevance for contemporary Christians. The overviews in the second and fourth sections of the literary structure and meaning of each psalm are particularly original elements in this structure.7 Through this framework Cassiodorus offered a thoroughgoing attempt not only to expound the text allegorically, as a vehicle of sacred learning, but also to enable its use as a textbook to inculcate secular learning, the liberal arts. As has recently been emphasised, he saw the psalter as ‘a collection of speeches’, to be viewed through the lens of classical rhetorical technique.8 Cassiodorus believed that the trivium and the quadrivium had a divine origin and as such were discernible in Scripture; once mastered they provided the means of better understanding the sacred text. ‘The Lord’s eloquence’, he says in the expositio of Psalm 6, grants those who seek it reconsideration of ‘the seeds of diverse teachings’; ‘we find in it [Holy Scripture] all that the masters of secular literature have adopted in their own writings’.9 In his commentary, Cassiodorus sought to explain the liberal arts through the biblical text. He even devised a system of marginal notation to indicate text illustrative of grammatical matter (such as etymology), of rhetorical figures, of logic (such as syllogisms), or of matter relating to arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. And indeed at the very end of the work he is quite explicit about this: ‘we have shown’, he says, ‘that the series of psalms is crammed with points of grammar, etymologies, figures, rhetoric, topics, dialectic, definitions, music, geometry, astronomy, expressions peculiar to

Walsh, Explanation, 1, p. 6. 7 8 Heydemann, ‘Orator as exegete’, passim, but esp. pp. 23–​6, 40–​2. 9 Cassiodorus, Expositio Psalmorum (subsequent refs: Cassiodorus, Exp.), 6, lines 94–​100, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 97–​8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958); trans. Walsh, 1, p. 92: ‘Primum nosse debemus omnipotentiam Domini, eloquentiam suam ita uariis disciplinis atque artibus ditasse, ut … semina diuersarum doctrinarum diligenter retractata concedat. Hinc est enim quod in ipsa reperiuntur, quae magistri saecularium litterarum ad sua post uolumina transtulerunt’.

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divine Scripture’.10 In all this, as James O’Donnell points out, Cassiodorus was distinctly original, ‘departing completely from the homilectic form of Augustine’s Enarrationes’.11 In the Institutions, Cassiodorus seeks to provide his present and future monks with a blueprint for Christian education for which, in a sense, he had already written a crucial textbook in the form of the commentary on Psalms. The Institutions is a somewhat loosely arranged work, produced at Vivarium and periodically revised throughout the rest of Cassiodorus’s very long life. It even contains references to his final orthographical treatise, last redacted when Cassiodorus was in his ninety-​third year.12 The Institutions are divided into two parts. The first starts by presenting a canonical list of the books of the Bible and the commentaries and other material that would most help Christian readers to understand those books.13 It then moves on to discuss the ways in which biblical text should be presented –​how it should be divided, edited, and corrected.14 A further section surveys the principal Christian historians and exegetes.15 This first part concludes with a series of supplements, presumably added during the periodic revisions. They focus upon subjects such as writers on geography, which had been overlooked in the original version, and on the monastery at Vivarium, the training that it offered its inmates, its scribes and doctors, and its rules of conduct for monks, tenants, and bondsmen.16 The second book discusses the seven liberal arts that formed the secular handmaid to sacred learning. It concludes by emphasising the supremacy of the divine readings.17

Pre-​Carolingian reception of Cassiodorus To relate all this to exegetical and scholarly activity at Wearmouth and Jarrow, this paper will first explore what the English monks knew of Cassiodorus and how they regarded his work. In all, Bede mentions Cassiodorus by name

10 Cassiodorus, Exp. 150, lines 148–​51; trans. Walsh, p. 465: ‘Ecce de grammatica et de etymologiis, de schematibus, de arte rhetorica, de topicis, de arte dialectica, de definitionibus, de musica, de geometria, de astronomia et de propriis locutionibus legis diuinae, seriem [psalmorum] refertam esse monstrauimus’. 11 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, esp. pp. 158–​61; Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 34–​5. 12 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:15.10; 1:30.2; Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15–​ 16, 41–​ 2, 54; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, p. 200. 13 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:1–​11. 14 Ibid., 1:12–​15. 15 Ibid., 1:16–​24. 16 Ibid., 1:25–​33. 17 Ibid., 2: concl. 3.

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four times.18 As far as we know, he is the first expressly to identify him as a Christian authority.19 After Cassiodorus’s death at an advanced age, c. 585, his community struggled to survive; it was probably extinguished in the earlier seventh century and its library dispersed.20 Evidence for the diffusion of Cassiodorus’s texts and editions is difficult to interpret. The widely accepted supposition is that, although he and his enterprise at Vivarium loom large in modern historiography, in fact their impact upon contemporaries was modest.21 More recently, however, evidence has been adduced to nuance that view. It has generally been thought, for example, that despite his dealings with Squillace,22 Gregory the Great knew nothing of Cassiodorus.23 But as Jacques Fontaine long ago observed and as Louis Holtz has emphasised more recently, a passage in the epistola missoria, the famous dedicatory letter to Bishop Leander of Seville which prefaces the Moralia, constitutes an ironic broadside against the whole programme of Cassiodoran study: Hence I have scorned to observe the art of speaking itself (i.e. rhetoric), as conveyed by the rules of worldly training. For, as the tenor of this letter will also show forth, I do not flee from the collisions of metacism, nor do I shun the confusion of barbarism, and I disdain to observe position and movement and even the cases of prepositions because I hold very strongly that it is unworthy to subject the words of the heavenly revelation to the rules of Donatus. For

18 Bede, De tabernaculo 2, line 1565; De templo 2, lines 28, 49; In Ezram et Neemiam 2, lines 283–​9, all ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnholt: Brepols, 1969). 19 U. Hahner, Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar (Munich: Bei der Arbeo-​ Gesellschaft, 1973), p. 8; R. N. Bailey, The Durham Cassiodorus, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1978), p. 4; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 16, 243–​4. 20 It was still in existence in 598, when it was mentioned by Gregory the Great: Registrum epistularum, 8:30; 8:32, ed. D. Norberg, CCSL 140–​140A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982). ‘After that there is silence’: O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 238–​9. But cf. Troncarelli, citing L. Cuppo Csaki, to identify Felix Cillitanum as an abbot of Vivarium active in 616: Vivarium, pp. 89–​90; L. Viscido, Ricerche sulle fondazioni monastiche di Cassiodoro e sulle sue Institutiones (Catanzaro: Edizioni la rondine, 2011), esp. pp. 28–​9. 21 Thus, for example, O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, esp. pp. 238–​53. For more positive recent views see esp.: L. Holtz, ‘Quelques aspects de la tradition et de la diffusion des Institutiones’, in S. Leanza (ed.), Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro. Atti della settimana di studi Cosenza-​Squillace 19–​24 settembre 1983 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 1986), pp. 281–​301, and below. S. Barnish notes that ‘Vivarium handbooks may have been in some demand’ but acknowledges ‘it is notorious that … he [Cassiodorus] had small influence on European culture until the Carolingian renaissance’: ‘The work of Cassiodorus after his conversion’, Latomus 48 (1989), 157–​87, esp. 183. Cf. Troncarelli, Vivarium, esp. pp. 84–​90; Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 81–​2. 22 Above note 20. 23 E.g. Cappuyns, ‘Cassiodore’, col. 1363, as cited by Holtz, ‘Quelques aspects’, p. 286.

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neither are these observed by any of the translators in the authoritative text of Holy Writ.24

It is especially telling that, as Holtz points out, these statements reference and subvert specific passages in the Institutions, and indeed include direct quotations from those passages.25 Even if, as Fontaine suggests, Gregory was clearly aware of the rules of grammatical composition and it is necessary to take these comments ‘cum grano salis’, they suggest that recognition of Cassiodorus’s recommendations was sufficient for them to be parodied without mentioning him by name. Significantly, indeed, Gregory nowhere mentions him, even when he made use of the Psalm commentary.26 Leander’s brother and successor, the encyclopaedist Bishop Isidore of Seville, was also certainly acquainted with some of Cassiodorus’s oeuvre, although, like Gregory, he nowhere mentions him by name. He does not seem to have known the commentary on Psalms,27 but he was certainly familiar with the treatise on orthography and Book II of the Institutions, which he used extensively.28 Cassiodorus was also known but again not cited by name at Iona. Thomas O’Loughlin has shown that Adomnán certainly knew and quoted from the Psalm commentary and speculates that he may also have known the Institutions.29 Three of Bede’s namings of Cassiodorus relate to the depictions of the Tabernacle and the Temple which Cassiodorus had placed in his ‘greater’

24 Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, Epist. ad Leandrum, 5, lines 215–​ 23, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 143, 143A–​B (Turnhout: Brepols, c. 1979–​85): ‘Vnde et ipsam loquendi artem, quam magisteria disciplinae exterioris insinuant, seruare despexi. Nam sicut huius quoque epistolae tenor enuntiat non metacismi collisionem fugio, non barbarismi confusionem deuito, situs motusque etiam et praepositionum casus seruare contemno, quia indignum uehementer existimo, ut uerba caelestis oraculi restringam sub regulis Donati. Neque enim haec ab ullis interpretibus, in scripturae sacrae auctoritate seruata sunt.’ Author’s translation. Adriaen prefers ‘modosque’ to ‘motusque’ which replicates Cassiodorus’s wording in the Institutions (1:9.8) and appears in some manuscripts. 25 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:15.7; 1:15.9; 2:1.2; Holtz, ‘Quelques aspects’, p. 286. 26 J. Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique, 3 vols (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1959–​ 83), 1, pp. 33–​ 6; Holtz, ‘Quelques aspects’, pp. 286–​7. Cf. P. Riché, Education and culture in the barbarian west, trans. J. Contreni (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1976), pp. 150 note 82, 152–​4; Vessey, ‘Introduction’, p. 86 note 239. 27 Vessey, ‘Introduction’, p. 86 note 239; Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture Classique, 2, pp. 843–​6. 28 On Isidore’s ‘vénération’ for Cassiodorus’s Institutions, see Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture Classique, 1, pp. 33–​4. 29 T. O’Loughlin, ‘The library of Iona in the late seventh century: the evidence from Adomnán’s De locis sanctis’, Ériu 45 (1994), 33–​52.

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pandect (complete version of the Bible) and which he had commented upon in his exposition on Psalms. The fourth reference, in the commentary on Ezra is, however, more expansive. There he describes Cassiodorus erroneously as a former senator (in fact Senator was the final element of his name) who unexpectedly (the word used is repente) became a teacher of the Church (doctor ecclesiae). Cassiodorus is given as an example of those who were members of the king’s household and who with royal encouragement had been entrusted to eminent Christian teachers for instruction. As evidence of this, Bede cites Cassiodorus’s ‘outstanding’ commentary on Psalms which, he says, ‘diligently gave attention to the teachings of Ambrose, Hilary (of Poitiers), Augustine, Cyril (of Alexandria?), John (Chrysostom?) and other Fathers of the Church’.30 Bede, here, was making something of a statement. This is a spontaneous and uncalled for notice of considerable warmth, all the more remarkable in that it is based exclusively on Bede’s own reading and represents his own judgement, unsupported by any earlier authority.31 Bede’s admiration for Cassiodorus was clearly based primarily upon the Psalm commentary, with its focus on the biblical book most beloved by monks. He quotes from it on numerous occasions, especially in the late works such as the commentaries on the Tabernacle, the Temple and Ezra, on the reckoning of time, and the retractation on Acts, as well as in earlier orthographical and grammatical treatises and the commentary on the Apocalypse.32 The high regard for Cassiodorus’s commentary on Psalms in eighth-​century Northumbria is apparent from the famous Durham cathedral manuscript, B.II.30. This very grand codex, which probably dates from 30 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 2, lines 283–​9; trans., S. DeGregorio, Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), pp. 89–​90: ‘Qualis fuit Cassiodorus quondam senator repente ecclesiae doctor qui dum in expositio psalmorum quam egregiam fecit diligenter intuitus est quid Ambrosius quid Hilarius quid Augustinus quid Cyrillus quid Iohannes quid ceteri fratres dixerint edoctum se procul dubio a senioribus Iudaeorum id est confitentium et laudantium Deum, probauit’. The fratres of the published text should, as DeGregorio plausibly suggests, be emended to patres: On Ezra, pp. 99, 227. 31 The list of teachers is drawn largely from Cassiodorus, Exp. 2, lines 396–​9. Cf. Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:4.1, 1:4.3. Oddly Bede omits Athanasius and Jerome who appear in that list but includes Chrysostom who does not, though he is named elsewhere in the work: Exp. 4, lines 181–​8; 6, lines 218–​20; 17, lines 217–​20; 72, lines 400–​4. 32 See Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 205; P. Stoppacci (ed.), Cassiodoro, Expositio Psalmorum. Tradizione manoscritta, fortuna, edizione critica (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012), esp. p. 156 note 48. On the dates of these works see M. L. W. Laistner and H. H. King, A handlist of Bede manuscripts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1943), pp. 25, 39, 70, 75, 131, 137; A. Holder, Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), p. xvi; A. Holder, ‘(Un) dating Bede’s De arte metrica’, in J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s golden age (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), pp. 390–​5; S. DeGregorio, Bede: On Ezra and

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the mid-​eighth century, preserves the earliest surviving text of the Psalm commentary, albeit in an epitomised form. Although it seems to post-​date Bede, there is a good chance that it was copied at Wearmouth-​Jarrow and based upon a unique complete version produced there in the late seventh or early eighth century and descending directly from the definitive sixth-​ century archetype. A leaf from a similarly epitomised text of the Psalm commentary preserved in the University Library at Düsseldorf (MS K. 16 Z 3/​1) is of similar date and provenance and is additional evidence of the impact of Cassiodorus’s text in early Northumbria.33 And, of course, there is the celebrated inscription of the Durham codex –​de manu bedae –​which shows that it was associated with Bede at least in the fourteenth century.34 One other pointer to this Northumbrian admiration for Cassiodorus’s Psalm commentary is the ‘explanations’ (explanationes), an element in a composite work on Psalms attributed to Bede and published by Heerwagen in 1563, now most easily available in the Patrologia Latina.35 That work includes elements that clearly much post-​date Bede and others which are contemporary but not by him. The explanationes, essentially introductory discourse on the structure and meaning of each of the Psalms, were formed from a verbatim abridgement of the first two sections, the introduction and the divisio, of Cassiodorus’s individual Psalm commentaries. As Michael Gorman, the most authoritative recent commentator, points out, the explanationes are attributed to Bede in a subscription found in

Nehemiah, pp. xxxvii–​xlii; C. B. Kendall (ed.), Bede, Libri II De arte metrica et De schematibus et tropis (Saarbrücken: AQ Verlag, 1991), pp. 28–​9; G. H. Brown, A companion to Bede (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 23, 26–​7. 33 Stoppacci, Cassiodoro, Expositio Psalmorum, pp. 156–​7; R. N. Bailey, ‘Bede’s text of Cassiodorus’ commentary on Psalms’, Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983), 189–​93; R. N. Bailey and R. Handley, ‘Early English manuscripts of Cassiodorus’ Expositio Psalmorum’, Classical Philology 8 (1983), 51–​5. 34 Bailey, Durham Cassiodorus, 3. 35 Liber de titulis psalmorum, PL 93, cols 477–​ 1108. The large and complex literature on this work includes B. Fischer, ‘Bedae de titulis psalmorum liber’, in J. Autenrieth and F. Brunhölzl (eds), Festschrift Bernhard Bischoff zu einem 65. Geburstag (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1971), pp. 90–​110; G. Morin, ‘Notes sur plusieurs écrits attribués à Bède le venérable’, Revue Bénédictine 11 (1894), 289–​ 95; Hahner, Cassiodorus Psalmenkommentar, p. 70; P. Salmon, Les tituli psalmorum dans manuscrits latines (Citta del Vaticana: Libreria Vaticana, 1959), pp. 151–​86; M. Gorman, ‘The Argumenta and Explanationes on the Psalms attributed to Bede’, Revue Bénédictine 108 (1998), 214–​39; M. Gorman, ‘The canon of Bede’s works and the world of Ps. Bede’, Revue Bénédictine 111 (2001), 399–​445, both reprinted in M. Gorman, The study of the Bible in the early middle ages (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007). Cf. most recently comments by Stoppacci, Cassiodoro, Expositio Psalmorum, pp. 129, 156, 277.

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at least four manuscripts copied in the ninth and tenth century and Bede’s name also figures in incipits, including that in one of the early tenth century manuscripts: ‘Here begins the abridgement of Bede the priest concerning the titling of the psalms which he took from Cassiodorus’ (Incipit breviarum Bedae presbyteri de titulis psalmorum quod de Cassiodoro sumpsit).36 Gorman is dismissive of these attributions, feeling that they are trumped by Bede’s failure to include any work on Psalms in the list of his work appended to the Ecclesiastical history.37 It should be noted, however, that Bede also failed to include any mention there of his On the Holy Places, perhaps because he similarly regarded it as derivative.38 Moreover, this work of excerpting recalls Bede’s Augustinian collectaneum on the Pauline letters.39 Gorman himself suggests Alcuin may have played a part in the dissemin­ ation of the explanationes,40 and at the very least therefore we may think of them as further evidence of Cassiodorus’s high standing in eighth-​century Northumbria.

Bede and Cassiodorus’s Psalm commentary We turn now to consider some of the ways in which Bede may have been influenced by Cassiodorus’s commentary. The Psalms were at the heart of early medieval monastic life. Central to liturgy and to prayer, they offered the monk a shared language which, assimilated through repetition, fostered personal identification with the voice of the psalmist or with the audience the psalmist addressed. Cassiodorus’s rhetorical perspective, his treatment of the Psalms as speeches, strengthened that way of thinking, and Bede’s close study of the commentary encouraged him to internalise the psalmist-​ orator’s discourse and relate it to events in contemporary Northumbria.41 Bede also took from Cassiodorus’s commentary another central idea: that Holy Writ, and the Psalms in particular, constituted a primary vehicle for 6 Gorman, ‘Argumenta’, pp. 222, 225, 226, 231. 3 37 Gorman, ‘Argumenta’, pp. 217 note 10, 231–​3. 38 W. T. Foley and A. Holder, Bede: a biblical miscellany (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 3. It is striking that Bede exhibits a strong interest in Cassiodorus in his last works; could it even be that the explanationes date, as Morin long ago suggested, from the very end of his life after he had finished any final amendments to the Ecclesiastical history? Morin, ‘Notes sur plusieurs écrits attribués à Bède’, p. 293, cited by Gorman, ‘Argumenta’, p. 232, where the idea is dismissed as ‘fanciful’. 39 A. T. Thacker, Bede and Augustine, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2005), pp. 7–​9; on the collectaneum see below. 40 Gorman, ‘Argumenta’, p. 233. 41 See e.g. Heydemann, ‘Orator as exegete’, p. 40; B. Ward, Bede and the Psalter, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1991).

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the inculcation and illustration of all learning, secular as well as divine. In his works on grammar and rhetoric, Bede not only quotes extensively from the Psalm commentary but applies this methodology of illustrating secular learning by means of examples drawn from the Sacred Page, if anything even more strictly than Cassiodorus himself. He builds very firmly on Cassiodorus’s dictum that the secular arts are handmaids to sacred learning –​that their primary purpose is deepening our understanding of sacred text.42 Here we will be looking at just two issues in which Bede’s approach was informed by ideas expressed in the Psalm commentary. First: doctrinal deviance. As I have argued elsewhere, Bede shows himself in his writings to have been much preoccupied with heresy, which he seems to have viewed as an ever-​present threat. By heresy he meant much more than simple doctrinal deviancy; rather he was looking at a whole range of beliefs and attitudes –​which might for example be embodied in an obstinate and potentially schismatic preference of individual will over communal orthodoxy, or a treacherous readiness to betray the discipline and loyalties of one’s own religious community at the behest of external agents. Heretics are repeatedly linked with falseness, not just in belief but in personal behaviour and values; they are characterised by discord, both among themselves and against the established order of the Church, by cunning (uersutia) and by treachery (perfidia). While no single element of this is novel, the sense that that package of qualities represented a pervasive threat, particularly evident in the here and now, is distinctively Bedan.43 Almost certainly, it reflects Bede’s mediation upon, and distaste for, the Northumbrian church of his day. But while Bede’s discourse on heresy is driven by his own conception of it as a pervasive and potent threat − ‘an invasive virus’, to quote Faith Wallis44 − it may well be that the Psalm commentary, of which he speaks so highly, provided him with a vocabulary and rhetoric with which to express his concern. Cassiodorus’s vast work has been rather sardonically described by L. W. Jones as containing ‘refutations of all the heresies which

42 See the index of authors provided by C. W. Jones and C. B. Kendall (eds), Beda Venerabilis opera didascalia CCSL 123C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980), p. 726. 43 A. T. Thacker, ‘Why did heresy matter to Bede? Present and future contexts’, in P. Darby and F. Wallis (eds), Bede and the future (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). pp. 47–​66. 44 F. Wallis, ‘Bede’s commentary on Proverbs’, Leeds International Medieval Congress, 2 July 2013. See now, F. Wallis, ‘Rectores at risk: erudition and heresy in Bede’s Commentary on Proverbs’, in S. DeGregorio and P. Kershaw (eds), Cities, saints and communities in early medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 131–​43, at 136.

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ever existed’.45 Cassiodorus was particularly concerned with Christological deviance; he was strongly, indeed obsessively, Chalcedonian.46 Nestorians, Arians, Eutychians, and Sabellians are alike condemned.47 References to heretics, their wickedness (prauitas), treachery, discord, their insidious pervasiveness and cunning (uersutia), their falseness and fraudulence (fraudulentia), are scattered through the commentary.48 In his discussion of Psalm 10, for example, Cassiodorus remarks of the opening phrase of the heading, In finem, that ‘here it declares the holy faith through which most faithful Christians experience mortal combat with heretics’;49 ‘the Psalm,’ he goes on to proclaim, ‘has been put forward to destroy heretics.’50 As with Bede, the metaphors are defensive: heretics lie in ambush to corrupt Catholics; they are persuasive and seduce innocent souls with wicked controversies (prauae contentiones).51 With their hidden plans to deceive Christians by their wicked words of persuasion, they are set in contradistinction to the preachers (praedicantes), holy men and right believers, whose words pour from heaven.52 The Psalm, Cassiodorus declares, ‘embraces with marvellous brevity’ (mirabili breuitate complexus est) –​it has only eight verses –​the wiles (uersutiae) of heretics and the penalties which they incur.53 This urgent sense of heretics in a generalised sense as deceitful and cunning agents of discord, as a pervasive and ever-​present contemporary threat, is very like the rhetoric of Bede. Another matter on which Cassiodorus has interesting things to say –​ things which are crucial to Bede’s work as an historian, and above all as an historian of salvation –​is on the defining of the terms gens (people, race) and

45 L. W. Jones, An introduction to the divine and human readings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), p. 20, quoted by Bailey, Durham Cassiodorus, p. 4. For a more recent and sympathetic view: Heydemann, ‘Orator as exegete’, pp. 21, 39–​40. 46 E.g. Cassiodorus, Exp. 2, lines 400–​5; 80, lines 209–​13; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 166–​7, 169–​70. 47 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 167–​9. 48 prauitas: 10, lines 15, 26; 18, line 80; 49, line 419; 88, line 251; 137, lines 70, 73; contentiones: 2, line 31; 50, line 294; 61, line 107; 118, line 2241; falseness, fraudulentia: 9, line 486; 64, line 144; 74, line 141; 75, line 94; 118, line 1462; uersutia: 10, line 142; 118, line 74; persuasiveness: 10, line 24; 64, line 144; 90, line 106; 118, line 1757; perfidi/​perfidia: 2, line 204; 10, line 115; 25, line 93; 140, line 184. 49 Cassiodorus, Exp. 10, lines 7–​8; trans. Walsh, 1, p. 134: ‘nunc autem sanctam fidem declarat, in qua haeretici digladiantur contra fidelissimos Christianos’. 50 Cassiodorus, Exp. 10, lines 12–​13: ‘Sciendum tamen hunc psalmum prolatum esse ad haereticos destruendos’ (author’s translation). 51 Ibid., 10, line 24. 52 Ibid., 10, lines 113–​17. 53 Cassiodorus, Exp. 10, lines 143–​4; trans. Walsh, 1, p. 138.

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natio (nation). I have discussed this in a recent Toller lecture,54 and so will only briefly recapitulate here. Gentes is usually rendered gentiles in modern translations –​and of course it is indeed used in the sense of non-​Jewish peoples –​but I would argue that we need to think of the word, when used by Bede and his contemporaries, as resonant in particular of the barbarian peoples, and peoples like them from outside the Roman empire. What follows draws extensively upon the work of Gerda Heydemann.55 Heydemann has drawn attention to Cassiodorus’s discussion of terms for peoples in his commentary on Psalm 95, where he declares that when the psalmist speaks of ‘the homelands of the peoples’ (patriae gentium), he means more than if he were merely to speak of gentes. Cassiodorus argues that a gens can embrace some foreigners (peregrini), whereas when we speak of a nation (natio) we do not include outsiders but denote a gens consisting of only one blood (sanguis).56 As Heydemann pointed out, we have here an unusually close analysis of the terms for peoples. The basic word, gens, is to a degree inclusive, whereas the sense of natio is more restricted, representing a purer gens of only one blood. This, she argues, goes beyond the definitions offered by patristic authors such as Augustine. That passage provides the most fully worked out exposition of Cassiodorus’s views on the subject of peoples and nations; but elsewhere he drives home a similar message. Most interestingly, in his treatment of Psalm 21 he declares that the term ‘seed of Israel’ (semen Israel) embraces not simply the people of one natio but the fullness (plenitudo) of all the gentes, and clearly therefore designates the Church.57 Elsewhere he speaks of the Church as the gathering (collectio) of all the holy faithful,58 as embracing the manifold tongues in which every gens praises the creator according to

54 A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede’s idea of the English’ (Toller Lecture, 2015)’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 92 (2016), 1–​26. 55 First presented at the Leeds international medieval conference of 2012 in a paper entitled ‘Exegesis after empire. Christian universalism and particular identities in Latin biblical commentary’. See now G. Heydemann, ‘Peoples of God? Biblical exegesis and the language of community in late antique and early medieval Europe’, in E. Hovden, C. Lutter, and W. Pohl (eds), Meanings of community across medieval Eurasia. Comparative approaches (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 27–​60, esp. 27–​32, 43–​8; G. Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel’, esp. pp. 147–​50, 157, 166–​7. 56 Cassiodorus, Exp. 95, lines 159–​62; trans. Walsh, 2, p. 419: ‘Gens enim aliquos potest habere peregrinos et dum natio dicitur, non aduenas complectimur sed tantum gentem unius sanguinis indicamus.’ 57 Cassiodorus, Exp. 21, line 578; trans. Walsh, 1, p. 230. 58 Cassiodorus, Exp. 4, lines 23–​4, quoted by Heydemann in her Leeds paper: ‘Ecclesia est collectio fidelium sanctorum omnium’.

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its native region (patria).59 In using such terminology Cassiodorus presents the Church as providing a framework for the integration of the barbarian peoples. The distinction between the exclusive world of the chosen people and the barbarian outsiders had been dissolved; the Christian populus Dei could embrace a ‘plurality of gentes’ and the Psalms offered a communal language to express this.60 All this is echoed by Bede. In his short treatise, Thirty questions on the Book of Kings, he writes of the New Testament heirs of Aaron’s priesthood as the sons of grace, ‘collected from every nation of the peoples’.61 And in his commentary on the Temple he classes himself among those ‘who come from gentes, with varying tongues (uariis …linguis) according to the diversity of nations (pro diuersitate nationum) but invoking one and the same God the Father because of the gift of the one Spirit.’62 Such terminology is, of course, especially relevant to the Ecclesiastical history. That work, as Patrick Wormald pointed out, is framed in terms of a single inclusive gens, the gens Anglorum, which encompasses a multiplicity of narrower, more particular, gentes who achieve integration within the embrace of the Church.63 It seems clear that Bede followed Cassiodorus not only in using gens and natio interchangeably to denote a grouping linked by blood and descent, 59 Cassiodorus, Exp. 44, lines 313–​15: ‘sed hic uarietatem, aut linguas multiplices significant, quia omnis gens secundum suam patriam in Ecclesia psallit auctori.’ And see also Exp. 101, lines 519–​21, where Cassiodorus highlights the strength of Catholic unity (uirtus cathlicae unitatis): ‘nam quamuis populus iste de diuersis mundi partibus aggregetur, ad unum tamen conueniunt, dum una fidei regula continentur’ (‘for though this people is assembled from different regions of the world, they come together since they are gathered in one regimen of faith’; trans. Walsh, 3, p. 14). 60 Heydemann, ‘Peoples of God’, pp. 43–​ 8, 50; Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel’, esp. pp. 178–​97. 61 Bede, In Regum librum xxx quaestiones, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), 1, lines 14–​17: ‘pro nobis alios quam de genere Aaron pontificatus sui reliquit heredes filios uidelicet gratiae noui testamenti de uniuersa gentium natione collectos.’ 62 Bede, De templo 2, lines 924–​7: ‘Qui ex gentibus [uenimus] uariis quidem linguis pro diuersitate nationum sed unum eundemque Deum patrem propter unius donum spiritus inuocantes.’ 63 See esp. P. Wormald, ‘The Venerable Bede and the “Church of the English” ’, in P. Wormald and S. Baxter (eds), The times of Bede: studies in early English Christian society and its historian (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 207–​28. Such thinking lies, for example, behind Bede’s description of Augustine of Canterbury as first bishop of the gens Anglorum or of the role of Gregory the Great in converting nostra gens, id est Anglorum, from the power of Satan to the faith of Christ: Bede, Historia ecclesiastica (subsequent references: HE) 2:1, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). Cf. N. Brooks, Bede and the English, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1999).

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but on occasion in treating natio as a less inclusive term especially resonant of such linkages. This more restrictive use of natio is apparent in the much-​debated passage dealing with the origins of the English people (gens Anglorum), in Book V of the Ecclesiastical history, in which Bede says that those called the Germans, the Garmani, by the Britons, from whom the Angles or the Saxons (Angli uel Saxones) derive their origin and descent (genus et origo), comprised many nationes; these are compared with many other nationes from the same parts who are still pagan. Here it seems very probable that Bede is using natio to denote the various (as he saw it) blood-​ linked groupings that in Britannia came in some sense to form a single Anglian or Saxon gens.64 A similar restricted use of natio is especially evident in the opening sentence of Book II, ­chapter 9, where Bede defines the Northumbrian people (gens Nordanhymbrorum) as an English natio, living north of the Humber.65 Here, clearly, he is envisaging the Northumbrians as a narrower, blood-​linked group within the wider and more inclusive English gens.66 To sum up: Cassiodorus’s encyclopaedic account accorded with and indeed probably promoted Bede’s own internalising of the Psalms in liturgy and prayer, and also encouraged him to think of them as a ubiquitous all-​sufficient educational tool. The depth of Bede’s reading of his work is illustrated by the ways in which it inflected his thought on such important matters as the character and all-​pervasive threat of heresy and of the nature of gentes and nationes and the integration of such barbarian groupings into the Catholic church.

Cassiodorus’s Institutions at Wearmouth and Jarrow: recommended authors While there can be no doubt that Bede was deeply acquainted with the Psalm commentary and identified with Cassiodorus as its author, his and his community’s knowledge of the second main work under consideration, the Institutions, remains a much-​debated matter. The issue, however, is very important indeed for our understanding of the programme of studies carried out at Wearmouth and Jarrow, since in so many ways Cassiodorus’s work provides a blueprint for the scholarly activities at the Northumbrian monastery. Pierre Courcelle long ago pointed out that Bede had read the 4 Bede, HE 5:9. 6 65 Bede, HE 2:9. 66 A similar usage is Bede’s reference to the pagan king Penda permitting the preaching of the Word among his own natio, the Mercians: HE 3:21.

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Institutions.67 His argument was based on the fact that the preface of Bede’s commentary on Genesis expressly names several works on that book cited by Cassiodorus in the Institutions and in particular shows knowledge of two which are rather rare: Eustathius’s Latin translation of Basil’s Hexameron and Ambrose’s Exameron.68 Courcelle’s assertion has since been forcefully elaborated by Michael Gorman, who further points out that Bede follows the Institutions in expressly mentioning Augustine’s treatment of Genesis not only in The literal meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram), On Genesis: A refutation of the Manichees (De Genesi adversus Manichaeos), and the Confessions, but remarkably in Against the adversaries of the law and the prophets (Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum), a work which to this day is little known for its treatment of the subject. Gorman also endorses Karen Corsano’s view that the text and diagrams of the Institutions rather than some presumed preface to Cassiodorus’s greater pandect, the so-​called Codex grandior, provided the main source for the prefatory material in the Codex Amiatinus, which includes direct quot­ations from Cassiodorus’s work.69 To all this we may add a neglected observation of Bonifatius Fischer: that, like Cassiodorus, Bede’s fellow monk, the anonymous author of the Life of Ceolfrith, uses the unusual verb transfundere rather than the more normal transferre, when referring to Jerome’s translation of Hebrew sources in the Vulgate, in what appears to be another direct citation of the Institutions.70

67 P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1943), p. 375 note 1. 68 Bede, In Genesim preface, lines 3–​18, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:1.1–​4. For Bede’s use of Eustathius’s translation and Ambrose’s Exameron see C. B. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), pp. 355, 357. 69 M. Gorman, ‘The Codex Amiatinus: a guide to the legends and bibliography’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser. 44.2 (2003), 863–​910, at 866–​7, 869–​72; K. Corsano, ‘The First quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones of Cassiodorus’, Scriptorium 41 (1987), 3–​34. On the Codex Amiatinus see below. 70 Vita Ceolfridi 37, ed. and trans, C. Grocock and I. N. Wood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 78–​121: ‘pandectes … interpretatione beati Hieronymi presbiteri ex Hebreo et Greco fonte transfusus’ (‘the pandect … in the version of the blessed priest Jerome translated from Greek and Roman sources’); Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:12.2: ‘omnes libros ueteris testament diligenter cura in Latinum sermonem de Hebreo fonte transfunderet’ (‘[Jerome] translated all the books of the Old Testament with scrupulous care from Hebrew into Latin’); B. Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften im frühen Mittelalter (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1985), p. 22 and note 36. As far as I can determine, the verb is nowhere used in this context by Jerome himself.

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These views, though to my mind largely persuasive, have by no means found universal acceptance, and on the whole most recent scholarly opinion has tended to favour Paul Meyvaert’s strongly argued case against the Institutions being known at the Northumbrian monasteries, based primarily upon the reasoning that Bede never mentions the work, ignored or failed to mention many of its recommendations and cannot certainly be shown to have quoted from it.71 In seeking to provide further specific instances of scholarly activity at Wearmouth and Jarrow which point directly towards the Institutions, this paper will first scrutinise some significant writers distinctively promoted by Cassiodorus in that work, beginning with Josephus. Although Jewish, Josephus was widely admired by the Fathers; Jerome in particular names and quotes from ‘the Jewish historian’, judaicae scriptor historiae, extolling him as a second Livy.72 He included Josephus in On illustrious men (De uiris inlustribus), though there he says little about him personally, beyond the fact that he was a priest (ex Hierosolymis sacerdos) and confines the notice to Josephus’s writings and his celebrated reference to Christ.73 Cassiodorus builds upon Jerome, giving a new vigour to the study of the Jewish historian.74 He refers to Josephus by name some four times in his work on Psalms, and on two occasions, as we have seen, expressly links him with the diagrams representing the Tabernacle and the Temple placed in the Codex grandior.75 Yet, while clearly esteeming Josephus’s learning,

71 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus and the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum 71 (1996), 827–​83, passim, but esp. 826–​31, 834–​5. He has been followed more recently by D. H. Wright in his review of J. Williams (ed.), Imaging the early medieval bible (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) in The Medieval Review 00.07.08 (2000); Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 17, 82; C. O’Brien, Bede’s temple: an image and its interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 93. But cf. Thacker, Bede and Augustine, p. 8. See now the assessment of C. Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 34–​5. Elsewhere at pp. 12, 233, Chazelle is cautiously accepting of the possibility of the presence of the Institutions in Northumbria. Chazelle’s important book appeared only after this paper had been largely prepared and it has not therefore been possible to take full account of her arguments here. 72 Jerome, Epistola 22, 35.8, ed. I. Hillberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910): ‘tales Josephus, Graecus Liuius, in secunda Iudaicae captiuitatis historia Essenos refert’; Courcelle, Les lettres grecques, pp. 335, 376; G. Bardy, ‘Le souvenir de Josèphe chez les Pères’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 43 (1948), 179–​91, esp. 183–​5. 73 Jerome, Liber de uiris inlustribus 13, ed. C. A. Bernouilli (Freiburg/​Leipzig: Mohr, 1895, repr. Frankfurt: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1968). 74 Bardy, ‘Le souvenir de Josèphe’, p. 386. 75 Cassiodorus, Exp. 14, line 43; 86, line 37; 118, line 23; 132, line 97. For the Codex grandior at Wearmouth-​Jarrow see below.

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Cassiodorus says relatively little about the historian himself in the Psalm commentary, merely confining himself to quoting ‘a certain writer’ (in fact Jerome) as referring to Josephus as a Jewish native speaker (uernaculus judaeorum).76 In the Institutions, however, Cassiodorus is much more forthcoming. In that work, Josephus ­figures –​rather strangely given his Jewish faith –​as first among the Christian historians, and one whose works were absolutely indispensable; he is the only non-​ecclesiastical historian writing in Greek found worthy of mention.77 Following Jerome, Cassiodorus hails Josephus as ‘almost a second Livy’ (paene secundus Liuius) and singles out the Antiquities of the Jews (Antiquitates iudaicae) for its large scale (magnitudo prolixi operis, late diffusus), announcing that he and his friends had surpassed Jerome in translating this work into twenty-​books in Latin, an undertaking which had involved great labour because of its subtlety and complexity.78 He followed this up with praise for the Captivity of the Jews (Bellum iudaicum), written ‘with marvellous brilliancy’ (mirabili nitore), and notes that its translation was ascribed to various eminent Church Fathers because of its outstanding merits (eximia merita).79 Later in the Insitutions, he again praises Josephus, ‘most learned of the Jews’ (Hebreorum doctissimus) for recording in the Antiquities that Abraham had introduced arithmetic and astronomy to the Egyptians.80 Bede, like Cassiodorus, speaks of Josephus with especial warmth and admiration, citing him on numerous occasions.81 In The Reckoning of time he follows Cassiodorus in commending Josephus as doctissimus; he was, he says, ‘a man most learned in legal writings and a priest’.82 Elsewhere, he describes Josephus as ‘an illustrious historian of the Jews’ (illustris Hebreorum historiographus).83 Undoubtedly his approbation looks back 76 Cassiodorus, Exp. 86, line 37; Jerome, Epistola 46.4; Jerome, Commentarii in prophetas minores: In Zach. I, line 450, ed. Y.-​M. Duval, CCSL 76–​76A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964–​9). Cf. J. Halporn, ‘Pandectes, pandects and the Cassiodoran commentary on Psalms’, Revue Bénédictine 90 (1980), 290–​300, esp. 294–​6. 77 Courcelle, Les lettres grecques, p. 335. 78 ‘quoniam est subtilis nimis et multiplex, magno labore in libris uiginti duobus conuerti fecimus in Latinum’. For Cassiodorus’s translation see F. Blatt, The Latin Josephus 1, Introduction and text: ‘The Antiquities’ Books 1–​5 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1958); see the review by J. A. Willis, Journal of Roman Studies 51 (1961), 272–​3. 79 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:17. 80 Cassiodorus, Inst. 2:3.22. Cf. Jerome, Epistola 29.7. 81 Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 218. 82 Bede, De temporum ratione 63, line 24, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977); trans. F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 150: ‘doctissimus legalium litterarum et sacerdos’. 83 Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 1, lines 1057–​60, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960).

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ultimately to Jerome, a large collection of whose works were available at Wearmouth and Jarrow;84 they included On illustrious men and it may have been from that text that he gained his knowledge that Josephus was a priest. But Bede also had Cassiodorus very much in mind when he made use of Josephus. That is apparent from his discussion of the drawings of the Tabernacle and the Temple, which he expressly says that he has seen and which he attributes to Cassiodorus. His assumption that the latter derived his knowledge of the layout of these structures and of the bronze grate in the altar of sacrifice from Jewish teachers (doctores judaeorum, antiqui judaei) was clearly based on Cassiodorus’s statements in the Psalm commentary linking the pictures in the pandect with the descriptions by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews.85 Interestingly too in the Institutions Josephus was associated by Cassiodorus with discussion of the figurative significance of priestly garments, the very garments depicted upon Ezra in the famous portrait and discussed by Bede at length in his commentary on the Tabernacle.86 It has recently been emphasised that, like the Amiatine image of the Tabernacle, that of Ezra was closely modelled on the descriptions of Josephus in the Antiquities.87 Bede in his commentaries clearly gave especial weight to these and, remarkably, in his exegesis of the high priest’s headdress in his work on the Tabernacle preferred Josephus’s account of it to the biblical one.88

4 Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, pp. 215–​17. 8 85 Cassiodorus, Exp. 14, lines 43–​5 (Tabernacle); 86, line 37 (Temple). See also 132, line 97; Bede, De tabernaculo 2, lines 1563–​70; De templo 2, lines 28–​52. Cf. the reference in Bede, In Regum librum xxx quaestiones 18, lines 57–​9; trans. Holder, Bede: a biblical miscellany, p. 120: ‘sed Josephi scriptura uel pictura ab antiquis formata plenius quo sint haec ordine distinguit’ (‘The passages from Josephus or the picture sketched by the ancients delineate more fully the plan of how these things were made’). 86 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:5.2; trans. Halporn, p. 122: ‘de ueste quoque sacerdotali plurima Domini sacramenta texebat, asserens nihil otiose positum quod non alicuius rei pulcherrimam portaret imaginem; haec etiam Ioseppum, Origenem et Hieronymum commemorasse in suis opusculis asserebat’ (‘He [Eusebius, see below] connected priestly dress with several mysteries of the Lord and stated that nothing was placed [in Scripture] without purpose or without carrying a beautiful symbol of something else. He also stated that Josephus, Origen, and Jerome had made the same point in their books’). For Bede’s discussion see De tabernaculo 3, lines 171–​1124. 87 S. H. Wander, ‘Illuminations of the Tabernacle of Moses and of Ezra in Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1): Bede, Cassiodorus and the Antiquitates Judaicae of Flavius Josephus’, Anglo-​Saxon England 46 (2019), 1–​29; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 328. 88 Bede, De tabernaculo 3, lines 932–​1000; L. Webster, ‘The Christian objects: function and significance’, in T. M. Dickinson, C. R. J. Fern, and L. Webster (eds), The

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Cassiodorus’s remarks in the Institutions on the significance of priestly garments occur immediately after reference to the images of the Tabernacle and the Temple which he had placed in the greater pandect. The context is praise of a certain Eusebius’s knowledge of the allegorical nature of Scripture and of his leading Cassiodorus to discover ‘many ancient books’ (multos codices antiquos); this, we learn, was despite Eusebius being a Novatian heretic (Nouatianae prauitatis errore detentus), though Cassiodorus was confident of his being brought to the true faith by the mercy of God.89 Cassiodorus thus associates images of the Tabernacle and the Temple with the priestly vesture evident in the Ezra portrait, thereby implying that he was led to Josephus’s description and figurative understanding of all of these things by Eusebius. The heretical Eusebius’s mediating role is unlikely to have appealed to Bede,90 but the connection between Josephus and both the imagery and mystical meaning of the Tabernacle, the Temple and priestly vesture in the Institutions is surely significant. Such a linkage, together with Cassiodorus’s high praise of Josephus, as an historian with a proper sense of the operation of divine providence in human affairs, could have encouraged Bede to name and quote him so extensively, especially in his trilogy on the Tabernacle, the Temple, and Ezra.91 This positive treatment contrasts notably with the reserve of Isidore, who names Josephus only a handful of times.92 Another author distinctively recommended by Cassiodorus in the Institutions was Eugippius, who features together with Dionysius Exiguus, also one of Cassiodorus’s contemporaries, in a chapter at the end of the section devoted to those whom Vessey terms the ‘stars’ of the Latin Church. Although Vessey rightly observed that Eugippius and Dionysius are ‘manifestly not of the same rank’ as Hilary of Poitiers, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome,

Staffordshire Hoard: an Anglo-​Saxon treasure (London: Historic England/​Society of Antiquaries, 2019), pp. 99–​119, at 115–​16. 89 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:5.2. 90 Meyvaert argued that the omission of any reference to Eusebius was because Bede did not know the Institutions (‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 835; cf. Holder, Bede: On the Tabernacle, p. 92 note 1), but it may rather stem from his reluctance to cite a heretic as an authority for such exegetically crucial structures or because he did not interpret them in the same way; see O’Brien, Bede’s temple, p. 96–​100. 91 Bede, De tabernaculo 1, line 929; 2, lines 224, 814, 894, 914, 1120; 3, lines 948, 953, 973; De templo 1, lines 381, 571; 2, lines 14, 19, 69; In Ezram et Neemiam 2, lines 202, 216, 468, 783, 1280, 1360, 1718; 3, line 1490. It also perhaps focused his attention on the praise scattered through Jerome’s vast oeuvre. 92 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 3:25.1 and 9:2.35, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); Chronica: s.a. 1642 and 2242, ed. J. C. Martin, CCSL 112 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).

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and Augustine, their appearance in such illustrious company undoubtedly confers upon them a certain prominence.93 I have discussed Bede’s use of Eugippius’s work elsewhere,94 and will summarise here. Eugippius, who died in 535, was abbot of Castellum Lucullanum in Naples and author of an important florilegium, a collection of excerpta from Augustine’s works, which he dedicated to Cassiodorus’s niece Proba.95 His work in many ways prefigured that of Cassiodorus, who had known him personally and who commended him highly, describing him as an exceptional exegete, whose works were indispensable.96 Cassiodorus singled out the florilegium, which was still being copied in Naples in 582,97 as ‘recommended reading since this diligent scholar set down in one collection what can scarcely be found in a great library’.98 Eugippius’s work was to become an influential vehicle for the diffusion of Augustine in the early Middle Ages, initially especially in Italy and in England.99 He was also known to Isidore of Seville and features among his illustrious men (in De uiris illustribus, a text not known to Bede), but Isidore does not mention any excerpta.100 Wearmouth-​Jarrow possessed a copy of Eugippius’s florilegium.101 As recommended by Cassiodorus in the Institutions, Bede used it extensively when he compiled his own collection of Augustinian excerpta devoted to the letters of the Apostle Paul.102 Bede arranged the excerpts in accordance with biblical text, to form a rigorous verse-​by-​verse commentary on the Pauline epistles and in so doing appears to have been influenced by the

3 Vessey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 58–​9; Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:18–​23. 9 94 Thacker, Bede and Augustine, pp. 7–​9. 95 Eugippius, Excerpta, ed. P. Knöll, CSEL 9 (Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1885). On Eugippius see Riché, Education and culture, pp. 130–​1; Biblical commentaries from the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian, ed. B. Bischoff and M. Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 114–​20. 96 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:23.1: ‘Conuenit etiam ut presbyteri Eugippii opera necessaria legere debeatis, quem nos quoque uidimus, uirum quidem non usque adeo saecularibus etiam eruditum, sed Scripturarum diuinarum lectione plenissimum.’ M. Gorman, The manuscript traditions of the works of St Augustine (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), p. 57; on Codex Amiatinus see below. 97 Riché, Education and culture, p. 160. 98 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:23.1; trans. Halporn, p. 154: ‘Qui codex, ut arbitror, utiliter legitur, quando in uno corpore diligentia studiosi uiri potuit recondi, quod in magna bibliotheca uix praeualet inueniri.’ 99 Gorman, Manuscript traditions, esp. pp. 116–​17, 146, 163, 213. 100 Isidore, De uiris illustribus 13, ed. C. Codoñer Merino (Salamanca: Theses et studia philiologica salamanticensia, 1964). 101 Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon library, pp. 36, 60, 207. 102 Featured in the list of Bede’s writings in HE 5:24, but unpublished, see Thacker, Bede and Augustine, p. 7 note 34.

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programme of study outlined by Cassiodorus in the Institutions. For his discussion of the biblical books in that work, in the section on the apostolic letters, Cassiodorus had highlighted the need for an authoritative comprehensive and orthodox commentary on the Pauline epistles. In particular, he eloquently commended the project of a certain Peter, abbot of the province of Tripoli: He declares the secret of his own heart with the tongue of another and he has fitted these examples [drawn from Augustine] so suitably to individual passages [of the Pauline epistles] that you might think that the whole had been accomplished rather by the effort of the blessed Augustine. For it is remarkable that one author has elucidated the text from another commentator in such a way that he seems to have expressed the desire of his own heart without adding a word of his own.103

Cassiodorus had not actually seen the work which he so expressively promoted, and indeed it seems not to have existed; his words represent an ideal he sought to inculcate.104 It was invoked because Cassiodorus was especially anxious to improve the available exegetical material on the Pauline epistles. He already had commentaries on four of them by Jerome at Vivarium,105 and was eagerly searching out other texts.106 Bede’s collectaneum on the Pauline epistles is a response to the quest and exactly corresponded to the enterprise ascribed by Cassiodorus to Peter of Tripoli. It fulfilled the need for an Augustinian commentary on all the Pauline epistles and it drew upon an earlier florilegialist whom Cassiodorus had particularly recommended. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Bede was in fact consciously filling a gap in biblical studies noted in the Institutions.

103 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:8.9; trans. Halporn, p. 129: ‘sancti Pauli epistulas exemplis opusculorum beati Augustini subnotasse narratur, ut per os alienum sui cordis declararet arcanum; qui ita locis singulis competenter aptauit, ut magis studio beati Augustini credas esse perfectum. Mirum est enim sic alterum ex altero dilucidasse, ut nulla uerborum suorum adiectione permixta desiderium cordis propria complesse uideatur.’ 104 A. Wilmart, ‘Le mythe de Pierre de Tripoli’, Revue Bénédictine 43 (1931), 347–​52; A. Wilmart, ‘La collection de Bède le Vénérable sur l’Apôtre’, Revue Bénédictine 38 (1926), 16–​52. 105 Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon: Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:8.13. 106 They comprise: annotationes composed by Ambrose on all the Pauline epistles, Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:8.10; commentaries by Jerome on a further seven (1–​2 Corinthians, 1–​ 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, 1–​ 2 Timothy), Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:8.14. Cassiodorus concluded that if fuller Latin commentaries could not be found then the best option would be to translate from the Greek the excellent commentary of John Chrysostom, which was already at Vivarium: Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:8.15.

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One other author distinctively endorsed by Cassiodorus left a particular mark upon Bede. Dionysius Exiguus receives a remarkably warm, disproportionately lengthy and detailed recommendation as a modern uir illustris in the chapter in which he is coupled with Eugippius, as a leading contemporary scriptural scholar.107 Dionysius is praised for his personal holiness, for his skilled and fluent translations, for his understanding of the Scriptures and most significantly for his strict Catholic orthodoxy and adherence to the rules of the Fathers.108 Bede, in his great work on the reckoning of time, likewise names him favourably as a venerable abbot of Rome, knowledgeable in Greek and Latin, and the creator of Incarnational dating.109 Although Bede’s source is the continuator of the Dionysian tables, it clearly chimes with Cassiodorus’s panegyric in the Institutions.110 Cassiodorus does not mention Dionysius’s computistical work but that he was associated with it is evident from the manuscript tradition of a short text known as the ‘Easter computus’ (computus paschalis). This compilation of 562, ‘essentially a copy’ of Dionysius’s argumenta, his computistical tables on the calculation of Easter, circulated exclusively with an interpolated form of the second book of the Institutions, the earliest evidence of the association being a manuscript in an Insular hand of the late eighth century.111 Bede’s decisive adoption of Dionysiac dating, as advocated by Wilfrid and in Bede’s Irish sources,112 may have been reinforced by Cassiodorus’s promotion of Dionysius himself.

07 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:23.2–​4. 1 108 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:23.3: ‘erat totus catholicus, totus paternis regulis perseueranter adiunctus’. 109 Bede, De temporum ratione 47. Bede also names Dionysius elsewhere in De temporum ratione: 65, 66, s.a. 4518. 110 C. W. Jones, Bedae opera de temporibus (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 73–​4, 265, 381, quoting the edition of B. Krusch, Studien zur christlich-​mittelalterlich Chronologie: die Entstehung unserer heutigen Zeitrechnung (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1938), pp. 86–​7; Wallis, Bede: Reckoning of time, pp. liii–​lv. 111 Wallis, Bede: Reckoning of time, p. liv; O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, p. 217. For Dionysius’s (interpolated) text see PL 67, cols 497–​ 508; for an edition of the text bound with Inst. 2 see P. Lehmann, Erforschung des Mittelalters, 5 vols (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1941–​62), 2, ‘Cassiodorstudien’, pp. 48–​55. Mynors discusses the relevant manuscripts in Cassiodorus, Inst. introduction, pp. xxiv–​xxvi. For a dismissal of the significance of the date 562 in relation to Cassiodorus see O. Neugebauer, ‘On the computus paschalis of “Cassiodorus” ’, Centaurus 25 (1981), 292–​302. 112 See Wallis, Bede: Reckoning of time, pp. lv–​lxiii.

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Cassiodorus, Wearmouth-​Jarrow, and the pandect From authors let us turn to terminology, in particular the use of the word ‘pandect’ to refer to a complete text of the Bible. Pandectes, pandectis, is a masculine first declension noun of Greek origin, meaning ‘a book that contains everything, a complete repertory’.113 It was not originally used expressly of the Bible but could refer to a collection of legal texts such as Justinian’s Digest. In the Institutions, however, Cassiodorus deploys the word more specifically, to denote a complete Bible. Thus in his discussion of the biblical books, Cassiodorus alludes to placing pictures of the Tabernacle and the Temple in ‘the Latin pandect of the larger format’ (in pandecte Latino corporis grandioris).114 Later, he makes the meaning quite explicit: the complete Vulgate (i.e. the smaller pandect), which he was commissioning, was to comprise fifty gatherings (representing the Hieronymian division of the biblical books), to be written ‘in a smaller hand because of the abundance of text’ (minutiore manu propter copiam lectionis).115 He is especially emphatic that a pandect should include both testaments. In his chapter on the division of Scripture into seventy books, he expressly says that the Codex grandior (earlier called a pandect) contained both testaments so divided. He is so keen to reinforce this new understanding of the term that he wilfully misinterprets Augustine’s recommendation in On Christian doctrine that Latin codices should be corrected if necessary from the Greek. Even though Augustine was referring to the Septuagint, that is simply the Old Testament, Cassiodorus goes out of his way to say, incorrectly, that by ‘codices’ the great Doctor was designating both Old and New. He goes on to note that in consequence he had left a Greek pandect (meaning a complete Bible) in seventy-​five books in the eighth bookcase of his library.116 In the following chapter, in the section on the correction of Scripture, he contrasts Jerome’s use of the Septuagint for such a purpose with Augustine’s recommendation of recourse to the Greek pandect ‘which is known to have collected together the whole of divine law’ (qui omnem legem diuinam 113 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 232; T. O’Loughlin, ‘ “Who, O Lord, shall live in your Tabernacle?” The map of the Tabernacle within the life of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow’, in J. Hawkes and M. Boulton (eds), All roads lead to Rome: the creation, context and transmission of the Codex Amiatinus (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 89–​ 104, esp. 89–​ 91; Halporn, ‘Pandectes, pandecta’, 290–​300; C. T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). 114 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:5.2. 115 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:12.3. 116 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:14.4; Augustine, De doctrina christiana 2:15.22, ed. J. Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); Halporn, Institutions, p. 138 note 156.

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dinoscitur habere collectam); again the implication is that the pandect contained both Testaments.117 Cassiodorus appears to have been the first to use the term ‘pandect’ to designate a complete Bible.118 Indeed he was clearly emphatically assigning it a particularly specific meaning. Thereafter it next recurs in this sense at Wearmouth and Jarrow in the early eighth century.119 There Bede applies the term to the Bible ‘of the old translation’ (uetustae translationis), brought back by Biscop and Ceolfrith from Rome in 678, and, together with the anonymous author of the Life of Ceolfrith, to the three celebrated complete versions of the Vulgate, produced at Wearmouth-​Jarrow under the direction of Abbot Ceolfrith: the Codex Amiatinus and its sister Bibles.120 Very probably therefore this unusual usage derived directly from Cassiodorus. Its deployment has been explained by the community’s identification of the Old Latin Bible which they brought back from Rome with the ‘greater pandect’ (Codex grandior) mentioned in the Psalm commentary as the book in which the celebrated images of the Tabernacle and the Temple had been placed. It is true that Bede expressly draws attention to those passages but Cassiodorus’s use of the word in the Psalm commentary is not explicit and can only be fully understood by reference to the Institutions.121 In particular, the term’s deployment at Wearmouth and Jarrow to designate freshly edited Vulgate texts of the complete Bible surely reflects knowledge of Cassiodorus’s own projected Vulgate pandect.122 Complete Bibles were rare.123 The Institutions reveal that, remarkably, Cassiodorus’s community possessed three in Latin and one in Greek, and perhaps knowledge of that further encouraged Wearmouth and Jarrow to embark upon their project to create three new Bibles.124 17 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:15.11. 1 118 R. Marsden, The text of the Old Testament in Anglo-​Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 30. 119 Chazelle notes that she can find no use of the word in Latin sources to designate a Christian Bible between Cassiodorus and Bede: Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 232–​3. 120 Bede, Historia abbatum 15; Bede, De temporum ratione 66, line 2047; Vita Ceolfridi 20, 37. 121 Cassiodorus, Exp. 14, lines 43–​5 (‘quod nos fecimus pingi et in pandectis maioris capite collocari’); Exp. 86, lines 36–​44 (‘et in corpore pandectae nostrae grandioris fecimus collocari’); Bede, De tabernaculo 2, lines 1565–​70; De templo 2, lines 28–​52. 122 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:12.3. 123 Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften, p. 20. 124 Vivarium’s three complete Latin Bibles were the Old Latin pandect (Codex grandior), the smaller Vulgate pandect, and the novem codices, also Old Latin: Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften, pp. 10–​18. For discussion of whether a multi-​volume

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If Wearmouth and Jarrow did not possess the Institutions, then, clearly their understanding that this novel term meant a single-​volume complete Bible would have depended solely upon their identification of the Old Latin translation brought back from Rome with Cassiodorus’s Codex grandior, as mentioned in the Psalm commentary. That in fact the Old Latin pandect was indeed the Codex grandior remains the most widely accepted view, recently endorsed by Chazelle.125 Bede’s express statement that he had personally seen the depictions of the Tabernacle and the Temple which Cassiodorus had placed in the Codex grandior should surely tip the scale.126 As Corsano and Gorman point out, however, this hypothesis is not without its difficulties.127 In particular, there is no evidence that any of Cassiodorus’s books were in Rome before the ninth century; a more plausible route for southern Italian material to arrive in Wearmouth-​Jarrow would have been via Canterbury, home to Archbishop Theodore’s coadjutor the Neapolitan Abbot Hadrian. He is very likely to have been the means by which manuscripts from late sixth-​ century Neapolitan scriptoria, including a lost Neapolitan Gospel book from the library of Eugippius, came to Northumbria.128 Ceolfrith’s Bible is then not especially likely to have been Cassiodoran. Nor need it even have contained the illustrations physically present in Wearmouth-​ Jarrow. As Corsano suggests they may have been in a detached gathering.129 Interestingly, in what is probably his earliest reference to the images, in the Thirty questions on the Book of Kings, Bede is not clear (as later) about who was responsible for them.130 While it is always dangerous to argue complete Bible could be regarded as a pandect see Chazelle: Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 232–​3; C. Chazelle, ‘The illustrations of the Codex Amiatinus and of Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography’, in Hawkes and Boulton (eds), All roads lead to Rome, pp. 11–​25, at 13. The enormous size of the Codex Amiatinus and the effort and expense that that involved would suggest that the community at Wearmouth and Jarrow thought the single-​volume format was regarded as essential. 125 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, esp. pp. 12, 311–​97. See also Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, esp. pp. 129–​39. 126 Bede, De templo 2, lines 48–​52. Chazelle, while accepting that Wearmouth and Jarrow may also have had a copy of the Institutions, considers the evidence for their having the Codex grandior ‘indirect yet substantial’ and observes ‘it seems a virtual certainty that Bede had seen the imagery for himself’: Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 12, 314. 127 Gorman, ‘Codex Amiatinus: a guide to the legends and bibliography’, pp. 866–​7; Corsano, ‘First quire’, 5. 128 Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical commentaries, pp. 118–​20, 159–​60. 129 Corsano, ‘First quire’, 33. As Meyvaert notes, Bede speaks as if they had been placed in a pre-​existing Bible: ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 835. He had some sense therefore of their being in some way a separate object. 130 Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 833–​ 4. Cf. Holder, Bede: a biblical miscellany, pp. 86–​7, 120 note 6.

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from silence, that is odd if they were in fact in a treasured Bible which the monastery had long identified as belonging to Cassiodorus.131 But even if we accept that the Old Latin Bible at Wearmouth was indeed the Codex grandior, the fact remains that the two books were very different indeed. Cassiodorus’s codex comprised Jerome’s hexaplaric revision of Old Latin versions of the Old Testament, together with the Gospels perhaps in the Vulgate and the rest of the New Testament in Old Latin, written in unspaced scriptura continua; the Codex Amiatinus was the Vulgate text throughout, written with word spacing per cola et commata. Punctuation by cola and commata was expressly connected by Cassiodorus with transcription of the entire Vulgate text although, as Vessey points out, Jerome nowhere states that he had arranged the whole of Scripture in this way. Most pertinently, it was not the way in which the Codex grandior was written.132 Here, the progenitors of the Codex Amiatinus seem to have been following the prescription of the Institutions rather than the model provided by Cassiodorus’s pandect. The Codex grandior cannot therefore have provided the template for the text or appearance of Wearmouth-​Jarrow’s new Vulgate Bibles. Indeed, scholars have recently stressed the Insular input into the Codex Amiatinus. Richard Gameson, for example, has shown that in codicological and palaeo­ graphical terms, including its adoption of word separation, Codex Amiatinus is a hybrid, a demonstration that the Wearmouth-​Jarrow community was ‘neither immune nor unreceptive to Insular scribal culture’.133 Peter Darby has drawn attention to the community’s distinctive admir­ation for Jerome.134 Clearly, Ceolfrith’s project was of manifold inspiration. Marsden has shown that it involved collating a wide variety of manuscripts and, for the Old Testament at least, a complex process of copying and correcting the text –​ either by assessing the quality of different versions or by second-​guessing –​ and then a final review of mistakes made in that process.135 While we are looking at a project inspired perhaps in part by Cassiodorus’s pandect, it had other –​and more significant –​roots. In particular, the scriptural work 131 Meyvaert was obliged to argue that the treasured Bible was only recognised as Cassiodorus’s greater codex in the second or third decade of the eighth century: ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 827, 831–​2. 132 Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften, pp. 10–​12, 21–​2; Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 117, 131; Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:12.4 (cf. praefatio 9); Halporn, Institutions, pp. 109, 136; Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 837–​8. 133 R. Gameson, Codex Amiatinus: making and meaning, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 2018), esp. p. 51. 134 P. Darby, ‘The Codex Amiatinus Maiestas Domini and the Gospel prefaces of Jerome’, Speculum 92 (2017), 343–​71, at 350; below. 135 Marsden, Text of the Old Testament, pp. 140–​201, esp. 183–​90.

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carried out at Wearmouth and Jarrow undoubtedly evokes Cassiodorus’s discussion in the Institutions of the various Latin versions of the Bible, of the arrangement of the biblical books and of how biblical text ought to be transcribed and corrected. While it did not necessarily follow Cassiodorus’s particular recommendations or deductions, the Institutions shaped the overall direction and methodology of its activity.136

The Amiatine prefaces There is, in fact, much to suggest that the scholars at Wearmouth and Jarrow had sufficient confidence and independence of judgement to choose their models and to depart from Cassiodorus’s conclusions and recommendations in all sorts of ways. One such matter is the summaries which in the Codex Amiatinus preface the Vulgate text of particular books or collections of books. These often differ from the models which Cassiodorus had in mind when he was writing the Institutions.137 The discrepancies, it has been noted, show ‘that it is unlikely that the prefatory material used at Wearmouth-​Jarrow was dependent on the Codex grandior’, but rather drawn from a variety of Vulgate codices available at Wearmouth-​Jarrow.138 In fact, as Darby has recently pointed out, the community was strongly convinced of the superiority of Jerome’s Vulgate version; they used Hieronymian material, mainly letters, to form their prologues, treating them with such respect as virtually to incorporate them into the biblical text.139 While they may have been using the Codex grandior in some important respects as a model, they were also quite capable of adjusting it in all sorts of even more important ways by using other sources. With this in mind, it is perhaps worth looking yet again at the prefatory material in the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus. The prologue on fol. IVr is written as a first person plural narrative and at one point directly addresses the brethren.140 Such phraseology would have been appropriate for both communities, at Vivarium and Wearmouth-​Jarrow. The text is strongly Cassiodoran in tone and indeed includes a direct and extended quotation from the Institutions (borrowings italicised):

36 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:1–​15. 1 137 Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften, pp. 26–​8. 138 Marsden, Text of Old Testament, pp. 142–​4. 139 Darby, ‘Codex Amiatinus Maiestas Domini’, 350. 140 Codex Amiatinus, fol IVr: ‘Festinemus itaque fratres ad animarum fontem uiuum’ (‘therefore let us hasten, brethren, to the living fountain of life’).

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In hoc autem corpore utrumque testamentum septuagenario numero probatur impletum, in illa palmarum quantitate forsitan praesagatus, quas in mansione helim inuenit populus hebraeorum. In this schema, both testaments are proved completed in the number 70, signified perhaps in that quantity of palm trees which the people of the Hebrews found in their abode at Helim.141

It has been widely supposed that the monks at Wearmouth and Jarrow reverentially copied out word for word a presumed prologue written by Cassiodorus to preface the Codex grandior, identified as the pandect in the old translation brought from Rome to Wearmouth.142 It should be noted, however, that while Cassiodorus introduces each of his own works with a preface (praefatio), sometimes, as in the case of the Psalm commentary and On orthography, distinctly personal in tone, he nowhere mentions prefixing a prologue to any of his Bibles.143 It is perfectly possible, given what has just been said about their methods of working, that the monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow took their inspiration from Jerome (after all, the table of contents on the verso concludes with verse in praise of Jerome144) and compiled such an introduction to their great work themselves, making use of Cassiodoran material. The departures from Bedan vocabulary noted by Meyvaert need not be significant; for there is no pressing reason to suppose that he wrote it. It is just as –​perhaps more –​likely that the author was Ceolfrith, the director of the project, as in the case of so many exhibition catalogues produced by modern museums and galleries.145 Cassiodorus’s larger codex was described as containing seventy books in the Institutions,146 corresponding to the seventy books mentioned in the Amiatinus prologue. The heading of the list of biblical books on the verso of the prologue, however, refers to seventy-​one books, though a certain amount of juggling is necessary to make the titles in the list itself corres­ pond to that number and an erasure has to be adduced to bring them up

141 For a full discussion of the Cassiodoran elements see Corsano, ‘First quire’, 11–​13; Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 866–​70. 142 See esp. Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 866–​8. Chazelle accepts this view of the prologue: Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 337–​8. 143 Corsano, ‘First quire’, 11. 144 Codex Amiatinus, fol. IVv. 145 As Meyvaert himself notes (‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 866–​8), the Cassiodoran use of calculus to denote reckoning occurs frequently in the Psalm commentary. The metaphorical use ‘palace of the Scriptures’ (Scripturarum divinarum palatium) is similar to ‘palace of piety’ (palatium pietatis) in the commentary on Psalm 85, line 58. Any one of Bede’s fellow scholar-​monks also soaked in the Psalm commentary could easily have replicated such usages. 146 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:14.2.

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from seventy to seventy-​one.147 Such a discrepancy did not seem to matter very much to Cassiodorus himself. He thought in terms of the complementarity of the various systems of division;148 while proclaiming the mystical significance of seventy, and the authorities underpinning it, he found Augustine’s seventy-​one books equally satisfactory and authoritative, and he detected further figurative significance in the seventy-​five books of his Greek Bible.149 Possibly, as Corsano suggests, the corpus of seventy referred to the systematisation of the material and the codex of seventy-​one to the order of contents of the physical book. In the last resort, however, it cannot be denied that the inconsistency does hint at elements in the prologue being copied from a pre-​existing text rather than directly relating to the contents of the succeeding biblical manuscript itself, be it the supposed prologue to the Codex grandior or the Institutions themselves. But even if it be granted that the Codex grandior replete with a prologue was indeed in Wearmouth-​ Jarrow, that does not exclude the possibility that the corresponding text in the Codex Amiatinus was reinforced and inflected by knowledge of the Institutions. The monks showed themselves capable of adapting and composing other prefatory material, such as Ceolfrith’s dedication on folio Iv and the verses of Isidore of Seville (which cannot have been copied from the Codex grandior) on folio IVv beneath the lists of books.150 The first three quote directly from Isidore of Seville, but the fourth ingeniously adapts an earlier line, apparently alluding to the new Vulgate gifts laid among the library’s ancient treasures.151 The three diagrams illustrating the arrangement and division of the biblical text have been exhaustively debated and it is not proposed to discuss them here.152 Suffice it to note that similar illustrative diagrams were probably produced for Cassiodorus to be included in the Institutions.153 What is

47 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 338–​9. 1 148 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:14.3: ‘nos omnia tria genera diuisionem iudicauimus affligenda, ut inspecta diligenter atque tractata non impugnare sed ad inuicem se potius exponere uideantur’, quoted by Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 38 note 12. 149 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:14.2; 1:13.2; 1:8.2; 1:14.4. Curiously the panel on fol. VIIIr wrongly attributes seventy-​two books to Augustine in De doctrina christiana. 150 See also the caption for the Ezra portrait for which Isidore is also the source: Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 333. 151 Corsano, ‘First quire’, 14; Darby, ‘Codex Amiatinus Maiestas Domini’, 369–​71. 152 For the most recent discussion see Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 355–​64; C. A. Farr, ‘The graphic presentation of inscriptions, first quire of the Codex Amiatinus’, in Hawkes and Boulton (eds), All roads lead to Rome, pp. 63–​76. 153 Corsano, ‘First quire’, 23–​ 4; Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 355.

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incontrovertible is that the text in the accompanying panels is very closely related to the discussion and presentation of the appropriate biblical schema in that work. These panels are generally assumed to derive exclusively from compositions placed by Cassiodorus in the Codex grandior without reference to the Institutions,154 but even so problems remain. The most puzzling is that relating to the Septuagint division, which again refers to the palm trees of Helim (fol. VIIr): Sic fiunt ueteris nouique testamenti sicut diuidit sanctus Hilarus Romanae urbis antistes et Epiphanius Cyprius quem latino fecisse sermone transferri libri LXX. In illo palmarum numero fortasse praesagati quas in mansione Helim inuenit populus Hebreorum. Thus are made the seventy books of the old and new testaments as St Hilarus, bishop of the city of Rome, and Epiphanius the Cypriot, whom we have caused to be translated into the Latin tongue, divided them. [They are] perhaps presaged in that number of palm trees which the people of the Hebrews found in the abode of Helim.

The relevant section in the Institutions names Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Rufinus, priest of Aquileia, Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus, and the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon as having accepted the Septuagint divisions, despite their differences, just as the harmonies of the Gospels ‘present events with faith though they differ in the way they are told’.155 It is striking that the panel changes Hilary of Poitiers to Hilary of Rome and omits Rufinus and the Councils.156 It also adds, in the first person plural, the phrase relating to the translation of Epiphanius into Latin. This phrase occurs elsewhere in the Institutions: when Cassiodorus is discussing the Song of Songs and notes that the Cypriot bishop Epiphanius had ‘treated the whole book in one brief volume in Greek’.157 The text of the panel could then have been constructed in Wearmouth-​Jarrow from material in the Institutions. That would, however, require the brethren at Wearmouth-​Jarrow to identify with Cassiodorus in such a way that they could adopt his voice in the first person 154 For the most authoritative presentation of this view, see Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 839–​44; for more caution see now, Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, p. 355. 155 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:14.3. 156 For the problems with Cassiodorus’s list, which may have been responsible for the revisions, see Corsano, ‘First quire’, 22–​3. As Chazelle points out, the changes may have been intended to point to an orthodox Roman underpinning to the arrangement that is closest to that in Codex Amiatinus and is accorded the most sumptuous decoration: Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 361–​3. 157 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:5.4; trans. Halporn, p. 123: ‘Epiphanius antistes Cyprius totum librum Graeco sermon uno volumine sub breviatate complexus est. hunc nos … in Latinam linguam … fecimus … transferri.’

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plural; they after all had clearly not translated Epiphanius. It is perhaps more likely that they did indeed have a Cassiodoran text before them; but even if this be granted, they nevertheless at the very least had the independence of judgement to amend and, as they believed, correct it. That editing process was of just the kind recommended by Cassiodorus himself and perhaps depended on material in the Institutions. It is entirely possible –​and perhaps more plausible –​to suppose that any pre-​existing model for this panel was reinforced by a reading of the Institutions.158

The wider educational programme A few final points may be made about the role of the Institutions in relation to other aspects of scholarly activity at Wearmouth and Jarrow, besides those focused directly on the Bible. As Courcelle noted, in addition to the study of Scripture, scriptural commentary, and the seven liberal arts, Cassiodorus also emphasised that other branches of learning were necessary for monks, in particular history, geography, and the natural sciences.159 We have already seen that his recommendation of Josephus as a Christian historian and of Eugippius as an excerptor and compiler probably influenced Bede. As to geography, Cassiodorus considered that monks should know about the places which they read about in the holy books. He stressed in particular the work of Marcellinus Comes, already commended as a Christian historian, expressly mentioning its detailed accounts of Constantinople and Jerusalem.160 As O’Loughlin has suggested for Adomnán at Iona,161 know­ ledge of the Institutions may have shaped Bede’s undoubted interest in the Holy Places. His early work On the Holy Places (De locis sanctis), is, as he acknowledged, heavily dependent on Adomnán’s work of the same name, but he reorders it so that it starts in Jerusalem and ends in Constantinople.162 Bede thought the subject matter sufficiently important to include four of its chapters in his account of Adomnán in the Ecclesiastical history.163 58 Chazelle, Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles, pp. 361–​2. 1 159 Courcelle, Lettres grecques, p. 335. See esp. Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:17; 1:25; 1:31. 160 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:25.1. Cf. praise for Marcellinus’s Chronicon in the chapter on Christian historians: Inst. 1:15.1–​2. 161 T. O’Loughlin, ‘The library of Iona in the late seventh century: the evidence from Adomnán’s De locis sanctis’, Ériu 45 (1994), 33–​52, at 50. 162 Bede, De locis sanctis, esp. 1–​2, 19, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); P. Darby and D. Reynolds, ‘Reassessing the “Jerusalem pilgrims”: the case of Bede’s De locis sanctis’, Bulletin for the Council for British Research in the Levant 9 (2014), 27–​31 at 29. 163 Bede, HE 5:15–​17.

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Bede, Ceolfrith, and Cassiodorus

Near the end of Book I of the Institutions, Cassiodorus turns to what was to form the main subject of his second book, the liberal arts, with a chapter on how the Bible could aid understanding of the trivium –​figures of speech (schemata), grammar (ars grammatica), rhetoric (ars rhetorica) –​and the disciplines of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). A further chapter on orthography lauded the work of scribes (scriptores) and recommended and named ancient orthographers (orthographi antiqui).164 Bede, of course, compiled manuals on the trivium: On the art of poetic metre, On figures of speech and tropes, and On orthography. In these works he made use of two of the orthographi antiqui recommended by Cassiodorus: Martyrius and Velius Longus.165 Moreover, he certainly knew Cassiodorus’s work on the same subject: his last composition, On orthography. Meyvaert, following Lehmann, asserted that all the echoes in Bede’s own text were mediated by a third source, namely Cassiodorus’s own Psalm commentary,166 but it has since been established that this is absolutely not the case. Patrizia Stoppacci in her edition proves conclusively that Bede included two direct quotations from Cassiodorus’s On orthography in his similarly entitled work.167 A further such quot­ ation has also been identified by Calvin Kendall in On the art of metre.168 Interestingly, the two quotations in On orthography cite Virgil, almost as if Bede felt authorised to use such an exemplar by Cassiodorus’s own practice. Bede, of course, does not name Cassiodorus any more than he names Pseudo-​Caper and Agroecius, two other frequently quoted sources. Such manuals, among which he may also have included the Institutions, did not require referencing.

64 Cassiodorus, Inst. 1:27, 30. 1 165 Jones and Kendall, Index auctorum, Beda Venerabilis opera didascalia, CCSL 123C, pp. 782, 799. 166 Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 832; Lehmann, ‘Cassiodorstudien’, pp. 38–​108, at 86–​8. 167 P. Stoppacci, Cassiodoro, De orthographia. Tradizione manoscritta, fontana, edizione critica (Florence: SISMEL, edizioni di Galluzzo, 2010), pp. clxxx–clxxxii. For the relevant quotations see Bede, De orthographia, lines 906–​7, 1242–​4, ed. C.W. Jones, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), deriving respectively from Cassiodorus, De orthographia 7, 41–​2 and 4, 105–​6, and unquestionably not mediated by the Expositio psalmorum. 168 Bede, De arte metrica, lines 18, 21–​2, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975).

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Conclusions To conclude: in my view, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the Institutions were indeed known to the scholarly community at Wearmouth-​ Jarrow in the early eighth century. Even if we consider simply the issue of direct quotation, in the Amiatine prefatory material and the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith, it seems more straightforward to assume that the verbal borrowings derive from the text itself rather than from some presumed intermediary. But we can add to direct quotation the Northumbrian community’s knowledge of obscure works recommended by the Institutions, of sixth-​century writers eulogised therein, and of an ancient writer first translated at Cassiodorus’s command. Above all, the adoption of Cassiodorus’s programme of biblical scholarship and editing –​in particular, the project of a complete Vulgate written per cola et commata –​is so close to Cassiodorus’s recommendations that the conclusion that the community was aware of them seems inescapable. That is not necessarily to deny the presence of the Cassiodoran Codex grandior, identified as such (perhaps indeed through reading of the Institutions) at Wearmouth-​Jarrow. Yet the simple possession of that codex, however highly esteemed and minutely examined, is insufficient to account for the wide range of the community’s investment in Cassiodorus’s educative programme. Undoubtedly, however, in the course of this activity –​as Meyvaert justly points out –​the scholars at Wearmouth and Jarrow in many ways diverged from the recommendations of the Institutions or failed to cite them as an authority. That however cannot be conclusive. Cassiodorus himself speaks of his work as more useful than distinguished (plus utilitatis … quam decoris) and in any case it is difficult to make much of such an omission, given the vagaries of explicit citation in the works of Bede. Moreover, as has increasingly been realised, the scholars of Wearmouth and Jarrow were capable of considerable independence of judgement as much in the artistic and scribal activity as in their assessment and editing of text. The warmth of Bede’s regard for Cassiodorus undoubtedly sprang primarily from his close reading of the Psalm commentary, an extended and encylopaedic exploration of a biblical text especially dear to his heart. That work had authority derived from its firm basis in knowledge of the Fathers; and in transmitting their work so faithfully Cassiodorus showed himself a true spiritual teacher, doctor, of the Church, a role with which Bede himself particularly identified. The Institutions showed Cassiodorus in a more utilitarian role, less the exegete and more the educator transmitting a programme of Christian instruction. Like Eugippius’s collectaneum, which provided a crucial filter for Bede’s Augustinian excerpta, they are never mentioned; both works offered practical models rather than spiritual

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insight. Nevertheless, the warmth of Bede’s notice in his late work focused upon the emblematic figure of Ezra, scribe and restorer of the Scriptures, reflects his and his community’s regard for Cassiodorus as the fons et origo of their programme of biblical scholarship. In the last resort, the monks may have been so familiar with that aspect of his writing that they took its recommendations for granted.

7 Bede and the Hebrew alphabets Damian Fleming

Bede, as a scholar, was deeply concerned with the physical transmission of Scripture, languages, and language difference. As Paul Meyvaert highlights, Bede took serious effort to ‘master Greek’, exemplified in his word-​by-​word Commentary and Retractions on the Acts of the Apostles.1 Bede and his community were also amongst the greatest champions of Jerome’s biblical translation according to the ‘Hebrew truth’, that is Jerome’s new translation which departed from the tradition of the Greek Septuagint to translate into Latin directly from Hebrew (the ‘Vulgate’).2 Bede’s interest in Hebrew has been long recognised, but often minimised. Meyvaert, following E. F. Sutcliffe, points to the care Bede took in collecting ‘scraps of information about Hebrew’ that came his way primarily from the Latin works of Jerome, and ‘how eagerly he would have embraced the study of the language had he had any opportunity of doing so’.3 Since he lacked these resources, however, much of Bede’s ‘knowledge’ of Hebrew has been dismissed as purely derivative –​not language engagement, but ‘simply Jerome abbreviated’.4 I have shown elsewhere the critical attention Bede paid to these ‘scraps’, not just internalising what he could about Hebrew, but even synthesising new

1 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 40–​69, at 50. See W. F. Bolton, ‘An aspect of Bede’s later knowledge of Greek’, The Classical Review 13 (1963), 17–​18. A. C. Dionisotti, ‘On Bede, grammars, and Greek’, Revue Bénédictine 92 (1982), 111–​41; K. Lynch, ‘The Venerable Bede’s knowledge of Greek’, Traditio 39 (1983), 432–​9. 2 M. MacCarron, Bede and time: computus, theology and history in the early medieval world (New York: Routledge, 2020), p. 82. 3 Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, p. 50. E. F. Sutcliffe, ‘The Venerable Bede’s knowledge of Hebrew’, Biblica 16 (1935), 300–​6, at 302. 4 C. Jenkins, ‘Bede as exegete and theologian’, in A. H. Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings: essays in commemoration of the twelfth centenary of his death (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), pp. 152–​200, at 163.

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conclusions about the Hebrew language, going so far as to take Jerome to task for perceived linguistic errors.5 All of this, however, has been explored in terms of Bede’s use of transliterated Hebrew words in Latin texts, that is, the abstract idea of Hebrew as transmitted through the writings of Jerome. Genuine Christian Hebraism is generally seen as an innovation of the later Middle Ages, and the period of time between Jerome and the twelfth century is one in which ‘real’ Hebrew was more or less inaccessible to Christians.6 While this is broadly true, Christian engagement with Hebrew, while limited, was a genuine scholarly concern in the early Middle Ages, and has received very little modern scholarly attention.7 This inattention has led to confusion over basic information about Hebrew which was commonplace for Bede’s scholarly mind. In this chapter, I will explore the evidence of Bede’s knowledge about the Hebrew alphabet as well as the possibility that he may have encountered Hebrew script. Exploring this topic will allow us to delve deeper into Bede’s scholarly mind. Bede was aware of the essential place of the Hebrew language in the transmission of Scripture, as well as the textual and physical reality of the change in script in the history of the Hebrew alphabet. Contextualising Bede’s scholarly knowledge about the Hebrew alphabets helps to illuminate assumptions that have been made regarding his role in the production of the

5 D. Fleming, ‘Hebraeam scire linguam: Bede’s rhetoric of the Hebrew Truth’, in S. Zacher (ed.), Imagining the Jew: Jewishness in Anglo-​Saxon literature and culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016), pp. 63–​78, at 66–​70. See also T. Major, ‘Words, wit, and wordplay in the Latin works of the Venerable Bede’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 22 (2012), 185–​219, esp. 214–​18. See also Gallagher, ‘Biblical-​textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis’ in this volume. 6 The classic work on the later period is B. Smalley, The study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941); see also J. Olszowy-​Schlanger, Les Manuscrits hébreux dans l’Angleterre médievale: étude historique et paléographique (Paris: Peeters, 2003); D. Goodwin, ‘Take hold of the robe of a Jew’: Herbert of Bosham’s Christian Hebraism (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 7 Studies of the earlier period include S. Berger, Quam notitiam linguae hebraicae habuerint Christiani medii aevi temporibus in Gallia (Paris: Hachette et Socias Bibliopolas, 1893); C. Singer, ‘Hebrew scholarship in the Middle Ages among Latin Christians’, in E. Beven and C. Singer (eds), The legacy of Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), pp. 283–​314; M. Thiel, Grundlagen und Gestalt der Hebräischkenntnisse des frühen Mittelalters, Biblioteca degli Studi Medievali 4 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1973); S. L. Keefer and D. R. Burrows, ‘Hebrew and the Hebraicum in late Anglo-​Saxon England’, Anglo-​Saxon England 19 (1990), 67–​80; T. Hilhorst, ‘The prestige of Hebrew in the Christian world of late antiquity and middle ages’, in A. Hilhorst, E. Puech, and E. Tigchelaar (eds), Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and other early Jewish studies in honour of Florentino García Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 118–​27.

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Codex Amiatinus. It also allows us to raise questions about the proliferation of alphabetic lore that flourished after Bede.

Ezra and the Hebrew alphabets Bede has long been associated with the Codex Amiatinus, which preserves the oldest complete text of the Vulgate. The scholarship focused especially on the front matter of this impressive book has uncovered much about the world of early eighth-​century Northumbria, the influence of the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow under the leadership of Abbot Ceolfrith, and Bede’s role in early medieval intellectual history.8 Richard Marsden has gone so far as to suggest that the Vulgate text of Amiatinus and its related sister pandects could be referred to as a ‘Bedan-​Ceolfrithian’ recension, since many of the emendations found in the text were made ‘surely under Bede’s influence’.9 Meyvaert has argued most vocally for Bede’s direct involvement in the creation of the front matter of this impressive book.10 Both have suggested that Bede’s own handwriting might be found in this manuscript.11 One of the two figural illuminations in this pandect is a full-​page image of a scribe on folio 4/​Vr. This figure is often thought to be the prophet Ezra, seated and dressed in some of the regalia of a Jewish high priest and surrounded with the accoutrements of a scribe in the act of writing in a book. Behind him, an open bookcase holds separate volumes of Scripture in nine labelled codices. Ezra’s role here is relatively clear: in Jewish and Christian traditions, he is said to have restored the text of Scripture following the Babylonian exile by rewriting it all in a new script that he himself had devised. Bede was well aware of this tradition, and very likely composed the verses written at the top of the folio: ‘When the sacred books had been burnt through foreign attack /​Ezra, burning with love for God, restored this work.’12 From the fact that Bede elsewhere describes Ezra as having rewritten Scripture with newly-​invented ‘lighter letters’ (leuiores litterae), 8 C. Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 9 R. Marsden, ‘Manus Bedae: Bede’s contribution to Ceolfrith’s bibles’, Anglo-​Saxon England 27 (1998), 65–​85, at 84. 10 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus and the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 827–​83; P. Meyvaert, ‘The date of Bede’s In Ezram and his image of Ezra in the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum, 80 (2005), 1087–​1133. 11 Marsden, ‘Manus Bedae’, 78. Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 841 note 75. 12 M. Lapidge (ed. and trans.), Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019), 348–​9: ‘Codicibus sacris hostili clade perustis /​Esdra Deo fervens hoc reparavit opus’; on Bede’s authorship of these verses, see pp. 108–​9.

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Meyvaert posits that Bede understood this to be some kind of ‘shorthand’ and then suggests that the writing which is clearly visible in Amiatinus on Ezra’s open book could be Tironian notae –​the ancient Roman system of abbreviations which later gained some popularity in Carolingian circles.13 Although this is an ingenious suggestion, which does, as Meyvaert suggests, fit with Bede’s clever mind, it obscures an obvious solution, that Ezra’s heroic act of writing is the origin story for the Hebrew alphabet, which Bede knew well and showed a particular interest in. Accordingly, Bede could have only understood Ezra to be writing Hebrew: either the new Hebrew alphabet which Ezra himself had invented for this task, or copying the old Hebrew alphabet in which Scripture had been preserved up to that point. Attention to Bede’s capacious scholarly mind as well as the material sources that were available to early medieval Christians makes this clear. The association of Ezra with the rewriting of Scripture and the invention of the Hebrew alphabet is widespread in textual material known to Bede. The fullest and most important text that details Ezra’s role in the rewriting of Scripture and the creation of the Hebrew alphabet is Jerome’s Prologue to the Book of Kings. This prologue is Jerome’s most passionate introduction to his project of translating the Old Testament from Hebrew, rather than relying on the Greek Septuagint as previous translators had done. Jerome called this his ‘Helmeted Prologue’ (Prologus galeatus) because he envisioned himself going into battle on behalf of his prioritisation of the Hebrew.14 One cannot underestimate how controversial this issue was and how forcefully he defends it.15 Bede takes up the mantle. This prologue would have been central to Bede’s understanding of the project of the Vulgate –​or the Hebrew Truth, as he calls it –​and this prologue grounds its argumentation in the literal Hebrew alphabet. The first third of the Prologue to Kings is a detailed discussion of Hebrew and cognate languages that differ in their written form. The beginning of the prologue sounds more like a grammar than a biblical preface: That there are twenty-​two letters among the Hebrews is shown by the language of the Syrians and Chaldeans, which is very close to Hebrew; for they also have twenty-​two letters with the same sound but different characters. The Samaritans also write the Pentateuch of Moses with the same letters, differing

13 Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 873–​4; Meyvaert, ‘The date of Bede’s In Ezram’, 1097–​8. On Tironian notae generally, see D. Ganz, ‘On the history of Tironian notes’, in P. Ganz (ed.), Tironische Noten (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 35–​51. 14 See M. H. Williams, The monk and the book: Jerome and the making of Christian scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 89–​91. 15 For a succinct overview, see Goodwin, Herbert of Bosham’s Christian Hebraism, pp. 73–​94.

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only in the shapes and tittles. It is certain that Ezra, the scribe and teacher of the law, after the captivity of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple under Zerubbabel, devised different letters, which we now use, since up to that time the letter shapes of the Samaritans and the Hebrews were the same.16

Jerome begins his prologue this way because the number of letters in these languages justifies his adherence to the Hebrew canon of books in the Old Testament, which he counts as twenty-​two. Jerome pushes this literal connection between the Hebrew alphabet and the canon of Hebrew Scripture even further, noting that just as there are five ‘double letters’ (the five Hebrew letters which have different forms when appearing at the ends of words [‫​ץ‬/‫​ף;צ‬/‫​ן;פ‬/‫​ם;נ‬/‫​ך;מ‬/‫ )]כ‬so too there are five ‘double books’ of the Old Testament: 1 and 2 Samuel; 1 and 2 Kings; 1 and 2 Chronicles; Ezra-​Nehemiah; and Jeremiah-​Lamentations. The creators of the Codex Amiatinus were certainly aware of Jerome’s Prologue. Not only is it included, naturally, as a Prologue to the Book of Kings within this manuscript, but Jerome’s scheme for reckoning the canon of Hebrew Scripture is also graphically represented on folio 5/​VIr, immediately following the scribal portrait.17 Although the Hebrew canon as laid out by Jerome was never adhered to by medieval Christians, there is no question that the Wearmouth-​Jarrow community involved in the production was well aware of Jerome’s thoughts, which are fully articulated in the Prologue to Kings and based on the Hebrew alphabet. Within the Prologue to Kings Jerome also explains Ezra’s connection to the Hebrew alphabet: ‘it is certain that Ezra, the scribe and teacher of the law … invented other letters (alias litteras repperisse) which we now use, although up to that time the Samaritan and Hebrew characters were the same’. This change in script is a historical reality. The ‘square’ script that most associate with Hebrew writing was an innovation of the fifth century

16 Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), p. 364; trans. E. Gallagher and J. Meade, The biblical canon lists from early Christianity: texts and analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 198–​9: ‘Viginti et duas litteras esse apud Hebraeos, Syrorum quoque et Chaldaeorum lingua testatur, quae Hebraeae magna ex parte confinis est; nam et ipsi viginti duo elementa habent eodem sono, sed diversis caracteribus. Samaritani etiam Pentateuchum Mosi totidem litteris scriptitant, figuris tantum et apicibus discrepantes. Certumque est Ezram scribam, legisque doctorem post captam Hierosolymam et instaurationem templi sub Zorobabel alias litteras repperisse, quibus nunc utimur, cum ad illud usque tempus idem Samaritanorum et Hebraeorum caracteres fuerint.’ 17 Meyvaert in fact has suggested that Bede himself is responsible for the prominent placement of Jerome’s canon list, which likely required a dismembering and reordering of the initial folios of the manuscript after it had already been bound: ‘Dissension in Bede’s community shown by a quire of Codex Amiatinus’, Revue Bénédictine 116 (2006), 295–​309.

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BCE, while a descendant of the older Hebrew script is retained to this day among the Samaritan community.18 The connection of Ezra to this change in scripts is preserved in Jewish tradition, which Jerome here repeats and makes widely available for Christian audiences in his Prologue to Kings. Bede was particularly interested in Ezra’s special role in rewriting the books of Scripture after the Babylonian exile and refers to it in a number of his other works. In his Thirty questions on the Book of Kings, Bede writes, ‘It is written of him … he was a nimble scribe in the Law of Moses, nimble, that is, because he devised shapes of letters that were more easily written than those that the Hebrews had used up until that time.’19 Following the language of Jerome’s Prologue, he uses the verb ‘repperire’ (‘to discover, find out, invent’) to describe Ezra’s creation of the new alphabet. Similarly, in his commentary on Ezra he notes, ‘The Hebrews also say, and there is no doubt among them, that the same Ezra invented the letters that were lighter, using the names they had previously, so he could write very quickly the many books that had been destroyed.’20 Meyvaert mistakenly asserts that

18 J. Naveh, Early history of the alphabet: an introduction to West Semitic epigraphy and palaeography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), pp. 112–​24. On the tradition that Ezra invented new Hebrew letters in Jewish and Christian texts, see S. Birnbaum, The Hebrew scripts (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 70–​5. The Samaritan alphabet has its own tradition and development and assumed its modern form in the fourth to seventh centuries CE. On the Samaritan alphabet, see R. Pummer, The Samaritans: a profile (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), pp. 213–​18; D. Barag, ‘Samaritan writing and writings’, in H. Cotton et al. (eds), From Hellenism to Islam: cultural and linguistic change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 303–​23. 19 Bede, In Regum librum xxx quaestiones 7, lines 21–​4, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); trans. W. Trent Foley and A. Holder, Bede: a biblical miscellany (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 102: ‘Vnde scriptum est de eo: … ipse scriba uelox in lege Moysi, uelox uidelicet quia promptiores litterarum figuras quam eatenus Hebraei habebant repperit’. 20 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 2, lines 813–​ 17, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); trans. M. Gorman, ‘The Codex Amiatinus: a guide to the legends and bibliography’, Studi Medievali, 44 (2003), 863–​910, at 888: ‘Ferunt quoque Hebraei neque apud eos de hac re ulla dubitatio est quod idem Ezras leuiores litteras excogitauerit sub nominibus earum quas eatenus habuerant quibus uelocissime tantam librorum copiam quae erat consumpta reficeret.’ Cf. Meyvaert’s translation of leuiores litteras as ‘a more expeditious system of graphemes’, ‘Bede’s In Ezram’, 1097; or DeGregorio’s ‘simpler letters’, Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), p. 110; and O’Reilly’s paraphrase, ‘smoothly flowing letters’ in J. O’Reilly, ‘The Library of Scripture: views from Vivarium and Wearmouth–​Jarrow’, in P. Binski and W. Noel (eds), New offerings, ancient treasures: studies in medieval art for George Henderson (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2001), pp. 3–​39, at 24.

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‘The story of a special script must go back directly to 4 Ezra … since it is not found in the Latin writers [Jerome and Isidore] just mentioned’.21 Jerome’s Prologue, in fact, more clearly mentions the script than the apocryphal 4 Ezra does; the entire beginning of Jerome’s Prologue is concerned with scripts. On the other hand, 4 Ezra –​which is not even included in the Codex Amiatinus –​describes Ezra dictating Scripture to five scribes rather than writing the text himself as depicted in the Amiatinus portrait (4 Ezra 14:23–​5). In 4 Ezra 14:42 it says that these scribes wrote ‘notis quas non sciebant’ (‘in characters they did not know’) which is surely Meyvaert’s ‘special script’, but this does not correspond to how Bede, following Jerome, understood what is being discussed: the Hebrew alphabet, as invented –​and written –​by Ezra.22 Knowledge about the Hebrew alphabet was commonplace to Bede, and he would have immediately associated Ezra with the Hebrew script. Bede uses the words litterae and figurae litterarum; he is literally talking about the shapes of the twenty-​two Hebrew letters, not a shorthand. Bede does, however, expand on Jerome’s brief description and seems to have a tangible sense of the difference between the writing systems, neither of which are a ‘shorthand’, but one of which might have seemed easier to write. Indeed a visual comparison of the two alphabets does make the characters of the square script seem both ‘lighter’ (leuiores) and ‘faster’, or perhaps ‘handier’ (promptiores). Bede also knew that the old Hebrew alphabet continued to be used among the Samaritans: ‘For this reason he is called not just a scribe but a “swift” scribe. The former letters, however, remained in use among the Samaritans, by which they were accustomed to write down the five books of Moses, which alone they accepted from Holy Scripture.’23 Bede –​ like very many medieval Christians –​knew that there were two Hebrew alphabets. Anyone who read the biblical prologues would have known this. Additionally, many medieval Christians would have also seen these two alphabets in Latin manuscripts. 1 Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 874. 2 22 Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’, 874; Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus, pp. 327–​36; C. Chazelle, ‘ “Romanness” in early medieval culture’, in C. Chazelle and F. Lifshitz (eds), Paradigms and methods in early medieval studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 81–​98, at 90–​1. O’Reilly, ‘Library of Scripture’, p. 23, on the other hand notes that ‘The Amiatinus scribal portrait is clearly not an illustration of this account [4 Ezra]’, and highlights Bede’s ‘editorial work’ in reconciling various conflicting accounts. 23 Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam 2, lines 817–​21; trans. DeGregorio, p. 111: ‘Vnde non solum scriba uerum etiam scriba uelox cognominatur. Priores autem litterae remanserunt apud Samaritas quibus illi quinque libros Moysi quos solos de sancta scriptura receperant scribere solebant.’

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Hebrew in Latin manuscripts Now how likely is it that Bede could have seen the Hebrew alphabet, old or new, or even just individual Hebrew letters? The difficulty in answering this question lies not in the general ignorance of Hebrew among medieval Christians, but rather in the paucity of surviving manuscript material from Bede’s day and earlier. From the early ninth century onwards, Hebrew alphabets –​albeit of varying degrees of accuracy –​survive in many medieval Latin manuscripts. As far as Bede is concerned, the crucial question is whether the widespread interest in foreign alphabets generally, and the Hebrew alphabet in particular, originated in the Carolingian period or whether the large number of Carolingian manuscripts suggests an even older interest which overlaps with the life of Bede. Carolingian and later copies of Jerome’s writings regularly feature Hebrew alphabets. Additionally, there is a tradition of ‘alphabet collections’ in medieval Christian manuscripts which preserve copies of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets together with Runic Futharks and increasingly ‘fantastic’ alphabets.24 The accuracy of many of these alphabets leaves something to be desired –​and indeed reinforces the ignorance of particular languages in particular places –​but confirms the general awareness of these languages and their alphabets. Many of these manuscripts specifically note Ezra’s role in the creation of the Hebrew alphabet and some of them contain both Hebrew alphabets, that is the ancient or ‘Samaritan’ Hebrew alphabet, as well as the modern or ‘Jewish’ Hebrew alphabet as created by Ezra. All of the codicological evidence I will explore postdates Bede. Nevertheless, the wealth of material from even the year 800 24 The foundational work is still R. Derolez, Runica Manuscripta: the English tradition (Bruges: De Tempel, 1954). See also R. Marti, ‘Fremde Schriften in einem lateinischen Codex’ (Zu den Bamberger Hss. Patr. 130/​1 und 130/​2), Scriptorium 45 (1991), 47–​ 83; E. Seebold, ‘Mandevilles Alphabete und die mittelalterlichen Alphabetssammlungen’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 120 (1998), 435–​49; E. Seebold, ‘Die Iren und die Runen: Die Überlieferung fremder Schriften im 8. Jahrhundert als Hintergrund zum ersten Auftreten von Manuskript-​ Runen’, in W. Haubrichs et al. (eds), Theodisca: Beiträge zur althochdeutschen und altniederdeutschen Sprache und Literatur in der Kultur des frühen Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 10–​ 37; A. Zironi, ‘Marginal alphabets in the Carolingian Age: philological and codicological considerations’, in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari, and C. Di Sciacca (eds), Rethinking and recontextualizing glosses: new perspectives in the study of late Anglo-​Saxon glossography (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 353–​70; K. Dekker, ‘Alphabets in Anglo-​Saxon manuscripts’, in C. Giliberto, L. Teresi (eds), Limits of learning: the transfer of encyclopaedic knowledge in the early Middle Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 81–​108; M. Kupfer, ‘ “…Lectres… plus vrayes”: Hebrew script and Jewish witness in the Mandeville Manuscript of Charles V’, Speculum 83 (2008), 58–​111.

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demonstrates how widespread this knowledge was. From the textual sources we have already examined, we can confidently assert that Bede would have known that Ezra transcribed Scripture from the old Hebrew script to the new Jewish script. Manuscript material suggests that Bede could have had a very tangible sense of what he thought these alphabets looked like.

Jerome’s Hebrew names Early medieval Christian knowledge of Hebrew always starts with, and often ends with, the works of St Jerome. Jerome’s text that is most explicitly concerned with the Hebrew language is his Book of Hebrew names (Liber interpretationis hebraicorum nominum) in which he gives Latin translations of the Hebrew meaning of every single proper name in the Bible.25 This book was so popular that in the later Middle Ages it was reordered and included in the commercially produced single-​volume pocket Bibles often known as ‘Paris Bibles’.26 In the early Middle Ages, it most often circulated alone or with other works by Jerome.27 Some of the oldest extant copies of this text have representations of Hebrew letters in the manuscripts. All of Jerome’s works are written in Latin of course, but he regularly refers to words from Greek, Hebrew, and other ancient languages. Much of the Greek seems to have been originally written out in Greek majuscules. Hebrew words, however, are always written out in Latin transliteration, but Jerome frequently refers to individual letters or the Hebrew spelling of particular words. When he does so, we find the names of the Hebrew letters written out as words, often in majuscule letters. For example, at the beginning of the Hebrew 25 Ironically, Jerome’s most famous work of biblical commentary is itself a translation of various Greek onomastic lists; Jerome made this translation early in his Hebrew-​ learning career, and within the text regularly disavows the ‘creative’ etymologies of Hebrew words which became associated with his name. See L. Grabbe, Etymology in early Jewish interpretation: the Hebrew Names in Philo (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 15–​17; A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: a study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 103–​ 26; H. Newman, ‘How should we measure Jerome’s Hebrew competence?’, in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds), Jerome of Stridon: his life, writings and legacy (Farnham: Surrey, 2009), pp. 131–​40, at 136–​7. 26 E. Poleg, Approaching the Bible in medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 118–​29; E. Poleg, ‘The Interpretations of Hebrew names in theory and practice’, in E. Poleg and L. Light (eds), Form and function in the late medieval Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 217–​36. 27 For manuscripts containing this text, see B. Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta: la tradition manuscrite des œuvres de Saint Jérôme. Tome II (Steenbrugge: in abbatia S. Petri, 1969), 11–​21, number 201. The list is neither complete nor completely accurate.

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names before the glossing proper, Jerome notes: ‘It should not be thought that all of the names that are listed under the letter A, which among the Hebrews is called ALEPH, only begin with that letter (ALEPH). For sometimes they begin with AIN, often with HE, and even with HETH, which have different breathings and vowel sounds.’28 This is also how Bede referred to individual Hebrew letters and orthography when he needed to.29 Bede was very familiar with Jerome’s text; he refers to dozens if not hundreds of etymologies of Hebrew names across his works and he references this text by name on more than one occasion.30 It is possible that Bede may have seen Hebrew –​or something purporting to be Hebrew –​while reading the Latin manuscripts of Jerome’s works. The oldest extant copy of Jerome’s Hebrew names postdates Bede, but has Hebrew letters throughout the text, and likely originally had a Hebrew alphabet at the end. The marginal Hebrew letters found in the ninth-​century manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 6228 are not perfect –​they are obviously not copied by a trained Hebrew scribe –​but they are easily recognisable to anyone with a familiarity with the modern Hebrew alphabet.31 We find the Hebrew letters ALEPH, HE, AIN, SADE, and SIN (‫א‬,‫ה‬,‫ע‬,‫צ‬,‫)ש‬ written in the margins at the points where Jerome refers to these letters by name in the text.32 Occasionally, the Hebrew letters appear in the running Latin text. This manuscript of the Hebrew names ends with a short text

28 Jerome, Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum preface, lines 4–​8, ed. P. de Lagarde, CCSL 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1959): ‘Non statim, ubicumque ex A littera, quae apud Hebraeos dicitur ALEPH, ponuntur nomina, aestimandum est, ipsam esse solam quae ponitur. Nam interdum ex AIN, saepe ex HE, non nunquam ex HETH litteris, quae aspirationes suas uocesque commutant, habent exordium.’ It should be noted that this is merely a reprinting of de Lagarde’s nineteenth-​century edition found in Onomastica Sacra (Göttingen: Horstmann, 1887; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), pp. 25–​116. 29 See Fleming, ‘Hebraeam scire linguam’, pp. 66–​71. 30 M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​ Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 217, number 161. 31 See G. Glauche, Katalog der lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München: Die Pergamenthandschriften aus dem Domkapitel Freising, Band 1, Clm 6201–​6316, Catalogus codicum manu scriptorum Bibliothecae Monacensis, tom. III, series nova, pars 2,1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), p. 39; Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit: Teil 1, Die Bayerischen Diözesen mit 32 Schriftproben (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1960), pp. 135–​6; Bischoff notes the presence of accurately produced Hebrew letters in the margins of the text of Jerome’s Liber interpretationis. The manuscript is viewable online at http://​daten.digit​ale-​sam​mlun​gen.de/​ bsb0​0064​012/​imag​e_​1 (accessed 4 January 2023). 32 See folios 1r, 30r, 31v, 32r, 34v, 39r, and 40v.

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about the Hebrew alphabet known as the Interpretatio alphabeti hebraeorum: a list of the names and meanings of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, excerpted from the chapter on the Psalter in the Hebrew names, but rearranged in their correct Hebrew order.33 Within the Hebrew names, the letter names appear in rough Latin alphabetical order, so, for example, AIN, the sixteenth letter in the alphabet, comes before BETH, the second letter. In later medieval manuscripts, the Interpretatio is very often followed by a complete Hebrew alphabet. It is not unlikely that this manuscript originally had such an alphabet, but the last folio has been cut in half and excised. Also among the oldest extant copies of Jerome’s Hebrew names is a ninth-​ century French book, now Oxford, Bodleian Marshall 19.34 This is the only surviving manuscript of Hebrew names known to have been in England before the Norman Conquest. This copy is not complete (it ends in the middle of the chapter on Ezekiel), but in the section on the Psalms the scribe has added marginal letters next to each of the names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (fol. 35r–​36r). These letters are far more confusing than those in the Munich manuscript. None of them are recognisable Hebrew even with the greatest imagination. Nevertheless, the names of the letters were known as such and a scribe knew that they needed forms. Medieval Christians knew about Hebrew even when they did not know exactly what it looked like. These manuscripts suggest that letterforms went hand in hand with the names of the Hebrew letters. It is not hard to imagine that Bede’s copies of the Hebrew names likewise contained Hebrew letters, whether real or imagined.

Anonymous alphabet tracts Additionally, short anonymous texts dealing with the Hebrew alphabet and alphabets more generally circulated in a variety of contexts in the early

33 E. Dekkers, Clavis patrum latinorum (Turnhout: Brepols, 3rd edn, 1995), p. 216, number 623; J. Machielsen, Clavis patristica pseudoepigraphorum medii aevi (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), number 2344; de Lagarde, Onomastica Sacra, pp. 191–​2; see also PL 23, cols 1365–​6. 34 H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon manuscripts: a bibliographic handlist of manuscripts and manuscript fragments written or owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), number 659; B. Barker-​Benfield (ed.), St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 13, 3 vols (London: British Library, 2008), 3, p. 1759. My thanks to the staff of the Bodleian for permission to examine this manuscript, which is among their treasures because of its original soft binding. Thanks as well to Dr Barker-​Benfield for helpful guidance via email.

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Middle Ages. Again, none of these manuscripts is contemporaneous with Bede, but they are old enough and widespread enough to suggest that this kind of material was commonplace. There are two main texts –​known by the modern titles De formis hebricarum litterarum35 and De inventione linguarum36 –​both of which tell the story of Ezra’s connection to the Hebrew alphabet and are sites of potential Hebrew language contact for early medieval Christians. The oldest extant copies of these texts date to around the year 800, though they are likely older. Both of these texts are always accompanied by letterforms purporting to be Hebrew, or, in the case of De inventione, Hebrew as well as a variety of other languages. In the earliest manuscripts of both of these texts there is a particular style of ‘Hebrew’ alphabet that was reproduced with surprising consistency throughout the Middle Ages, despite its dissimilarity from recognisable Hebrew. Noteworthy features of the alphabet are an ALEPH that resembles a Roman capital I or Z and a T shape for the letters HE and THAU.37 The handful of scholars who have studied alphabet collections in medieval manuscripts follow Samuel Berger and Charles Singer in referring to these letterforms as ‘Samaritan’.38 Following Roland Marti, I prefer not to.39 The relationship between these letterforms and the Samaritan alphabet is as tenuous as that between these letters and the square Hebrew alphabet. I prefer to call these letterforms ‘De inventione’-​type Hebrew letters because their clearest realisation is in that tract in a manuscript from around the year 800, St Gall 876, discussed below.40 These letterforms have a very long life in Christian Latin texts. Even in times and places when Hebrew texts and Jewish scholars would have been relatively easy to consult, these letterforms are found in Christian manuscripts.

De formis hebricarum litterarum These same letterforms are also regularly presented as examples of Hebrew in the text De formis hebricarum litterarum. This short anonymous text is

35 Clavis patristica pseudoepigraphorum medii aevi, number 2361; Clavis patrum latinorum, number 624; PL 30, cols 317–​20; Thiel, Grundlagen, 119–​21. 36 PL 112, cols 1579–​83; Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 279ff. 37 See, for example, www.e-​codi​ces.unifr.ch/​en/​csg/​0876/​280 (accessed 18 December 2022); below, Figure 7.1. 38 Berger, Quam notitiam; Singer, ‘Hebrew scholarship’. 39 Marti, ‘Fremde Schriften’, 65 note 75. 40 These letterforms are also found in Bern, Bürgerbibliothek 207, which is arguably a few decades older than St Gall 876. See Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 174–​91; Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, p. 28; Zironi, ‘Marginal alphabets’, p. 360.

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found in manuscripts dating from the ninth to fifteenth centuries, both in the context of genuine works by Jerome as well as in grammatical and computistical manuscripts.41 This text contains information similar to Jerome’s Prologue to Kings, but starts not with the number of letters, but with the tradition of the two Hebrew alphabets: Concerning the shapes of the Hebrew letters there are two: an ancient one, which the Samaritans use, the other later, which the Jews use …These are the Samaritans who preserve the custom of the homeland, keeping the fire and Jewish laws; Ezra handed this down in his writings … Because of the fact that they had been separated from them [or, in order that they might be separated from them42], Ezra, doctor of law, established another form of letters and passed it on to them, preserving nevertheless the same values for the letters; these are the letters which Jews now use. There are therefore 22 Hebrew letters that were handed down from Moses.43

This is followed by two lists: first the letters’ names (‘Nomina sunt ista’) and then their forms (‘formae autem istae’). The text concludes with a note on the writing direction of Hebrew: ‘Their lines are written differently than us, from the right and they end them on the left. For this reason we have placed the letters in that way here.’44 The oldest manuscript listed in Lambert’s catalogue of works associated with St Jerome is Bern, Bürgerbibliothek 417, a computus miscellany of the first half of the ninth century.45 This text in that manuscript occurs among a number of other short texts dealing with

41 Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta, 3B, pp. 258–​9, number 401. The Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta list is not complete. See Thiel, Grundlagen, pp. 119–​20; Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, pp. 12–​13. 42 For this latter reading, that the new alphabet was adopted in order to distance themselves from Samaritans, see Birnbaum, The Hebrew scripts, p. 74. 43 Thiel, Grundlagen, p. 120; I have silently expanded ę to ae: ‘Hebraicarum litterarum formae duae sunt: una antiqua, qua Samaritani utuntur, altera posterior, qua Iudaei. … Hi sunt Samaritae, qui et patriae consuetudinem servant, ignem colentes, et iudaica mandata; Ezras [hoc] nobis scire tradidit scriptis suis. … Propter quod, ut essent separati ab eis, Ezdras legis doctor formam aliam litterarum instituit atque tradidit eis, virtute tamen litterarum eadem servata, quibus litteris etiam nunc utuntur Iudaei. Sunt igitur hebraice litterae, quae per Moysen sunt traditae XXII.’ 44 Thiel, Grundlagen, p. 120: ‘Scribuntur autem versus nobis inverse a dextris, namque ad sinistram partem eos finiunt, propter quod et nos hoc eodem modo litteras posuimus.’ 45 Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta, 3B, pp. 258–​9, number 401. H. Hagen, Catalogus codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana) (Bern: B. F. Haller, 1875; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1974), pp. 372–​3; O. Homburger, Die illustrierten Handschriften der Burgerbibliothek Bern: die vorkarolingischen und karolingischen Handschriften (Bern: Bürgerbibliothek Bern, 1962), 69–​71.

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letters, including Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets.46 The text ends with two lists: the names of the letters (ALEPH through THAU) followed by De inventione-​type letterforms that have been misunderstood and copied out of order despite being labelled with their names. The error is clearly the result of copying left to right a text which is meant to be read right to left. De formis is also preserved in a Fleury manuscript of c. 800, now Paris, BnF lat. 1750, which contains a collection of alphabetic and computistical materials, including Hebrew and Greek alphabets.47 Michael Lapidge argues on paleographical grounds that part of this manuscript was copied from an English exemplar from around the year 700.48 This is one of the cleanest ninth-​century copies of De formis; it concludes with the names of the Hebrew letters in the correct order (ALEPH through THAU) followed by a labelled list of the letterforms written in four short lines, where each line is correctly written from right to left, just as the text describes. Successfully copying an unknown alphabet in the reverse direction of Latin text was one of the greatest challenges for Latin scribes dealing with foreign alphabets. Although the text discusses both forms of the Hebrew alphabet, here as commonly it is followed only by a single set of letterforms, of the De inventione-​type. Another early ninth-​century manuscript does contain two distinct versions of the Hebrew alphabet, but they have become rather confused in copying.49 The very last folio of a deluxe pandect Bible from St Germain from the year 822, now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 11504 +​11505, contains an abbreviated version of this text, beginning at Hi sunt Samaritæ qui.50 A series of alphabets in columns follows: the first is the names of the letters in order from top to bottom (haec nomina earum, from ALEPH to THAU); then there is a column of letterforms of the De inventione-​type followed by the names again and the names’ meanings.51 This list is headed forme autem

46 See H. Hagen (ed.), Anecdota Helvetica, Grammatici Latini 8 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1870; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961), pp. cxxxxiii–​ cxxxxvi, esp. cxxxxv; Thiel, Grundlagen, p. 120. 47 See https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​ark:/​12148/​btv1b8​4790​09h/​f294.dou​ble (accessed 4 January 2023). 48 M. Lapidge, ‘An Isidorian epitome from early Anglo-​Saxon England’, in M. Lapidge (ed.), Anglo-​Latin Literature 600–​899 (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 183–​ 223, at 185–​7. 49 Berger, Quam notitiam, pp. 5–​8; see Thiel, Grundlagen, p. 120. 50 That is, beginning on the fourth line of the text as printed in Thiel, Grundlagen, p. 120. 51 Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, p. 34: https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​ark:/​12148/​btv1b8​4267​80x/​f432.image (accessed 4 January 2023).

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istae sunt. These forms and names appear to be lined up correctly, but are out of order from the first list. In this second list, the first letter is MEM (the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet), which then runs backwards through the Hebrew alphabet to ALEPH, then jumps to THAU before running backwards through the rest of the alphabet. Like in the Bern manuscript, this list was clearly created from an alphabet which was written from right to left, but this scribe has copied them from left to right. The exemplar must have had two horizontal rows, the first ALEPH to MEM and the second NUN to THAU. This sort of error is unsurprisingly common in Christian copies of Hebrew alphabets. Even when the introductory text specifies the writing direction of Hebrew, scribes regularly copied the alphabet backwards. Then follows the normal explicit of De formis (Scribuntur autem …) and the following additional sentence: ‘Jewish [letters] which the Jews use with the same words, the same value, with just the forms changed, as we have dealt with above’ (Iudaicas uero quibus etiam nunc utunter Iudæi hisdem uocabulis, eadem uirtute, forma immutata tantum, ut supra taxauimus). This is followed by yet another ‘Hebrew’ alphabet, with a different set of forms and no names, but Latin letter equivalents. These too have been copied out of order, though differently from the second list –​again because of an exemplar that had the letters in the correct Hebrew order –​now ‘starting’ in the middle of the alphabet with what must be NUN (‫)נ‬.52 Finally, this manuscript has a list of Greek majuscules, the names of the Greek letters, Greek minuscules, and the numbers that correspond to the Greek letters. The multiple layers of confusion in the copying of the Hebrew alphabets suggest that this text is significantly older than this manuscript copy from 822. While none of these manuscripts are as old as Bede’s lifetime, they show that the tradition of copying –​or attempting to copy –​Hebrew letters and alphabets was certainly thriving and indeed going astray from better exemplars within a few generations of his life. These manuscripts also reinforce that knowledge of the two Hebrew alphabets and their connection to Ezra was well known. Apart from the theoretical exemplar of Paris BnF lat. 1750, which is likely as early as 700 and possibly English, there is one intriguing but frustratingly flawed piece of manuscript evidence that suggests the presence of Hebrew and other foreign alphabetic material in England close to the time of Bede. British Library MS Cotton Domitian A.ix, fol. 8 is a single leaf written in an uncial hand that E. A. Lowe dates to the second half of the eighth century.53 Because of this leaf’s presence in Cotton Domitian A.ix, 52 Singer, ‘Hebrew scholarship’, reproduces the letterforms from this manuscript, p. 291, cols 7 and 8; see Berger, Quam notitiam, p. 6. 53 See Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, p. 24: www.bl.uk/​manu​scri​pts/​Vie​wer.aspx?ref=​cotton​_​ms_​ domi​tian​_​a_​i​x_​f0​08r (accessed 18 December 2022).

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‘a very miscellaneous volume of English provenance’, Lowe suggests that it was written ‘possibly in England’,54 and is thus included in Helmut Gneuss’ Handlist.55 The recto of this leaf contains the conclusion of a collection of alphabets. The clearest items on the page are three alphabets labelled Chaldeorum litterae, Egyp[torum], and litterae graecae cum numero.56 The first two alphabets belong to a tradition of ‘spurious alphabets’ which René Derolez has studied in conjunction with his investigation of manuscript runes.57 He points to this odd folio as one of the earliest examples containing such material.58 The three alphabets are written out as prose, with letterforms –​not resembling any known languages –​written below their names. At the very top of the folio preceding the ‘Chaldean’ alphabet is the end of what must have been a Hebrew alphabet. The names of the last two letters of the Hebrew alphabet –​SEN and THAU –​are visible at the top of the page followed by the last sentence from De formis, scribuntur autem uersus nobis inuersę a dextris | namque ad sinistram partem eos finiunt | propter et nos hoc eodem modo littera posuimus.59 It can be reasonably assumed that the previous folio of the manuscript contained the beginning of the Hebrew alphabet and the rest of the text. If so, this would be the oldest known copy of De formis and another example with possible English connections. Despite what the text says, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet do not appear to have been copied from right to left; SEN is to the left of THAU. This marks this copy as distinct from the oldest complete copy of the text, Paris BnF 1750, where the De inventione-​type letters are copied in the Hebrew order from right to left. As in Bern 417, Paris BnF lat. 11505, and Paris lat. 1750, a Greek alphabet ‘with numbers’ follows, but Domitian A.ix fol 8 is the only one among these manuscripts that also contains ‘spurious’ or pseudo-​alphabets. The clear and correctly ordered Hebrew alphabet in Paris BnF lat. 1750 contrasted with the confused and spurious alphabets in Domitian A. ix suggests that these manuscripts represent what must have been an active interest in alphabets likely already developed by the time of Bede. It is often

54 E. A. Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores: a palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century Pt. 2 Great Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), p. 19, number 185. 55 Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-​Saxon manuscripts, number 329.5. 56 www.bl.uk/​manu​scri​pts/​Full​Disp​lay.aspx?ref=​Cott​on_​M​S_​Do​miti​an_​A​_​IX (accessed 18 December 2022). 57 See Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 274–​8. 58 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, p. 6. 59 Cf. Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 5–​6.

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assumed that alphabet collections were a Carolingian interest; these manuscripts suggest that the tradition is older than that.60 A comparison of these four eighth-​and ninth-​century copies of this short text demonstrates at once its popularity as well as its age. Among at least three of the four copies the order of the letters has already been confused, suggesting that these extant copies were part of a chain of transmission already subject to confusion.

De inventione linguarum Another anonymous text on alphabets that likewise connects Ezra directly to the re-​creation of the Hebrew alphabet is the so-​called De inventione linguarum. Its title and attribution to Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856) are baseless conjectures by the seventeenth-​century scoundrel Melchior Goldast; neither have any medieval provenance.61 Nevertheless, its presence in the Patrologia Latina under that title and author has had an influence on those who refer to it. Derolez, who is the only modern scholar to devote any serious attention to the text, suggests De inventione litterarum would be a far more sensible title and he rejects the attribution to Hrabanus Maurus.62 The text in its most basic form consists of five alphabets together with short explanatory paragraphs on the origin of the alphabets: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, the alphabet associated with Aethicus Ister,63 and runes. Aethicus Ister’s Cosmography is a fascinating but confusing early medieval text, purporting to be a travelogue as narrated to ‘Hieronymus’. In some ways it is an eighth(?)-​century precursor to the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The text of the Cosmography describes the ‘alphabet of Aethicus Ister’ and manuscripts regularly end with this fanciful alphabet as well as each of its letter’s interpretations.64 Michael Herren refers to this seemingly entirely invented alphabet as ‘a rather silly parody’ of Hebrew and Greek alphabet collections.65

60 Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, p. 11; though see also p. 13: ‘Die Herkunft und frühe Uberlieferung der hebräischen Alphabete beider Typen ist völlig unklar’. Zironi, ‘Marginal alphabets’, pp. 354–​6. 61 Goldast was charged with stealing and defacing manuscripts held by the Abbey of St Gall; Derolez suspects that he may have excised a now-​missing runic alphabet from the oldest manuscript of De inventione linguarum. See Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 294 and 303. 62 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, p. 285. 63 M. Herren, The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: edition, translation, and commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). 64 See Herren, Aethicus Ister¸ pp. 164–​5 and 214–​17 (with plates). 65 Herren, Aethicus Ister, pp. 320–​1.

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De inventione survives in approximately sixteen manuscripts; due to the mutable nature of this material, it is difficult to draw a distinct line between what does or does not constitute a member of this text family.66 Most of the manuscripts of De inventione are from the eleventh century or later and originate in France or Germany. There are no extant copies with clear pre-​Conquest English connections. The earliest manuscript of this text, from around 800, however, deserves special attention. St Gall 876 is a large grammatical compilation containing works by Donatus, Bede, and many anonymous grammatical tracts.67 In the middle of this manuscript is De inventione with a striking, unparalleled layout (pp. 278–​80; Figure 7.1). The scribe planned to present all five alphabets in horizontal parallel lists running across three consecutive folios in the order Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aethicus Ister, then runes. The first opening, for example, has the Latin alphabet from A through V; you turn the page to find the final letters completed on the verso. Running above each of the alphabets are written short introductory paragraphs explaining the origin of each alphabet. The scribe must have realised that they did not have enough space to include the runes themselves underneath the final paragraph, and they are not included here. The runes must have been written out on a following folio, but that page is now missing (Derolez suggests that Melchior Goldast, the text’s first editor, stole it).68 The monumental layout of the manuscript gives one the impression of reading from a scroll, and one wonders whether this is the scribe’s innovation or reflects the exemplar of this text. The Hebrew alphabet here is particularly noteworthy: it is correctly copied from right to left over the three pages, so that the beginning of the Hebrew alphabet appears parallel to the end of the other alphabets. The short introductory paragraph explains that the alphabet was first created by Moses and revised by Ezra: ‘The Hebrew letters were invented first of all by Moses and were restored by Ezra after their captivity and return. We have labelled the forms of the letters below as we were able to find; their total is 22 letters.’69 De inventione does not include the detail found in De formis that Hebrew is written right to left, but the alphabet here is so copied. There 6 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 345–​59. 6 67 G. Scherrer, Verzeichniss der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Gallen (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1875), pp. 303–​ 5; Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 290–​9; viewable online at www.e-​codi​ces.unifr.ch/​en/​csg/​ 0876 (accessed 18 December 2022). 68 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, p. 294. 69 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, p. 349: ‘Primo omnium litterae Hebraicae linguae a Moyse inventae sunt et ab Ezra post illorum captivitatem et reversionem eorum renovatae sunt; quarum elementa litterarum subtus ut invenire quivimus adnotata habemus, earumque summa XXII constat litterarum.’

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

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Figure 7.1.  (continued)

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Figure 7.1.  (continued)

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is, however, a unique note in this oldest copy of De inventione appended to the very end of the description: ‘but get some better letters of these’ (sed require caracteres earum uerius).70 The note is written in the same hand and seemingly at the same time as the main paragraph about the Hebrew alphabet. Either the scribe immediately had doubts about the accuracy of the letterforms or was copying from an exemplar which expressed these doubts. As discussed above, these letterforms are the De inventione-​type letters which are not easily recognisable as genuine Hebrew or Samaritan. This type of comment calling for correction suggests an awareness of the reality of Hebrew that is not often associated with Singer’s characterisation of the ‘simple minds of the men of the Dark Ages’.71 Indeed, the early ninth-​ century continental scholar Walahfrid Strabo had a collection of alphabets in his personal manuscript, including an incredibly accurate Hebrew alphabet.72

Conclusion A fuller exploration of the concept of alphabet collections is necessary to contextualise this phenomenon as well as the particular interest in Hebrew alphabets among these collections. It was certainly appealing to Carolingian audiences, but this impression is skewed by the higher survival rate of such manuscripts in comparison to those from earlier periods, such as the lifetime of the Venerable Bede. The single leaf in Cotton Domitian A. ix demonstrates that collections of ‘exotic’ alphabets are at least as old as the eighth century, and the condition of the alphabets in that manuscript suggests that the tradition was already well established by then. The early eighth-​century pseudo-​travel narrative, the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, describes the author writing in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and his own invented letters; manuscripts of this text conclude with this ‘fantastic’ alphabet that was apparently quickly incorporated into De inventione linguarum.73 The fact that this author seems to parody the idea of foreign alphabets in the early eighth century likewise suggests that it was already an existing genre of intellectual knowledge. It has even been suggested that Bede himself could have

0 Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, p. 294. 7 71 Singer, ‘Hebrew scholarship’, p. 289. 72 St Gall 878; see B. Bischoff, ‘Eine Sammelhandschrift Walahfrid Strabos (Cod. Sangall. 878)’, in Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählt Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1966–​1981), 2, pp. 34–​51. Online at www.e-​codi​ces.unifr.ch/​en/​csg/​0878/​320/​ (accessed 18 December 2022). 73 Herren, Aethicus Ister, pp. 162–​5 and 320.

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been responsible for promoting an interest in alphabets and other similar lists.74 Early in his Reckoning of time, Bede describes how the Greek alphabet can be used as a clearer system of counting than the Roman system of numbers.75 Thus the Greek alphabet is contained in most copies of Bede’s influential text. As Faith Wallis points out, however, Bede’s inclusion of the alphabet really ‘has nothing to do with the calendar, or even with calculation’.76 Bede also gives the names of the months according to the Hebrew, and the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and English.77 Lists like these reflect an interest in collecting ‘ethnographic’ encyclopaedic information; alphabets were a key component of this type of information, and knowledge about the Hebrew alphabet in particular was central to it.78 Although Bede would never have had anything we would consider a reading knowledge of Hebrew, he knew a lot about Hebrew, and he was confident in his knowledge. He used the knowledge about Hebrew which he gleaned from Jerome –​information about the alphabet, its sounds, its grammatical structures –​ to make original deductions and arguments about the text of the Bible which sometimes even diverge from Jerome. Some of this information is strikingly vivid. In his commentary On Genesis, he gives the impression of consulting Hebrew manuscripts –​and thus avoiding mistakes that Jewish scribes make: ‘The Dodanim are the people of Rhodes: … the similarity of the letters DALETH and RES often creates this mistake among Hebrews, as the one is read for the other.’79 As I have shown elsewhere, this is not ‘simply Jerome abbreviated’; indeed here Bede suggests an emendation to Jerome’s text.80 Furthermore, Bede might not just be repurposing knowledge he derived from Jerome, but could very well have been familiar with the Hebrew alphabet, and might have genuinely understood the similarity between the letters dalet: ‫ ד‬and resh: ‫ר‬. Information about, and interest in, the Hebrew alphabet was not esoteric knowledge for Christians in the time of Bede or later; rather, these were essential and mainstream facts for any medieval scholar with an interest in the text of the Bible as translated by Jerome. Bede, the scholar, knew that. 4 Seebold, ‘Die Iren’, p. 11. 7 75 Bede, De temporum ratione liber 1, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972). 76 F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 263. 77 Bede, De temporum ratione 11–​15. 78 Dekker, ‘Alphabets in Anglo-​Saxon Manuscripts’. 79 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 40–​4, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967): ‘Dodanim Rhodii: … similitudo enim litterarum DALETH et RES hunc apud Hebreos saepe facit errorem, ut alia legitur pro alia’. 80 Fleming, ‘Hebraeam scire linguam’, pp. 68–​9.

8 Biblical-​textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis John J. Gallagher* There can be no doubt that the Bible was the single greatest influence on Bede’s scholarly activity. As Bede himself informs us in his autobiographical postscript to the Ecclesiastical history, his career was entirely shaped by the scholarly study of the Bible: ‘From then on I have spent all 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 delight to learn or to teach or to write.’1 Bede inhabited a cultural environment in which biblical learning was central to his devotional and intellectual life. Even his non-​exegetical works of history, poetry, and calendrical science are strongly coloured by a biblical worldview. However, Bede’s most prolific scholarly outputs are in the field of biblical commentary, as is evident in the catalogue of works appended to the Ecclesiastical history.2 Bede’s autobiographical epilogue reveals the significance of the Bible to his lifework; however, an investigation of Bede’s general methods of biblical interpretation within a single work of exegesis would help to furnish a fuller understanding of how Bede interacted with the Bible in his scholarship. For this task, I have chosen Bede’s commentary On Genesis for several reasons: the Book of Genesis is one of the most important biblical texts, providing as it does the foundational narratives of Judaism and Christianity; Genesis is one of the oldest and most textually complex books in the biblical canon; Genesis has experienced a protracted redaction and translation history and exhibits a plethora of textual problems that pose interpretative difficulty to the early medieval biblical scholar. This research was funded by the Irish Research Council. * 1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum (subsequent references: HE), 5:24, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 566–​7: ‘Cunctumque ex eo tempus uitae in eiusdem monasterii habitatione peragens, omnem meditandis scripturis operam dedi, atque inter obseruantiam disciplinae regularis, et cotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut docere aut scribere dulce habui.’ 2 Bede, HE 5:24.

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As such, this article examines a selection of textual difficulties tackled in this commentary and the text-​critical methods utilised by Bede to solve these issues.3 Practically speaking, how did Bede go about the business of biblical scholarship? What was his scholarly appraisal of the Scriptures, their textual difficulties, and myriad textual traditions? Bede’s biblical commentary, at times, represents theological enquiry, but it is almost always focused on biblical-​textual criticism –​that is, the minute scrutiny of the text, the use of ancillary resources to facilitate interpretation of obscure details, comparison between different biblical versions, and the explication of a range of textual problems. This chapter details aspects of Bede’s exegetical interpretations and what these disclose about how Bede the scholar approached the Bible in his work.

The dating of On Genesis On Genesis is a work of four parts: Book 1 (Genesis 1:1–​3:23); Book 2 (4:1–​9:29); Book 3 (10:1–​14:23); and Book 4 (15:1–​21:10). The compositional history and dating of this work is complex and the following outline is indebted to Calvin B. Kendall’s work on these matters.4 The text exists in two different versions. The first and shorter recension comprises two books on Genesis 1–​3. Some years after its composition, this early version was combined into a single book (Book 1) to which three further books (Books 2–​4) were added, resulting in the longer form which is the focus of this chapter. There is also an abbreviated version consisting of the portion of the commentary that deals with the Hexameron. Kendall proposes that this shorter version is merely a truncated version that has been excerpted from the first version, rather than representing the earliest stage in the composition of the commentary prior to its expansion. That is, the first version was completed as a cohesive unit, and the shorter version dealing with the Hexameron was 3 Recent examinations of Bede’s methods of biblical scholarship include P. Hilliard, ‘The Venerable Bede as scholar, preacher, and gentile’, in R. Corradini, M. Gillis, R. McKitterick, and I. Van Renswoude (eds), Ego trouble: authors and their identities in the early middle ages (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 101–​9, and D. M. Train, ‘The Venerable Bede’s manuductive hermeneutics: lame readers, apostolic teachers, and temple exegesis in his Commentary on Acts’, Christianity and Literature 63 (2014), 173–​201, at 173–​5. On medieval exegesis, see C. Ocker and K. Madigan, ‘After Beryl Smalley: thirty years of medieval exegesis, 1984–​2013’, Journal of the Bible and its Reception 2 (2015), 87–​130. 4 C. B. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), pp. 44–​53.

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extracted as a stand-​alone piece at a later stage by a later redactor of the commentary who was interested in this subject alone. The later, longer version is the most complete stage in the commentary’s history. The remainder of this form (Books 2–​4) was produced after a hiatus during which Bede worked on his On Ezra and Nehemiah, as indicated in a preface dedicated to Acca, Bishop of Hexham.5 It is difficult to provide a firm date for these different versions of On Genesis. Kendall’s timeline is generally accepted as the standard: the first recension –​what was to later become Book 1 –​was completed 717–​18 and the second version –​the redaction of the first version into Book 1 and the composition of Books 2–​4 –​was completed 720–​25; Kendall argues that there was a further break between Book 2 and Books 3–​4 within this period, but this is irrelevant to the present discussion which is concerned with the final overall version. I would argue, however, that the timbre of Books 3–​4 is markedly different from that of the first two, a fact that might be ascribed either to differences in the biblical narrative at this stage of Genesis or to a later date of composition. It is not clear when the Hexameral portion was excerpted, but this does not have any bearing on the composition of the two main versions since it seems likely to be a later extraction. Genesis 21:11–​50:25 is not covered in the commentary, indicating that the textual difficulties posed by this biblical book were too numerous to be addressed by a single scholar in a single work.

Methodology, approach, and audience At the very core of Bede’s practice of exegesis was the desire to uncover, explain, and contextualise the meaning of biblical texts and the history of their interpretation in commentary form, for himself and his confrères, as well as epistolary correspondents like Acca, bishop of Hexham, for whom On Genesis was composed.6 As Bede explains: ‘From the time I became a priest until the fifty-​ninth year of my life I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam preface, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). 5 6 On Bede’s exegetical methodologies, see S. DeGregorio, ‘Interpretatio monastica: biblical commentary and the forging of monastic identity in the early middle ages’, in R. Stephenson and E. Thornbury (eds), Latinity and identity in Anglo-​Saxon literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 38–​53. See also A. Holder, ‘Bede and the tradition of patristic exegesis’, Anglican Theological Review, 72 (1990), 399–​411; C. W. Jones, ‘Some introductory remarks on Bede’s Commentary on Genesis’, Sacris Erudiri 19 (1969), 115–​98, repr. in W. M. Stevens (ed.), Charles W. Jones: Bede, the schools and the computus (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), number 4; T. W. Mackay,

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works of the venerable Fathers on the holy scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.’7 For the most part, however, the ‘notes’ that Bede appends to patristic quotations tend to exceed his excerpts from the Fathers and offer insight into various interpretative senses, including the literal (historical), allegorical (typological or figural), moral (tropological), and occasionally the anagogical (heavenly or eschatological). Bede variously refers to a three-​or four-​fold method of scriptural interpretation throughout his corpus. However, our modern scholarly fixation on these divisions does not always capture the objective of Bede’s exegetical exposition, which is, at times, theological, pastoral, or didactic in tone. Such methods of commentary fall outside of or defy the conventional taxonomies of medieval biblical exegesis, but are nevertheless central and prominent modes of scriptural exposition. In the commentary On Genesis, Bede frequently includes lengthy verbatim quotations from Augustine and Jerome, but this is certainly outweighed by his own comments. Overall, the purpose of Bede’s biblical work is twofold: to distil the complex traditions of patristic scholarship in easily digestible formats for the benefit of his contemporaries; and, most importantly, to explain difficulties presented in the Scriptures. In most cases, Bede proceeds systematically in a verse-​ by-​verse manner through the biblical text under consideration, interweaving his own original exegesis with scriptural and patristic quotations. Scott DeGregorio’s suggestion that some commentaries might have begun life as monastic collatio is compelling and gestures to the didactic application of Bede’s biblical scholarship within his monastic community, a fact Bede himself acknowledges.8 In sum, Bede’s commentaries served as scholarly aids to deciphering the textual difficulties of the Bible and navigating the labyrinth of patristic scholarship.

‘Bede’s biblical criticism: the Venerable Bede’s summary of Tyconius’ Liber regularum’, in M. H. King and W. M. Stevens, Saints, scholars, and heroes: studies in medieval culture in honor of Charles W. Jones (Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979), pp. 209–​ 32; P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 40–​69. C. O’Brien, Bede’s temple: an image and its interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 23–​34; R. Ray, ‘What do we know about Bede’s commentaries?’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 49 (1982), 5–​20. 7 Bede, HE 5:24, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 566–​7: ‘Ex quo tempore accepti presbyteratus usque ad annum aetatis meae LVIIII haec in scripturam sanctam meae meorumque necessitate ex opusculis uenerabilium partum breuiter adnotare, siue etiam ad formam sensus et interpretationis eirum superadicere curaui.’ 8 DeGregorio, ‘Interpretatio monastica’, pp. 42–​3.

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Conor O’Brien’s observation that Bede approached biblical scholarship from the reader’s perspective holds true across the early medieval world in which biblical commentary was produced by authors like Bede, not for their own benefit, but to assist others in navigating interpretative difficulties in the sacred text.9 It is the challenge posed by reading and understanding scriptural texts, particularly the Old Testament, that is at the heart of biblical scholarship at this time, rather than the need to define theological doctrine or dogma. Bede’s readers were, primarily, scholarly, monastic, and clerical and required Bede to provide interpretative aids in a manner that was accessible and convenient. Beyond the immediate context of Wearmouth-​Jarrow, individuals such as Acca, without the command of such resources as were available to Bede, commissioned commentaries based on perplexing individual verses of the Scriptures, indicating that the Bible was read in a similarly detailed fashion by individuals or communities elsewhere at this time. All of Bede’s commentaries represent a distinctive form of exegesis that is particularly learned, monastic, or clerical in terms of the educational environment in which it was produced and the contexts in which it was used. For the most part, Bede’s works were composed for the benefit of his fellow monks and correspondents, rather than for the instruction of the laity. Bede’s commentaries (and, indeed, his Gospel homilies) manifest a learned form of biblical scholarship that is detailed, scrupulous, highly erudite, philological, and, to certain degrees, arcane and intended for religious communities in early medieval England; evidence of preaching in the secular churches simply does not exist for the eighth century in early medieval England, but it must have looked very different to the kind of biblical exposition that Bede puts forward in his work, notwithstanding his frequently pastoral tone. DeGregorio discusses Gregory the Great’s comments on the obscurity of the scriptural texts and the great benefit that lies in the exercise of their decipherment.10 Bede’s exegetical method employs detailed lexical, semantic, and etymological analysis as the building blocks of his broader theological conclusions. As Rosalind Love has observed: Much of Bede’s own biblical scholarship … was concerned with the minute scrutiny of the wording of the scriptures. This was the starting point for biblical exegesis, with the words themselves, radiating out to a variety of perspectives: identifying plants or animals, places, people and their historical setting,

O’Brien, Bede’s temple, p. 27. 9 10 DeGregorio, ‘Interpretatio monastica’, pp. 45–​7.

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but then delving deeper into symbolism and prophetic foreshadowing and drawing out lessons for this present life.11

It is this concern with the minutiae of individual biblical verses that constitutes the substance of Bede’s practice of exegesis. Indeed, his commentaries on the whole seem to have been composed in order to provide elaborate exegetical cribs or glosses to the sacred text on a verse-​by-​verse –​and, indeed, word-​by-​word –​basis, addressing the different senses of Scripture that a particular verse invokes, which is often multivocal, leading to broader theological conclusions through an appreciation of the letter of the text. Bede’s On Genesis, among other works, functions as a scholarly study aid for readers interested in understanding the biblical text at the most detailed lexical, semantic, and etymological levels. The only substantial works of biblical exegesis produced in early medieval England before the time of Bede are the Canterbury Commentaries and the related Leiden family of glosses.12 These works offer similar scholarly cribs, but in a much less exhaustive and primarily literal fashion.13 The incredibly rich but terse biblical glosses from Canterbury constituted the first extant foray into sustained biblical scholarship in the nascent early medieval English Church. The more expansive patristic style of biblical commentary is realised for the first time in the early medieval English context in Bede’s scholarship, which, like the work of the Church Fathers Jerome and Augustine, deploys verse-​by-​verse glossing, but with exhaustive, wide-​ranging commentary.14 Bede’s On Genesis is, perhaps, the best example of this style of scriptural commentary within his corpus. 11 R. Love, ‘The World of Latin learning’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 40–​53, at 41. 12 Aldhelm, the most prodigious author in England before Bede, produced an impressive range of religiously informed work, but his output does not include biblical commentary or glossing per se. See M. Herren, ‘Aldhelm the theologian’, in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds), Latin learning and English lore, volume I: studies in Anglo-​Saxon literature for Michael Lapidge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 68–​89. 13 For editions of the texts, see B. Bischoff and M. Lapidge (eds), Biblical commentaries from the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); J. H. Hessels (ed.), A Late eighth-​century Latin-​Anglo-​Saxon glossary preserved in the library of the Leiden University (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1906, repr. 2011); P. Vaciago (ed.), Glossae biblicae I–​ II, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 189A–​189B (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). On the Canterbury school, see Lapidge, ‘The school of Theodore and Hadrian’, Anglo-​ Saxon England 15 (1986), 45–​72. 14 Bede’s commentaries in the question-​and-​answer format resemble the Canterbury Commentaries in that they deal with distinct sets of difficult biblical lemmata and corresponding interpretamenta in a much shorter format than works like On Genesis.

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The multiple senses of Scripture Having broadly sketched the general characteristics of Bede’s scholarly approach, I now turn to the question of how the biblical text and its difficulties are dealt with in On Genesis. Aside from the Fathers, Bede takes his scholarly cue for interpreting scriptural texts from the Bible itself. In his exposition of the figure of Melchisedech, Bede ruminates on the multiple senses of Scripture. Accordingly, Melchizedek signifies the Lord Saviour, who first indeed, as the Apostle says, by interpretation is king of justice, and then king of Salem, that is, king of peace. With these words the blessed Apostle demonstrates how Melchizedek should be understood as an allegorical figure in such a way that he also teaches us very clearly to seek out in the literal text of the Old Testament the hidden meanings not only of things but also of names.15

The explanation of Melchisedech offered here functions on two levels: Melchisedech is understood figuratively as a type of Christ based on the designation ‘king of justice’ (rex iustitiae) given in Hebrews 7:2; ‘king of peace’ (rex pacis) is a further figurative understanding predicated on the popular, but possibly fallacious, etymology of ‘Salem’ (peace), in Hebrews 7:2, as well as Psalm 75:3.16 Here, Bede identifies a crucial instance in which a scriptural author explicitly engages in exegetical practices that might normally be associated with post-​biblical scholars. The author of Hebrews is interested in presenting Christ as High Priest, an idiom that would be familiar to the first-​century Jewish-​Christian audience of the Epistle and which functioned to legitimise their departure from mainstream late Second Temple Judaism. Therefore, understanding Melchisedech, a paragon of Old Testament priesthood, as a prefiguration of Christ, whose high-​priestly 15 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1680–​5, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); trans. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p, 268: ‘Itaque Melchisedech Dominum saluatorem significat: Primum quidem, ut apostolus ait, qui interpretatur rex iustitiae, deinde autem rex Salem, quod est rex pacis. Quibus uerbis beatus apostolus ita figuram Melchisedech qualiter sit intellegenda demonstrat, ut et nos apertissime doceat in litteris testamenti ueteris non solum rerum sed et nominum significationes quaerere.’ 16 All Latin quotations are taken from R. Weber and R. Gryson (eds.), Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007); translations from Douay-Rheims (New Testament, published 1582; Old Testament, published 1609; revised by Bishop Challoner 1749–​52). The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate and diligently compared with Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages (London: Burns, Oates, and Washburn, 1914). The toponym ‘Jerusalem’ defies definitive scholarly interpretation and etymologisation. The author of Hebrews, as well as Josephus, Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine, promoted the etymology alluded to here, which depends upon a paronomastic play on various historical forms of ‫ שָ ׁלֹום‬shalom.

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sacrifice achieved atonement and salvation for mankind, is an important exegetical heuristic and polemic for the author of Hebrews.17 In Hebrews 7:1–​2, Bede sees a scripturally sanctioned example of the literal, figurative, and typological analysis of an Old Testament ­figure –​an instance in which the biblical text itself exemplifies the substance of his own interpretative practice.18 As John Cavadini has observed, figurative exegesis was applied liberally by biblical authors themselves and such methods of interpretation were necessary to reading the biblical canon as a cohesive, interconnected body of texts.19 Hebrews 7 suggests to Bede the need to interpret the Old Testament within the Christian context by going beyond its literal level. It is from the text of the Bible that Bede takes his imprimatur to read the multiple senses of the Scriptures, beginning with minor textual points and details and expanding outwards from there. For Bede, the various senses of Scripture are not incompatible or hierarchical, but, in fact, engender one another reciprocally, as his interpretation of Melchisedech illustrates. Recent studies have adopted a more integrated appreciation of how Bede applied the different senses of exegesis throughout his works compared to an earlier preoccupation with Bede the allegorical biblical scholar.20 Historically, there has been a tendency to view medieval biblical commentary as eisegesis, the practice of reading one’s own ideas into the text, rather than exegesis, the explication of ideas present in the text. For Bede, scriptural revelation was inexhaustible. The utilisation of one or more senses does not preclude the latent presence of other levels of interpretation with the biblical passage under consideration. What unites these different modes of exegesis is Bede’s close attention to the significations of the letter of Scripture and his desire to uncover depth in the Bible’s textual detail. Bede and his readers were highly interested in uncovering the hidden meaning of the sacra pagina, whether at the literal level of unfamiliar biblical lexis or at the more recondite level of hidden figurative meaning that is not discernible to a reader at first blush. Such an approach to Scripture has less to do with eisegesis and more to do with a cohesive intellectual and spiritual view of biblical literature as an interrelated corpus. In Bede’s understanding of the Bible, there are innumerable Old Testament prefigurations (types) of New Testament figures and events (antitypes). It is

17 See E. Mason, ‘You are a priest forever’: Second Temple Jewish Messianism and the priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 18 See Galatians 1–​6. 19 J. Cavadini, ‘From letter to spirit: the multiple senses of Scripture’, in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds), The Oxford handbook of early Christian biblical interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 126–​48, at 126. 20 See Holder, ‘Bede and the tradition of patristic exegesis’, 407–​11.

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precisely because the Old Testament is so vast as a body of writing that this mode of exegesis appears prominently in Bede’s commentaries, the majority of which cover this part of the biblical canon. There are two major currents that define Bede’s approach to the Old Testament: the desire to explicate its text literally, because it is arguably more textually difficult than the New Testament; and the interest in identifying typological prefigurations of the New Testament to underscore the grand scheme of salvation history for Christian users of the Hebrew Scriptures. Allegorical or figurative readings of the Old Testament help to link concepts and figures, that are not necessarily direct types and antitypes, between and within each division of the canon. In this vein, one feature of Bede’s biblical scholarship is the identification and explication of hidden references to Christ in the Old Testament. Particular examples he draws attention to include the ‘fountain of life’ (fons vitae) of Psalm 35:10 and ‘sun of justice’ (sol iustitiae) in Malachias 4:2.21 Bede views Christ as the fountain of life because it is through baptism in Him that we are brought to everlasting life. The prophecy of Malachias 4 concerns God’s judgement of the wicked and their future extinction, which will be brought about not by water as the Noahic covenant guarantees, but through fire (Malachias 4:1). For Bede, the sol iustitiae in the context of God’s judgement is a veiled reference to Christ whose Second Coming will herald the Last Judgement, as various eschatological passages of the New Testament suggest. The theological and symbolic associations between the fons vitae and Christ are transparent; sol iustitiae appears alongside nomen meum and forms part of the action of God’s judgement, which, for Bede, is a disguised reference to the second person of the Trinity, Christ, in the eschatological role of judge. Wordplay and word association are frequently part of the process of exegesis. The paronomasia between sunu (son) and sunne (sun) in Bede’s native Old English, as noted by Kendall, must have added further weight to this exegesis of sol iustitiae.22 In the same way that proper names can reveal hidden spiritual meaning, phrases in the Old Testament can also reveal hidden sacred names. Bede at times inserts references to Christ in his Old Testament exegesis. Numbers 9:11 relates instructions for the Passover: ‘in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, they shall eat it with unleavened bread and wild lettuce’.23 Bede replaces ‘wild lettuce’ (lactucis agrestibus) with ‘in the blood of the lamb’ (in sanguine agni) in order to complement ‘unleavened bread’ (azymus panibus) and to emphasise the 1 See also the fons vitae in Proverbs 13:14, 14:27, and 16:22. 2 22 Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 38 note 191. 23 ‘Mense secundo quartadecima die mensis ad vesperam, cum azymis et lactucis agrestibus comedent illud.’

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typology between the Passover meal and the Eucharist.24 This represents an interesting example of quoting and then adapting or expanding a biblical verse, a phenomenon we see across Bede’s exegetical corpus. Bede’s adapted quotation constitutes a new Christianised form of the verse. The citation of the Septuagint in an adapted form is a distinguishing feature of the style of Pauline New Testament documents. Bede uses the Scriptures in a similar fashion, blurring the contours of what constitutes quotation and showing that the Bible –​which took so long to become reified in its early medieval forms –​was a living, organic text even in Bede’s day. Elsewhere, Bede is keen to point out the typology between Melchisedech and Christ, regarding the gift of bread and wine to Abraham.25 Later on, Bede explains that Melchisedech’s offer of bread and wine anticipated that fulfilment would not come under Mosaic Law but the Gospel.26 An important aspect of Bede’s approach to Old Testament exegesis is to convey its relevance for contemporary Christians or, as with Numbers 9:11, to pointedly emphasise this relevance. Many of Bede’s intrabiblical allusions –​a hallmark feature of his commentary style –​depend upon close verbal and conceptual reminiscences between individual verses throughout the biblical canon. Needless to say, Bede’s scriptural knowledge is encyclopaedic and, throughout his work, he frequently links ideas in the Old Testament with associated New Testament verses. For example, in his discussion of the child that Sarah will bear, Bede’s filium promissionis alludes to the promissionis filii of Galatians 4:28 and the filii sunt promissionis of Romans 9:8.27 Making associations of this nature was fundamental to how Bede as a scholar approached the capaciousness of Scripture, a method that is the result of a life of daily biblical study and liturgical practice.

Textual obscurity For Bede as a biblical scholar, abstruseness is a fairly common category of interpretative difficulty. At times, Bede appears comfortable with ambiguities in the biblical text. The Vulgate and Old Latin traditions do not make it clear whether at Genesis 4:25 the speaker is Adam or Eve. Bede does

4 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1551–​6; trans. Kendall, p. 187. 2 25 Genesis 14:18. 26 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1420–​8. 27 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 881–​4. See also, ‘Isaac, id est in filio promissionis’, Bede, In Genesim 4, line 460.

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not resolve this difficulty, but appears to be comfortable with this uncertainty, allowing the statement in question to come from either one of Seth’s parents.28 At other times, Bede is quick to clarify potential ambiguity. The Origines gentium or the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 outlines the generations that follow Noe, which include the progenitors of the gentile ‘islands’ and their tongues.29 The list begins with Noe’s three sons: Sem, Cham, and Japheth; the genealogy then enumerates the sons of Japheth and the offspring of two sons of Japheth only, Gomer and Javan.30 Bede underscores the brevity and also the impreciseness of Genesis 10:5, clarifying that it is not only the sons of Javan (and possibly also Gomer) in the immediately preceding verses (10:3–​4) to whom the gentile nations owe their origin, but to the complete catalogue of Japheth’s sons, which would also include Magog, Madai, Tubal, Moshoch, and Thiras listed at 10:2. The paratactic nature of the catalogue of Noe’s descendants and the fact that the generations of some sons are omitted allows for possible ambiguity concerning the progenitors of the gentile nations. Interestingly, it is not the abstruse geographic region (insulae gentium) that Bede takes issue with, but the possible misunderstanding that the gentile nations descend from two of Noe’s grandsons, rather than all seven. Bede is at pains to clear up any ambiguity concerning the Table of Nations since this is important to understanding the origin of his own people, to which he affords due consideration in the Ecclesiastical history. In the absence of any named progenitor for the English in the Table of Nations, identifying precisely the forbears of the gentile ‘islands’ or peoples is as close as Bede can get in this work to integrating the English with the nations of the Origines gentium.31 Other difficulties pertaining to this passage include the specification that Sem was the brother of Japheth, but the absence of a similar designation for Cham, since this information is given at the start of the biblical chapter.32 While this does not pose a major interpretative problem, Bede is nevertheless eager to point out issues with how the text relays its information or, in this case, fails to. Other kinds of clarifications made by Bede are more matter-​of-​fact. In this way, Bede’s commentaries function as go-​to encyclopaedic reference texts that explain interpretative difficulties literally and which explicate factual discrepancies and imprecision in the scriptural texts. At Babel, language was confounded and speakers of the newly separated languages were

8 Bede, In Genesim 2, line 652. 2 29 Genesis 10:5. Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 48–​60; trans. Kendall, p. 217. 30 Genesis 10:1–​5. 31 On which, see D. Anlezark, ‘Sceaf, Japheth, and the origins of the Anglo-​Saxons’, Anglo-​Saxon England, 31 (2002), 13–​46. 32 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 217–​22.

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dispersed across the world.33 Bede informs us that although construction of the Tower of Babel was halted, the city of Nineveh did not cease to be inhabited.34 While Bede goes on to spiritually reflect on Babylon, his clarification here is straightforward and supplements the verses at hand in a way that deepens our understanding of the bare facts of biblical narratives. Later in the commentary, Bede draws attention to the minor lexical difference between the ‘fountain’ (iuxta fontem aquae) at which Hagar is visited by an angel in Genesis 16:7 and the ‘well’ (puteum) which Hagar names at 16:14. While no deeper conclusion is drawn from this minor lexical difference, the attention to detail here indicates how carefully Bede reads the text of the Bible in the process of his exposition. Although it might seem like a truism, it is worth pointing out that with Bede’s approach to the Bible, some textual difficulties are significant and warrant clarification while others are of less consequence. Extraneous explanations such as the discussion of fons /​ puteum form part of the encyclopaedic nature of Bede’s biblical commentaries at this time, which provide general but distilled repositories of the known learning on a particular biblical text or verse. The unusual way in which certain verses of the Bible were written is a primary concern of early medieval Christian commentators. Bede makes several observations in his commentary On Genesis concerning how the biblical text was composed and arranged and its anomalous syntax, repetition, phrasing, and style. ‘I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth’.35 The repetition in this verse that the world will not be destroyed by a flood is commented upon by Bede as follows: ‘and by this insistent repetition the heresy of Origen … is refuted’.36 Bede views the verse as refuting the possibility of Origen’s cyclical and unending cosmos. Bede draws deeper meaning from a stylistic feature that strikes him as an early medieval reader of the Bible, suggesting that repetition is used by the biblical author to underscore the linear direction of the cosmos and salvation history, which have a definite beginning and end. While repetition is a distinctive feature of Biblical Hebrew 3 Genesis 7:9. 3 34 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 505–​8. 35 Genesis 9:11: ‘Statuam pactum meum vobiscum et nequaquam ultra interficietur omnis caro aquis diluvii, neque erit deinceps diluvium dissipans terram’. 36 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 2208–​11; trans. Kendall, p. 207: ‘Crebraque repetitione redarguitur ac damnatur haeresis Origenis’. Kendall, p. 207 note 360, suggests that the ‘insistent repetition’ that Bede refers to is the repetition of ‘I will establish my covenant with you’, which appears at 9:9 and 9:11, but I would argue that it applies to these verses and to the repetition at 9:11 that the world will not be destroyed by a flood again.

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rhetoric and style, particularly prolix verses in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation appear anomalous and against general stylistic conventions to Bede as an early medieval reader of the text. Similarly, Bede remarks on God’s blessing of all of Creation after its individual components had already been blessed, referring to the benediction given in Genesis 1:31 as an ‘additional remark’.37 Repetition is used in Hebrew to underscore important verses, which is highly effective given the generally sparse nature of Hebrew scriptural texts. Bede correctly identifies the biblical author’s use of repetition as a means of stressing the elements being repeated, although the biblical author’s emphasis at 9:11 is really upon the Noahic covenant rather than cosmology. Nevertheless, Bede’s exegesis here gestures towards an understanding and appreciation of Biblical Hebrew stylistics even though it is encountered through a Latin translation. Paul’s remark in 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘for now we see through a glass darkly’ (videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate), seems appropriate here.38 The use of odd and ‘additional’ phrases is related to repetition as it also violates Bede’s stylistic expectations, warranting further explanation. The unusual qualification that Nimrod was ‘a stout hunter before the Lord’ (robustus venator coram Domino) suggests for Bede intentional emphasis upon his strength and sinfulness.39 Furthermore, Genesis relates that Nimrod ‘began to be mighty on the earth’ (coepit esse potens in terra), an odd phrase which Bede explains refers to the fact that Nimrod was the first to build up earthly power through the construction of Nineveh.40 At 17:4, the arrangement ‘and God said to him: I am, and my covenant is with thee’ (dixitque ei Deus: Ego sum et pactum meum tecum) raises similar questions for Bede concerning repetitious phrasing.41 The same is true of Genesis 16:11: ‘[B]‌ehold, said he, thou art with child, and thou shalt bring forth a son: and thou shalt call his name Ismael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.’42 The link between the name and God hearing Hagar’s affliction is perplexing unless one understands that the etymology of ‘Ismael’ relates to sound. Bede explains: ‘Ishmael means “catching the sound of God” and the reason for the name is explained when it is immediately added: “Because

7 Bede, In Genesim 1, line 950; trans. Kendall, p. 96. 3 38 Translation here is from the Authorised Version. The new Cambridge paragraph Bible, with the apocrypha: King James Version, ed. D. Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 39 Genesis 10:9. 40 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 87–​99; trans. Kendall, p. 218. 41 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 308–​11; trans. Kendall, pp. 280–​1. 42 ‘Ecce ait concepisti et paries filium, vocabisque nomen eius Ismahel eo quod audierit Dominus adflictionem tuam.’

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the Lord has heard your affliction”.’43 Commenting on Genesis 4:7, ‘but the lust thereof shall be under thee’ (sed sub te erit appetitus eius), Bede draws attention to Hebraisms in the Latin tradition that replicate the grammar of the original Hebrew. Bede explains that in accordance with ‘Hebrew idiom’, the biblical text uses the indicative rather than the imperative in relating God’s punishment of Cain.44 As a biblical scholar, therefore, Bede is not solely concerned with interpretative difficulties, but stylistic features too –​a fact that is unsurprising given that he wrote two works expressly dedicated to stylistics.45

Temporal difficulties Bede as a biblical scholar was taken with the issue that the biblical text does not always say precisely what it means. A particular quandary arises when we read at Genesis 5:32 that Noe was 500 years old when he begat Sem, Ham, and Japheth; Genesis 7:6 tells us that Noe was 600 years old when the Flood came; and yet we read at Genesis 11:10 that Sem was 100 years old when he fathered Arphaxad two years after the Flood, rather than 102.46 Bede’s solution is that Noe was not 500 but 502 when Sem was born and that the biblical author used a round number as synecdoche for an exact number, since 500 is contained within 502.47 Bede possibly thought that the biblical texts incorporate numerical synecdoche for stylistic reasons when he comments: ‘for Scripture usually speaks in such a way that, although a small amount may be left over or lacking, it nevertheless gives a full and complete number for the total’.48 This statement is quite remarkable given Bede’s close attention to biblical numbers at literal face value in his recalculation of

43 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 235–​8; trans. Kendall, pp. 278–​9: ‘Ismahel interpretatur “exauditio Dei”, causaque nominis exponitur cum protinus subinfertur eo quod audierit Dominus afflictionem tuam.’ 44 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 97–​9; trans. Kendall, p. 143. 45 Bede, De arte metrica and De schematibus et tropis, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975). On Bede’s own stylistic sensibilities, refer to his poetic corpus. See M. Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 46 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 710–​11. 47 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 733–​41. 48 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 745–​7; trans. Kendall, p. 239: ‘Solet enim sic loqui scriptura nonnumquam, ut etsi modicum supersit uel desit, plenarium tamen et perfectum in computo numerum sonat’. As noted by Kendall, Bede draws here on Tyconius’s rules for interpreting the Bible related in his Expositio Apocalypseos, which suggest that biblical numbers are sometimes related in this way. See Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 239 note 178.

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annus mundi. Bede observes that the biblical text is not being literal, which is an equally remarkable assertion, implying that this text of monumental authority is, in fact, imprecise or not literal at times about literal details. Bede relates that the Bible here is ‘speaking freely’ since Noe, at age 500, could not have fathered three sons in one year to a single mother, even though there is no mention of the number of Noe’s wives.49 Bede’s biblical scholarship does not follow one format or another, but strikes a careful balance between literal or non-​literal interpretation predicated on the content and context of individual biblical statements. The duration of the Flood poses a further hemerological quandary for Bede as a biblical scholar. There is a complicated plethora of temporal designations related in the Flood narrative, which is the result of the Pentateuch’s multi-​layered redaction history. The Flood began ‘in the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month’ (7:11); it rained for forty days and nights (7:12, 7:17); the waters were on the earth for 150 days, following the initial period of rainfall (7:24); the waters began to abate after 150 days (8:3); the ark was berthed on the twenty-​seventh day of the seventh month (8:4); the waters continued to abate until the tenth month (8:5); Noe sent birds out on three occasions to conduct reconnaissance: after forty days (8:6), seven days after that (8:10), and a further seven days after that (8:12), after which the bird did not return; on the first day of the first month of Noe’s 601st year, the earth was dry (8:13) –​that is, the twenty-​seventh day of the second month (8:14). Within the interpretative tradition, Bede is original in his assertion that the Flood lasted for exactly one solar year, an interpretation he also puts forward in De temporum ratione.50 As Philipp Nothaft clarifies, Bede could not have been aware of the Jewish commentators who arrived at this conclusion before his time.51 Noe’s age also implies that the Flood lasted one year, since it began in his 600th year and ended in his 601st. There are two temporal references that are of consequence to Bede’s exact calculation of the Flood’s duration; the shorter intervening periods relate to the length of precipitation, the earth’s submersion, and the time it took for the floodwaters to abate. From the Flood’s beginning (17/​2) to its end in the following year (27/​2) is a period of 375 solar days.52 Bede was eager to make precise

9 Bede, In Genesim 3, line 753; trans. Kendall, pp. 239–​40. 4 50 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1899–​1946; Bede De temporum ratione 11, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). 51 C. P. E. Nothaft, ‘Noah’s calendar: the chronology of the Flood narrative and the history of astronomy in sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​century scholarship’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 74 (2011), 191–​211 at 195. 52 As noted by Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 7.

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sense of the figures indicated in the text and to convey these in simple contemporary calendrical terms. His solution is straightforward: the months to which the biblical text refers are lunar, rather than solar, a fact known to computists at this time. The lunar year lasts roughly 354 complete solar days.53 Therefore, from 17/​2 to 16/​2 in the following year is a complete lunar year of 354 solar days. From 17/​2 to 27/​2, there are a further eleven solar days. Taken together, these amount to the total number of days in a single solar year (354+​11=​365). The morass of temporal references in this passage betrays the complex redaction history of the Pentateuch and poses substantial difficulty for any reader of Genesis. It is unclear if the biblical authors and redactors intended to relate that the Flood lasted a solar year or if the 365 solar days (354+​11) is a happy coincidence resulting from the amalgamation of different sources and their numerical data into a single narrative.54 Since Noe’s age is used to bookend the Flood, it seems plausible that a single lunar year was the originally intended duration of the Flood in some versions prior to redaction. Ambrose in De Noe et arca argues that the Flood lasted a full lunar year from 27/​2 to 27/​2, but this has less to do with a variant biblical reading and more to do with Ambrose’s desire to read perfection into the textual messiness of the Bible.55 Bede’s computistical background means he was uniquely placed to solve the puzzle of the Flood’s length from this array of data as it appears in the Latin Bible. The originality of Bede’s explanation cannot be overestimated since he is the only Christian commentator to apply detailed computistical knowledge in this manner and to arrive at a tidy solution to the issue. Bede’s process of interpretation applies scientific calendrical knowledge to the biblical text, revealing hidden literal meaning that resonates with contemporary calendrical learning. As demonstrated in Eoghan Ahern’s study, scriptural difficulties were frequently resolved by Bede through reference to non-​biblical

53 In medieval calendrical science, to correlate the lunar year with the solar year, 11 solar days (epacts) are added. This necessitates the addition of an intercalary month or lunar leap month roughly every three years (the embolismic year) to mitigate this difference. 54 See D. G. Longacre, ‘Charting the textual waters: textual issues in the chronology of the Flood narrative’, in A. A. Snelling and S. W. Boyd (eds), Grappling with the chronology of the Genesis Flood: navigating the flow of time in biblical narrative (Green Forest, AZ: Master Books, 2014), pp. 231–​98, in particular 237–​62. 55 See Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 198 note 314. In Ambrose’s interpretation, the Flood would have lasted exactly one lunar year, and one day, with the new post-​ Diluvian world beginning on 27 February.

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empirical knowledge of the natural world.56 Bede undoubtedly thought that the methods of calendrical reckoning he used were cutting-​edge and the only definitive and accurate dating system following its long history of adjustment. The inexplicit reference to the solar year confirmed for Bede the latent presence of scientific truth, as later humanity had gradually come to discover it, within the biblical text.

Terminology, metrology, and authorship There are numerous other textual difficulties that Bede tackled in his biblical scholarship. Technical terminology is an abiding challenge, particularly in Genesis. Terms employed for the decks of the ark require explanation: the upper floor or middle story (Vulgate, cenacula [dining room, usually first floor]; Old Latin, bicamerata [second level]) and the third storey (Vulgate, tristega [third floor]; Old Latin, tricamerata [third level]).57 Similarly, monetary terms like denarius require glossing.58 The first set of terms constitutes neologisms coined specifically for Latin biblical translation, while terms relating to currency and measurement belong to the world of the Bible; therefore, both demand explanation. There is also the issue of what biblical units of measurement refer to. Bede considers the common exegetical question of whether the ark had the spatial capacity to support its inhabitants. Genesis 6:14–​16 provides the blueprint for the ark in terms of its measurements in cubits. Bede draws on Augustine’s explanation that Noe’s cubits are six times the size of ‘our’ cubit.59 The size of the familiar cubit led critical readers of Genesis to question the viability of the ark’s size as it is literally described in 6:14–​16. Augustine and Bede refer to Acts 7:22, which relates that ‘Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians’ (eruditus est Moses omni sapientia Aegyptiorum). Bede suggests that despite the presence of specific measurements in the text, Moses –​learned as he was in Egyptian geometry –​was not explicit here about the unit of measurement used for the ark as he did not wish to mislead the people of the book by including details that they would not understand.60 Bede observes, too, that the cubits used for the dimensions of the Tabernacle –​and presumably also the ark of the Covenant –​later on are different again to the measurements 56 E. Ahern, Bede and the cosmos: theology and nature in the eighth century (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), p. 81. 57 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1314–​46; trans. Kendall, p. 180. 58 Bede, In Genesim 2, line 1744. 59 The cubit was a known unit of measurement in ancient Israel. Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1370–​435. 60 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1370–​83.

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inexplicitly intended for Noe’s ark.61 As we have seen earlier, in Bede’s reading of Scripture, the text does not always convey its literal details in a directly literal manner. Interestingly, this circuitous explanation of measurement is one of the rare instances in which Old Testament textual obscurity is imputed directly to an individual redactor of the Bible. At Genesis 9:5–​6, Bede regards sanguinem animarum (the blood of lives) as a metaphor for the breath of life, even though the ‘Lawgiver’ (Moses) at Leviticus 17:14 writes that ‘for the life of all flesh is in the blood’ (anima enim omnis carnis in sanguine est).62 At Genesis 13:18, Abraham relocates to a valley near Hebron, which Bede clarifies is a later name (applied at Joshua 14:15) for the place known as Cariatharbe in the time of Moses.63 The reason for the anachronistic appearance of this later name at this earlier point in Genesis is attributable to the rewriting of the Law by the prophet Esdras –​an event alluded to in the famous illumination from the first quire of Codex Amiatinus.64 In this way, the text of the Bible has textual features that are imprecise and which are the result of its transmission history. Similarly, Bede comments on aspects of the New Testament, explaining that the Apostle Paul wrote in a particular way for a particular reason.65 In his Old Testament

1 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1386–​412. Exodus 25:10–​27:18. 6 62 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 2146–​53; trans. Kendall, pp. 205–​6. 63 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1378–​90. 64 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1385–​90. On Amiatinus, see C. Chazelle, ‘Ceolfrid’s gift to St Peter: the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the evidence of its Roman destination’, Early Medieval Europe 12 (2003), 129–​58; Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘sister’ bibles: scripture, liturgy, and art in the milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden: Brill 2019); C. A. Farr, ‘The Graphic presentation of inscriptions: the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus’ diagrams and Ezra picture’ in J. Hawkes and M. Boulton (eds), All roads lead to Rome: the creation, context, and transmission of the Codex Amiatinus (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 63–​76; R. Marsden, ‘Job in his place: the Ezra miniature in the Codex Amiatinus’, Scriptorium 49 (1995), 3–​15; P. Meyvaert, ‘The date of Bede’s “In Ezram” and his image of Ezra in the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum 80 (2005), 1087–​133; J. O’Reilly, ‘ “All that Peter stands for”: the Romanitas of the Codex Amiatinus reconsidered’, in J. Graham-​Campbell and M. Ryan (eds), Anglo-​Saxon /​Irish relations before the Vikings (Oxford: Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 2009), pp. 367–​95; J. O’Reilly, ‘The art of authority’, in T. Charles-​Edwards (ed.), After Rome (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 141–​89; J. O’Reilly, ‘The Library of Scripture: views from Vivarium and Wearmouth-​Jarrow’, in P. Binski and W. Noel (eds), New offerings, ancient treasures: studies in medieval art for George Henderson (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 2001), pp. 3–​39; J. Ramirez, ‘Sub culmine gazas: the iconography of the armarium on the Ezra page of the Codex Amiatinus’, Gesta 48 (2009), 1–​18. 65 See where Bede identifies an instance of sarcasm in 2 Corinthians 12:13: Bede, In Genesim 1, 2257–​61.

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commentaries, Bede often indicates that Scripture operates or speaks in one way or another, explaining peculiar features as simply an attribute of biblical style. The usual evocation of Mosaic authorship implies that Moses conveyed the Pentateuch or the Word of God, rather than having an active hand in its wording. However, for Bede, some of the Bible’s textual problems are original to the text and can also be ascribed to its divinely sanctioned transmitters. On the question of authorship, in Bede’s thought, the original transmitters of the Word of God also have the effect of bringing theological clarity to older portions of the Scriptures. Hebrews 7 concerns the tithes given by Abraham to Melchisedech and to Levi by his brothers.66 The author of Hebrews tells us that even Levi, who comes much later in Genesis, paid tithes through Abraham to Melchisedech.67 As Bede relates, Abraham represents his descendants, the priestly caste of Levi and Aaron; therefore, Abraham’s tithe to Melchisedech –​a type of Christ –​represents the superiority of the order of Melchisedech over the Levitical priesthood.68 Bede claims that ‘the Apostle understood and explained this very profoundly’ (quod multum sublimiter intellexit atque exposuit apostolus).69 For Bede, the author of Hebrews added weight to the significance of Abraham’s tithe by extending his offering forwards to include Levi, therefore underscoring the deference owed to the order of Melchisedech by the priesthood of the Law. Hebrews and Bede concur that the Old Covenant has been superseded by the New. For Bede, the Apostle helps to bring clarity to an episode in Genesis by interpreting it as a discourse on later Mosaic Law and its priesthood. In a related vein, Bede’s comparison between the door of the ark at Genesis 6:16 and the door of the Temple is deemed by Kendall as a literal or historical allegory, whereby a non-​spiritual connection is drawn between two objects in the unredeemed world of the Old Testament.70 The interpretation of Abraham’s tithe here similarly disrupts our definitions of allegory or typology, which normally operate between the Old Testament and the New. This sensitivity to how particular biblical authors utilise exegesis in their texts reveals a critical understanding of biblical composition on the part of Bede.

66 On tithing, see Genesis 14:18–​24; Exodus 22:29; Leviticus 27:30–​4; Numbers 19:8–​ 32; Deuteronomy 10:9, 12:11–​19, 18:1–​9. 67 Hebrews 7:9–​10. 68 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1644–​777. 69 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1739–​40; trans. Kendall, p. 269. 70 Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 179 note 215.

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Onomastic difficulties The literal and figurative meanings of personal names and place-​names are a prominent subject throughout Bede’s scholarship. Indeed, onomastic explanations are the most frequent type of literal explanations offered in Bede’s On Genesis. Overall, Jerome’s Hebrew names is the most commonly cited work in Bede’s corpus insofar as current editions of his works permit us to say.71 This concern with explicating names is unsurprising in early medieval England, which would have been accustomed to a degree of linguistic transparency in Old English personal and place-​names.72 The world of the Bible must have seemed distant and alien to an early medieval English reader. Understanding the meaning of names in the biblical texts helps to render these materials more familiar. Bede particularly appreciated the additional layer of exegetical richness that onomastic exposition, etymologising, and spiritual reflection added to his interpretation of the Old Testament. The following is a general example of Bede’s onomastic interpretation: ‘For Amorite means “bitter”, and Dan means “judging” or “judgement”.’73 Bede goes on to offer a reflection on the righteousness and justice of the Danites, wherein the literal meaning of the name underscores the character of this group. The land of Naid in which Cain dwelt is explained as meaning ‘unsteady motion, fugitive’ and refers to a state of being, rather than a place-​name, which would not be apparent to an early medieval English reader who would take this as a specific place-​name since Jerome treats it as such.74 Philip is from Bethsaida, which is etymologised by Jerome and Bede as ‘house of hunters’, a literal meaning that is interpreted as reflecting their evangelical mandate and since the first disciples (Simon Peter and Andrew) were referred to by Christ as ‘fishers of men’ when called.75 At times, etymological information 71 There are over 400 citations from the Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum throughout Bede’s corpus, 64 alone in In Genesim, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967). M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library, p. 217. Lapidge’s study does not take account of the Fontes Anglo-​Saxonici system of classification and whether a source is definitely a direct source, a possible source, or an analogue. However, with the highly rarefied nature of Hebrew knowledge, the majority of the supposed citations listed by Lapidge probably constitute direct borrowings. Bede also garners knowledge of Hebrew onomastics from Jerome’s De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum and Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos. 72 See F. Robinson, ‘The Significance of names in Old English literature’, Anglia 86 (2009), 14–​58. 73 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1619–​ 20; trans. Kendall, p. 189: ‘Amorraeus quippe “amarus”, Dan interpretatur “iudicans” siue “iudicium”.’ 74 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 440–​7; trans. Kendall, p. 153. 75 John 1:43–​51; Mark 1:16–​20.

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is provided that simply relates the meaning of toponyms without any broader interpretative application; the presence of this factual information leans into the purpose of commentaries as encyclopaedic repositories and textual geographies (travel works, even) of distant, but important, locations.76 At other times, the place-​names Bede reads in the Vulgate are not actually place-​names, as he points out in the case of Abraham who was not rescued from Ur –​commonly understood as a place-​name –​but from the ‘fire’ into which he was thrown.77 Thus, we see the myriad problems presented by place-​names in the Bible, which Bede confronts in order to clarify the scriptural text at hand. In some instances, Bede corrects the text of the Vulgate with biblical readings taken from ancillary scholarly materials. Genesis 10:4 mentions the Dodanim, the sons of Javan (discussed above) who are believed to be the progenitors of the people of Rhodes.78 Bede argues that the correct form of the name is Rhodanim or Rhodim, ‘as the Seventy Translators rendered it, and as our translator [s.c. Jerome] also put it in the book of Hebrew names’.79 Jerome completed his Hebrew names shortly after relocating to Bethlehem (c. 388), while his Pentateuch translations were not produced until the last years of his career (c. 398–​406), at the final stage of his conversion to the ‘Hebrew truth’ (Hebraica veritas).80 His book of Hebrew onomastics was written with reference to the Septuagint text of Genesis where Rhodanim appears. The source of this difference in the biblical-​textual tradition, as Bede indicates, is confusion between the Hebrew letters ‫( ד‬dalet [d]‌) and ‫( ר‬resh [r]) by the translators of the Septuagint.81 Throughout the Hebrew tradition, which is followed in most modern Bible versions, the name is rendered Dodanim; the notable ancient exceptions are the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic text of 1 6 See Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1487–​9; trans. Kendall, p. 261. 7 77 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 85–​93; trans. Kendall, p. 274. 78 Kendall translates these names at Genesis 10:4 as ‘the Kittim and the Dodanim’, suggesting that these names refer to demonyms rather than personal names: Bede: On Genesis, p. 216. In most modern translations of the Bible, ‘Dodanim’ has been taken as an individual masculine name. However, the ending ‘-​im’ in the Hebrew original suggests that this name refers to a plural group. Strong’s Concordance clarifies ‘Dodanim’ as a son of Javan or his descendants, allowing for this name to function as a personal name or a demonym. Largely in biblical translation history, this has been taken as the proper name of an individual. The Vulgate has ‘Elisa et Tharsis, Cetthim et Dodanim’. Modern versions obscure the fact that these are not four sons of Javan, but two sons and two later ethnic groups. Bede understood this name as referring to a group, rather than an individual. 79 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 40–​4; trans. Kendall, p. 216: ‘ut septuaginta interpretes transtulerunt, et in libro Hebreorum nominum etiam noster interpres posuit’. 80 After relocating to the Holy Land, Jerome continued to revise biblical translations based on the Old Latin and Septuagint traditions. 81 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 43–​4. See discussion of this issue in D. Fleming, ‘Hebraeam scire linguam: Bede’s rhetoric of the Hebrew Truth’, in S. Zacher (ed.), Imagining the

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Paralipomenon 1:7 in which Rhodanim appears. At the time Jerome produced this work on Hebrew place-​names, he had not yet translated Genesis, so he was not necessarily sensitive to this divergence. Jerome’s onomastic handbook was intended as a crib to the Old Testament before he had fully turned his attention to translating its canon anew from Hebrew. Interestingly, Bede defers to the authority of the older biblical-​textual tradition of the Septuagint and also to Jerome’s onomastic scholarship. Jerome’s work was vital to any early medieval western exegete who wished to understand the unfamiliar place-​names and demonyms of the Old Testament/​Hebrew Bible. Therefore, it seemed to enjoy particular authority as a lexical reference text for Hebrew names, an authority that is, in fact, derived from Jerome’s role in translating the Bible. In an interesting display of exegetical gymnastics, Bede’s appeal to this older reading suggests that Jerome’s Vulgate is incorrect in how it renders this name, deferring to the Septuagint and, more importantly, Jerome’s onomastic work as more authoritative than the scriptural text itself. Bede’s use of Jerome here raises a fascinating matrix of questions regarding the textual authority of Jerome’s Vulgate when compared to his onomastic work. A similar correction to the scriptural text is proposed in Bede’s Thirty questions on the Book of Kings. This commentary forms a list of esoteric queries on aspects of the Books of Kings addressed to Bede by Nothhelm. Bede’s correspondent is puzzled by 4 Kings 17:30 concerning the deities that were developed amongst the nations that settled in Samaria (most likely indicating the erection of statues of these deities): ‘for the men of Babylon made Sochothbenoth’ (Viri enim Babylonii fecerunt Soccoth Benoth).82 Soccothbenoth (as Bede renders it; Vulgate Socchothbenoth; King James Version /​New Revised Standard Version Succoth-​benoth; New International Version Sukkoth Benoth) was the deity that was constructed by the Babylonians in Samaria. The name can be transliterated differently based on the Masoretic tradition; however, here I follow the name as it is rendered by Bede. Bede takes Jerome to task over his rendering of this figure’s name in the Vulgate text. From his reading of Jerome’s onomastic scholarship, Bede had determined that the element soccoth in this name denoted tabernacula (tents, booths) in Latin: ‘If I am not mistaken, the translator would have done better to render “Soccoth” into the Latin as “booths” and to give “Benoth” by itself as the idol’s name.’83 As observed Jew in Anglo-​Saxon literature and culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016), pp. 63–​78, at 69–​70. As Fleming observes, elsewhere in the Nomina Hebraica, Bede also includes ‘Dodanim’, but in reference to Genesis 10:4, only the forms ‘Rodii, Rodim’ are given. For further discussion see D. Fleming, ‘Bede and the Hebrew Alphabets’ in the present volume. 82 4 Kings 17:30. 83 Bede, In Regum librum xxx quaestiones 23, lines 18–​20, ed. D. Hurst. CCSL 119 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972); trans. W. Trent Foley in Bede: a biblical miscellany

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by Trent Foley, Bede took the place-​name Benith, a settlement that is listed under Kings in Jerome’s Hebrew names, as referring to the second element of the deity, Soccothbenoth.84 Benoth does not appear as a place-​name in its own right anywhere in the Old Testament, but Jerome lists it in Hebrew names in relation to 4 Kings 17:30. The other cities mentioned in 4 Kings 17:30 take their names from regional deities; therefore, it seems that Jerome understood -​benoth as the name of a location. Bede’s presumption that Soccothbenoth functions in the same way is astute given the difference between these two forms and since the connection is not made explicit by Jerome. The actual meaning of the deity’s name is ‫‘ סֻּכֹות בְ ּנֹות‬Booths of Daughters’. In Jerome’s biblical translation, however, the two elements of the name are not separated, indicating that it was thought of cohesively as a proper name, although this second element also related to a location. Representing place-​names in Latin is a challenge for Jerome who renders some names as Latin transliterations of the Hebrew forms such as Siloam (Luke 13:4), even though it has a transparent meaning (‘sent’ as given in John 9:7), while other names are translated word for word.85 Bede’s interpretation is an exercise in Hebrew etymology that seeks to shed light on this theonym and to draw connections with names listed in Jerome’s onomasticon. Within his exposition, Bede very boldly suggests improvements to the form of this name as rendered in the Vulgate. In Bede’s view, Jerome did not represent the name correctly or transparently. Bede’s proposed correction may even imply that Jerome did not handle the original Hebrew correctly, misrepresenting two elements as a proper name. Bede utilises Jerome’s onomastic scholarship to correct Jerome’s own biblical text. Here, we see Bede privileging scholarly, non-​scriptural Hieronymian sources over Jerome’s Vulgate translations. Perhaps Bede felt the ability to pursue this kind of correction of the sacred text against an etymological dictionary since both are the work of the same individual scholar. Bede’s ability to connect Benith with -​benoth reveals a remarkable facility with Hebrew for this particular time and context. The interpretation put forward (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp. 89–​138 at 126–​7: ‘Et melius ni fallor faceret interpres, si soccoth latine in tabernacula uerteret et nomen idoli benoth absolute poneret.’ In my quotation, the name is edited to conform to the way in which Bede rendered it in his Latin commentary; Foley’s translation conforms to modern Hebrew-​based English spellings of biblical names in order to appear more familiar to the modern reader, an admirable task in itself. Here, fidelity to the early medieval forms of the text and the way it presents names has been sought. See also confusion over the meaning of Amos 9:11. 84 Foley, Bede: a biblical miscellany, p. 127 note 1. 85 See the Vulgate’s rendering of Deuteronomy 3:29 as ‘fanum Phogor’ (temple of Phogor) with modern Hebrew-​based Bible versions that give Beth-​peor.

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by Bede is also an attempt to make sense of names in Jerome’s onomastic work that are seemingly absent from the Bible. The corrections Bede proposes to the sacred text based on his investigation of ancillary scholarly resources challenges possible perceptions of biblical-​textual authority in this period. Bede’s confidence in his own credentials and standing as a biblical scholar is apparent in his willingness to suggest that Jerome could have done better. As this gloss makes clear, Bede is not merely a passive reader of the Vulgate and exponent of the Hebrew Truth, but is an engaged and audacious biblical-​textual critic.

Conclusions One of the primary driving forces behind Bede’s biblical scholarship is the imperfect textual state of the Bible which requires clarification. The challenges posed range from unfamiliar details to instances in which the text presents its information in an obfuscatory manner, such as the ark’s measurements. Earlier, we mentioned Bede’s concern with the wording of the Scriptures. On the whole, Bede’s biblical scholarship could be defined as a kind of sacred philology (sacra philologia) that attempts to clarify textual difficulties, to explicate their origin, and to outline the textual and interpretative histories of a particular word, phrase, or verse. A distinguishing feature of Bede’s exegesis is its comparative approach to different versions of the Bible, namely the Septuagint and the Old Latin Bible. These versions are frequently mentioned to bring further clarity to a verse, underlining the textual imperfection of Jerome’s Vulgate and Bede’s philological conception of the Bible as a text that exists in multiple versions, some of which can be drawn upon to elucidate difficulties in the Vulgate. In the commentary On Genesis alone, over seventy references to alternative readings in the Septuagint or Old Latin are made. This stands in sharp contrast to the eight references to the Hebraica veritas in this same commentary. While Bede is usually hailed as a champion of the Vulgate –​and in certain instances, he is –​his Old Testament exegesis demonstrates clearly the messiness of the biblical-​textual tradition and the need to rely on other versions, the exegetical tradition, and intertextual scriptural citation to bring clarity to the text under consideration. Indeed, as Bede writes in his interpretation of Melchisedech, if one wishes to understand more about this figure from Genesis, one should just carefully read the entire Epistle to the Hebrews.86 When it comes to scriptural difficulties, there is no substitution for knowing

86 Bede, In Genesim 3, lines 1775–​7.

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the Scriptures in depth and in their various versions. In discussing the three measures of flour that Sarah used to prepare loaves for the three angels who visited Abraham, Bede allegorises these as the three levels of Scripture: the historical, the typological or allegorical, and the anagogical or eschatological;87 Bede relates the butter and milk Abraham prepares for them to the literal and mystical levels of Scripture.88 However, it is not the application of one level of exegesis or another that defines Bede’s biblical scholarship. As he states, ‘let no one suppose that he has understood the Scripture rightly, in which he was unable to find the teaching of charity’.89 Properly understood, the New Testament theological virtue of charity (ἀγάπη agápé) refers to humanity’s love of God, God’s love for humanity, and fraternal human love for one another.90 Bede’s biblical scholarship serves to elucidate the narratives of revelation and salvation, emphasising God’s love for humanity and our means of pursuing God. The fraternal connotations of ἀγάπη are apparent when we refer back to the epilogue to the Ecclesiastical history wherein Bede claims to have written primarily for the benefit of his clerical brothers and sisters. Bede’s biblical scholarship is, therefore, inspired by charity (ἀγάπη); he approaches the difficult task of exegesis from the perspective of his readers and gently leads them to a fuller appreciation of the intellectual meaning and spiritual relevance of these texts.

7 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 675–​744. 8 88 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 745–​56. 89 Bede, In Genesim 4, lines 715–​17; trans. Kendall, p. 292: ‘neque ullatenus se scripturam recte intellexisse quisquam putet, in qua institutionem caritatis inuenire non potuit’. 90 1 Corinthians 13. See discussion of this concept in P. Darby, ‘The Codex Amiatinus Maiestas Domini and the Gospel prefaces of Jerome’, Speculum 92 (2017), 343–​71.

9 Bede and ‘the nature of things’ Eoghan Ahern

Almost half a century ago, Paul Meyvaert applied himself to the question of whether or not Bede ought to be considered a real scholar. ‘As I understand it,’ he wrote, ‘real scholarship implies the application of a sound critical judgement to a given body of material, and sound judgement of this kind is seldom applied without new insights being developed: critical judgement is linked with original insights and independent conclusions. How sharp and shrewd a mind did Bede have? How creative and original was he? And in what fields do this sharpness and creativity best manifest themselves?’1 In this chapter, I wish to develop a line of enquiry suggested by Meyvaert’s study. I will explore Bede as a scholar of the natural world, considering the methods and procedures that he drew upon in pursuing that particular branch of knowledge and exploring the extent of Bede’s originality and intellectual independence. My chapter title is derived from On the nature of things, a work of cosmography which Bede composed in 703 when he was about 30.2 Though it is a short text, and ranks among Bede’s least celebrated works, the vision of the universe laid out in its pages would provide the foundation for Bede’s later forays into cosmological questions –​and, though he never wrote another work solely focused on the topic, it is clear that he continued to think deeply about ‘the nature of things’. I shall therefore draw not only on this text but on a range of writings from across Bede’s body of work, particularly his exegetical commentaries and his computistical treatise The Reckoning of time. For brevity’s sake, I will limit myself to Bede’s discussions of the physical world, but in

1 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’ in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 40–​69, at 41. 2 Bede, De natura rerum, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975); trans. C. B. Kendall and F. Wallis, Bede: On the nature of things and On times (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010).

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truth Bede saw no hard-​and-​fast disciplinary boundary between corporeal and incorporeal matters.3 Before tackling Bede’s views of nature, some trends in scholarship must first be recognised and addressed. In the twentieth century, influenced in part by widely shared notions of historical progress, a number of important studies of Bede’s thought sought to burnish his scientific credentials and to demonstrate that his approach to questions of natural philosophy represented both an advance on his patristic forebears and an important precursor to the birth of empiricist science.4 Bede’s computistical work was often the focus of this enterprise, but his ideas about the physical universe were also called upon as proof of his advanced reasoning. Thomas Eckenrode, for instance, wrote in 1971 that Bede’s ‘basic notion of attributing appearances and events of nature to its own laws demonstrated a mind which was headed in the proper empirical direction’.5 Bede’s rationalism seemed all the more commendable when measured against the credulity of his patristic sources, some of whom, according to Eckenrode, did not even realise that the earth was a sphere. Eckenrode could thus write that Bede, ‘even though he made use of the Church Fathers … presented the universe as one ordered by ascertainable causes and effects’.6 Wesley M. Stevens, in an important Jarrow lecture of 1985, was more tempered, but still contrasted Bede favourably with earlier writers like Augustine. According to Stevens, Bede ‘showed a greater interest in natural experience’ than Augustine had,7 and, unlike the Church Fathers, he ‘taught that phenomena of the skies and phenomena of the earth could be explained rationally’.8 More recent scholarship, particularly a series of insightful studies by Faith Wallis, has developed a more nuanced approach.9 Wallis has jettisoned the overtly teleological, history-​of-​science 3 See ­chapters 4 through 7 of my Bede and the cosmos: theology and nature in the eighth century (London: Routledge, 2020). 4 See particularly P. Duhem, Le système du monde, 10 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1913–​ 59), 3, pp. 3, 16–​20; T. R. Eckenrode, ‘Venerable Bede as a scientist’, American Benedictine Review 22 (1971), 486–​507; T. R. Eckenrode, ‘Venerable Bede’s theory of ocean tides’, American Benedictine Review 25 (1974), 56–​74; T. R. Eckenrode, ‘The growth of a scientific mind: Bede’s early and late scientific writings’, Downside Review 94 (1976), 197–​212; W. M. Stevens, Bede’s scientific achievement, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1985), repr. in W. M. Stevens, Cycles of time and scientific learning (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), number 2. 5 Eckenrode, ‘Venerable Bede as a scientist’, 487–​8. 6 Eckenrode, ‘Venerable Bede as a scientist’, 489. Emphasis mine. 7 Stevens, Bede’s scientific achievement, p. 4. 8 Stevens, Bede’s scientific achievement, p. 7. 9 F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp. xv–​ci; F. Wallis, ‘Si naturam quaeras: reframing Bede’s “science”’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede

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reading of Bede’s thought and has demonstrated that his appeals to common experience cannot be read as empirical experiments.10 Yet it seems to me that a hangover of the earlier approach still lingers: it is often the case that contemporary scholars –​who again find themselves returning to the question of Bede’s originality and how to define it –​cannot resist painting his contributions in progressivist terms.11 Furthermore, the idea that Bede’s investigative programme was superior in some important respects to that of Augustine, Isidore and his other predecessors has endured. The question of Bede’s originality is a thorny one. As I have recently argued,12 Bede’s model of the universe was a rationalistic one (that is to say, it was internally consistent and built up from some basic principles) but, as I shall attempt to show in this chapter, this rationalist approach was neither empiricist in the modern sense nor particularly out of the ordinary for Bede’s context. Claims for Bede’s uniqueness often rest on ideas about the nature of early medieval thought coupled with a vision of modernity, science, and rationalism that sees these concepts as inextricably linked. Where many influential studies of the Scientific Revolution (or other such intellectual revolutions placed earlier or later in history) represented it as a profound reordering of human thought, more recent accounts of the history of knowledge have tended to stress continuities at the expense of radical novelty.13 In an important study of historical ‘ways of knowing’, John V. Pickstone has argued that the development of science, technology, and medicine is ‘not a matter of … the replacements of one kind of knowledge by another; rather it is a matter of complex cumulation and of simultaneous variety, contested over time, not least when new forms of knowledge partially displace old forms’.14 Rational enquiry and appeal to the evidence of the senses were not new in the sixteenth century of Galileo, nor were they in the thirteenth when Grosseteste and Roger Bacon wrote, nor in the eleventh when William

(Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 65–​ 99; F. Wallis, ‘Caedmon’s created world and the monastic encyclopedia’, in A. Frantzen and J. Hines (eds), Transformations: Bede, Caedmon’s Hymn, and the interdisciplinary Anglo-​Saxon world (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2007), pp. 80–​111; F. Wallis, ‘Bede and science’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 113–​26; Kendall and Wallis, On the nature of things and On times, pp. 1–​68. 10 See particularly Wallis, ‘Si naturam quaeras’, pp. 65–​99. 11 See below, pp. 239–40. 12 Ahern, Bede and the cosmos, esp. pp. 10–​11, 237–​8. 13 See, for instance, S. Shapin, The scientific revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 14 J. V. Pickstone, Ways of knowing: a new history of science, technology and medicine (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 9, emphasis in original.

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of Hirsau pioneered advances in observation,15 though these moments did represent a shift in emphasis, a reordering of the importance placed on different ways of knowing. Those of us who study pre-​modern and medieval thinkers, therefore, should not be surprised to find our subjects engaging in forms of intellectual activity sometimes claimed as the exclusive preserve of the modern scientist. Equally, when we encounter such things, we should restrain the impulse to declare our subject a unique rationalist in an age of unreason. Instead, we should consider the place that such activities occupied in their wider intellectual programme.

Ways of knowing To undertake such a consideration in the case of Bede, let us begin by reviewing the ways in which he derived his understanding of the world. What streams of knowledge, what types of evidence, what avenues of exploration were open to Bede as a scholar of the natural world? What were the ‘ways of knowing’, to borrow Pickstone’s term, through which he could begin to build a model of nature and cosmos?

Classical cosmographical tradition The source of much of Bede’s understanding of the world was cosmographical tradition –​more specifically, a cluster of interrelated theories about nature that derived from Greek antiquity. Most of the ancient schools of thought had conceived of a universe consisting of a series of concentric, revolving spheres, at the centre of which rested the globe of the earth.16 From the fifth century BC, if not before, it was held that the universe was composed of four elements (sometimes five, with the addition of the

15 Philipp Nothaft has recently drawn attention to William of Hirsau’s place in intellectual history, see 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, at 1095–​9. 16 Overviews of classical cosmology (with an emphasis on Late Antiquity) can be found in Duhem, Le système du monde; I. S. Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: the Latin tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); D. E. Hahm, The origins of Stoic cosmology (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1977); S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957); S. Sambursky, The physical world of late antiquity (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); R. Sorabji, Matter, space and motion: theories in Antiquity and their sequel (London: Duckworth, 1988); R. Sorabji, The philosophy of the commentators, 200–​600 AD: a sourcebook: volume 2. Physics (London: Duckworth, 2004).

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Aristotelian aether).17 The cosmos was accordingly divided into four layers, each of which corresponded to one of these elements: each element naturally came to rest in its proper layer according to how heavy it was –​earth, being the heaviest, sat in the cosmic centre; water, the next heaviest, sat above that, and so on. Thus the universe comprised a hierarchy of spherical layers, with earth at the centre, water above that, then air and finally fire. The simplicity of this model might cause us to overlook its power and resilience but almost every natural phenomenon could be explained by it, from earthquakes and volcanoes to gravitational attraction to the composition and structure of the sky and the atmosphere. It is not surprising then that it found many adherents from Greek antiquity until the early modern period (albeit with some tweaks and alterations along the way). It was not until the findings of Galileo had been widely published that the bottom fell out of a model that had once seemed so unassailable and possessed such impressive explanatory power.18 It is important to note, however, that Bede himself would not have recognised that his worldview derived from the inquiries of the pagan philosophers. A curious feature of the adoption of Christianity into elite and cultured circles of late ancient Roman society was that the elemental, geocentric model of the universe ubiquitous across Graeco-​Roman schools of thought was projected back onto the books of the Old Testament. According to the Christian Apologists, it wasn’t that the ancient writings of the Hebrew religion were being read in light of Graeco-​Roman ideas; it was that the Greeks and Romans had stolen their ideas from the ancient Hebrews.19 And so, when Late Antique Christians studied, for instance, the Creation narrative of the Book of Genesis, they assumed that Moses, the putative author of Genesis, had been familiar with the tenets of contemporary cosmology (see next section, below). Bede, then, drew heavily on Graeco-​Roman cosmology, which he knew through a small number of dedicated cosmographical texts –​Pliny the Elder’s Natural history (or at least part of it), Isidore’s On the nature of things and Etymologies, and an anonymous seventh-​century 17 For an overview of elemental theory and its transmission to the early Insular world, see M. Smyth, Understanding the universe in seventh-​ century Ireland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996), pp. 47–​87. 18 W. G. L. Randles, The unmaking of the medieval Christian cosmos, 1500–​1760: from solid heavens to boundless Æther (Ashgate: Routledge, 1999). 19 D. Ridings, The Attic Moses: the dependency theme in some early Christian writers (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1995); P. Ciholas, ‘Plato: The Attic Moses? some patristic reactions to Platonic philosophy’, The Classical World 72 (1978–​9), 217–​25; F. Jourdan, ‘La théodicée développée sur le thème du larcin des Grecs: origine du mal, liberté et Providence chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Stromates I 17, 81–​87)’, Semitica et Classica 4 (2011), 147–​70.

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text On the ordering of Creation –​which could be complemented with the scattered references to nature and cosmos found in patristic biblical commentaries, particularly the hexaemeral works of Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine.20 He did not know that the cosmic model he adhered to was the product of a non-​Christian philosophical tradition just over a millennium old. Instead, he believed that it was twice that age, first set out in the pages of the Bible by Moses in the third age of the world. It had not been set out clearly or explicitly, perhaps, but the elemental model was a truism, widely accepted across human societies, and Moses had had weightier matters than the rudiments of cosmographical knowledge to impart to his readers.

Scriptural revelation The relationship between faith and reason is something that has long hung over any discussion of medieval thought.21 To a certain extent it is true that Bede, and thinkers like him, believed certain things ‘because the Bible said so’, as a still widespread view of the Middle Ages would have it. He himself claimed that scriptural authority trumped all else: sacred Scripture ‘excelled’ all other writings in authority, as well as in age, usefulness, and artistic composition;22 and while allegorical interpretation was permissible, readers of the Bible should not lose sight of its literal truth.23 We have banished the concept of Revealed Truth from the lexicon of modern science: in theory

20 On the texts available to Bede, see R. Love, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in R. Gameson (ed.), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain: volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 606–​ 32; M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 34–​7, 191–​228; M. L. W. Laistner, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in A. H. Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings: essays in commemoration of the twelfth centenary of his death (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 237–​66, at 263–​6. For the knowledge economy upon which Bede’s learning was founded, see now Z. Guiliano, ‘Hierarchies of knowledge in the works of Bede’, in L. Ayres, M. Champion, and M. Crawford (eds), The intellectual world of Christian late antiquity: reshaping classical traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 21 See the overview provided in D. C. Lindberg, ‘Medieval science and religion’, in G. B. Ferngren, et al. (eds), The history of science and religion in the western tradition: an encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 259–​67. 22 Bede, De schematibus et tropis 1, ed. C. B. Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975): ‘sancta scriptura ceteris omnibus scripturis non solum auctoritate, quia diuina est, uel utilitate, quia ad uitam ducit aeternam, sed et antiquitate et ipsa praeeminet positione dicendi.’ 23 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 29–​31: ‘sed diligenter intuendum ut ita quisque sensibus allegoricis studium impendat, quatenus apertam historiae fidem allegorizando derelinquat’.

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(and often in practice) the received wisdom of the past is to be treated not as inviolable but as something to be tested, falsified, and improved upon. Bede’s words thus seem to us an intellectual dead end, precluding any kind of true rational enquiry. But the relationship between scriptural pronouncement and interpretation of that pronouncement is not quite as straightforward as all that. In recent decades, studies of medieval science have sought to move away from an earlier characterisation of the period as an age of religious credulity. Scholars such as David C. Lindberg and Edward Grant have argued that, in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, rational enquiry functioned as the ‘handmaiden’ of religious faith, tolerated and even cultivated by the Church.24 Even according to this ‘handmaiden’ formulation, however, reason had its limitations: per Lindberg and Grant, where rational enquiry clashed with scriptural revelation the latter always won out.25 But while ancient and medieval Christians may have felt this to be true, the way in which they read Scripture was predicated on what their cultural background and education had prepared them to believe or not to believe. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not, they measured biblical pronouncements against the yardstick of their own expectations and assumptions. Especially in the realm of cosmology and physics, subjects on which the Bible was not as explicit as in other areas, there was much room for manoeuvre. And so, as mentioned above, the elemental, geocentric cosmography of Graeco-​Roman learned culture was read into the Christian Bible. Augustine was thus able to claim that Moses, the putative author of Genesis, ‘was not ignorant of the nature and order of the elements when he described the creation of visible things that move by nature throughout the universe in the midst of the elements’.26 Many statements that appeared to contradict that model were dismissed or read allegorically.27 Where a scriptural passage conflicted with classical cosmography in a way that could not be explained away, one or the

24 D. C. Lindberg, The beginnings of western science: the European scientific tradition in philosophical, religious, and institutional context, prehistory to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); E. Grant, God and reason in the middle ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 25 For instance, Grant, God and reason, pp. 37–​8. 26 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3:6, p. 68, lines 3–​5, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 28.1 (Prague, Vienna, Leipzig: Hoelder, Pichler, Tempsky, 1894); trans. J. H. Taylor, The literal meaning of Genesis (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 79: ‘non igitur ignorabat naturas elementorum eorumque ordinem, qui cum uisibilium, quae intra mundum in elementis natura mouentur, conditionem introduceret’. 27 R. Swinburne, ‘What does the Old Testament mean?’, in M. Bergmann, M. Murray, and M. Rae (eds), Divine evil? The moral character of the God of Abraham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 209–​25.

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other had to bend. The most famous example of such a process of accommodation is the notion of the ‘waters above the firmament’.28 The Book of Genesis stated that God had created a firmament ‘amidst the waters’ that divided the waters under the firmament from those that were above the firmament (Gen 1:6). Explaining this division of waters in the context of the classical cosmic system required much original and ingenious thought on the part of Christian exegetes. In the end, most patristic thinkers agreed that one had to accept the authority of Scripture over the internal logic of the classical cosmos, and the waters above the firmament became a permanent fixture of the medieval model of the universe. As for classical ideas about the eternity of the universe, these were quite quickly brushed aside in favour of the fundamental Christian tenet of a moment of Creation.29 On the other hand, the Book of Genesis’s presentation of an anthropomorphic God had very few literalist readers in Late Antiquity.30 Hellenised and Romanised Christians read the Bible in light of both classical philosophical ideas and the principle of adherence to the word of Scripture –​sometimes the former won out, sometimes the latter, in a give-​and-​take process that, while it soon arrived at some widely-​agreed-​upon readings, had by no means come to an end by Bede’s day. And so, by the same token, Bede’s interpretation of Scripture was shaped by his own expectations and assumptions. To sum up, then, the word of Scripture, though it stood at the apex of a hierarchy of knowledge, existed in balance with information derived via other avenues.

Observation and experience While it was certainly less important than Scripture or classical cosmographical tradition in shaping Bede’s understanding of the world, the evidence of the natural world was by no means negligible.31 Yet acquisition of this evidence rarely took the form of direct observation and never of focused testing or experimentation (see further discussion below). Much of it was in fact reproduced verbatim from his sources. In this, he was not out of the ordinary: in discussing Bede’s favourite authority on natural history, Pliny

28 T. O’Loughlin, ‘Aquae super caelos (Gen 1:6–​ 7): the first faith-​ science debate?’, Milltown Studies 29 (1992), 92–​114. 29 P. M. Blowers, Drama of the divine economy: creator and creation in early Christian theology and piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), passim. 30 David L. Paulsen, ‘Early Christian belief in a corporeal deity: Origen and Augustine as reluctant witnesses’, Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990), 107–​14. 31 On observation in the early Middle Ages, see K. Park, ‘Observation in the margins, 500–​1500’ in L. Daston and E. Lunbeck (eds), Histories of scientific observation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 15–​44.

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the Elder, Katharine Park describes how Pliny ‘presented observation as a collective and largely anonymous process, associated with the early, originary phases of natural knowledge, long ago and far away’.32 Bede’s attitude towards observation was in a similar vein. He was happy to invoke the evidence of the senses as proof of some facet of nature, but that evidence might be at second or third hand. Thus, many of the remarks in Bede’s writings that might be taken to indicate personal observation on Bede’s part are simply part of the wide array of material he drew from his library of exegetical, philosophical, and theological writings. We find a simple example of this in ­chapter 11 of On the nature of things. There, Bede noted that the constant presence of the stars in the sky, even during the daytime, could be confirmed by observation of the sky during an eclipse of the sun.33 A casual reader might suppose that Bede had undertaken such an inspection himself and had thus arrived at this conclusion independently. In fact, the line is borrowed, almost verbatim, from Isidore, who had himself taken it from Jerome’s commentary on the Book of Isaiah.34 On the other hand, Bede sometimes invoked experiential evidence that was clearly more contemporary, making reference to phenomena that could be observed in Britain. A number of these invocations –​particularly Bede’s reference to British knowledge of the tides and the principle of port –​have been taken by some as indicating scientific observation on Bede’s part.35 As Faith Wallis has commented, however, many of the ‘personal observations’ traditionally ascribed to Bede are in fact records of things generally known. ‘Bede,’ she says, ‘never claims to have made any independent investigation into the pattern of tides; on the contrary, he states that the principle of port is a matter of common local knowledge.’36 In fact, we find this kind of appeal to common experience quite a few times across Bede’s corpus of writings. It demonstrates, again, his willingness to draw on knowledge acquired through inspection or observation. Finally, Bede also sometimes made reference to pedagogical experiments that we might imagine him to have personally carried out. The most famous of these is his use of the example of lamps hanging from the roof of a great hall to demonstrate how

2 Park, ‘Observation in the margins’, p. 19. 3 33 Bede, De natura rerum 11. 34 Isidore, De natura rerum 24, ed. J. Fontaine, Isidore de Séville: Traité de la nature (Bordeaux: Féret et fils, 1960); Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam 6:13.10, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963). 35 Duhem, Le système du monde, 3, pp. 16–​20; Stevens, Bede’s scientific achievement; Eckenrode, ‘Venerable Bede’s theory of ocean tides’. 36 Wallis, ‘Reframing Bede’s “science” ’, p. 70.

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the moon sometimes appears higher in the sky than the sun despite being closer to the earth.37 We must bear in mind that, then as now, appeal to observation had substantial rhetorical weight and its use does not always indicate an entirely unprejudiced approach to the evidence. Seemingly the most clear-​cut examples of Bede drawing on his own observation are found in the realm of astronomy, where a particularly famous passage seems to indicate Bede’s use of a type of sundial or horologium. Bede defended the 21 March date for the vernal equinox by appealing to both tradition and the evidence of the senses: we learn of the correct date, he said, ‘not only from the authority of the Fathers but also from inspection of a horologium’ (non solum auctoritate paterna sed et horologica consideratione).38 Unfortunately for Bede, he was wrong. By his day, the calendar year had slipped out of alignment with the solar year to the point where the true date of the vernal equinox was 17 March. Bede’s statement has thus been characterised as ‘more a comment about what should be observed given the veracity of the tradition at stake, rather than what was observed in actual fact’.39 But we should not necessarily assume that Bede was operating in bad faith in claiming that his preferred date was supported by the evidence of the horologium. Observation, as thinkers from John Stuart Mill to Thomas Kuhn have emphasised, is ‘theory-​laden’.40 That is to say, what one observes –​or what one understands from what one observes –​is shaped by one’s theoretical commitments. The likely device to which Bede was referring was not unerringly accurate enough to be impervious to misreading, especially by a few days (and his opponents were arguing for an even later, and thus more incorrect, date).41 Thus, Bede may well have consulted a horologium when considering the question of equinoctial dating, only to be misled. If so, he was not the first, and he would not be the last, to see what he expected to see when attempting to draw on the evidence of observation.

7 Bede De temporum ratione 26, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). 3 38 Bede, De temporum ratione 30, lines 89–​90. 39 Nothaft, ‘Bede’s horologium’, 1094; cf. B. Eastwood, Ordering the heavens: Roman astronomy and cosmology in the Carolingian renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 24–​5. 40 See, for instance, N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into the conceptual foundations of science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 4–​30; T. S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 111–​29. For a useful précis of the long debate over theory-​ ladenness in scientific observation, see W. F. Brewer and B. L. Lambert, ‘The theory-​ ladenness of observation and the theory-​ladenness of the rest of the scientific process’, Philosophy of Science, 68 (2001), 176–​86. 41 Nothaft, ‘Bede’s horologium’, 1091.

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Bede’s cosmos What model did Bede arrive at, then, by drawing on these various sources of information on the workings of nature? In its general framework, Bede’s cosmos was an entirely traditional concoction. It is in the details that we find the most interesting, and most telling, moments of theorisation and interpretation. The physical part of Creation was formed out of the four elements, wrote Bede, ‘from fire, by which the stars shine; from air, by which all living things breathe; from the waters, which barricade the earth by surrounding and penetrating it; and from earth itself, which is the middle and lowest portion of the mundus [the physical universe], and which hangs suspended, motionless, with the universe whirling around it’.42 The whole thing was kept in balance by the interplay of the different elements and their inherent natures: the element of earth, the ‘heaviest’ element, naturally sought its home in the centre of the universe, forming the cosmic core; as it was slightly less heavy than earth, the element of water came to rest above this; the natural seat of air, lighter still, was above the water; and fire, the lightest of the elements, made up the outermost sphere of the physical cosmos. The plausibility and apparent logic of this model could be easily observed in nature. As Bede explained: ‘if it happens that [air] is placed under the water in some vessel, it, being lighter [than water], at once escapes upwards’.43 In their translation and commentary on On the nature of things, Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis write that this line, which they believe to be an original addition of Bede’s to a passage otherwise borrowed from On the ordering of Creation, ‘suggests some kind of simple experiment’ on Bede’s part. In fact, the idea does derive from On the ordering of Creation,44 though it has been rephrased, and, as Marina Smyth noted in her translation of that work, it is a type of simple demonstration that may originate much earlier.45 Once again, an apparently original moment of personal observation on Bede’s part reveals itself to be a borrowing from an older text.

42 De natura rerum 3, lines 3–​6: ‘igne, quo sidera lucent; aere, quo cuncta uiuentia spirant; aquis, quae terram cingendo et penetrando communiunt; atque ipsa terra, quae mundi media atque ima’. 43 De natura rerum 4, lines 5–​6: ‘si forte aquis in uase aliquo subdatur, statim ad superiora ut leuior euadit’. 44 De ordine creaturarum 4.5, ed. M. C. Díaz y Díaz, Liber de ordine creaturarum: Un anónimo irlandés del siglo VII (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1972), p. 108: ‘aer namque sub aqua per se subsistere non ualet sed ad sua spatia, etsi aliqua necessitatis uim aquis subductus fuerit, statim uadit’. 45 M. Smyth, ‘The seventh-​century Hiberno-​Latin treatise Liber de ordine creaturarum. A translation’, Journal of Medieval Latin 21 (2011), 137–​222, at 173 note 40.

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An aspect of Bede’s model that set him apart from other Christian cosmographers was an emphasis on the interrelated nature of earth and water in that cosmic hierarchy. The elements of earth and water, after all, were not as sharply separated from one another as the other elemental zones were –​this was quite clear from the fact that, although some parts of the earth lie under the water, many other parts rise high above sea level. Bede found an explanation for this in the pages of Pliny. Pliny, drawing on a long tradition of Roman hydrology,46 had spoken of an earth riven with ‘veins’ that ran in all directions, connecting all bodies of water with one another. It was this subterranean network of caverns and channels, thought Pliny, that explained both the constant supply of water to springs high in the mountains and the relatively stable level of the sea (after all, if rivers constantly ran into the sea, why didn’t its level ever seem to rise?). Bede, borrowing his wording almost verbatim from Pliny, wrote that earth and water ‘were joined in a mutual embrace, with the one opening her bosom and the other permeating the whole, within, without, above, below, by means of veins running throughout like bonds, and even bursting out in the highest mountain ranges’.47 As I have discussed at length elsewhere, this idea of the ‘veins of the earth’ was something that Bede returned to again and again.48 It was an important part of his cosmography, serving to explain a number of aspects of the natural world, from the occurrence of such phenomena as earthquakes and lightning to the fixed level of the sea. Indeed, he felt that the existence of such veins was glaringly evident; when discussing the appearance of new rivers and streams after earthquakes, he remarked: ‘no one who intelligently observes that the earth is full of innumerable veins of water, just as the human body is full of veins of blood, doubts that this can happen’.49 As proof, Bede appealed to the evidence of common experience: ‘diggers of

46 L. Taub, Ancient meteorology (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 143–​4, 147, 151–​2; A. K. Biswas, History of hydrology (Amsterdam: North-​Holland Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 96–​9; J. O. Thomson, History of ancient geography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 104–​5; M. N. Baker and R. E. Horton, ‘Historical development of ideas regarding the origin of springs and ground-​water’, Eos: Transactions, American Geophysical Union 17 (1936), 395–​400. 47 Bede, De natura rerum 44, lines 6–​8; trans. Kendall and Wallis, p. 97: ‘mutuo implexu iungerentur, hac sinus pandente, illa uero permeante totam, intra, extra, supra, infra, uenis ut uinculis discurrentibus, atque etiam in summis iugis erumpente’. 48 Ahern, Bede and the cosmos, 38–​40, 51, 67, 76, 80, 219, 231, 236, 239. 49 Bede, Expositio in canticum Abacuc prophetae 3:10, lines 397–​400, ed. J. E. Hudson, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); trans. S. Connolly, Bede: On Tobit and On the Canticle of Habakkuk (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), p. 80, modified: ‘quod ita fieri posse non ambigit, qui prudenter intellegit, ita uenis aquarum innumeris tellurem, sicut uenis sanguinis corpus humanum esse plenissimum’.

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wells’, he said, ‘prove by experience that the whole earth is filled with waters flowing through unseen veins which take their source from the sea.’50 This use of well-​digging as evidence for the existence of subterranean channels was not, as far as I can tell, derived from any of Bede’s sources. It shows that he was happy to appeal to common experience even when it was not part of an argument inherited from a previous writer. Again, however, we should not assume that this means that he had necessarily undertaken any personal observation but simply that he was drawing on commonly reported experience. Some of the most original and imaginative aspects of Bede’s cosmology shine through in his biblical commentaries. There he sought to square scriptural pronouncements with the vision of nature he had outlined in On the nature of things, an undertaking made possible by his assumption that the Bible was in harmony with classical cosmography. For instance, he took for granted, as a number of Christian authors before him had done, that the four elements were implied in the Creation narrative of Genesis 1:1–​ 2:3: the ‘earth’ and ‘abyss’ mentioned in Genesis 1:2 surely referred to the elements of earth and water, albeit in a primordial form. Though Genesis did not mention the other two elements at this stage, Bede understood that they were implied: fire was present ‘in the iron and stones which lay hidden, already buried even then in the bowels of the earth’ (in ferro et lapidibus quae terrae uiscere iam tum condita latebant) and air lay hidden in the earth itself.51 Interestingly, this allowed him to read a logical pattern into the six days of Creation: he divided them into two distinct phases –​first came the creation and differentiation of the four elements and corresponding areas of the universe (earth, water, air, and fire; days one to three), then the ‘adornment’ of these four areas, in turn (days four to six). This reading of the six-​ day Creation narrative seems to have been original to Bede and is revealing of the rationalising approach he took to biblical interpretation: ‘the world’, as he put it, ‘proceeded in perfectly proper order from unformed matter to harmonious form’.52 Bede’s understanding of the Apocalypse was also coloured by his cosmology. This was an area ripe for exploration, as fear of millenarian literalist interpretation had kept many orthodox patristic commentators from

50 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 347–​50; trans. C. B. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), p. 78: ‘nam et fossores hoc puteorum probant, quia tellus omnis per inuisibiles uenas aquis est repleta manantibus quae trahunt ex mari principium.’ 51 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 92–​3. 52 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 399–​400; trans. Kendall, p. 80: ‘Decente satis ordine mundus ex materia informi congruam procedit ad formam’.

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exploring the topic to any great degree (Augustine, as is often the case, was the exception). Bede, once again assuming that the word of Scripture must match with the classical cosmography he had derived from his sources, brought new readings to the abstruse descriptions found in Christian apocalyptic literature. A variety of biblical books declared that the physical world would end in cataclysm. Bede read these passages through the lens of elemental theory. Thus, the repeated scriptural references to earthquakes (Matthew 24:7; Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11; Revelation 8:5), the dissolution of mountains (Micah 1:4; Nahum 1:5; Habakkuk 3:6; Revelation 6:14), and particularly the idea that the ‘foundations of the earth’ would be shaken (Sirach 16:19; Isaiah 24:18–​20), suggested to Bede that the element of earth itself would be demolished in the final days.53 A fiery conflagration would then be let loose; according to 2 Peter 3:12, it would melt ‘the elements’. Though it is unlikely that classical elementary theory had been in the mind of the author of 2 Peter,54 Bede interpreted it as follows: ‘there are four elements of which this world is composed –​fire, air, water and earth –​all of which that mighty fire will consume.’55 Bede even flirted with the idea that the elements of water and fire would be entirely missing from the post-​ apocalyptic reborn cosmos, as Scripture had suggested that both the sea and lamps would be missing from the new heaven and new earth.56 The theory of the ‘veins of the earth’ proved itself useful in explaining some otherwise obscure scriptural passages. It was via these veins, said Bede, that the waters of the Flood had receded, ‘the waters returned from off the earth going and coming’ (Genesis 8:3), and it was to these veins that King Solomon had been referring when he said ‘all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow; unto the place from whence the rivers come they return to flow again’ (Ecclesiastes 1:7).57 Most importantly, it explained 53 Bede, De die iudicii, lines 50–​2, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); Expositio Apocalypseos 1:8, ed. R. Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); De eo quod ait Isaias, PL 94, cols 702–​10, at 706. 54 P. W. van der Horst, ‘ “The Elements will be dissolved with fire”: the idea of cosmic conflagration in Hellenism, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity’, in P. W. van der Horst (ed.), Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity: essays on their interactions, 2nd ed (Leuven: Kok Pharos, 1998), pp. 271–​92, at 288. 55 Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistula 2 Petri 3, lines 121–​3, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983): ‘Quattuor sunt elementa quibus mundus iste consistit, ignis, aer, aqua, et terra, quae cuncta ignis ille maximus absumet.’ 56 Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistula 2 Petri 3, lines 120–​39; De temporum ratione 70; Expositio Apocalypseos 3:36, lines 61–​3; Ahern, Bede and the cosmos, 227–​9. 57 Bede, In Genesim 2, lines 1689–​97: ‘Reuersaeque aquae de terra euntes et redeuntes, et coeperunt minui post centum quinquaginta dies. Quod dicit reuersas esse aquas de terra euntes et redeuntes, aperte indicat iuxta litteram quod omnes fluuiorum ac

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why God could be said to have gathered the waters ‘together into one place’ (Genesis 1:9) on the third day of Creation: as Bede explained, even though there appeared to be many different seas, they were all in fact joined together by ‘an unbroken and continuous stream of water’ (iugis unda atque continua); although there were lakes that appeared to be self-​contained, they were known to be connected by ‘certain hidden caverns’ (occultae quaedam cauernae) that also eventually led to the sea.58 Thus, Scripture was shown to chime with Plinian hydrology. Or rather, to put it as Bede would have understood it, it was clear that Pliny and his Greek and Roman predecessors had (either independently or through cultural exchange) come to comprehend a feature of the natural world first explained by Moses in the Book of Genesis.

Bede’s working methods: innovation, tradition, synthesis We have seen how Bede regularly copied ideas about the workings of nature from the pages of Pliny’s Natural history or from the Christian cosmographers, and that he often repeated observations originally carried out –​if they ever were –​by people long before his own time. Our first impulse may well be to dismiss Bede’s cosmology, then, as the unthinking replication of what he found in his sources. This has been the image of Bede found in many older studies and Bede’s own self-​presentation in the final chapter of the Ecclesiastical history is that of a traditional scholar who hewed close to the learning of the Fathers. However, though Bede at first sight might seem to represent an unoriginal compiler of other people’s work, a closer examination of his writings reveals a critical mind at work.59 Though he professed

riuorum decursus per occultas terrae uenas ad matricem abyssum redeant, iuxta illud Salomonis, Omnia flumina intrant in mare, et mare non redundat; ad locum unde exeunt flumina reuertuntur, ut iterum fluant.’ 58 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 325–​50: ‘Bene autem cum multa constet esse maria, in locum tamen unum congregatas dicit aquas, quia uidelicet cuneta haec iugi unda atque continua oceano ac mari iunguntur magno. Sed etsi qui lacus in semetipsos uidentur esse circumscripti, et hos ferunt occultis quibusdam perforatos cauernis in mare suos euoluere meatus. Nam et fossores hoc puteorum probant, quia tellus omnis per inuisibiles uenas aquis est repleta manantibus quae trahunt ex mari principium.’ 59 Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, pp. 40–​ 69. Cf. S. DeGregorio, ‘Introduction: the new Bede’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 1–​ 10, at 6–​9; A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede and the ordering of understanding’, in DeGregorio, Innovation and tradition, pp. 37–​63; R. Ray, ‘Who did Bede think he was?’, in DeGregorio, Innovation and tradition, pp. 11–​35; B. Ward, ‘“In medium duorum

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modesty, he was secure in his own intellectual opinions. If he felt that it was warranted, he was capable of diverging from received opinion or of choosing the theories of one authority over another equally venerated. He chose his words wisely, even when they were not entirely original to him: even the minutest change to the wording of one of Bede’s sources can be consequential (though it can also be purely cosmetic; Bede was a discriminating, even fussy, Latin stylist and would often spruce up any prose he felt to be rococo or unclear).60 This is true of Bede’s approach to learning more generally, but it comes into focus when we consider his method of approaching physical and natural knowledge. We must remember that Bede was not interested in being an innovator. To categorise his writings according to how derivative or innovative they now seem is to evaluate his life’s undertaking by our standards, not his own. It is true that he was more likely at the start of his career to reproduce long passages from his patristic sources with minimal editorial reworking and more likely at the end to diverge from received opinion, but this is the result of an increased breadth of reading, a developing awareness of gaps and inconsistencies in inherited knowledge, and a growing intellectual confidence over time, not a sign that innovation per se was something he was aiming for. Yet in the realm of cosmography and natural philosophy, while certain tenets had by the eighth century become unquestionable, there were still many disputed areas of knowledge and questions to which no definitive answer had been agreed upon. This meant that, for someone with Bede’s puzzle-​solver mind, one could not simply be a traditionalist. What Bede sought was a way to make everything fit, in a manner that did not contradict the word of Scripture but that also harmonised with the way in which the natural world appeared to work. He did not see, as thinkers of more recent centuries have, a necessary friction between revealed religious truth and rational inquiry. Instead, he sought to harmonise both streams, in a manner that was internally consistent. animalium’: Bede and Jerome on the Canticle of Habakkuk’, Studia Patristica 25 (1993), 189–​93. 60 A clear example of this fussiness is found in his adaptation of Adomnán’s prose, a writer who he in general admired: Bede, De locis sanctis, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965); Historia ecclesiastica 5.16–​17, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). See also Danuta Shanzer’s comments on Bede’s adaptation of Gildas’s circuitous Latin: D. Shanzer, ‘Bede’s style: a neglected historiographical model for the style of the Historia ecclesiastica?’, in C. D. Wright, F. Biggs, and T. N. Hall (eds), Source of wisdom: Old English and early medieval Latin studies in honour of Thomas D. Hill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 329–​ 52, at 331–​3.

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A good example of this approach is found in a passage from his commentary on Genesis, in which he argued for the plausibility of the waters above the firmament. As noted above, Christian scholars had long sought to explain how there could exist ‘waters’ above the firmament, as claimed in Genesis 1:6. To prove the feasibility of such a seemingly incredible feature of the cosmic model, Bede both drew on the evidence of the natural world and appealed to other scriptural passages. He knew, from reading Basil’s Hexaemeron, that there existed ‘crystalline rock’ (crystallinus lapis), a hard substance which, according to Late Antique natural philosophy, was formed from congealed waters. If such a process were possible in nature, it followed that the firmament might itself be made of hardened water.61 Bede also noted that clouds were essentially water kept aloft in the sky –​if God could arrange this phenomenon, surely he could also arrange for an aquatic firmament to be sustained high above the world, ‘not with vaporous thinness but with ice-​like solidity’.62 Finally, he made reference to those instances, recorded in Scripture, in which God had lifted and made fixed the waters of the Red Sea and the River Jordan (Exodus 14:21–​2; Joshua 3:14–​17) –​evidence, said Bede, that agglomerations of water ‘can remain in a fixed position’.63 These three examples show how Bede could draw on different forms of knowledge that, to modern eyes, seem incongruous: a piece of natural historical lore transmitted by Basil, a widely known natural phenomenon observable in everyday life, and a number of miraculous events detailed in Scripture. All three were permissible forms of evidence. In reference to this series of examples, Calvin Kendall has voiced his admiration for Bede’s ‘freedom from the mindset of the late Antique period’, due to the fact that he ‘took seriously the responsibility of looking for rational or “scientific” explanations of natural phenomena’, and argued that Bede’s approach ‘differed from the ancient one in that it united theory with observation and experiment’.64 Kendall’s comments offer a good chance to circle back to the question of Bede’s originality and to ask: is it fair to place Bede in such high contrast to the ‘mindset of the late Antique period’? The sentiment is certainly widely shared.65 It often goes hand in 61 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 254–​7: ‘qui enim crystallini lapidis quanta firmitas quae sit perspicuitas ac puritas nouimus, quem de aquarum concretione certum est esse procreatum’. 62 Bede, In Genesim 1, line 268: ‘non uaporali tenuitate sed solidate … glaciali’. 63 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 274–​5: ‘fixa possint statione manere’. 64 Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 28. 65 As well as the studies of Eckenrode and Stevens cited above, there is the seminal contribution of Pierre Duhem, who set the tone for much of the century that followed when he portrayed Bede as someone who improved greatly on the knowledge of previous generations (specifically Isidore), in part by drawing on ‘ses observations

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hand with a similar claim: that Bede’s achievements rank high amongst his immediate predecessors and peers in the Insular world or in the early medieval world more generally.66 But how different is Bede really in searching for rational order in nature and in drawing on the evidence of observation? We have already noted that many of the more excitable claims about Bede’s ‘science’ do not hold water: he cannot be characterised as someone following a programme of scientific observation as we would understand it and a number of the examples of Bede’s invocations of observation that have been touted as proof of his superior approach were in fact taken from his sources. But he did draw on the evidence of human experience –​usually the experience of others but in some cases, perhaps, his own –​and he did attempt to rationalise the workings of nature. By these lights, how does he compare to the other writers and thinkers of the late ancient and early medieval Latin Christian world? Part of the project of such Church Fathers as Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine –​all of whom were hugely influential on Bede –​involved demonstrating the rational basis of Christian belief in, inter alia, Creation, hell, apocalypse, and eternal life after resurrection; if such things could be proved to be consistent with the way in which the world worked, Christian faith in them could be shown to be reasonable. In their writings, we therefore find many instances of appeal to the evidence of experience and observation. These were not, for the most part, records of direct observation by these writers but second-​hand accounts drawn from books of classical natural philosophy. But then, as we have seen, this was the case too for Bede. In fact, amongst the patristic writers we find Augustine going one better than Bede by personally carrying out an experiment, of a sort. In order to probe the widespread claim that the flesh of the peacock was incorruptible, Augustine saved and carefully preserved some flesh from that bird; a year later, he

personnelles’ (Duhem, Les système du monde, 3, p. 17). We find many similar portrayals in more recent general histories of medieval science, of which the following can serve as a representative example: ‘Finally, there is Venerable Bede (ca. 673–​735), perhaps the most intelligent of the Latin encyclopedists … Although he borrowed heavily from his predecessors, especially Isidore, Bede was capable of adding intelligently to his meager inheritance. For example, he formulated the concept of the “establishment of the port” and recorded that the tides recur at approximately the same time at a particular place along the coast, although the times of occurrence vary from place to place’: E. Grant, The foundations of modern science in the middle ages: their religious, institutional and intellectual contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 14. 66 For critique see I. Warntjes, The Munich Computus: text and translation. Irish computistics between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its reception in Carolingian times (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. xlvii–​xlviii.

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examined it and found no sign of decay, ‘except that it was now a little more shrivelled and drier’.67 Whatever the deficiencies of this as an experiment by modern scientific standards, it shows that personal observation and probing of the natural world was perfectly permissible in this period. This approach continued beyond the era of the Church Fathers. As Stephen McCluskey has shown, Gregory of Tours’ On the course of the stars did not simply echo astronomical tradition but included new observations made by Gregory or by a near contemporary ‘in northern Gaul near the end of the sixth century’.68 Even poor Isidore, whose reputation as a thinker has taken a prolonged drubbing from scholars of Bede since the early twentieth century,69 sought rational explanations for things and even appealed to sense experience when he felt it necessary.70 In the Insular world in the century before Bede, similar observation and rationalisation of the workings of nature can be found in On the miracles of sacred Scripture by Augustinus Hibernicus, in the Irish computus treatises, and in On the ordering of Creation, a work whose influence on Bede was significant but has often been overlooked.71 The recording of personal observations of astronomical phenomena was an ongoing enterprise of the monks of Iona, who, with great accuracy, set down celestial events such as eclipses and comets in their annals.72 There is no reason to suspect that the situation was different in Northumbria and in Wearmouth-​Jarrow. Indeed, one of Bede’s most celebrated moments of drawing on the evidence of observation, the reference to the inspection of a horologium discussed above, was something borrowed from a letter

67 Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 21.4, p. 492, lines 14–​15, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCSL 47–​8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); trans. R. W. Dyson, Augustine: The City of God against the pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 1049: ‘nisi quod aliquantum corpulentiae siccioris et contractioris fuit’. 68 S. C. McCluskey, ‘Gregory of Tours, monastic timekeeping, and early Christian attitudes to astronomy’, Isis 81 (1990), 8–​22, at 18. 69 See, for instance, Laistner, ‘Library of the Venerable Bede’, pp. 237–​66; C. W. Jones, Bedae opera de temporibus (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1943), p. 131. For a re-​evaluation of the idea that Bede did not think highly of Isidore, see W. D. McCready, ‘Bede and the Isidorian legacy’, Mediaeval Studies 57 (1995), 41–​73; cf. F. Wallis, ‘Isidore of Seville and science’, in A. Fear and J. Wood (eds), A companion to Isidore of Seville (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 182–​221, at 182–​3. 70 For instance, Isidore, De natura rerum 15:2 and 41:1. 71 For an overview, see M. Smyth, ‘From observation to scientific speculation in seventh-​ century Ireland’, in M. Kelly and C. Doherty (eds), Music and the stars (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 73–​ 98. On early Irish computistics, see Warntjes, The Munich Computus, pp. xxx–​lvi. On Bede’s use of On the ordering of Creation, see my Bede and the cosmos, pp. 41–​5. 72 D. P. McCarthy and A. Breen, ‘An evaluation of astronomical observations in the Irish annals’, Vistas in Astronomy 41 (1997), 117–​38.

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of Abbot Ceolfrith to the Pictish king, Nechtan.73 Bede’s enquiries into nature, then, do not seem to me out of keeping with his milieu –​entirely the opposite, in fact. Bede drew on the same methods, the same ‘ways of knowing’, as his predecessors had. His most celebrated ‘scientific’ achievements, such as his recording of the principle of port, do not represent a sudden turn towards observational evidence or a rejection of the Late Antique approach to natural knowledge: rather, they are a testament to the practicability and power of that very approach. To return to Meyvaert’s criteria, we can certainly say that Bede’s enquiries into nature involved ‘the application of a sound critical judgement to a given body of material’ and the development of ‘original insights and independent conclusions’, though these insights and conclusions took place as part of an intellectual enterprise very different to the ‘scientific’ one sometimes imposed on him. Yet Bede’s approach to understanding ‘the nature of things’ was certainly rational, that is to say, ‘thinking which involves some general principles and strives for internal consistency’.74 This is not to argue that Bede was unfailingly rational or that the limitations of his understanding were contiguous with the limitations of the information available to him. He sometimes made mistakes, following tradition without checking to see if it matched with what could be observed (such as when he repeated an easily confuted idea found in Pliny that ‘a comet is never found in the western part of the sky’).75 But in its broad strokes, the cosmic model that Bede inherited and refined was convincing and seemed to accord with both observable phenomena and common sense. In short, Bede believed that it was possible to build a coherent, internally consistent model of nature by drawing on a combination of permissible sources of evidence: Scripture –​and the Christian tradition of scriptural interpretation –​supplied some answers; the theories of ancient Greek cosmography were robust and seemingly self-​evident and there was little reason to doubt their applicability; and the testimony of the senses could allow one to verify or deny theorised models, at least to some 73 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5.21. Though some have seen Bede’s hand in that letter, it is more straightforward to assume that it reflects Ceolfrith’s own voice or at least the voice of the Wearmouth-​Jarrow community (of which, after all, Bede was a product): cf. M. Ohashi, ‘The “real” addressee(s) of Bede’s Letter to Wicthed’, in P. Moran and I. Warntjes (eds), Early medieval Ireland and Europe: chronology, contacts, scholarship (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 119–​35, at 127 note 28; C. O’Brien, Bede’s temple: an image and its interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 61. 74 D. D’Avray, Rationalities in history: a Weberian essay in comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 16. 75 Bede, De natura rerum 24, lines 9–​10; trans. Kendall and Wallis, p. 89: ‘cometes numquam in occasura parte caeli est.’

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limited extent. Bede could thus attempt to knit scriptural references to the natural world together with complementary statements from elsewhere in the Bible, with information drawn from his extensive library, with common-​ sense inference, and with reported observation or his own observation of the behaviour of nature. In this manner, he constructed a framework for understanding the behaviour of the world.

10 Revisiting Bede’s miracles: earth, water, and healing in the Ecclesiastical history, commentary On Genesis, and prose Life of Cuthbert Sharon M. Rowley* At first glance, considering Bede’s creativity and the sharpness of his critical mind in relation to miracle stories may seem to be a doomed endeavour. Thinking of ‘creativity’ in hagiographical contexts has sometimes led to concerns about fictionalising.1 Paul Meyvaert pointed out as early as 1976 that Bede ‘accepted as true facts all the miraculous events described in the books of the Old and New Testaments’; he also observed that Bede’s ‘critical powers would have come into full play’ in his ‘scrutiny’ of witnesses to contemporary miracles.2 Unfortunately, however, awareness of Bede’s beliefs and criteria has not always led to recognition of his critical acumen.3 Similarly, although recent hagiographical studies have revealed the ways in which biblical precedents and recognisable patterns allowed medieval audiences to

* An earlier version of this chapter was presented as ‘Bede’s elemental miracles and the spiritual/​material paradox’, at the King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies on 4 December 2018. I would like to thank Máirín MacCarron and Peter Darby for organising conference panels over the years and for editing this book. 1 W. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, Studies and Texts 118 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1994), p. 233 and ­chapter 9; R. Ray, ‘Bede’s vera lex historiae’, Speculum 55 (1980), 1–​21; W. Goffart, ‘Bede’s “uera lex historiae” explained’, Anglo-​Saxon England 34 (2005), 111–​16 and Narrators of barbarian history (A.D. 550–​800), Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), esp. ­chapter 4. 2 P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede the scholar’, in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 40–​69, at 52–​3; Loomis agrees that Bede’s miracle stories demonstrate caution, C. G. Loomis, ‘The miracle traditions of the Venerable Bede’, Speculum 21 (1946), 404–​18, at 404–​5. 3 McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, pp. 230–​3; see also C. W. Jones, ‘Bede as early medieval historian’ in Medievalia et humanistica 4 (1946), 26–​36, at 33; B. Colgrave, ‘Bede’s miracle stories’, in A. Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 201–​29 at 228; and C. Plummer, ‘Introduction’, Venerabilis Bedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1, p. lxiv.

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identify and establish sanctity, such imitation and repetition may undermine notions of creativity and critical acumen for modern audiences.4 However, combining comparative and integrative approaches with a focus on materiality (i.e. the physical materials of earth and water, as well as the properties of them) reveals that some miracles recounted by Bede constitute a crucial point of development between Late Antique pilgrim practices involving natural materials from holy places (loca sancta) and the dazzling artistry of later medieval reliquary practices.5 More specifically, this chapter focuses on the posthumous healing miracles enacted by drinking earth and water in Bede’s accounts of Oswald (king of Northumbria 634–​42), Chad (bishop of Mercia c. 669–​c. 672), and Hædde (bishop of Winchester 676–​705) in his Ecclesiastical history of the English people, and Cuthbert in his prose Life of St Cuthbert.6 Reading this subset of posthumous healing miracles in dialogue with Bede’s commentary On Genesis and ‘Homily on the Ascension’, and a range of other early hagiographical texts, demonstrates that Bede’s

4 P. Brown, ‘The rise and function of the Holy Man in late antiquity’, The Journal of Roman Studies, 61 (1971), 80–​101; C. Cubitt, ‘Memory and narrative in the cult of early Anglo-​Saxon saints’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), The uses of the past in the early middle ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 29–​66; J. Howard-​ Johnston and P. A. Hayward (eds), The cult of the saints in late antiquity and the early middle ages: essays on the contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, repr. 2004); S. Ridyard, The royal saints of Anglo-​Saxon England: a study of West Saxon and East Anglian cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). See also S. M. Rowley, ‘Reassessing exegetical interpretations of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum’, Literature and Theology 17 (2003), 227–​43 and ‘Bede and the northern kingdoms’, in C. A. Lees (ed.), The Cambridge history of early medieval English literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 158–​82, esp. 164–​9. 5 On integrative approaches to Bede, see S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006); on materiality see D. Miller ‘Materiality: an introduction’, in D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 1–​50. On Late Antique pilgrim practices, see B. Reudenbach, ‘Holy places and their relics’, in B. Kühnel, G. Noga-​Banai, and H. Vorholt (eds), Visual constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 197–​206; and R. Bartal, N. Bodner, and B. Kühnel (eds), Natural materials of the Holy Land and the visual translation of place, 500–​1500 (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). On late medieval relics, see C. Walker Bynum, Christian materiality: an essay on religion in late medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), and C. Hahn, ‘What do reliquaries do for relics?’, Numen 57 (2010), 284–​316. 6 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum (subsequent references: HE), ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), and Vita Sancti Cuthberti (subsequent references: VCP), ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 142–​307.

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elemental miracles reflect both his creativity and his critical acumen.7 As he selects and paces accounts of miracles involving holy remains, earth, and water, Bede frames these miracles in cosmological and Christological symbolism that transforms the hagiographical traditions of the early Middle Ages and expands the meaning(s) of loca sancta for audiences in and –​with the popularity of the HE and VCP –​beyond eighth-​century Britain. The relationship between Bede’s accounts of elemental miracles in Northumbria and Wessex and the ‘continuing miracle’8 of earth at the site of Christ’s Ascension offers a preliminary articulation of the elemental miracles and dynamic discussed in this chapter. At the location of Christ’s Ascension, no matter how many of the faithful carried away dirt, the impression of the footprints remained visible, and the site remained intact.9 In contrast, so many people took earth from the sites of Oswald’s martyrdom and Hædde’s deaths that they dug holes ‘as deep as a man’s height’ and ‘of considerable size’, respectively, at these locations.10 According to Bede, drinking the soil from the site of Oswald’s death mixed with water healed sick men and beasts. Bede also reports that the soil onto which the water used to wash the bones of Oswald was poured had healing powers and cured demonic possession when consumed with water.11 The soil onto which Cuthbert’s washing water was poured was similarly efficacious.12 Healing miracles were also enacted with dust from Chad’s tomb and earth from the site of Hædde’s death.13 The contrast between the hole dug by the faithful at the 7 I have selected this set of miracles to focus this chapter; this choice should not be taken to suggest that other miracles Bede recounts are less reflective of his creativity and critical acumen. Bede, In Genesim, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); trans. C. B. Kendall, Bede: On Genesis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014); Bede, Homiliae 2:15, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: Homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 2, pp. 135–​48. 8 For ‘continuing miracles’, see T. O’Loughlin, Adomnan and the holy places: the perceptions of an Insular monk on the locations of the biblical drama (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008), pp. 113–​4. 9 Bede, HE 5:17. J. Kramer discusses the pilgrim practice of measuring Christ’s footprints, along with belief in the curative powers of the fabric that touched them, see J. Kramer, Between earth and heaven: liminality and the ascension of Christ in Anglo-​ Saxon literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 80–​ 1; see also P. Darby and D. Reynolds, ‘Reassessing the “Jerusalem pilgrims”: the case of Bede’s De locis sanctis’, Bulletin for the Council for British Research in the Levant 9 (2014), 27–​31. 10 Bede, HE 3:9, 5:18. 11 Bede, HE 3:9: ‘Vnde contigit ut puluerem ipsum, ubi corpus eius in terram conruit’. 12 Bede, VCP 41: ‘tollensque inde modican humi particulam immisit in aquam’. 13 Bede, HE 4:3 and 5:18: ‘…ac partem pulueris inde adsumere’ and ‘hominesque prouinciae illius solitos ablatum inde puluerem propter languentes in aquam mittere’,

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site of Oswald’s death and the miraculously self-​replenishing dirt around Christ’s footprints on the Mount of Olives creates a space in which the connections and differences between god and saint, heaven and earth, presence and absence, cohere and reflect each other. Although the collection of earth from the sites of Oswald and Hædde’s deaths resembles pilgrim practices at the site of the Ascension, healing miracles enacted specifically by drinking that earth mixed with water were uncommon before Bede. Prior to Bede’s writings, similar practices can be found only in the anonymous Life of St Cuthbert and Gregory of Tours’ Lives of saints Julian and Martin.14 An examination of evolving pilgrim and cultic practices reveals the skill with which Bede incorporates Northumbrian and West Saxon saints and loca sancta into the larger Christian narrative.

Loca sancta, ‘blessings’, and relics The faithful who carried away the dirt from the Mount of Olives were engaging in practices that developed during the fourth century.15 Loca sancta were not part of the earliest Christian beliefs; rather, this concept was indebted to Roman religious practices involving sanctified space and to Constantine the Great’s ‘extensive building project in Palestine’, which was designed to ‘identify and mark loca sancta’ like the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.16 Bruno Reudenbach traces the concept of sacred Christian places through respectively. Despite varied translations, Bede always uses forms of puluis in this context: see further below. 14 This claim is based on an examination of 302 miracles in hagiographical texts that Bede knew (along with a few he did not) in which no such miracles occur: these include the lives of Anthony, Martin, Ambrose, Augustine, Germanus, Wilfrid, Gregory, Columba, and the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. I found no such miracles in Augustine’s City of God or the poems of Paulinus of Nola but did not count the number of miracles in those texts. Vita Cuthberti Anonymo (subsequent references: VCA) 1:3 and 4:15, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 59–​140, and Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus Iuliani 24, 46a, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 1.2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 562–​84; Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 1:37–​9, and 2:1 and 12, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 1.2, pp. 584–​661. See below, pp. 256–8. 15 See Reudenbach, ‘Holy places’, p. 199. See also A. T. Thacker, ‘Loca sanctorum: the significance of place in the study of the saints’, in A. T. Thacker and R. Sharpe (eds), Local saints and local churches in the early medieval west (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 1–​44; J. M. H. Smith, ‘Portable Christianity: relics in the medieval west (c. 700–​1200)’, Proceedings of the British Academy 181 (2012), 143–​67; E. Gertsman and A. S. Mittman, ‘Rocks of Jerusalem: bringing the Holy Land home’ in Bartal, Bodner and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, pp. 157–​71. 16 Reudenbach, ‘Holy places’, pp. 199–​200.

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the writings of Eusebius and Jerome (among others) to show that by the late fourth century, ‘[w]‌hat constitutes the idea of the loca sancta … is an indivisible alliance among topography and biblical narrative and history, between place and event’.17 Constantine’s mother, Helena, also reputedly carried earth from Calvary to Rome, where it was ‘placed under the foundations of churches and local burial sites in Europe, which became infused with its characteristics and sanctified through the earthen relic’.18 Collecting ‘natural materials such as earth, water, stones, and wood in the Holy Land’ from these places provided a way for believers to participate in sacred history.19 As Julia Smith observes, however, early ‘reliquiae, left-​overs, relics … were not –​yet –​relics as scholars are familiar with them’.20 Mundane substances collected by pilgrims, such as earth, water, stones, wood, and oil ‘were accessible, found in abundance, and usually less carefully guarded’.21 Ora Limor connects these eulogiae, i.e. ‘blessings’ or ‘benedictiones’, to the senses, as ‘elements [that] could be touched, eaten, smelled’ to evoke memories, convey knowledge or even ‘saturate’ a pilgrim with holiness, when blessings like fruit from the Holy Mount were eaten.22 Natural materials and relics also provided ways to ‘relocate the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem into Europe’s churches’ beyond Rome. Smith traces European practices of such relocations beyond Rome back to ‘ca. 800’, and discusses how the modes of transportation and uses of these holy materials changed over time.23 Reliquaries feature prominently in many (if not most) later medieval accounts of relics.24 Despite continued and valuable scholarly interest in adornment and aggrandisement as central to developing reliquary practices, ‘sacred matter’ was not always enclosed in reliquaries; rather, ‘handfuls of earth and tiny stones were kept in bundles of silk and

7 Reudenbach, ‘Holy places’, p. 201. 1 18 Bartal et al., ‘Natural materials, place and representation’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, pp. xxiii–​xxxiv, at xxiii. 19 Bartal et al., ‘Natural materials’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, p. xxiii. 20 Smith, ‘Portable Christianity’, 146. Soil, wood, water etc. that have come into contact with holy remains are sometimes called contact relics; I eschew that term to avoid sublimating the materials involved. 21 O. Limor, ‘Earth, stone, water and oil: objects of veneration in Holy Land travel narratives’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, pp. 3–​18, at 3. 22 Limor, ‘Earth, stone, water and oil’, pp. 4–​5. 23 J. M. H. Smith, ‘Eleventh-​century relic collections and the Holy Land’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, pp. 19–​35, at 19; cf. Smith, ‘Portable Christianity’, and the other chapters in Natural materials. 24 See Hahn, ‘What do reliquaries do for relics?’ and Bynum, Christian materiality.

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vellum that were labeled with their origin and significance’.25 ‘[N]‌arrative, visual, epigraphic, architectural, and ritual constructs’ also allowed natural materials like earth from loca sancta to be identified as ‘holy matter’, and to foster the kind of ‘indivisible alliance among topography and biblical narrative and history’.26

Earth as substance, object, and medium The natural materials and holy remains involved in the elemental healing miracles in Bede’s HE combine and expand aspects of these practices. Although Bede’s accounts of miracles have been the subject of extensive study, neither the mundane materials involved nor the absence of ornate reliquaries have been considered particularly significant.27 One exception is Between earth and heaven, in which Johanna Kramer discusses Oswald’s miracles in relation to Rogationtide practices in tenth-​century England. Rogationtide practices, which involve blessings for crops and fields, bring the earth into play in relation to the Ascension. Kramer focuses on communal rituals and the liminality of the Ascension.28 This makes sense, since the act of blessing has a spiritual focus; the Ascension also points away from the earth, towards Christian immortality. Such a focus on the spiritual is integral to traditional Christian modes of interpretation in which spiritual meaning takes priority. In the writings of Augustine, Gregory and Bede, as Benedicta Ward points out: ‘incredulity about a miracle was resolved not by reference to facts or evidence but by a closer examination of the tale’s significance’.29

25 Bartal et al., ‘Natural materials’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds), Natural materials, p. xxvii. 26 Reudenbach, ‘Holy places’, p. 201; see note 12, above. 27 See S. Foot, ‘Bede’s northern saints’, in M. Coombe, A. Mouron, and C. Whitehead (eds), Saints of north-​east England, 600–​1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 19–​ 40; C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge, Oswald: Northumbrian king to European saint (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995); D. Rollason, Saints and relics in Anglo-​ Saxon England (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1989); C. Cubitt, ‘Sites and sanctity: revisiting the cult of murdered and martyred Anglo-​Saxon royal saints’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 53–​83, and notes 1 and 2 above. On miracles associated with Oswald’s cross, see C. E. Karkov, S. Larratt Keefer, and K. L. Jolly (eds), The place of the cross in Anglo-​Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). 28 Kramer, Between earth and heaven, pp. 93–​4 and 177–​8. 29 B. Ward, Miracles and the medieval mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), p. 42.

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When it comes to the bodies of saints and martyrs, however, Susan Kim demonstrates the ‘insistence’ of the material body –​even within an Augustinian mode of interpretation: The martyr, through his body, speaks the truth of the resurrection. The suffering of the martyr and the fragmentation of his body point away from that particular suffering and to ‘the immortality of the resurrection’ displayed in yet another extraordinary body. But, … the martyr also disrupts this very signifying function. His extraordinary body signifies. It points away from itself and towards meaning elsewhere. But at the same time, in the infinite reproduction of its full presence, the martyr’s body insists –​dramatically –​on its materiality.30

Although Kim is discussing St Christopher’s martyred body, her observation about the disruptive function of the saint’s body is relevant here. In Bede’s elemental miracles, earth and water become similarly insistent as they become the combined medium through which the virtue of the saint is reproduced and transferred.31 Because the properties of earth and water shift across these practices, a clarification of terms is necessary. Our ‘inhabited environment consists’ of ‘medi[a]‌, substances and surfaces’.32 Typically, earth is a substance that ‘furnish[es] necessary physical foundations for life’, as opposed to a medium, like air, which affords humans both ‘movement and perception’ on surfaces, which form the ‘interface between the medium and substances’.33 Objects, in contrast, ‘are the way things appear to a subject –​that is, with a name, an identity, a … use or function, a history’.34 When earth is recognised as holy, carried away and used by the faithful, it becomes an object. In the HE, such earth becomes not only a curative object and an object of veneration with a function and history, but it also becomes a symbolic object. In the healing

30 S. M. Kim, ‘“In his heart he believed in God, but he could not speak like a man”: martyrdom, monstrosity, speech and the dog-​headed Saint Christopher’, in S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, editors and exemplars in medieval English texts (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 235–​50, at 242–3. 31 Charles Thomas reminds us that both the term virtus (virtue) and precedent of transferability come from the NT, specifically the episode of the Haemorissa. C. Thomas, ‘Bede, archaeology and the cult of relics’, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1973), repr. in M. Lapidge (ed.), Bede and his world: volume 1, the Jarrow Lectures 1958–​1978 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994), pp. 349–​68, at 352. 32 T. Ingold, ‘Materials against materiality’, Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007), 1–​16, at 4–​5; Ingold draws these ideas from J. Gibson, Ecological approach to visual perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflan, 1979), pp. 12–​27. 33 Ingold, ‘Materials against materiality’, 4–​5. 34 W. J. T. Mitchell, What do pictures want? The lives and loves of images (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 156–​7.

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miracles, this earth also becomes a medium through which saintly virtue is transmitted, usually in combination with water. It is interesting to ponder, in this scenario, the extent to which the saint can then be read as a surface, that is, as an interface for the ‘movement and perception’ of the transcendent, one that permits a fuller sense of the irruption and participation of the divine on earth than articulated in the concept of liminality –​not between, but in and on earth.35 In addition to natural materials from the Holy Land, however, Bede’s elemental miracles in the HE involve materials from local saints and places. They become objects in the hands of the faithful, and are framed almost exclusively by his narrative, rather than by reliquaries. The use of reliquaries seems to have been evolving. In the HE, one finds a few mentions of caskets or little bags containing relics and ‘holy matter’, but Bede does not describe them (or any labels) in detail. The narrative and archaeological records seem to agree here: according to David Rollason, ‘few positively authenticated examples of English reliquaries of before c. 850 have survived’.36 Alan Thacker has also emphasised how practices that ‘have come to be regarded as standard features of an early cult’, may not yet have been common in Bede’s day: ‘[T]‌hough the [HE] is studded with holy figures, few can be shown to have been the objects of cults before the late seventh century’.37 Bede provides several important early accounts of the translation of holy remains and the building of shrines in the HE, but the silver case in which Oswald’s arm and hand were preserved is the only precious reliquary he details.38 Bede does not mention the pectoral cross interred with

35 This chapter is part of a larger project on Bede’s elemental miracles in which I am developing a fuller discussion of this idea, a complete discussion of which is beyond the scope of this essay. 36 Rollason, Saints and relics in Anglo-​Saxon England, pp. 23–​59, and Rollason, ‘Relics and relic cults’, in J. Blair, S. Keynes, and D. Scragg (eds), The Blackwell encyclopedia of Anglo-​Saxon England (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1999), pp. 389–​90; A. T. Thacker, ‘The making of a local saint’, in Thacker and Sharpe (eds), Local saints and local churches, pp. 45–​73, esp. 48–​62; see also D. A. Hinton, S. Keene, and K. E. Qualmann, ‘The Winchester reliquary’, Medieval Archaeology 25 (1981), 45–​77; J. Lunnon and R. Martlew, ‘An Anglo-​Saxon amulet canister from Arncliffe, North Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 88 (2016), 235–​7. 37 A. T. Thacker, ‘Lindisfarne and the origins of the cult of St Cuthbert’, in G. Bonner, C. Stancliffe, and D. Rollason (eds), St Cuthbert, his cult and his community to A.D. 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 103–​122, at p. 106. 38 Bede, HE 3:6; see A. T. Thacker, ‘The saint in his setting: the physical environment of shrines in northern Britain before 850’, in M. Coombe, A. Mouron, and C. Whitehead (eds), Saints of north-​east England, 600–​1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 41–​68, at 52–​4.

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Cuthbert when his remains were translated in 687 in the HE. The raised boss on Cuthbert’s cross is suspected to contain a relic –​but it has never been unsealed.39 This is typical; although treasure often featured in early English churches and narratives, James Campbell reminds us that, ‘[h]ere, as often, Bede is the odd man out. He tells us something about treasures; but he is not enthused by them’.40 Overall, as Charles Thomas and Catherine Karkov confirm, early medieval Northumbrian practices tended towards ‘sculptural or semi-​architectural’ shrines or reliquaries.41 Karkov has also ‘connected both [the] Ruthwell and Bewcastle [monuments] to what Bede has to say about the inherent sacredness of the land’ positing that, ‘at least in Northumbria, they seemed very intent on materialising the idea of a living paradise’.42 Looking at Bede’s elemental miracles suggests that his understanding of Christian cosmology envisions a deeply rooted sense of the inherent sacredness of earth itself.

Bede’s cosmological and Christological symbolism 1: On Genesis Bede’s commentary On Genesis provides a basis for thinking about the inherent sacredness of the earth and its role in elemental healing miracles. Starting at 1:1, Bede explains, ‘it is said that In the beginning God created heaven and earth, in order that it may be clearly understood that he did both simultaneously, although it could not be said simultaneously in human language’.43 Even light itself comes after earth and water, which are ‘two elements of this world’. Bede reiterates that earth and water ‘are

39 Bede, HE 4:30. See Rollason, Saints and relics, p. 29; cf. E. Coatsworth, ‘The Pectoral cross and portable altar from the tomb of St Cuthbert’, in Bonner, Stancliffe, and Rollason (eds), St Cuthbert, his cult and his community to A.D. 1200, pp. 287–​301. 40 J. Campbell, ‘Elements in the background to the Life of St Cuthbert and his early cult’, in Bonner, Stancliffe, and Rollason (eds), St Cuthbert, pp. 3–​19, at 5. 41 Thomas, ‘Bede, archaeology and the cult of relics’. C. E. Karkov, personal correspondence, 18 November 2018; cf. The Visionary cross viewer http://​vcg.isti.cnr.it/​ cross/​(accessed 8 January 2023). 42 C. E. Karkov, personal correspondence, 18 November 2018, and Karkov, The art of Anglo-​Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), p. 95; cf. F. Orton, I. N. Wood, and C. A. Lees, Fragments of history: rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle monuments (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 43 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 16–​19; trans. Kendall, p. 68: ‘Vnde benedictum est quia in principio creauit deus caelum et terram, ut aperte detur intellegi quia utrumque simul ab eo factum est quamuis utrumque simul ab homine dici non possit.’

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expressly mentioned as having been made in the beginning with heaven’.44 Furthermore, the earth itself has a special relationship with the waters, since it cannot make the soil fertile without their sap and watering, but neither can it exist on its own, as Peter attests, who says that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.45

Earth and water are also connected to Adam, whose body was ‘formed of the mud of the earth’, with the qualification, ‘but the soul was created out of nothing by the inspiration of God’.46 Bede also emphasises that Christ, the second Adam, like the first, was made of the ‘true substance of the flesh from Adam … to recover in the new man the image of God that we lost in the old man’.47 That is, ‘[t]‌he “true substance of the flesh” (ueram … carnis substantiam) refers to Adam as he was created “in the image and likeness of God” before he sinned’.48 We are reminded here, then, that ‘the mud of the earth’ provided the ‘true substance’ in, through and by which Christ consists in his mystical humanity. The healing miracle in John 9 deepens the symbolism of healings involving earth and water, and connects them even more closely with Christ. In this miracle, when confronted by a man blind from birth, Jesus anoints the man’s eyes with mud made from the earth at his feet and his own saliva. Jesus then instructs the man to ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’, after which the man ‘came back with sight’.49 This miracle, as Bruce Grigsby emphasises, not only ‘validates Christ’s claim … to be the “light of the world” ’ by healing blindness, it also highlights the symbolic, Messianic properties of the waters of Siloam. For Grigsby, this miracle links Jewish practices of ritual washing for purification with John’s ‘developing “living water” motif –​a motif which culminates in the effluence of water from the crucified 44 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 89–​91; trans. Kendall, p. 70: ‘Vbi notandum quod cum caelo in principio duo mundi huius elementa, aqua uidelicet et terra, nominatim facta memorantur.’ 45 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 677–​81, quoting 2 Peter 3:5; trans. Kendall, p. 88: ‘Nam et ipsa praecipuam habet cognationem cum aquis, utpote quae sine earum suco et inrigatione non solum fructificare sed nec ipsa consistere possit, petro adtestante qui ait, quia caeli erant prius et terra de aqua et per aquam consistens dei uerbo.’ 46 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 1385–​6; trans. Kendall, p. 109: ‘E quibus corpus de limo terrae formatum, anima uero de nihilo sita deo inspirante creata’. Cf. Genesis 2:7. 47 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 775–​9; trans. Kendall, p. 91: ‘Quia nimirum ita ueram de adam carnis substantiam sumpsit … hoc est imaginem dei quam in ueteri homine perdidimus recuperare in nouo.’ 48 Kendall, Bede: On Genesis, p. 91 note 98. 49 John 9:6–​7. D. B. Hart (trans.), The New Testament: a translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

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Christ’, also signalled by Christ’s use of his own saliva in this miracle.50 Grigsby also connects the cultic sense of the ‘living waters’ of the pool to Isaiah’s prayer for water, which was miraculously granted, as a ‘developing “sign of Siloam” ’. The flowing water ‘sent’ as a sign of God’s blessing leads to ‘Siloam’ being translated as ‘Sent’, which develops ‘Messianic overtones’ connecting the pool with Christ.51 Bede’s elemental miracles are informed by the Christological and cosmogonic nature of earth and water –​along with the fundamental role of earth and water in the creation of humans, as well as Christ’s mystical humanity.52 In the HE, these elements become media for divine virtue; they reflect a primordial unity that is simultaneously lost and yet to come. From a Christian cosmological perspective, the earth and the waters that permeate it not only participate in eternity but also exist in historical/​human time –​as do relics and ‘blessings’, which constantly evoke and re-​evoke a sense in which they are in and of both. The cosmological overlaps the Christological: just as the flowing waters that permeate the earth extend the holiness of Creation, Christ is both the ‘true substance’ of the mud of the earth and the living flowing waters. As the embodiment of divinity, simultaneously mystical and physical, he provides the archetypes for the saints and their miracles, whether the miracles are enacted by prayer alone, or some form of contact, such as touch or transfer via a medium, including –​eucharistically –​eating and drinking. Bede’s elemental miracles reflect his understanding of ‘natura externa, God’s gracious Creation, which is a book of doctrine lying open to read’.53 As both Jones and Kendall emphasise, Bede’s conception of nature differed from that of Augustine of Hippo. According to Jones, ‘in Bede’s writings’, unlike Augustine’s, ‘a reader sees most clearly how Nature and Grace hang upon the locus amoenus of prelapsarian Eden’.54 In Bede’s elemental healing miracles, earth and water establish a symbolic link to prelapsarian Creation, Eden, and Christ’s humanity. Britain, as part of the Christian oecumen, is part of the ‘whole earth [which] is filled with waters flowing through unseen

50 B. Grigsby, ‘Washing in the Pool of Siloam: a thematic anticipation of the Johannine Cross’, Novum Testamentum 27 (1985), 227–​35, at 227–​8. 51 Grigsby, ‘Washing in the Pool of Siloam’, 230 and 234. 52 I disagree with Thacker’s suggestion that ‘the ritual washing and disposal of the hallowed water was surely to create an inexhaustible source of relic material’ in the VCA and VCP: Thacker, ‘The making of a local saint’, p. 71. 53 C. W. Jones, ‘Some introductory remarks on Bede’s Commentary on Genesis’, Sacris erudiri 19 (1969–​70), 115–​98, at 117, repr. in W. Stevens (ed.), Bede, the schools and the computus (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994), number 4. 54 Jones, ‘Some introductory remarks’, 117.

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veins which take their source from the sea’.55 These insistent materialities of earth and water differ dramatically from strips of cloth, or pieces of a wooden cross. Miracles of earth and water remind us that liminality is itself a condition of the Fall; saints participate in Christian eternity, to which earth and water are fundamental and coeval. Elemental miracles allow Christian eternity to irrupt into the lived reality of believers.

Bede’s cosmological and Christological symbolism 2: the VCP and HE Although Limor’s point that ‘unlike earth and stones, fruit can be eaten’ makes good sense from a human dietary perspective, Bede’s elemental healing miracles involve the human consumption of earth mixed with water.56 In the HE, Bede includes three accounts of healing miracles involving earth, water, and the remains of either Oswald, Chad, or Hædde, and one in his VCP; in each account Bede reports that many were healed, so these are also ‘ongoing miracles’.57 In the HE, Bede uses the same term, puluis, in each account, though Colgrave and Mynors translate ‘earth’ at the site of Oswald’s death and ‘dust’ at Chad’s tomb. Pulius refers not only to dust ‘lying on the ground or surfaces’, but also ‘dust associated with certain special activities’ and ‘destruction (applied esp[ecially] to the remains of a dead body)’.58 These miracles are verbally as well as symbolically linked. Because Bede uses forms of terra in his commentary On Genesis, his choice of pulius in the HE may suggest the importance of the term’s association with human remains and ‘special activities’.

55 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 348–​50; trans. Kendall, p. 78: ‘Quia tellus omnis per inuisibiles uenas aquis est repleta manantibus quae trahunt ex mari principium.’ See J. O’Reilly, ‘St John as a figure of the contemplative life: text and image in the art of the Anglo-​Saxon Benedictine reform’, in C. A. Farr and E. Mullins (eds), Early medieval text and image, volume 2: the Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-​Saxon art (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 243–​75, at 257–​8. On Bede’s conception of hydrology, see further E. Ahern, ‘Bede and “the nature of things” ’ in the present volume. 56 Limor, ‘Earth, stone, water and oil’, in Bartal, Bodner, and Kühnel (eds.), Natural materials, p. 5. Emphasis added. 57 Colgrave compares the miracle in the VCP to a miracle performed by Benedict in Gregory’s Dialogues in which Benedict heals a possessed cleric; however, Benedict is alive and he enacts the miracle through prayer. Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, p. 358; Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri iu 2:16, ed. A. de Vogüé, SC 260 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1979). 58 See entry for pulius in The Oxford Latin dictionary, ed. P. G. Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Bede and the anonymous use humus in their Lives of Cuthbert.

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The roughly eighty-​seven miracles in Bede’s HE fall into a diverse range of categories, from visions, healings, and exorcisms, to power over nature, incorruption, and the gift of song.59 In the HE, Bede combines miracles performed by living saints, discoveries of relics, and posthumous miracles in ways that differ from some early lives and passions, which tend to focus either on acts of conversion and the miracles performed by living saints or to describe martyrdoms. Also in contrast to the many healing miracles in Late Antique and early medieval saints’ lives or passions that take place at tombs by virtue of prayer and/​or proximity, or healings enacted by anointing one’s body with oil or dust from a tomb, miracles involving the consumption of puluis and water appear to have been relatively uncommon prior to Bede.60 Indeed, although William McCready claims that Bede’s miracles ‘are entirely in keeping with what is found in similar early medieval texts’, that is not the case with miracles enacted by consuming sanctified earth.61 Paulinus of Nola reports anointing the sick with oil passed through the tomb of Felix, but the caretakers of the tomb panicked when they found earth in the oil, fearing that an animal had desecrated the tomb of their saint.62 In The miracles of St Hilary, Fortunatus records lepers curing themselves at Hilary’s tomb by covering themselves in dust, but they do not consume it.63 In Gregory of Tours’ Miracles of Julian, however, drinking water from the spring where Julian had been decapitated was curative.64 In his Miracles of Martin, Gregory 59 As Clare Stancliffe points out, categorising and counting miracles is difficult; categories overlap and similar events can be recorded in groups. Loomis, McCready, and Rosenthal all arrived at different totals for miracles in the HE, ranging from 51 to 76; more recently, Rochester has counted 87, taking the broadest range of phenomena into account. See Rochester for a detailed account of the different totals found in Bede’s HE. C. Stancliffe, St Martin and his hagiographer: history and miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 205–​6; C. G. Loomis, ‘The miracle traditions of the Venerable Bede’, 404; J. T. Rosenthal, ‘Bede’s use of miracles in “the Ecclesiastical history”’, Traditio 31 (1975), 328–​35, at 329–​30; T. E. Rochester, ‘Sanctity and authority: documenting miracles in the age of Bede’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2018), pp. 147–​8. 60 Peter Brown discusses the Late Antique aversion to corpses, how Christian practices changed attitudes towards the dead, and miracles that occurred around tombs, P. Brown, The cult of saints: its rise and function in late antiquity (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980); see also notes 4, 13, and 60 above, especially Thacker and Rollason. 61 McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, p. 230. See also note 14, above. 62 Paulinus, Carmina 21, lines 602–​16, ed. W. Hartel, CSEL 30 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1894); trans. P. G Walsh, The poems of St Paulinus of Nola (New York: Newman Press, 1975), p. 193. 63 Fortunatus, Liber de virtutibus sancti Hilarii, ed. B. Krusch, MGH Auct. ant. 4.2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885), pp. 7–​11. 64 Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus Iuliani 24, 46a.

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recounts several miraculous cures enacted by drinking dust from the saint’s tomb mixed with water,65 as well as cures enacted by being sprinkled with dust from the tomb and oil sanctified there.66 These miracles are similar, but not identical, to the earth and water miracles described by Bede. Bede may have learned of these practices through oral accounts or via his main source for his VCP (c. 720), the anonymous Lindisfarne VCA (c. 698–​705). The VCA seems to be the earliest surviving written source from Northumbria to report the practice of drinking a mixture of soil that had come into contact with the remains of a saint and water. It reports that a boy was cured from demonic possession after drinking water in which ‘a certain man of good and sound faith’ had ‘sprinkled … some of the earth from the trench in which that water had been poured, wherein the body of our holy bishop [i.e., Cuthbert] had been washed after his death’.67 In his VCP, Bede’s version of this miracle adds that the priest ‘was instructed in spirit’ by Cuthbert himself to the location at which his body had been washed, and the water poured out. Bede reports that a pit was still visible in his own day, that it had been given a wooden border, filled up with pebbles, and that ‘many miracles of healing took place by means of those same stones or with some of that earth’.68 Bede’s addition of the miraculous revelation of the spot in a vision enhances the connection between the saint and his elemental miracles. In his notes to Two Lives, Colgrave suggests that Cuthbert’s elemental healing miracles are like others reported by Stephen of Ripon and Gregory the Great: closer examination demonstrates that they are not. First, Colgrave suggests that the miracle in the VCA resembles a miracle involving washing water in Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid. The miracle to which Colgrave refers involves a cure enacted by plunging a paralysed limb into water used to wash Wilfrid’s robe.69 The washing water is similar, but no earth is involved. Nor does the healed nun drink the washing water from Wilfrid’s robes to enact the healing. Next, Colgrave suggests that Bede’s version of this miracle in the VCP resembles one performed by Benedict in Gregory’s Dialogues, in which Benedict heals by prayer a possessed cleric who had not been cured by visiting the tombs of the martyrs.70 Benedict, who is alive, enacts this 5 Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 1:37–​9, and 2:1 and 12. 6 66 Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 1:2. 67 VCA 4:15. 68 Bede, VCP 41. 69 Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 340 and 358. Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 66. Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri iu 2:16. 70 Colgrave, Two lives of Saint Cuthbert, p. 358.

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miracle through prayer. Both Benedict and Cuthbert’s relics succeed where other methods of healing failed, but the similarities end there. No earth or water is consumed in Gregory’s miracle. In these notes, Colgrave refers back to his essay in Bede: his life, times and writings to confirm the regularity with which miracles enacted by mixing relics with water occur –​but all of these are in Bede’s own writing; they are neither sources for Bede’s miracles nor analogues to them.71 It’s also telling that the two miracles of Benedict and Wilfrid bear no resemblance to each other beyond the component of healing. The healing drink of earth and water Bede reports in his VCP clearly aligns with the VCA, and is otherwise most closely related to miracles reported by Gregory of Tours in his Lives of Martin and Julius. Notably, although the VCA draws directly on Sulpicius Severus’ Life of St Martin, Sulpicius does not include healing miracles enacted by drinking dust from the saints’ tombs in water. Neither Bede nor the anonymous Lindisfarne author have been shown to have known the lives by Gregory; rather, Bede’s sources for this group of elemental miracles in the HE seem to have been oral.72 He tells us that ‘Hædde’s successor Aldhelm used to relate…’, and indicates that the monks at Lastingham were his source for his account of Chad’s tomb. The miracles of Oswald were reported by ‘innumerable witnesses’.73 Similarities between Bede’s accounts and the archaeological record suggest that practices like those Bede reports in the HE arose on the Continent and were transmitted to Northumbria.74 Early medieval English practices were related to, but not entirely dependent on, Roman and Merovingian ones –​and Bede’s descriptions of translations, reburials, and shrines resemble practices recorded in Gaul.75 Thomas argues that the shape of Cuthbert’s coffin was ‘not derivable from Roman wooden coffins in Britain’, but that

71 Colgrave, ‘Bede’s miracle stories’, in Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writing, pp. 217ff. 72 See above notes 6 and 13. Harris lists Gregory’s History as part of Bede’s library, but not the saints’ lives. S. Harris, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, Old English Newsletter 45.1 (2014). Miracles similar to those of King Edwin occur in Gregory’s LJ, which makes me suspect that Bede may have been familiar with the stories contained in the text. 73 Bede HE, 5:18, preface, and 3:23. Theodore also wrote a short poem about Hædde, but it does not mention these miracles. See M. Lapidge, Anglo-​Latin literature 600–​ 899 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 225–​6. 74 On the connections between Wearmouth-​Jarrow and the Continent, see P. Darby and M. MacCarron, ‘The autobiographical statement of Bede the scholar in Ecclesiastical history 5:24’, above, pp. 15–​24. 75 Thacker, ‘Lindisfarne and Cuthbert’, p. 107, and Thacker, ‘Saint in his setting’, pp. 42–​6, 64; Rollason, Saints and relics, p. 49.

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it ‘must recall the distinct tapering seen in Merovingian stone sarcophagi of the late classical tradition’.76 The cultural influences surrounding Chad’s ‘tumba lignea’, his ‘wooden coffin’, are more complicated. Bede reports that it looked like a ‘little house, having a hole in one side, through which those who go [there] out of devotion may insert their hands and take out some of the dust. When it is put in water and given either to cattle or men who are ailing, they get their wish and are at once freed from their ailments and rejoice in health restored’.77 Of the miracles discussed in this chapter, these are the closest to those reported by Gregory of Tours, though in Gregory’s accounts the dust is scraped off the tombs, not taken from within it.78 Thomas argues that Chad’s open wooden coffin and shrine reflect a combination of practices and influences both Mediterranean and Irish, along with composite ‘corner-​post shrines’ slightly post-​dating Bede, that ‘could even have been invented, if that is the right word to use, in Jarrow-​Monkwearmouth’.79 Bede’s monastery thrived as a place of cross-​cultural creativity and innovation; his hagiographical writings reflect such cross-​cultural influences. Bede develops and deploys the cosmological and Christological symbolism of earth and water most fully in his account of King Oswald’s discovery and posthumous miracles. Although Bede also reports healing miracles involving splinters from Oswald’s cross, Bede separates his accounts of the cross and the discovery of the site of Oswald’s death by several chapters. Julia Barrow has recently discussed Bede’s use of Christological symbolism in the cross episode, connecting Bede’s presentation of the cross in HE 3:2 to his Commentary on Luke.80 The miracles of earth in HE 3:9 build on the Christological symbolism of Oswald’s cross by developing the site of his death as a holy place and a locus amoenus. Although Oswald’s severed head and incorrupt arm had already been separated from his body, the site of his death and the remainder of his body is initially unmarked earth, adorned only by its greenery.81 The site is discovered by an anonymous ‘rider, who was an intelligent man’, whose horse is cured by rolling on the earth; the rider marks the spot as a place of sanctity. Another man, Bede tells us, also

76 C. Thomas, The Early Christian archaeology of North Britain (London: Published for the University of Glasgow by Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 146–​8. 77 Bede, HE 4:3. 78 Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 2:37–​9. 79 Thomas, ‘Bede, archaeology and the cult of relics’, p. 362; cf. Thomas, Early Christian archaeology, p. 148; cf. Thacker, ‘Saint in his setting’, pp. 50–​2. 80 J. Barrow, ‘Oswald and the strong man armed’, in A. Langlands and R. Lavelle (eds), The land of the English kin: studies in Wessex and Anglo-​Saxon England in honour of Professor Barbara Yorke (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 183–​96, at 193. 81 Bede, HE 3:6.

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noted that ‘a certain patch of ground was greener and more beautiful than the rest of the field’, so he concluded that someone ‘holier than the rest of the army’ died there.82 The earth that he takes from the spot for the purpose of healing prevents a fire from burning down the post on which the little bag of earth was hung. Eventually, the faithful create a pit ‘the height of a man’ by carrying away the dirt for its curative properties.83 Jacqueline Stodnick has recently discussed how the ‘emptying’ of this site ‘served to ground communal identity’. She emphasises the connection between the male saint’s body and the land, asserting that the ‘[p]‌lace has become the man himself’.84 While the site of Oswald’s death does participate in the sacred geography Bede articulates in the HE, this place is neither empty nor only ‘the man’. The earth itself asserts Oswald’s sanctity; it remains materially instrumental to the discovery and miraculous cures, and full of virtue despite the hole. As the faithful collect the soil, their behaviour recalls Late Antique pilgrim practices and establishes a locus sanctus, which, with its greenery, also recalls Christian cosmology and Eden. Eventually, Osthryth, queen of Mercia and Oswald’s niece, arranges for his remains to be recovered from the site and taken to Bardney, where they are initially rejected. But a column of light from the carriage containing the bones ‘stretched … right up to heaven’, confirming the sanctity of the bones overnight. They are taken in, washed and the process of aggrandisement begins. Bede tells us that the bones were: laid in a shrine … with fitting honors; … they placed above his tomb a banner of gold and purple, pouring out the water in which the bones had been washed in a corner of the sanctuary. Ever afterwards the soil which had received that holy water had the power and saving grace of driving devils from the bodies of people possessed.85

Although Bede mentions the purple and gold banner, he immediately shifts his focus to the washing water poured onto the earthen floor. Symbolically analogous to ‘the effluence of water from the crucified Christ’, this poured water transmits Oswald’s saintly virtue to the floor of the sanctuary, the earth of which retains special power, Bede tells us, ‘ever afterwards’.86

2 Bede, HE 3:10. 8 83 Bede, HE 3:9. 84 J. Stodnick, ‘Bodies and the land: the place of gender in the Old English Martyrology’, in P. E. Szarmach (ed.), Writing women saints in Anglo-​Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), pp. 3–​52, at 47–​9. 85 Bede, HE 3:11; on the shrine and its adornments which were later increased, see Thacker, ‘Saint in his setting’, pp. 52–​6. 86 Grigsby, ‘Washing in the Pool of Siloam’, 227; Bede, HE 3:11.

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This is an instance of contiguity and connection. As I noted above, in his commentary On Genesis, Bede describes how the waters are ‘unbroken’, and ‘permeate the earth though they seem to be self-​contained’.87 Bede reiterates that ‘the earth has a special relationship with the waters, since it cannot make the soil fertile without their sap or watering’.88 In the sanctuary at Bardney, the washing water from Oswald’s bones serves as a medium connecting not only the bones in the shrine and the earth of the sanctuary, but also the open site of Oswald’s martyrdom and the enclosed, authorised shrine in the church. As the newly miraculous sanctuary soil heals demonic possession, it extends the power and presence of Oswald that had existed –​ and continued to exist –​out in the field. The shrine serves to aggrandise, enclose, and control access to Oswald’s sanctity, but it works in tandem with the ‘inherent sacredness’ of the landscape. Miracles enacted using earth and water from within the shrine insist on the cosmological and Christological significance of the elements themselves in Bede’s narrative. Between Oswald’s famous erection of a cross before battle and the collecting of the soil from the site of his death, the allusions to Christ and Calvary become clear, as do connections with the site of the Ascension, which Bede describes in Book 5 of the HE. While the significance of this site, unlike that of Oswald’s martyrdom, was authoritatively witnessed by the apostles and marked immediately by the footprints of God as significant, it miraculously resisted enclosure and aggrandisement by humans. Bede describes these footprints in the excerpts from Adomnán’s De locis sanctis that he includes in Book 5 of the HE. He tells us that the church ‘could not be vaulted or roofed because the Lord’s body passed up out of it’ and that ‘[a]‌lthough the earth is daily carried away by the faithful, yet it still remains and preserves the same appearance of having been marked by the impress of His feet’.89 The presence of absence in both locations is striking, though evoked by different properties of the earth, as is the insistent materiality of the unadorned earth. The vestigia Domini, the footprints of God, also speak for themselves and physically refuse to be contained, though they are framed in narrative.

7 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 351–​69; trans. Kendall, p. 78. 8 88 Bede, In Genesim 1, lines 677–​9; trans. Kendall, p. 88: ‘Nam et ipsa praecipuam habet cognationem cum aquis, utpote quae sine earum suco et inrigatione non solum fructificare’. 89 Bede, HE 5:17, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 510–​11: ‘Interior namque domus propter dominici corporis meatum camerari et tegi non potuit … Quae cum cotidie a credentibus terra tollatur, nihilominus manet, eandem que adhuc speciem ueluti impressis signata uestigiis seruat.’

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The fruitfulness of Christ’s divine presence is also symbolised by the vines, olives, wheat, and barley that grow on the Mount. This fruitfulness plays a central symbolic role in Bede’s ‘Homily on the Ascension’, where he discusses the image of Christ as a cluster of grapes and the true vine, expounding on the importance of the place where ‘the first root of faith in him would be brought forth’; and there ‘the first shoot of the burgeoning Church, like that of some kind of great vine, would be planted.’90 The fruitfulness of the earth echoes the coeval and constant presence of the unbroken, though often invisible, waters of Genesis 1:24, underscoring both the themes of presence in absence and the primordial unity of the simultaneous creation of the heavens, the earth, and the waters. This theme of divine, life-​giving fruitfulness overcoming death and illness plays a key role in these cures enacted by consuming earth and water. There is no sense of abjection in these acts of consuming this earth; earth and water are substances of Creation that become media for virtue and healing. At the same time, however, the contrast between the fruitful and miraculously regenerating soil on the Mount of Olives and Oswald’s pit also marks a clear hierarchical difference between the saint-​king and his God. Bede makes this clear: ‘the Mount of Olives quite fittingly represents the very person of our Lord. Appearing in the flesh, he excels all the saints, who are simply human beings, both by the loftiness of his dignity and the grace of his spiritual power’.91 Oswald’s faith and death foster Christianity in early medieval Britain, but differ in nature and degree, though the greener beauty of that ‘certain patch of ground’ allows audiences to glimpse Bede’s locus amoenus in the miracles of Oswald. Both the place and the saint differ by degree; the land is inherently sacred, but it is not the Holy Land. These are cases of participation in sacred history and symbolic connection, rather than exceptionalism or substitution. Bede does not develop this cosmological and Christological symbolism as dramatically in the case of Hædde, bishop of the West Saxons; rather, he chooses to report Hædde’s miracles as simply and concisely as possible. He tells us that Aldhelm reported miracles at the site of Hædde’s death, stating that people ‘used to take soil from the place and put it in water for the benefit of the sick, and both sick men and cattle who drank it or

90 Bede, Homiliae 2:15, lines 73–​5; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, pp. 137–​8: ‘ibi prima fidei illius radix ederetur primus ecclesiae nascentis quasi magnae cuiusdam uineae surculus plantaretur.’ 91 Bede, Homiliae 2:15, lines 127–​31; trans. Martin and Hurst, 2, p. 139: ‘mons oliueti ipsam redemptoris nostri personam multum decenter exprimit qui in carne apparens et altitudine dignitatis et spiritalis gratia uirtutis omnes qui puri homines sunt sanctos antecellit’.

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were sprinkled with it were healed’.92 Nevertheless, this language clearly echoes Bede’s account of Oswald’s posthumous miracles, especially with the accessibility of the site, the digging of the pit, and the healing of men and cattle (creatures crucial for human sustenance). Importantly, Bede places his description of Hædde’s miracles in his narrative immediately after his excerpts from Adomnán’s De locis sanctis in the HE. By using an envelope structure, Bede connects Britain with the Holy Land in a concatenation of elemental miracles. Hædde’s site extends the presence of loca sancta southwest into Wessex, from Oswald and Chad’s in Northumbria.

Conclusions The simplicity of Bede’s account of Hædde’s locus sanctus allows the unadorned earth to signify without aggrandisement or descriptions of ornate reliquaries. This may explain why Bede does not include Cuthbert’s elemental miracles in the HE. In the VCP, Bede reports that the trench where Cuthbert’s washing water had been poured was framed with wood and filled with pebbles. Unlike the open and accessible sites of Oswald and Hædde’s deaths, Cuthbert’s framed site no longer evoked the primordial nature of earth as clearly as the others. The elemental miracles in both Lives of Cuthbert, however, remain crucial to our understanding of the transmission of these practices to Bede’s Northumbria. During the time of Bede, the written and archaeological records demonstrate that cultic and reliquary practices were developing and changing. While the practice of collecting sanctified earth resembles early pilgrim practices –​including eating fruit from the Holy Mount –​a close examination of miraculous cures enacted by drinking sanctified earth mixed with water allows us to trace one particular type of miracle in its earliest written forms. Gregory of Tours appears to be the first to record the faithful drinking dust from a saint’s tomb mixed with water. The anonymous Lindisfarne author’s account of the soil that received Cuthbert’s washing water adds another key symbolic element, and arguably introduces this concept to the North Atlantic archipelago –​where Bede’s account offers a variation on a theme. It may be worth pointing out that Bede wrote the second version of his commentary On Genesis around the same time he was writing his VCP. By the time Bede crafted the narrative of his HE, he had collected other accounts of 92 Bede, HE 5:18, ed. and trans Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 514–​15: ‘hominesque prouinciae illius solitos ablatum inde puluerem propter languentes in aquam mittere atque huius gustum siue aspersionem multis sanitatem aegrotis et hominibus et pecoribus conferre’.

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similar practices at the sites of Oswald and Hædde’s deaths, as well as Chad’s tomb. Bede links these holy men and their posthumous miracles together via repetition of key words and phrases, and at the same time he imbues these accounts with richly allusive cosmological and Christological symbolism that inheres in the insistent, primordial materiality of earth and water. In doing so, Bede symbolically connects local Northumbrian and West Saxon saints with Christ, the loca sancta of Britain with the Holy Land, and his moment in time with Christian eternity. Refusing to allow earth and water to disappear behind spiritual meanings clearly reveals Bede’s hagiographical innovations and creativity, as well as his critical, exegetical and authorial acumen.

11 Bede’s Martyrology: a resource and spiritual lesson Paul C. Hilliard* Scholars have been able to reach a nearly harmonious agreement about Bede’s Martyrology: he should be credited with the creation of the genre of historical, narrative martyrologies.1 Bede was one of the first recorded authors in the Latin West to add historical information to the lists of martyrs that were then in circulation. The most famous of these was the Hieronymian martyrology, most likely the base text of Bede’s Martyrology project.2 The entries in this fifth-​century text attributed to Jerome, so far as can be reconstructed, provided the barest of details to locate the martyrs in the wider Greco-​Roman world: a date, a name, and a place. By adding historical details to these lists, Bede began a process which would eventually lead to the production of the Roman Martyrology.3 In this regard, one could also say that Bede’s text lies at the foundation of any collection of biographies about the saints arranged according to the liturgical calendar. Bede himself recognised the innovative nature of his text which he described as: ‘a martyrology concerning the commemorative festival days of the holy martyrs, in which I have diligently striven to note down all those whom I was able to find, not only on what day but also through what kind of struggle and under which judge they vanquished the world’.4

* I would like to thank the editors for their extremely helpful comments as well as the tireless efforts of Robin. All mistakes remain my own. 1 H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du moyen age: étude sur la formation du martyrologe romain (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1908) pp. 17–​18. 2 Martyrologium Hieronymianum, ed. H. Quentin and H. Delahaye, Acta Sanctorum Novembris, vol. II, Pars posterior: Commentarius perpetuus in Martyrologium Hieronymianum (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1931). 3 For the first edition of the contemporary Roman Martyrology: Martyrologium Romanum: edition princeps (1584), Monumenta liturgica Concilii Tridentini 6 (Vatican City: Libreria editrice vaticana, 2005). 4 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5:24, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969): ‘Martyrologium de nataliciis sanctorum martyrum diebus, in quo omnes,

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In total, Bede seems to have produced around 114 historical notices for his Martyrology.5 The Martyrology Bede composed is a list of saints organised according to the calendar beginning with January. In his description of the work Bede only highlighted what scholarship has come to call historical entries or longer entries; that is, the entries where Bede provided the information described above. The martyrology Bede composed, however, does not survive in its original form. Even the earliest of manuscripts demonstrate revisions, adaptations, and augmentations. In the martyrological tradition, the list of saints organised by the liturgical calendar in front of a copyist seemed to invite scribal interventions.6 As such, it is probably impossible to establish whether Bede was the author of all of the entries in the earliest manuscripts, many of which do not align with his description in the HE. For the purpose of this chapter, I have chosen to focus on those entries which are in accord with Bede’s description of the text.7 By limiting discussion to the historical entries, we can be more confident that we are working with material composed by Bede. As we shall see, Bede provided to the reader historical notices, calendrically arranged, primarily about saints who suffered, both involuntarily and voluntarily, and not just those who gave the ultimate witness to their faith in the conventional understanding of martyrdom. The work was completed sometime between 725 and 731, although there are signs that Bede may have been working on the text earlier in his career. While the novelty of the work is not particularly contested, the meaning and purpose of the Martyrology has eluded a wider consensus. First, this chapter will briefly review the scholarly attention paid to Bede’s text, highlighting the focal points of discussion which have guided the historiography. Next, in order to answer the central question of the chapter, ‘why did Bede produce this text?’, two points must be discussed. The first point is the relationship between Bede and his sources. Second, we must understand from

quos inuenire potui, non solum qua die verum etiam quo genere certaminis uel sub quo iudice mundum uicerint, diligenter adnotare studui’. Translation cited from F. Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’, in T. Head (ed.), Medieval hagiography: an anthology (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 171. 5 F. Biggs debated the number of historical entries in ‘Bede’s Martyrologium and the Martyrologium Hieronymianum’, Analecta Bollandiana 134 (2016), 241–​78. 6 A. T. Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, in E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds), Listen, O Isles, unto me: studies in medieval word and image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011), pp. 126–​41 at 128. 7 For examples of the shorter entries see the B and B2 family in Edition pratique des Martyrologes de Bede de l’Anonyme Lyonnais et de Florus, ed. J. Dubois and G. Renaud (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1976).

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the wider Bedan corpus what Bede thought about the martyrs and their relationship to the Church, past, present, and future. With this information in place, we can then proceed to answer the question of what Bede hoped to achieve with the text.

Prior scholarship The Martyrology may be Bede’s least studied historical writing in the scholarship of the past 150 years. In the work of those who have considered his text, there are two central themes to the historiography. The first and central theme, which led to the production of editions of the text, is Bede’s relationship to other martyrologies, in both the continental and Insular traditions, but especially the Old English Martyrology. The other theme is how to understand the inclusion of violent and graphic details recorded in Bede’s historical notices. As with many things in Bedan studies, one of these lines of inquiry can be traced back to Charles Plummer. Plummer had little to say about the Martyrology, but what he did say laid the foundation for the question over the graphic nature of the historical notices: ‘the Martyrology as we have it has been so added to, that it is impossible to tell what part, if any, is really due to Bede. And there is much in it that one would willingly believe not to be Bede’s –​too much ecclesiastical gloating over the physical horrors of martyrdom, and legends of the purely silly kind.’8 Usually a sensitive reader of Bede’s works, Plummer’s discomfort here over the physical horrors of martyrdom led to this feature of the work being discussed prominently in the renewed interest of twenty-​first-​century scholarship. The foundation of the second principal theme, the relationship of Bede’s text to other martyrologies, is found in the efforts of Henri Quentin to provide a critical edition of sorts for the early medieval historical martyrologies, if not also the Bollandists and the Acta Sanctorum scholars themselves.9 Quentin’s edition is organised more by the sources than by the martyrology text itself and this has led to subsequent efforts by Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud, and by Felice Lifshitz, to create a more useable version of the text. A traditionally formatted critical edition has yet to be produced. The majority of twentieth-​century engagement with the Martyrology was dedicated to understanding Bede’s place in the emergence of the Roman

8 C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 1, p. cliii. 9 Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du moyen age, pp. 17–​119.

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Martyrology.10 Thus, twentieth-​century scholarship was primarily directed towards intertextual relationships in the wider martyrological tradition. Exploration of the content and meaning of the text would have to wait until the twenty-​first century. Four main scholars have worked on Bede’s Martyrology since the foundations laid in the twentieth century.11 What I present here is a summary of their findings about those aspects most germane to the study at hand. In no way should this summary be seen as exhaustive of the insights to be found in these scholars.

Eighth-​century martyrologists and the date of the Martyrology One of the great benefits which has emerged in the more recent scholarship is greater clarity that Bede was not alone in his interest in the martyrological tradition, especially with regard to engagement with the Hieronymian martyrology. Lifshitz saw Bede as part of the wider group of individuals in and around AD 700 who were all concerned with using and adapting the martyrological tradition.12 These individuals were in contact across the western Christian world, but especially pronounced were the connections between Northumbria and Willibrord’s monastery at Echternach. Ó Riain and Lapidge expand this group to include Lindisfarne and the wider Irish

10 For an exploration of Bede’s relationship to the Old English Martyrology, see G. Kotzor, ‘The Latin tradition of martyrologies and the Old English Martyrology’ in P. Szarmach (ed.), Studies in earlier Old English prose (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 301–​33. For the most recent edition see. C. Rauer, The Old English martyrology: edition, translation, and commentary (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013). 11 Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’ and The name of the saint: the martyrology of Jerome and access to the sacred in Francia, 627–​827 (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), esp. pp. 126–​30 and 141–​4; V. Gunn, Bede’s historiae: genre, rhetoric, and the construction of Anglo-​Saxon church history (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 131–​ 42; Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’; Biggs, ‘Bede’s Martyrologium’. Also important are: D. Bullough, ‘York, Bede’s calendar, and a pre-​ Bedan English martyrology’, Analecta Bollandiana 121 (2003), 329–​55; P. Meyvaert, ‘Discovering the calendar (Annalis libellus) attached to Bede’s own copy of De temporum ratione’, Analecta Bollandiana 120 (2002), 5–​64; M. Lapidge, ‘Acca of Hexham and the origin of the Old English Martyrology’, Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29–​78; P. Ó Riain, Feastdays of the saints: a history of Irish martyrologies (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 2006) pp. 1–​56; P. Ó Riain, ‘A Northumbrian phase in the formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology’, Analecta Bollandiana 120 (2002), 311–​63. 12 Lifshitz, Name of the saint, p. 31.

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Insular world, and Hexham, respectively. Thus, we can say that it seems likely that three of the most important houses in Northumbria, namely Wearmouth-​Jarrow, Lindisfarne, and Hexham, were all engaged in adapting and developing the martyrological tradition. Furthermore, these connections went beyond Northumbria, spreading through ecclesiastical contacts in all directions. As a source for much of this activity Lapidge points to the importance of John the Archcantor, the Roman singer brought to Northumbria by Benedict Biscop to teach his monks in c. 680. Lapidge made two useful points about John’s activities in connection with the martyrological tradition, namely that John committed ‘to writing all things necessary for the celebration of feast days throughout the whole year’ and that those writings were preserved at Wearmouth-​Jarrow and copies made for other places.13 Thus, somewhere at the monastery was a place to look for resources for the celebration of the liturgy. This idea of a physical place at Wearmouth-​Jarrow, where visiting scholars could access and copy resources, is extremely important for the dating of Bede’s Martyrology. There are entries in the Echternach copy of the Hieronymian martyrology, dated to the first half of the eighth century, which appear to have used Bede’s text as an inspiration. As Biggs has argued persuasively, this indicates that the Bedan material used was produced early on in Bede’s career, and that information from his Martyrology travelled from Wearmouth-​Jarrow and influenced the community at Echternach.14 Biggs, then, argues for an accretive date for the Martyrology, as does Thacker. All the surveyed scholars agree that the completion of the text is firmly after the completion of The Reckoning of time (725) and therefore should be considered a later work of Bede’s. As late as the Retractions, Bede was still citing from the Hieronymian martyrology rather than his own Martyrology, to which can be added a late use in the Commentary on Mark.15 Thus we cannot be sure how close to the completion of the Ecclesiastical history to place the completion of the Martyrology. While the text was finished late, Bede’s interest in the saints can possibly be dated all the way back to the arrival of a copy of the Hieronymian martyrology and John the Archcantor, sparking Bede’s curiosity early on.16 Bede’s sustained lifelong interest in the festivals of the saints, an interest shared by a wide group of scholars in the

13 Lapidge, ‘Acca of Hexham’, 45–​6; Ó Riain, ‘A Northumbrian phase’, 338–​9, Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:16. 14 Biggs, ‘Bede’s Martyrologium’, 266–​72, 275. 15 Lifshitz, Name of the saint, p. 141. Bede, Retractatio in Actus Apostolorum 1, lines 57–​60, ed. M. L. W. Laistner, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983); In Marci euangelium expositio 2, lines 906–​17, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960). 16 Biggs, ‘Bede’s Martyrologium’, 275; Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4:16.

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eighth century, including Acca of Hexham, could rest in the fateful coincidence that Bede, John, and the Hieronymian martyrology all arrived at Wearmouth around the same time.

Contents and graphic narratives Two puzzles have confronted the scholars of this century. The first is why Bede included some saints and not others, considering that not all of the figures in his text are martyrs in the conventional sense; that is, those who died for the faith. The second is why Bede included graphic details about the violence inflicted on these individuals. The geographical spread of the contents stretches from Persia (present-​day Iran) all the way to Northumbria, but the majority of the entries are figures from the Mediterranean world. Only four saints from the entire Insular world (Alban, Aethelthryth, and the two Hewalds) are included in the text.17 Bede’s selectivity, for Lifshitz, was an effort to create a ‘finely calibrated balance of contents’ to tell the story of the universal Church and its geographic spread. For her ‘the key to Bede’s martyrology is the universal Rome-​centered story into which England, like other Christian nations, had finally been incorporated.’18 Thacker saw in Bede’s selectivity an effort to provide clarity to the list of names in the Hieronymian martyrology tradition and he noted that one of Pope Gregory’s letters could have been the inspiration behind Bede’s generic adaptation, as this letter pointed out the pope’s desire for more knowledge about how the martyrs suffered, beyond the codex he had, which merely included their names and locations.19 The heavy Roman orientation, with little Insular presence, indicated to Thacker that the martyrology was ‘avoiding any elaboration of the obvious and the familiar’.20 Lifshitz noted that the graphic depictions of violence in the entries could serve an emotive function for readers, while Gunn experienced discomfort similar to Plummer’s but noted the Late Antique foundation of the passio tradition.21 Thacker presented a more positive appraisal of the graphic narratives, arguing that ‘Bede’s focus is on the suffering of the living, not the

7 Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, p. 132; Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’, p. 173. 1 18 Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’, p. 173. 19 Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, p. 127. Gregory the Great: Registrum epistularum 8:28, ed. D. Norberg, CCSL 140–​140A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982). Thacker notes that there is no clear evidence that Bede knew this letter, but points out that Bede did know of a letter immediately next to it in Gregory’s Register. 20 Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, p. 130. 21 Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 134–​6.

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cult of the dead. He liked in particular to record the power of the martyrs’ stoic endurance of torment to inspire others also to give their lives for the faith and to convert their persecutors and executioners, thereby demonstrating their role as potent witnesses and missionaries.’22

Reason and purpose For Lifshitz, the point of Bede’s text was as an expression and facilitator of Roman integration on the part of his community. With regard to the use of Bede’s text, she noted that the Carolingians used the text as part of the Office of Prime.23 Gunn saw the text as an expression of Bede’s desire to add chronological precision and personal agency to historical narratives.24 Thacker, on the other hand, concluded that Bede’s text was not designed to be of practical liturgical use, but was instead both a treatise on martyrdom, perhaps for reading during mealtimes in the monastic community, and a methodological demonstration of how the contemporary, confused understanding of the names of the saints could be improved and clarified.25 Finally, Biggs saw the text as connected to Bede’s boyhood curiosity.26 Thus, the scholarship of the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries has taught us a great deal about how Bede constructed his martyrology in the broader context of the martyrological tradition. While we know much about how the text was constructed, the question of why remains unresolved in scholarship. Even the question of Bede’s attitude about martyrs and their suffering remains open, with some continuing Plummer’s discomfort while others have a more positive perspective.

Bede’s sources and methods In the remainder of this chapter I will place Bede’s handling of his sources in the Martyrology into the wider perspective of his scholarly practices. As in his exegesis and the Ecclesiastical history, Bede often showed his work by pointing his readers to his source. Within the entries, Bede cited the following titles to his readers: History of Silvester (fifth century), Cyprian’s On the lapsed (third century), Life of Lawrence (unknown), Deeds of

2 Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, p. 129. 2 23 Lifshitz, Name of the saint, pp. 126–​7. 24 Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 137–​43. 25 Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, pp. 140–​1. 26 Biggs, ‘Bede’s Martyrologium’, pp. 275–​6.

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Marcellus (unknown, or between fourth and eighth centuries), Passion of Callistus (before eighth century), Jerome’s Life of Hilarion (late fourth century), Gregory the Great’s Dialogues (late sixth century), Eusebius/​Rufinus’ Ecclesiastical history (fourth century), Lives of the Fathers (third and fourth centuries, with continuations), Life of Anastasius (seventh to eighth centuries), and the Book of pontiffs (sixth century and following). A typical example of use from the latter source, a collection of papal biographies from Peter onwards, is the entry for Sixtus: ‘At Rome, [the commemorative festival] of St. Sixtus, bishop, Felicissimus and Agapitus; deacons, who were beheaded under Decius. Four other subdeacons, Januarius, Magnus, Vincent and Stephen, were also beheaded with him, as is read in the Pontifical Book.’27 As Quentin has demonstrated by his source analysis, Bede’s list is not exhaustive of the sources he used. This practice and the discrepancy merit some consideration. By calling his reader’s attention to other texts, Bede achieved several things at once: he authenticated his text by pointing to the authorities, he invited readers to do further readings of only certain texts he used, and he placed his text into a community of texts concerning the saints. Thus, Bede’s Martyrology was an epitome of useful information, especially for those without his resources, just as his biblical exegesis drew together the Fathers for his readers. Additionally, like the biblical exegesis, these martyrology source notices were also an invitation to enter more deeply into the textual community for those who had access to the mentioned texts. This twofold aspect is a reminder that Bede’s texts were often written to serve multiple audiences and varying levels of intellectual engagement. The unnamed sources of the Martyrology are also a strong reminder to all who work with Bede that his influences could be more extensive than we realise. There are many sources which could have profoundly influenced and shaped Bede and his thought, but we would never have known about them were it not for Bede’s use of them in this text. This means that any effort to capture Bede’s full reading will most likely remain only a surface impression of what was available to him; we will most likely only ever see the tip of the iceberg.28 That being said, we can see Bede return in his Martyrology to some 27 Bede, Martyrologium, 6 August, VIII Id. Aug., ed. Quentin, p. 103; trans. Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’ p. 189: ‘Romae, sancti Xysti episcopi, Felicissimi et Agapiti diaconorum, qui decollate sunt sub Decio. Decollati sunt cum eo et alii quatuor subdiaconi Ianuarius, Magnus, Vincentius et Stephanus, ut in Gestis pontificalibus legitur’. Bede’s use of the Liber pontificalis is an additional indication that the parts of the text that draw upon this source were produced close to or after his De temporum ratione. 28 On Bede’s library see M. L. W. Laistner, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in A. H. Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times and writings: essays in commemoration of the twelfth centenary of his death (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 237–​66; M. Lapidge, The Anglo-​Saxon library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); R. Love,

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of his favourite sources: Jerome /​Gennadius On illustrious men, Eusebius/​ Rufinus Ecclesiastical history, and of course the Book of pontiffs. In terms of textual composition, Bede’s method in the Martyrology parallels several of his other projects, namely On Revelation, On the nature of things, Minor chronicle, and Major chronicle. Probably the closest parallel is to the Major chronicle in The Reckoning of time. Bede took a base text as a skeleton for his project and then mustered many of the sources available to him to create a fuller, more complete treatment of the subject. For example, in the case of the Major chronicle, Bede’s base text was the Chronicle of Eusebius/​Jerome, to which he added many observations, especially from the biblical text and later the Book of pontiffs. For the Martyrology, the Hieronymian martyrology, in whatever form Bede had it, provided the base text to which he added information from many of his favourite sources, plus fifty-​four passiones according to Quentin.29 It is interesting to note that where Bede was following the compositional method of the Major chronicle, he also followed the practice of altering the genre in front of him. To the Major chronicle he added exegetical comments and to the Martyrology he added historical notices. Here we can see one of the hallmarks of Bede’s scholarship: not merely to repeat but to improve significantly the intellectual patrimony handed over to him; this is how Bede followed in the footsteps of the Fathers.30 An additional observation by Thacker is worth noting in this discussion of the parallels between Bede’s other texts and the Martyrology. Bede was engaged in harmonising his sources in the Martyrology.31 This impulse to harmonise sources is demonstrated throughout Bede’s scholarship, but can often be found in his biblical exegesis. For example, when describing the dimensions of the Temple, Bede reconciled Josephus, Chronicles, and Kings about the length of a cubit. Bede’s goal was to reconcile the shorter measurement of the Temple in 3 Kings 6:2 with Josephus and 2 Chronicles 3:4. His decision that the Kings passage measures only one floor allows him to accept the accuracy of all three sources.32 Examples of Bede harmonising ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in R. Gameson (ed.), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain: volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 606–​32. 29 Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du moyen age, pp. 111–​12. 30 See more generally, S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), esp. the contributions by DeGregorio and Ray, at pp. 1–​10 and 11–​36. 31 Thacker, ‘Bede and his martyrology’, pp. 131–​40. 32 Bede, De templo 1, lines 785–​803, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). For further discussion of biblical cubits in Bede’s writings see J. J. Gallagher, ‘Biblical-​textual criticism in Bede’s commentary On Genesis’ in the present volume.

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his sources abound in discussions of his works.33 As Quentin stated, and Thacker and Biggs have demonstrated, Bede remained firmly in control of his sources. This is a reminder that methodologically Bede was not seeking merely to weave together sources, but rather he brought together diverse sources in service to his primary concern. He collected many flowers but arranged them in a bouquet of his own design. We can firmly state that the Martyrology is in keeping with what we know of Bede’s common practices in using sources. He built his text on the skeleton of a base text, but also significantly altered the genre in front of him. He remained a master of his sources, judiciously using them as he determined best. He pointed his reader to some of his sources, but not all of them. For the sake of those with and without resources, he brought clarity and organisation to the disparate intellectual patrimony handed down to him. The next question we should ask then is: what do Bede’s other works reveal about his attitudes towards the martyrs?

Saints and martyrs in Bede’s other writings Bede was a firm believer in the power of examples. As early as his commentary on the Catholic Epistles (705x709), he stated that it was a duty of the doctors, that is the teachers, of the faith to recall and hand on the past to the younger generation.34 For Bede, even Jesus, the greatest of teachers, was the greatest of teachers because he combined words with actions worthy of emulation.35 Bede’s awareness of the importance of the power of examples seems to have increased after his production of the prose Life of Cuthbert around 720, as the frequency with which he mentions the power of examples increases in his biblical commentaries composed after this text.36 Thus, as we move closer to the completion date of the Martyrology, in On the Temple (730x732), Bede comments that the lives of the saints teach us to admire the members, both past and living, of the heavenly kingdom and 33 For a recent demonstration of Bede reconciling disparate material in his chronicles see M. MacCarron, Bede and time: computus, theology and history in the early medieval world (London: Routledge, 2020), esp. pp. 96–​116. 34 Bede, In epistulas septem catholicas, In epistolam I Iohannis 2, lines 122–​37, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 35 Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio 2, lines 1627–​50 and 2296–​306, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960). 36 P. Hilliard, ‘The Venerable Bede as scholar, gentile, and preacher’, in R. Corradini, M. Gillis, R. McKitterick, and I. van Renswoude (eds), Ego trouble: authors and their identities in the early Middle Ages (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 101–​10 at 108.

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the path to salvation.37 Beyond the importance of saints in general, martyrs played a very particular role in Bede’s thought on the power of examples. Bede’s love of the martyrs could already be seen in one of his earliest works, the Commentary on the Apocalypse.38 He celebrated the Holy Innocents, Agnes, and John the Baptist as martyrs in his poetry.39 In his commentary on parts of Isaiah (c. 716), Bede extolled the bravery of the martyr, but also of the lapsed who repented.40 Closer to the time of completion (725x731) of his Martyrology, Bede revealed the importance and the use of the martyrs much more clearly in the writings from the end of his career. In The Reckoning of time (c. 725) Bede connected martyrs particularly with the sixth age, the age that was begun by the Incarnation, but was also connected allegorically with Christ suffering his passion on the sixth day.41 In On the Tabernacle, in explaining the allegorical meaning of the red-​dyed skins of the roof of the Tabernacle, Bede stated that the roof represented teachers who refused to cease teaching up to the point of martyrdom, and that by ‘the example of their suffering and patience the holy preachers guard the hearts of the weak lest they should give way to the afflictions of tribulation’.42 Bede went on further to show the connection between martyrs and virgins, represented by the blue skins of the roof, as both of these groups were as far from the ground as possible in the structure of the Tabernacle. For Bede this meant that both the martyrs and the virgins or celibates were united in their detachment from worldly things.43 We get a small hint about the lesson Bede desired for his audience when it came to contemplating the suffering of Christ and the saints in On the Temple. In the middle of a discussion of how it is licit to have images of Christ, the saints, and martyrs, Bede made a telling connection about the impact of the image of the cross, namely that it elicits compunction in the beholder.44 7 Bede, De templo 1, lines 711–​21. pp. 164–​5. 3 38 References to martyrs can be found throughout the text; for one example which is very representative see Bede, Expositio apocalypseos 37, lines 211–​15, ed. R. Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). 39 See M. Lapidge, Bede’s Latin poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019), pp. 354–​62 and 392–​6 (hymns 1, 2, and 7). 40 Bede, De eo quod ait Isaias, PL 94, cols 702–​10, at 705. 41 Bede, De temporum ratione 71, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). 42 Bede, De tabernaculo 2, lines 623–​31, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969); trans. A. Holder, Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), p. 64: ‘… cum sancti praedicatores exemplo passionis et patientiae suae corda infirmorum ne in pressuris tribulationum deficere debeant muniunt.’ 43 Bede, De tabernaculo 2, lines 637–​61. 44 Bede, De templo 2, lines 824–​33. For a discussion of the passage in question, see P. Darby, ‘Bede, iconoclasm and the Temple of Solomon’, Early Medieval Europe 21 (2013), 390–​421.

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Compunction, the gift of tears, for Bede played an important role in impelling the believer to grow in the spiritual life. His poem On the Judgement Day was designed precisely to open the reader and himself up to this gift.45 Throughout his commentaries On Ezra and On the Temple, Bede extolled the importance of holding up examples for the faithful.46 Bede’s position on sharing the lives of the saints by this point in his life is well summarised by the following passage: In building the house of the Lord, first of all the wood and stones must be hewn from the mountain because those whom we seek to train in the true faith we must first teach to renounce the devil … Then we must have to look for large precious stones and lay them in the foundation of the Temple, so that after they have renounced their former way of life, we may remember in all things to watch over their life and conduct, and set before our hearers for imitation those whom we know to cling in a special way by the virtue of humility to the Lord, people whom we see persevering unflinchingly with invincible constancy of spirit like squared stones, in a certain sense, and whom by their merit and repute we have found to be large and precious stones.47

There are many individuals who fit the description of people to be set before hearers for imitation, but the martyrs certainly fulfil the criteria of those who persevere unflinchingly with an invincible constancy of spirit. Additionally, in the prologue to On the Temple, Bede explained how the suffering of the righteous in the Scriptures is a source of consolation as it inspires us to accept our trials and follow in imitation of those who endured more, but also the suffering of the righteous should lead to the state of compunction those who are weaker and have given in to allurements. Interestingly, Bede explicitly added that this consolation could be found not only in the Word of God, but also in the writings of the Fathers.48 5 Bede, De die iudicii, ed. Lapidge, Bede’s Latin Poetry, pp. 158–​78. 4 46 For example In Ezram et Neemiam 1, lines 35–​8; 2, lines 1109–​12; 3, lines 1630–​56, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). De templo 1, lines 282–​311; 1, lines 711–​21; 2, lines 482–​6; 2, lines 672–​704. 47 Bede, De templo 1, lines 344–​ 66; trans. S. Connolly, Bede: On the Temple (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), p. 16: ‘In aedificanda domo domini primo sunt ligna et lapides caedendi de monte quia eos quos in fide ueritatis instituere quaerimus primo necesse est ut abrenuntiare diabolo ac de sorte primae praeuaricationis in qua nati sunt doceamus renascendo erui. Deinde quaerendi sunt lapides pretiosi et grandes atque in fundamentum templi ponendi ut meminerimus abdicata conuersatione priori eorum in omnibus uitam mores que inspicere eos nostris auditoribus imitandos proponere quos per uirtutem humilitatis specialiter domino adhaerere nouerimus quos inuincibili mentis stabilitate quasi quadratos quodammodo atque ad omnes temptationum incursus immobiles perdurare conspicimus quos pretiosos et grandes merito ac fama comperimus.’ 48 De templo, prologue, lines 49–​55.

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The impact that these writings had on Bede and his rhetorical audience was precisely the impact that Bede wanted to make on his audience when discussing martyrs. In addition to general edification, Bede saw a particular lesson in recalling the sufferings of the saints. In his Commentary on Proverbs, Bede emphasised the dire punishment for those who killed the just,49 but he also used the suffering of the martyr as a way to challenge his reader: ‘if the holy martyrs, who were just, suffered such things, how great do you think the torments that they suffer, those unjust ones who persecuted them (the just). If Job, Tobias, and the rest of God’s elect received such adversity in this life, why are you sorrowful if affliction touches you a little, you who for a long time [have been] trying to place yourself in their footsteps.’50 Here we see a warning about what happens to those who persecute the just, but more importantly we see that the suffering of the saints was used as a tool to help Bede’s audience accept their more limited suffering. The presence of Job and Tobias in this passage is also important because it reveals a class of suffering which did not result ultimately in death but was seen as parallel to the suffering of the martyrs. We can be certain that Bede thought this lesson of accepting suffering by comparing oneself to the martyrs was important for his community, since he included this message in two of his homilies. Homily I.10, for the feast of the Holy Innocents, is almost a mini-​treatise on martyrdom, but it is in Homily II.23, for the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist, where Bede made this lesson most explicit: We might consider and commit more actively to memory how almighty God allows his chosen ones and beloved servants, those he has predestined to life and his eternal kingdom to be so stricken in this life by the persecution of the wicked, to be wasted by so many kinds and such fierce punishments and deaths. This is so that when we have viewed the sufferings of perfect men, we may grieve less over the adversities that perhaps have happened to us, and learn instead to esteem it complete joy when we fall in various kinds of temptations, keeping in mind that the Lord chastises the one he loves, and scourges every child whom he receives … When therefore we see such extraordinary heirs of the heavenly kingdom suffering such great [torments] during the time of their mortal exile, what remains for us to do under these circumstances, except to humble ourselves the more in the sight of our benevolent Maker and

49 Bede, In proverbia 2:11, lines 38–​44, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 50 Bede, In proverbia 2:11, lines 169–​74: ‘Si sancti martyres tanta passi sunt iusti, quanta putas eos manere tormenta qui illos affligebant iniusti? Si Iob et Tobias ceteri que Dei electi tanta in hac uita receperunt aduersa, quid contristaris si te qui tam longe infra illorum uestigia iaces temptans ad modicum afflictio tangit?’

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Redeemer, the more clearly we become aware that we are unable to follow them either by imitating their lives or their deaths.51

Here we can see Bede’s two main messages from the lives of the martyrs. The first is that the suffering of those more perfect than us demands that we embrace the suffering in our lives. The second is that contemplating the intense suffering of great saints should bring about compunction and humble awareness that we are lacking.

The Martyrology After considering Bede’s thoughts about the martyrs and the suffering of the saints in his other works, we now return to his Martyrology. The first question that should be addressed is: who was Bede’s primary audience? From On the Temple, we know that Bede thought it important to hold up examples of holy ones to those who had already turned away from the world, in order to strengthen them. Therefore, what Bede was doing in the Martyrology is, in one sense, for all Christian believers. We can, however, speculate a bit further about the audience, as there is one clue in the Martyrology that indicates the text was primarily composed for his own monastic community. In a small number of entries, accepted as original to Bede by Quentin and Lifshitz, Bede used the phrase ‘our father’ with reference to Pachomius (14 May), Arsenius (19 July), and Hilarion (21 October). This phraseology is found only in these entries and all three are important figures in the monastic tradition. This makes it highly likely that the Martyrology was intended for a monastic audience. We have already seen in his homilies that Bede wanted his community to contemplate the suffering of the saints. Therefore,

51 Bede, Homiliae 2:23, lines 240–​ 50 and 282–​ 7, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); trans. L. T. Martin and D. Hurst, Bede the Venerable: homilies on the Gospels, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 2, pp. 237–​9: ‘Inter haec sane considerandum est et attentius memoriae commendandum quomodo omnipotens Deus electos dilectosque suos famulos quos ad uitam regnumqua praedestinauit aeternum in tantum in hac uita prauorum patitur persecutione conteri tot ac tantis poenarum mortiumque generibus consumi quatenus perspectis perfectorum uirorum passionibus minus de his quae nobis forte aduersa contigerint doleamus ac potius discamus omne gaudium existimare cum in temptationes uarias inciderimus memoria retinentes quia quem diligit dominus castigat flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit … Cum ergo tam eximios regni caelestis heredes tanta in huius exilio mortalitatis pati uiderimus quid nobis inter haec fratres carissimi, restat agendum nisi ut tanto magis humiliemur in conspectu pii conditoris et redemptoris nostri quantum nos patenter animaduertimus eos nec uitae imitatione sequi posse nec mortis?’

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it seems appropriate that we should view the Martyrology as an expansion of the collection at Wearmouth-​Jarrow of the materials left by John the Archcantor for the celebration of the feasts of the saints. Bede’s thoughts about the martyrs in his commentaries help solve one of the puzzles about the contents of the Martyrology, namely that some of the figures were not martyrs in the traditional sense; that is, those who have died for the faith.52 I have attempted to categorise the non-​conventional martyrs in what follows. Some of these non-​martyrs do suffer for the sake of the faith, such as Marcellus, Felix, Hilary of Poitiers, Julius, Thecla, and Urban. We can classify these figures as Confessors, who were righteous and suffered, even while they did not suffer the ultimate price of martyrdom. The next group is more difficult to classify: Lupus of Troyes, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome. These are important teachers, but their connection to suffering is not as explicit, although they are important witnesses to the faith, which may invoke the original meaning of the word martyr as witness. The final grouping includes Paul the hermit, Pachomius, Aethelthryth, Arsenius, Germanus of Auxerre, and Luke. The suffering of these individuals is a detachment from the world which Bede described in his Tabernacle commentary under the figure of the blue skins. Germanus and Luke both have their continence explicitly mentioned. Aethelthryth’s virginity is also extolled in her entry. Thus, these figures do suffer, albeit by choice, so this group points towards a rejection of the world. We can say, then, that one of the keys to understanding the entries in Bede’s text is that it is a list of people who suffered for the sake of the faith, whether through death, torment, or self-​denial. This picture is complicated by the three figures who do not fit this pattern. Lupus of Troyes was a bishop during the invasion of Attila, so there may be a sense of suffering involved. Augustine and Jerome both, eventually, adopted lives of self-​denial and were afflicted by intellectual opponents, and therefore could be seen to fit more firmly into the pattern I am suggesting. The brevity of the entries for both Jerome and Augustine leaves much room for speculation about why these two Fathers are included but others like Ambrose or Gregory the Great are not. The question remains: why did Bede put together this list of people who suffered for the faith in the first place? What drove him to go through the difficulty of mining, with sophistication, so many sources to add historical notices to these figures? Although there may be additional reasons for the text, we can highlight three reasons: informational, relational, and spiritual.

52 For the changing understanding of the term martyr and Bede’s position in that tradition see D. Jacobsen, ‘The testimony of martyr: a word history of martyr in Anglo-​ Saxon England’, Studies in Philology 115 (2018), 417–​32.

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Bede’s commentaries are full of explanations of the Greco-​Roman and Jewish worlds. As early as his Commentary on Acts (c. 709) we see Bede explaining such things as the geo-​political structure of first-​century Jewish society and details of Roman naval practices.53 This practice of supplying contextual information for understanding Scripture on the literal level never abated during Bede’s career. Indeed, elsewhere in this volume, Celia Chazelle observes that Bede included this type of information even in his capitula: chapter titles meant to guide a reader’s interpretation of Scripture.54 Bede’s works demonstrate a lifelong quest to explain Mediterranean minutiae to his confrères and wider society. As anyone who has undertaken study of medieval liturgy will know, the minute knowledge required can feel at times overwhelming. How much more overwhelming would it have been, without our contemporary resources and on the farthest edge of Latin-​ speaking society, to be faced with a daunting list of names and feasts drawn from a society one had never visited and recited in a language which one had learned as a second tongue? Even the most common of all prayers in Latin liturgy confronts a hearer with a confusing list of very particular names. The main eucharistic prayer of the Latin West, sometimes referred to as the Roman Canon, had its form fixed by the time of Gregory the Great (d. 604).55 At two different points in the Roman Canon there is a litany of names recited. Mary and the apostles are included, of course, but additional names are given in two different sections. In the section called the communicantes we hear the additional names of Linus, Cletus, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas, and Damian. In the nobis quoque peccatoribus section we also hear the names John the Baptist, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius (of Antioch), Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter (not the apostle), Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, and Anastasia. At every mass these names would be heard. In the Martyrology, none of the biblical figures in these lists have long entries, although many of them are indeed martyrs. More tellingly, all of the non-​biblical figures, except for Linus and Cletus, receive historical notices in Bede’s work. The

53 Bede, Expositio actuum apostolorum 2, lines 85–​98 and 27, lines 9–​22, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 121 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 54 C. Chazelle, ‘Bede’s biblical capitula and the oriented reading of Scripture at Wearmouth–​Jarrow’ above, Chapter 3. 55 J. A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1951–​55), 1, pp. 51–​8. For the liturgy in early medieval England see also R. Pfaff, The liturgy in medieval England: a history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 30–​55 and a useful terminology excursus at pp. 56–​61. For the Office, see J. Billett, The divine office in Anglo-​Saxon England: 597–​c.1000 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014).

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fact that the biblical saints do not have entries, and the non-​biblical saints commemorated in the liturgy do, reinforces Thacker’s observation that Bede was filling in gaps. This observation also helps address why Bede did not include some of his favourite saints, like Oswald and others from the Insular world, or even figures of great monastic importance like Benedict of Nursia. It may be that these figures were well known and Bede’s text was primarily dedicated to helping his own community understand those distant and more obscure saints who appeared in their liturgical lives. The lack of entries for Linus and Cletus may point to the fact that these two saints were not included in the eucharistic prayer at Wearmouth-​Jarrow, but we cannot be certain.56 Thus, the surprising lacunae in the text may be not so much puzzles as statements about the text’s purpose: continuing Bede’s long effort to explain obscure Mediterranean realities to a Christian community almost as far from that society as was geographically possible in the eighth century. If this analysis is correct, then the inclusion of a longer entry for Alban may indicate a lack of community knowledge about his cult, while the inclusion of Aethelthryth demonstrates a need to inform the reader; but the shortness of the entry indicates she was more well-​known. While liturgical use in the office or a source of readings during meals remain possible uses of the text, we can say that the text served a deeper and more fundamental liturgical use, in that it provided the information necessary for participants to know who was being commemorated. The liturgy used at Wearmouth-​Jarrow, as far as research has taken us, points to a very up-​to-​date liturgy from Rome, including the newly developed stational liturgy, along with strong Campanian influences, all of which would require explanation and clarification.57 The monks of Wearmouth-​ Jarrow took their liturgy seriously, as can be seen from the building of structures, the importing of manuscripts, and the bringing of John the Archcantor. One of the best indications of Wearmouth-​Jarrow’s devotion to the liturgy, and to the mass in particular, lies in how they processed the traumatic event of the departure of Ceolfrith. Both authors who recorded the events tell that the departure of Ceolfrith to Rome was experienced in highly liturgical fashion, thus indicating that the liturgy was the mode chosen for responding to and

56 Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, 2, pp. 173–​5 observes that these two popes do not appear in all the early lists; there is some fluidity in the list of names in the Roman Canon, although that fluidity usually manifested itself as additions, not subtractions, with local areas adding some of their favorite saints. See also V. Kennedy, The Saints of the Canon of the Mass (Vatican City: Pontificio istituto di archeologia Cristiana, 1938), p. 189. 57 E. Ó Carragáin, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow: St Paul’s Church, 1994), pp. 9, 26.

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processing the grief over the loss of their abbot.58 This was a community that wanted to do liturgy in the right way and the information included in Bede’s Martyrology would have assisted them in this effort. One can easily envisage that Bede’s text was kept for communal access, especially by the priest-​monks, along with the material from John about the proper celebration of feasts.

Conclusion We can accept Lifshitz’s observation that the Martyrology presents a ‘story of the universal Church, the story of its progressive geographic spread up to the author’s own lifetime against enemies who sought to stem the Christian tide through violence’.59 This lesson, about the universality of the Church and the spread of the message, was one of Bede’s favourite stories to tell his readers throughout his career. It is important to emphasise here that the frequent repetition of this lesson was part of Bede’s larger project to redefine the past of his people. All the figures in the Martyrology and the long history of salvation become part of their own story for the baptised. The balanced geographic spread of the entries in the Martyrology, from Persia to Britain but with a heavy Roman orientation, expressed a vision of the Church at once universal and yet very much inspired by Rome. Thus, Bede helped his audience understand the relationship between themselves and the ideals of universality and romanitas. The final purpose of the Martyrology returns us to Plummer’s discomfort. Savagery and violence towards the saints are on full display in Bede’s text. The presence of non-​martyrs and Bede’s thoughts on the power of examples discussed above make it clear that the text was meant to offer not only general spiritual edification but also a specific lesson about the relationship between the world and the Christian. The suffering of the saints demonstrates the continual hostility of the world to those claimed by Christ, but the suffering of the saints also helps Christians to embrace their smaller sufferings in the here and now. In particular, the strength of the martyrs in the face of persecution can assist in bringing about a conversion in the reader, especially through the gift of compunction. The Martyrology, then, fits in perfectly with Bede’s long-​term practice of making pastorally useful texts. In other words, the Martyrology was a form of preaching: it was simply a 58 See Anonymous, Vita Ceolfridi 28 and Bede, Historia abbatum 17–​18, ed. and trans. C. Grocock and I. N. Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), pp. 78–​121 and 22–​75. 59 Lifshitz, ‘Bede, Martyrology’, p. 173.

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different mode for presenting the same message he delivered in other places, such as his homilies and commentaries. Although often neglected, Bede’s Martyrology proves a useful text for summarising many of his lifelong priorities as a scholar. His sorting out of chronology and his skilful use of his sources point to a scholar fully in control of his creative process; one who brought clarity and concision to often chaotic material. This text continued Bede’s project of sharing his wisdom and knowledge of the Greco-​Roman world with readers who lacked access to such information, but also called his reader to further study by mentioning some, but not all, of his sources. The historical entries allowed Bede to retell one of his favourite stories: the growth and spread of the universal Church. Most importantly, this text taught valuable spiritual lessons for living the Christian life in an often hostile world and therefore was a manifestation of Bede’s own special type of preaching. Finally, like his commentaries, world chronicle, and homilies, the Martyrology inspired continuing development of its material, especially by his Carolingian-​era readers, which would lead to the Roman Martyrology and contribute greatly to a list of historical notices about the saints organised by the liturgical calendar. As a resource and a source of spiritual edification about the saints then, it may be said that Bede’s truest successor is the Acta Sanctorum project itself.

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Index

Aaron 153, 216 Abraham 113, 115, 157, 207, 215, 216, 218, 222 Acca (bishop of Hexham) 12, 21, 30, 139, 200, 202, 270 Adam 207, 253 Adomnán (abbot of Iona) 14, 146, 171, 261, 263 Ælfflæd (abbess of Whitby) 20, 21 Æthelberht (king of Kent) 30 Aethelthryth (queen) 270, 279, 281 Aethicus Ister 191, 192, 196 Agapetus (pope) 142 Agroecius 172 Ahern, Eoghan 213 Aidan (bishop) 21 Alban (martyr) 270, 281 Alcuin 149 Aldhelm of Malmesbury 11, 21, 127, 258, 262 Ambrose 25, 33, 42, 71, 147, 155, 159, 213, 228, 240, 279 Anonymous Life of Ceolfrith 16, 17, 19, 28, 29, 56, 62, 130, 135, 136, 137, 138, 155, 164, 173 Anonymous Life of Cuthbert 120, 247, 257, 258, 263 Antony (saint) 120, 121, 138, 139 Apollinaris 36 ark of the Covenant 214 asceticism 45, 78, 121, 124, 132, 138 astronomy 143, 157, 232 Athanasius 34, 120 Augustine of Canterbury 14, 30, 101

Augustine of Hippo 4, 8, 11, 12, 24, 33, 36, 38, 39, 42, 48, 50, 51, 71, 72, 99, 101, 105–7, 108, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 124, 125, 131, 143, 144, 147, 152, 155, 160, 161, 163, 169, 201, 203, 214, 224, 225, 228, 229, 236, 240, 249, 254, 279 Augustinus Hibernicus 241 Babel 208, 209 Babylon, Babylonians 177, 180, 209, 219 Bacon, Roger 225 baptism 39, 40, 45, 46, 51, 111, 206, 282 Bardney 260, 261 Barking (monastery) 14, 28, 127 Barrow, Julia 259 Basil of Caesarea 120, 155, 228, 239, 240 Bede’s writings Biblical capitula 3, 53–80, 280 Ecclesiastical history 2, 3, 4, 5, 7–32, 52, 53, 54, 55, 64, 79, 101–5, 108, 109, 112, 114, 117, 118, 136, 149, 153, 154, 171, 198, 208, 222, 237, 245, 246, 250, 251, 252, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266, 269, 271 excerpts from Augustine on the letters of Paul 149, 160, 161, 173 History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow 14, 17, 18, 136

513

Index Homilies on the Gospels 5, 8, 13, 23, 24, 27, 30, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 51, 52, 55, 62, 80, 97–105, 106, 111, 116, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133–9, 202, 245, 262, 277, 278, 283 Hymns 29 letter to Albinus 12 Letter to Ecgberht 12, 23, 30, 101, 129 letter to Helmwald 12 Letter to Plegwine 12, 23 letter to Wicthed 23 Martyrology 3, 5, 265–83 metrical Life of Cuthbert 12, 117 On eight questions 64, 66 On Ezra and Nehemiah 5, 114, 131, 147, 159, 180, 200, 276 On First Samuel 26, 77, 128 On Genesis 4, 5, 7, 39, 100, 155, 197, 198–222, 239, 244–64 On Luke 35, 128, 259 On Mark 35, 269 On orthography 172 On Proverbs 115, 277 On Revelation 7, 25, 26, 57, 65, 66, 67, 74, 78, 99, 114, 118, 147, 273, 275 on schemes and tropes 172 on the Acts of the Apostles 67, 68, 69, 175 On the art of metre 72, 172 On the Holy Places 116, 149, 171 On the Judgement Day 276 On the nature of things 223, 231, 233, 235, 273 On the seven catholic epistles 42, 274 on the Song of Songs 35, 37, 41, 50, 56, 57, 69–79, 80, 130 On the Tabernacle 5, 13, 26, 64, 66, 128, 147, 158, 159, 275 On the Temple 5, 26, 64, 66, 125, 126, 128, 147, 153, 159, 274, 275, 276, 278 On times 273 on what Isaiah says 275 prose Life of Cuthbert 13, 23, 120, 138, 245, 246, 255–63, 274

315

retractions on Acts of the Apostles 68, 69, 147, 175, 269 The Reckoning of time 107, 111, 147, 157, 162, 197, 223, 269, 273, 275, 283 Thirty questions on the Book of Kings 64, 66, 153, 165, 180, 219 Benedict Biscop 4, 9, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 119, 133–9, 140, 269 Benedict of Nursia 26, 27, 138, 257, 258, 281 Berger, Samuel 186 Bethlehem 218 Bethsaida 217 Bewcastle Cross 252 Bible Genesis 39, 64, 100, 113, 115, 181, 198–222, 227, 229, 230, 235, 236, 237, 239, 262 Exodus 54, 64, 100, 110, 111, 181, 212, 213, 216, 218, 219, 239 Leviticus 115, 181, 212, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219 Numbers 115, 181, 206, 207, 212, 213, 216, 218, 219 Deuteronomy 181, 212, 213, 216, 218, 219 Joshua 215, 239 Judges 54, 64 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 64, 179 2 Kings (2 Samuel) 179 3 Kings 179, 273 4 Kings 179, 219, 220 1 Paralipomenon (1 Chronicles) 64, 179, 219 2 Paralipomenon (2 Chronicles) 64, 179, 273 1 Esdras (Book of Ezra) 179 2 Esdras (Book of Nehemiah) 179 Tobit 55, 64, 277 Judith 55, 64 Esther 55, 64 Job 64, 65, 72, 277 Psalms 41, 50, 185, 204, 206 Proverbs 64, 115 Ecclesiastes 64, 236

316

Index

Bible (continued) Song of Songs 41, 50, 64, 69–79, 170 Isaiah 49, 64, 115, 236 Jeremiah 179 Lamentations 179 Micah 236 Nahum 236 Habakkuk 236 Malachi 206 4 Esdras 181 Matthew 4, 40, 59, 101, 105, 106, 107, 119–40, 236 Mark 23, 236 Luke 40, 46, 123, 129, 220, 236 John 4, 33, 35, 39, 48, 50, 52, 62, 97–118, 130, 132, 220, 253 Acts of the Apostles 67–9, 175, 214 Romans 34, 40, 58, 59, 64, 207 1 Corinthians 210 2 Corinthians 41 Galatians 40, 207 Ephesians 44 1 Timothy 36 Philemon 64 Hebrews 116, 204, 205, 216, 221 2 Peter 42, 44, 236 Revelation 44, 236 Biggs, Frederick 269, 271, 274 Boniface (archbishop) 20, 21, 58 Bonner, Gerald 1, 10, 99, 117 Book of pontiffs 272, 273 Caedmon (poet) 139 Cain 211, 217 Calvary 248, 261 Campbell, James 32, 252 Canterbury 12, 16, 21, 165, 203 Canterbury school 21, 203 Carroll, M. T. A. 114 Cassian, John 33, 121 Cassiodorus 4, 8, 11, 141–74 Castellum Lucullanum (monastery) 160 Cavadini, John 205 Cedd (bishop) 14 Ceolfrith 4, 9, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 27, 28, 29, 110, 112, 130, 136, 139, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 242, 281

Ceolwulf (king of Northumbria) 12, 30 Chad (bishop) 4, 18, 109, 110, 111, 245, 246, 255, 258, 259, 263, 264 Chalcedon, Council of 35, 37, 51, 151, 170 Chelles 21 Christology 31, 35, 36, 37, 65, 151, 246, 254, 259, 261, 262, 264 chronology 32, 65, 108, 283 Colgrave, Bertram 255, 257, 258 Colmán (bishop of Northumbria) 102, 103, 108 computus 5, 8, 30, 108, 112, 162, 187, 188, 213, 223, 224, 241 Constantine (emperor) 247, 248 Constantinople 141, 142, 171 Corinth 68 Corsano, Karen 155, 165, 169 cosmology 5, 8, 24, 209, 210, 223–43, 246, 252–63 Courcelle, Pierre 154, 155, 171 Cuthbert (bishop and saint) 13, 14, 132, 135, 138, 139, 246, 252, 257, 258, 263 Cuthbert the Deacon 99, 100, 101, 118 Cyprian of Carthage 159, 271 Darby, Peter 166, 167 De Bruyne, Donatien 54, 55, 56, 59, 62, 64, 67, 73 DeGregorio, Scott 2, 77, 201, 202 deification 33–52 Delvaux, Matthew 124 Demetrias 70, 72 Derolez, René 190, 191, 192 devil 40, 110, 276 Dionysius Exiguus 14, 111, 159, 162 Donatus 145, 192 Dubois, Jacques 267 East Anglia 21 Easter 14, 100, 102–5, 108, 110, 111–14, 118, 162 Ecgberht (monk) 14, 112, 113 Ecgfrith (king of Northumbria) 16, 17, 19, 138 Echternach 268, 269 Eckenrode, Thomas 224

713

Index education 4, 8, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 129–33, 136, 140, 142, 144, 154, 171–2, 202, 229 Edwin (king of Northumbria) 101 Egypt 110, 111, 112, 121, 157, 197, 214 Ely 14 Eosterwine (abbot) 17, 18, 27, 136 Epiphanius (bishop of Cyprus) 170, 171 Eugippius 159, 160, 162, 165, 171, 173 Eusebian canon tables 59, 119 Eusebius (church historian) 32, 108, 248, 272, 273 Evagrius 120 Eve 207 Ezekiel (prophet) 185 Ezra (scribe and priest) 158, 159, 177–81, 182, 183, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192 Famulus Christi (book) 1, 2, 10 famulus Christi (term of self identification) 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 26, 31 fish, fishing 100, 142, 217 Fletcher, Eric 136 Foley, W. Trent 220 Fontaine, Jacques 145, 146 Foot, Sarah 138 Francis of Assisi 120 Fulgentius of Ruspe 12 Gabriel (angel) 35 Galileo 225, 227 Gameson, Richard 166 Gaul 16, 101, 241, 258 geography 171, 260 Gneuss, Helmut 190 Goldast, Melchior 191, 192 Gorman, Michael 58, 148, 149, 155, 165 grammar 5, 8, 36, 62, 143, 150, 172, 178, 211 Grant, Edward 229 Greek 34, 110, 120, 142, 157, 162, 163, 164, 169, 170, 175, 178, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 196, 197, 222

317

Gregory of Nyssa 115 Gregory of Tours 32, 241, 247, 256, 258, 259, 263 Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) 11, 13, 24, 50, 51, 65, 72, 128, 130, 138, 145, 146, 202, 241, 249, 257, 258, 270, 272, 279, 280 Grigsby, Bruce 253, 254 Grocock, Christopher 138 Grosseteste, Robert 225 Gunn, Vicky 270, 271 Hadrian (abbot) 16, 21, 165 Hædde (bishop) 245, 246, 247, 255, 258, 262, 263, 264 Hamilton Thompson, Alexander 1 Hartlepool 21 Hebrew 4, 110, 155, 175–97, 206, 210, 211, 218, 219, 220, 221, 227 Hebron 215 Helena (empress) 248 heresy 4, 13, 35, 36, 42, 78, 150, 154, 209 Herod 68 Herren, Michael 191 Hewald the Black 15, 270 Hewald the White 15, 270 Hexham 12, 14, 21, 139, 200, 269, 270 Heydemann, Gerda 152 Hieronymian martyrology 265, 268, 269, 270, 273 Hilary of Poitiers 147, 159, 170, 279 Hild (abbess of Whitby) 4, 14, 21, 109, 110, 111 Hilliard, Paul 25 Holder, Arthur 121, 123 Holtz, Louis 145, 146 Holy Land 248, 251, 262, 263, 264 Holy Spirit 13, 34, 40, 44, 47, 48, 69, 117 horologium 232, 241 Hrabanus Maurus 191 Hurst, David 69, 70, 74, 75 Hwætberht (abbot) 18, 22, 28, 139

318

Index

Iona 14, 112, 113, 114, 146, 171, 241 Ireland 10, 21, 102, 103, 138, 162, 241, 259 Irenaeus 34 Ishmael 210 Isidore of Seville 146, 159, 160, 169, 181, 225, 227, 231, 241 Italy 26, 69, 141, 142, 160 James (apostle) 49, 68, 107 Jarrow (St Paul’s) 15–17, 27, 29, 137, 138 Jerome 10, 24, 32, 49, 70, 108, 115, 121, 124, 127, 128, 143, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 166, 167, 168, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183–5, 187, 197, 201, 203, 210, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 231, 248, 265, 272, 273, 279 Jerusalem 23, 107, 108, 171, 179, 247, 248 Jesus 7, 23, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 68, 98, 104, 105, 108, 109, 114, 115, 116, 117, 130, 133, 253, 274 Jews and Judaism 42, 68, 73, 78, 79, 102, 107, 108, 156, 157, 158, 177, 180, 182, 183, 186, 187, 189, 197, 198, 204, 212, 253, 280 John (apostle) 49, 67, 68, 97–118 John (archcantor) 29, 136, 269, 270, 279, 281, 282 John of Beverly 12, 15 John the Baptist 275, 277, 280 Jonas of Bobbio 10 Jones, Charles W. 254 Jordan (river) 39, 239 Josephus 4, 156, 157, 158, 159, 171, 273 Jouarre 21 Jovinian 71 Julian of Eclanum 57, 69, 70, 71, 72 Justinian (emperor) 141, 142 Justus 101 Karkov, Catherine 252 Kendall, Calvin 172, 199, 200, 206, 216, 233, 239, 254 Kent 14, 30

Kim, Susan 250 Kramer, Johanna 249 Lambert, Bernard 187 Lapidge, Michael 188, 268, 269 Last Judgement 125, 132, 206 Lastingham 18, 258 Lateran, Rome 23 Laurence (archbishop of Canterbury) 14, 101 Leclercq, Jean 115 Lehmann, Paul 172 Leiden glosses 203 Lent 62 Leo the Great (Pope Leo I) 37, 42 Lérins (monastery) 21, 134 Levi 216 libraries 21, 119, 134, 141, 142, 145, 160, 163, 165, 169, 231, 243 Lifshitz, Felice 267, 268, 270, 271, 278, 282 Limor, Ora 248, 255 Lindberg, David C. 229 Lindisfarne 14, 15, 21, 23, 27, 258, 263, 268, 269 liturgy 28, 29, 62, 79, 103, 107, 114, 149, 154, 207, 265, 266, 269, 271, 280, 281, 282, 283 Livy 156, 157 Love, Rosalind 77, 202 Lowe, E. A. 189 Lyon 21 Manicheans 36 manuscripts Bern, Bürgerbibliothek 417, 187, 190 Codex grandior 155, 156, 159, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173 Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, 58 (Book of Kells) 119 Durham, Cathedral Library, B.II.30 (Durham Cassiodorus) 147, 148 Düsseldorf, University Library, K. 16 Z 3/​1 148 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1 (Codex Amiatinus) 8, 53–80, 109, 155, 158, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 177, 178, 179, 181, 215

913

Index Fulda, Landesbibliothek, 1 (Codex Fuldensis) 58, 59 Lichfield Gospels (St Chad/​St Teilo Gospels) 119 London, British Library, Additional 28106, 59 London, British Library, Additional 28107, 59 London, British Library, Additional 37777, 56 London, British Library, Additional 45025, 56 London, British Library, Additional 89000, 109 London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A.ix 189, 190, 196 London, British Library, Cotton Nero D IV (Lindisfarne Gospels) 119 London, British Library, Loan 81, 56 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 6228, 184 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Marshall 19, 185 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1750, 188, 189, 190 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 11504, 11505188, 190 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 876, 186, 192 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Q.v.I.18 (St Petersburg Bede) 55 Utrecht, Universiteits-​Bibliotheek, 32 (Gospelbook fragment) 59 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Latin 285, 70 Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.p.th.f.68 (Burchard Gospels) 59 Marcellinus Comes 171 marriage 20, 116, 126, 127 Marsden, Richard 57, 166, 177 Marti, Roland 186 Martin (saint) 120, 247, 256, 258 Martyrius (grammarian) 172

319

Mary (mother of Jesus) 35, 40, 46, 47, 50, 71, 280 Mary Magdalene 76 Matter, Ann 77 Matthew (apostle) 120 McClusky, Stephen 241 McCready, William 99, 256 Meconi, David 38, 41 Melchisedech 204, 205, 207, 216, 221 Mellitus 101 Mercia 20, 245, 260 Meyvaert, Paul 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 53, 54, 55, 56, 64, 156, 168, 172, 173, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 223, 242, 244 Moses 180, 181, 187, 192, 214, 215, 216, 227, 228, 229, 237 Mount of Olives 247, 248, 262, 263 Müller, Barbara 128 music 29, 143 Mynors, R. A. B. 255 Naples 160, 165 Nazareth 46 Nechtan (king of the Picts) 112, 242 Nechtansmere (battle, 685) 17 Nestorius 36 Nicaea, Council of 170 Nicodemus (Gospel of John) 40 Nineveh 209, 210 Noah 206, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215 Northumbria 4, 7, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 29, 30, 101, 102, 112, 118, 129, 130, 133, 135, 138, 139, 147, 148, 149, 150, 154, 156, 165, 173, 177, 241, 245, 246, 247, 252, 257, 258, 263, 264, 268, 269, 270 Nothaft, Phillip 212 Nothhelm 23, 219 Ó Riain, Pádraig 268 O’Brien, Conor 202 O’Donnell, James 144 O’Loughlin, Thomas 146, 171 O’Reilly, Jennifer 2, 24, 36, 137

320

Index

O’Sullivan, Sinéad 127 Ohly, Friedrich 75 Old English 197, 206, 217 Old English Martyrology 267 Old Latin Bible 58, 75, 76, 164, 165, 166, 207, 214, 221 On the ordering of Creation (De ordine creaturarum) 228, 233, 241 Origen 71, 75, 209 Ortiz, Jared 34 Osthryth (queen) 260 Oswald (king of Northumbria) 245, 246, 249, 251, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 281 Oswiu (king of Northumbria) 20, 107, 133 Paris Bibles 183 Park, Katharine 231 Passover 110, 111, 112, 206, 207 Paul (apostle) 9, 13, 15, 16, 34, 41, 149, 160, 161, 207, 210, 215 Paulinus of Nola 11, 256 Pelagius 70, 71, 72 Penda (king of Mercia) 20 Pentecost 39, 40 Peter (abbot of Tripoli) 161 Peter (apostle) 9, 15, 16, 42, 44, 49, 50, 67, 68, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105–7, 108, 133, 217, 236, 253, 272 Pickstone, John V. 225, 226 pilgrimage 5, 133, 139, 245, 247, 248, 260, 263 Pliny the Elder 227, 231, 234, 237, 242 Plummer, Charles 46, 267, 270, 271, 282 poverty 41 Pseudo-​Caper 172 Quentin, Henri 267, 272, 273, 274, 278 Ravenna 141 Ray, Roger 1

Red Sea 110, 239 reform 113 relics 5, 245, 247–9, 251, 254, 256, 258 Renaud, Geneviève 267 Reudenbach, Bruno 247 rhetoric 36, 51, 143, 145, 149, 150, 151, 172, 210 Rollason, David 251 Roman Martyrology 265, 268, 283 Rome 8, 16, 21, 22, 29, 56, 102, 134, 136, 139, 142, 162, 164, 165, 168, 170, 248, 270, 272, 281, 282 Rufinus 32, 170, 272, 273 Rule of St Benedict 24, 26, 27 runes 182, 190, 191, 192 Russell, Norman 35 Ruthwell Cross 252 sacraments 45–8, 112 Salem 204 Samaritans 115, 116, 117, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 196, 219 Sarah (wife of Abraham) 113, 207, 222 scriptorium 22, 165 Septuagint Bible 163, 170, 175, 178, 207, 218, 219, 221 Sigefrith (abbot) 18, 135, 136 Singer, Charles 186 Smith, Julia 248 Smyth, Marina 233 Solomon (king) 125, 236 Squillace 141, 142, 145 Stephen of Ripon 257 Stevens, Wesley M. 224 Stodnick, Jacqueline 260 Stoppacci, Patrizia 172 Sulpicius Severus 120, 258 Sutcliffe, E. F. 175 Thacker, Alan 2, 4, 251, 269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 281 Theodore (archbishop) 21, 165 Thomas, Charles 252, 258, 259

123

Index Tironian notae 178 Trinity 49, 51, 206 Trumberht 18 Tyconius 25, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79 Velius Longus (grammarian) 172 Vessey, Mark 142, 159, 166 Vienne 21 Vigilius (pope) 141 Virgil 172 virginity 11, 108, 126, 127, 128, 279 Vivarium 141, 142, 144, 145, 161, 167 Vulgate Bible 10, 54, 58, 74, 75, 110, 123, 155, 163, 164, 166, 167, 169, 173, 175, 177, 178, 207, 210, 218, 219, 220, 221 Walahfrid Strabo 196 Wallis, Faith 150, 197, 224, 231, 233 Ward, Benedicta 27, 249

321

Wearmouth-​Jarrow (monastery) 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15–24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 54, 55, 56, 59, 62, 69, 109, 118, 119, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 144, 148, 154, 156, 158, 160, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 177, 179, 202, 241, 259, 269, 270, 279, 281 Wessex 27, 246, 263 Whitby (monastery) 14, 21 Whitby, Synod of (664) 4, 102–5, 107, 108, 118 Wilfrid (bishop) 21, 27, 102, 103, 107, 108, 134, 162, 257, 258 Willibrord 268 Witmer (monk) 14 Wood, Ian 16, 138 Wormald, Patrick 133, 134, 137, 153 York 12, 23