Venerable Bede (Baeda)
 |
| St. Bede the Venerable |
He
writes: Thus much concerning the ecclesiastical history of Britain, and
especially of the race of the English, I, Baeda, a servant of Christ and a
priest of the monastery of the blessed apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, which
is at Wearmouth and at Jarrow (in Northumberland), have with the Lord's help
composed so far as I could gather it either from ancient documents or from the
traditions of the elders, or from my own knowledge. I was born in the territory of the said monastery,
and at the age of seven I was, by the care of my relations, given to the most
reverend Abbot Benedict [St. Benedict Biscop], and afterwards to Ceolfrid, to
be educated. From that time I have spent
the whole of my life within that monastery, devoting all my pains to the study
of the Scriptures, and amid the observance of monastic discipline and the daily
charge of singing in the Church, it has been ever my delight to learn or teach
or write. In my nineteenth year I was
admitted to the diaconate, in my thirtieth to the priesthood, both by the hands
of the most reverend Bishop John [St. John of Beverley], and at the bidding of
Abbot Ceolfrid. From the time of my
admission to the priesthood to my present fifty-ninth year, I have endeavored
for my own use and that of my brethren, to make brief notes upon the Holy
Scripture, either out of the works of the venerable Fathers or in conformity
with their meaning and interpretation.
After this Bede
inserts a list or Indiculus, of his previous writings and finally concludes his
great work with the following words: And
I pray thee, loving Jesus, that as Thou hast graciously given me to drink in
with delight the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst mercifully grant me to
attain one day to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom and to appear forever before
Thy face.
It is plain from
Bede's letter to Bishop Egbert that the historian occasionally visited his
friends for a few days, away from his own monastery of Jarrow, but with such
rare exceptions his life seems to have been one peaceful round of study and
prayer passed in the midst of his own community. How much he was beloved by them is made
manifest by the touching account of the saint's last sickness and death left us
by Cuthbert, one of his disciples. Their
studious pursuits were not given up on account of his illness and they read
aloud by his bedside, but constantly the reading was interrupted by their
tears. "I can with truth
declare", writes Cuthbert of his beloved master, "that I never saw
with my eyes or heard with my ears anyone return thanks so unceasingly to the
living God." Even on the day of his death (the vigil of the Ascension,
735) the saint was still busy dictating a translation of the Gospel of St.
John. In the evening the boy Wilbert,
who was writing it, said to him: "There is still one sentence, dear
master, which is not written down." And when this had been supplied, and
the boy had told him it was finished, "Thou hast spoken truth", Bede
answered, "it is finished. Take my
head in thy hands for it much delights me to sit opposite any holy place where
I used to pray, that so sitting I may call upon my Father." And thus upon
the floor of his cell singing, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and
to the Holy Ghost" and the rest, he peacefully breathed his last breath.
The title Venerabilis seems to have been
associated with the name of Bede within two generations after his death. There
is of course no early authority for the legend repeated by Fuller of the
"dunce-monk" who in composing an epitaph on Bede was at a loss to
complete the line: Hac sunt in fossa Bedae . . . . ossa and who next morning
found that the angels had filled the gap with the word venerabilis. The title
is used by Alcuin, Amalarius and seemingly Paul the Deacon, and the important
Council of Aachen in 835 describes him as venerabilis et modernis temporibus
doctor admirabilis Beda. This decree was specially referred to in the petition
which Cardinal Wiseman and the English bishops addressed to the Holy See in
1859 praying that Bede might be declared a Doctor of the Church. The question had already been debated even
before the time of Benedict XIV, but it was only on 13 November, 1899, that Leo
XIII decreed that the feast of Venerable Bede with the title of Doctor
Ecclesiae should be celebrated throughout the Church each year on 27 May. A local cultus of St. Bede had been maintained
at York and in the North of England throughout the Middle Ages, but his feast
was not so generally observed in the South, where the Sarum Rite was followed.
Bede's influence
both upon English and foreign scholarship was very great, and it would probably
have been greater still but for the devastation inflicted upon the Northern
monasteries by the inroads of the Danes less than a century after his death. In numberless ways, but especially in his
moderation, gentleness, and breadth of view, Bede stands out from his
contemporaries. In point of scholarship
he was undoubtedly the most learned man of his time. A very
remarkable trait, noticed by Plummer (I, p. xxiii), is his sense of literary property, an extraordinary thing in that age.
He himself scrupulously noted in his writings the passages he had borrowed from
others and he even begs the copyists of his works to preserve the references, a
recommendation to which they, alas, have paid but little attention. High, however, as was the general level of
Bede's culture, he repeatedly makes it clear that all his studies were
subordinated to the interpretation of Scripture. In his "De
Schematibus" he says in so many words: "Holy
Scripture is above all other books not only by its authority because it is
Divine, or by its utility because it leads to eternal life, but also by its
antiquity and its literary form" (positione dicendi). It is perhaps the highest tribute to Bede's
genius that with so uncompromising and evidently sincere a conviction of the
inferiority of human learning, he should have acquired so much real culture. Though Latin was to him a still living tongue,
and though he does not seem to have consciously looked back to the Augustan Age
of Roman Literature as preserving purer models of literary style than the time
of Fortunatus or St. Augustine, still whether through native genius or through
contact with the classics, he is remarkable for the relative purity of his
language, as also for his lucidity and sobriety, more especially in matters of
historical criticism. In all these
respects he presents a marked contrast to St. Aldhelm who approaches more
nearly to the Celtic type.
Taken from an
excerpt from Catholic Encyclopedia-- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm
Regarding his
Writings and editions see the same page --
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