Today is the Memorial of St. Bede the Venerable – monk,
historian, and Doctor of the Church.
St. Bede, by his own account, was born “on the lands of
this monastery” (by which he means the twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth and
Jarrow, near modern Newcastle in Northumberland, England) in 672 (some scholars
give the date as 673). Almost all we
know about St. Bede comes from his own writings. When he was seven, his parents sent him to
the monastery at Monkwearmouth to be educated.
This was common practice among well-to-do families, and did not
necessarily mean that the young student became a monk – although Bede did. Scholars point to his name, which was not
common, and was derived from the old English baed, which meant prayer, as a token that his parents intended him
to become a monk.
In 682, a sister monastery to Monkwearmouth was
established at Jarrow and Bede was probably transferred there. Plague broke out there four years later, and
it is believed that Bede was one of only two monks not struck down. In 690, Bede was ordained a deacon at an
unusually early age, which may give some indication of the depth of his
learning and his holy nature. Bede’s
monastery contained a magnificent library for its time and place, and included
the works of Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, whose work surely
influence Bede. He was ordained a priest
in 702.
Shortly before his ordination, Bede began writing. His first two works were textbooks, but he
eventually produced over 60 works, most of which have survived. He was a polymath, and wrote on philosophy,
music, and poetry; as well as scriptural translations and commentary. His works had vast influence both within in
the Church and the larger society. The
only known travel of Bede outside the monastery lands he was born on, was a
trip to York in 733, to assist in the establishment of York as an
archbishopric. He died after a short
illness in 735.
A fellow monk recorded
Bede’s last days and the poem he composed on his deathbed, called Bede’s Death
Song. Here it is in Olde English (with a
modern translation):
Bede’s Magnum Opus was the Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It is viewed as one of the earliest and
finest histories in the Western world, and established Bede as the “Father of
English History.” Scholars regard it as one
of the "small class of books which transcend all but the most fundamental
conditions of time and place", and praise Bede's "astonishing power of
coordinating the fragments of information which came to him through tradition,
the relation of friends, or documentary evidence ... In an age where little was
attempted beyond the registration of fact, he had reached the conception of history." Veneration of Bede grew
slowly, although by 10th century he was widely known throughout
England and had churches named after him.
His veneration grew and in 1899, Pope Leo XIII named him a Doctor of the
Church (he was officially declared a saint in 1935).
So what does an obscure scholar-monk have to say to us,
some 1300 years later? His many written
works were marvels of their time; but perhaps the most important lesson we can
draw from him today is continuity. Like
most historians, Bede tried to clarify the past in order to give the people of
his time (and us), a sense of how we arrived at where we are, and what that
might mean to where we are going. That
is lesson almost completely lost on our society today, in which radical “change”
is heralded as the highest ideal.
Neither Bede, nor the Church, was against change; but rather saw it as
evolving in continuity with what had gone before. We, as heirs of the glorious heritage of
Western Civilization, have the duty to preserve our history and culture even as
we advance it. Those in the Western
world who think they can cut themselves off from their past (and most
especially the central role of Christianity in it), and create new worlds of
their own pride and folly, impoverish not only themselves, but their
descendants. Let us pray to St. Bede,
that faith and reason, those two wings which lift humanity towards God, may
govern not only our lives, but our culture as well.
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