Bede wrote scientific, historical and theological works, reflecting the range of his writings from music and
metrics to exegetical
Scripture commentaries. He knew
patristic literature, as well as
Pliny the Elder,
Virgil,
Lucretius,
Ovid,
Horace and other
classical writers. He knew some Greek. Bede's scriptural commentaries employed the
allegorical method of interpretation, and his history includes accounts of
miracles, which to modern historians has seemed at odds with his critical approach to the materials in his history. Modern studies have shown the important role such concepts played in the world-view of
early medieval scholars. Although Bede is mainly studied as a historian now, in his time his works on grammar, chronology, and
biblical studies were as important as his historical and hagiographical works. The non-historical works contributed greatly to the
Carolingian Renaissance. He has been credited with writing a
penitential, though his authorship of this work is disputed.
Ecclesiastical History of the English People '', from a 12th-century
codex at
Engelberg Abbey, Switzerland Bede's best-known work is the , or
An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in about 731. Bede was aided in writing this book by
Albinus, abbot of
St Augustine's Abbey,
Canterbury. The first of the five books begins with some geographical background and then sketches the history of England, beginning with
Caesar's invasion in 55 BC. A brief account of Christianity in Roman Britain, including the martyrdom of
St Alban, is followed by the story of
Augustine's mission to England in 597, which brought Christianity to the
Anglo-Saxons. These ended in disaster when
Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed the newly Christian
Edwin of Northumbria at the
Battle of Hatfield Chase in about 632. The climax of the third book is the account of the
Council of Whitby, traditionally seen as a major turning point in English history. The fourth book begins with the consecration of
Theodore as
Archbishop of Canterbury and recounts Wilfrid's efforts to bring Christianity to the
Kingdom of Sussex. The fifth book brings the story up to Bede's day and includes an account of missionary work in Frisia and of the conflict with the
British church over the correct dating of Easter. The preface mentions that Ceolwulf received an earlier draft of the book; presumably Ceolwulf knew enough Latin to understand it, and he may even have been able to read it. It has been estimated that there were about 200 books in the monastic library. For the period prior to Augustine's arrival in 597, Bede drew on earlier writers, including
Gaius Julius Solinus. He had access to two works of Eusebius: the
Historia Ecclesiastica, and also the
Chronicon, though he had neither in the original Greek; instead he had a Latin translation of the
Historia, by Rufinus, and
Jerome's translation of the
Chronicon. He also knew Orosius's
Adversus Paganus, and
Gregory of Tours'
Historia Francorum, both Christian histories, He used
Constantius of Lyon's
Life of Germanus as a source for
Germanus of Auxerre's visits to Britain. Bede would also have been familiar with more recent accounts, such as
Stephen of Ripon's
Life of Wilfrid, and the anonymously written
Life of Gregory the Great and
Life of Cuthbert. and there was a copy of the
Liber Pontificalis in Bede's monastery. Bede quotes from several classical authors, including
Cicero,
Plautus, and
Terence, but he may have had access to their work via a Latin grammar rather than directly. However, it is clear he was familiar with the works of Virgil and with
Pliny the Elder's
Natural History, and his monastery also owned copies of the works of Dionysius Exiguus. He also had access to a life of Ceolfrith. Some of Bede's material came from oral traditions, including a description of the physical appearance of
Paulinus of York, who had died nearly 90 years before Bede's
Historia Ecclesiastica was written. Almost all of Bede's information regarding Augustine is taken from these letters. he was in contact with Bishop
Daniel of Winchester for information about the history of the church in Wessex, and wrote to the monastery at
Lastingham for information about
Cedd and
Chad of Mercia. Most of Bede's informants for information after Augustine's mission came from the eastern part of Britain, leaving significant gaps in the knowledge of the western areas, which were those areas likely to have a native Briton presence.
Models and style Bede's stylistic models included some of the same authors from whom he drew the material for the earlier parts of his history. His introduction imitates the work of Orosius, Bede quoted his sources at length in his narrative, as Eusebius had done. Bede's work as a
hagiographer and his detailed attention to dating were both useful preparations for the task of writing the
Historia Ecclesiastica. His interest in computus, the science of calculating the date of Easter, was also useful in the account he gives of the controversy between the British and Anglo-Saxon church over the correct method of obtaining the Easter date. His Latin has been praised for its clarity, but his style in the
Historia Ecclesiastica is not simple. He knew rhetoric and often used figures of speech and rhetorical forms which cannot easily be reproduced in translation, depending as they often do on the connotations of the Latin words. However, unlike contemporaries such as
Aldhelm, whose Latin is full of difficulties, Bede's own text is easy to read. In the words of
Charles Plummer, one of the best-known editors of the
Historia Ecclesiastica, Bede's Latin is "clear and limpid ... it is very seldom that we have to pause to think of the meaning of a sentence ... Alcuin rightly praises Bede for his unpretending style."
Intent Bede's primary intention in writing the
Historia Ecclesiastica was to show the growth of the united church throughout England. The native Britons, whose Christian church survived the departure of the Romans, earn Bede's ire for refusing to help to
convert the Anglo-Saxons; by the end of the
Historia the English, and their church, are dominant over the Britons. This goal, of showing the movement towards unity, explains Bede's animosity towards the British method of calculating Easter: much of the
Historia is devoted to a history of the dispute, including the final resolution at the
Synod of Whitby in 664.
Omissions and biases Bede is somewhat reticent about the career of Wilfrid, a contemporary and one of the most prominent clerics of his day. This may be because Wilfrid's opulent lifestyle was uncongenial to Bede's monastic mind; it may also be that the events of Wilfrid's life, divisive and controversial as they were, simply did not fit with Bede's theme of the progression to a
unified and harmonious church. Bede was a Northumbrian, and this tinged his work with a local bias. The sources to which he had access gave him less information about the west of England than for other areas. He says relatively little about the achievements of Mercia and Wessex, omitting, for example, any mention of
Boniface, a West Saxon missionary to the continent of some renown and of whom Bede had almost certainly heard, though Bede does discuss Northumbrian missionaries to the continent. He is also parsimonious in his praise for Aldhelm, a West Saxon who had done much to convert the native Britons to the Roman form of Christianity. He lists seven kings of the Anglo-Saxons whom he regards as having held
imperium, or overlordship; only one
king of Wessex,
Ceawlin, is listed as
Bretwalda, and none from Mercia, though elsewhere he acknowledges the secular power several of the Mercians held. Historian
Robin Fleming states that he was so hostile to Mercia (because Northumbria had been diminished by Mercian power) that he consulted no Mercian informants and included no stories about its saints. Bede relates the story of Augustine's mission from Rome, and tells how the British clergy refused to assist Augustine in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. This, combined with Gildas's negative assessment of the British church at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, led Bede to a very critical view of the native church. However, Bede ignores the fact that at the time of Augustine's mission, the history between the two was one of warfare and conquest, which, in the words of
Barbara Yorke, would have naturally "curbed any missionary impulses towards the Anglo-Saxons from the British clergy."
Use of Anno Domini At the time Bede wrote the
Historia Ecclesiastica, there were two common ways of referring to dates. One was to use
indictions, which were 15-year cycles, counting from 312 AD. There were three different varieties of indiction, each starting on a different day of the year. The other approach was to use regnal years—the reigning Roman emperor, for example, or the ruler of whichever kingdom was under discussion. This meant that in discussing conflicts between kingdoms, the date would have to be given in the regnal years of all the kings involved. Bede used both these approaches on occasion but adopted a third method as his main approach to dating: the
Anno Domini method invented by Dionysius Exiguus. Although Bede did not invent this method, his adoption of it and his promulgation of it in
De Temporum Ratione, his work on chronology, is the main reason it is now so widely used. Bede's Easter table, contained in
De Temporum Ratione, was developed from
Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table.
Assessment The
Historia Ecclesiastica was copied often in the Middle Ages, and about 160 manuscripts containing it survive. About half of those are located on the European continent, rather than in the British Isles. This total does not include manuscripts with only a part of the work, of which another 100 or so survive. It was printed for the first time between 1474 and 1482, probably at
Strasbourg. Modern historians have studied the
Historia extensively, and several editions have been produced. Modern historians and editors of Bede have been lavish in their praise of his achievement in the
Historia Ecclesiastica. Stenton regards it as one of the "small class of books which transcend all but the most fundamental conditions of time and place", and regards its quality as dependent on Bede's "astonishing power of co-ordinating 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."
Patrick Wormald describes him as "the first and greatest of England's historians". The
Historia Ecclesiastica has given Bede a high reputation, but his concerns were different from those of a modern writer of history. Early modern writers, such as
Polydore Vergil and
Matthew Parker, the
Elizabethan Archbishop of Canterbury, also utilised the
Historia, and his works were used by both
Protestant and
Catholic sides in the
wars of religion. Some historians have questioned the reliability of some of Bede's accounts. One historian, Charlotte Behr, thinks that the ''Historia's'' account of the arrival of the Germanic invaders in Kent should not be considered to relate what actually happened, but rather relates
myths that were current in Kent during Bede's time. It is likely that Bede's work, because it was so widely copied, discouraged others from writing histories and may even have led to the disappearance of manuscripts containing older historical works.
Other historical works presenting the work to the saint. This manuscript was given to St Cuthbert's shrine in 934.
Chronicles As Chapter 66 of his
On the Reckoning of Time, in 725 Bede wrote the
Greater Chronicle (
chronica maiora), which sometimes circulated as a separate work. For recent events the
Chronicle, like his
Ecclesiastical History, relied upon Gildas, upon a version of the
Liber Pontificalis current at least to the papacy of
Pope Sergius I (687–701), and other sources. For earlier events he drew on Eusebius's
Chronikoi Kanones. The dating of events in the
Chronicle is inconsistent with his other works, using the era of creation, the
Anno Mundi.
Hagiography His other historical works included lives of the abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, as well as verse and prose lives of
St Cuthbert, an adaptation of
Paulinus of Nola's
Life of St Felix, and a translation of the Greek
Passion of
St Anastasius. He also created a
listing of saints, the
Martyrology.
Theological works In his own time, Bede was as well known for his biblical commentaries, and for his exegetical and other theological works. The majority of his writings were of this type and covered the Old Testament and the New Testament. Most survived the Middle Ages, but a few were lost. It was for his theological writings that he earned the title of
Doctor Anglorum and why he was declared a saint. (), showing Bede finishing his translation of the Gospel of John on his deathbed|170x170px Bede first wrote commentaries on biblical books which previous
patristic authors had not treated in depth, to his knowledge:
On the Gospel of Mark,
Commentary on Revelation,
Commentary on the Catholic Epistles,
Commentary on Acts,
Reconsideration on the Books of Acts,; and from the Old Testament
Commentary on Samuel,
Commentary on Genesis,
Commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah,
On the Temple,
On the Tabernacle,
Commentaries on Tobit,
Commentaries on Proverbs,
Commentaries on the Song of Songs,
Commentaries on the Canticle of Habakkuk. The works on Ezra, the tabernacle and the temple were especially influenced by Gregory the Great's writings. He also wrote
On the Gospel of Luke, and
Homilies on the Gospels. Bede wrote homilies, which are works written to explain theology used in worship services. He wrote homilies on the major
Christian seasons such as
Advent,
Lent, or Easter, as well as on other subjects such as anniversaries of significant events. He did this for the last 40 days of his life. When the last passage had been translated he said: "All is finished." It is clear from Bede's own comments that he felt his calling was to explain to his students and readers the theology and thoughts of the Church Fathers. Bede sometimes included in his theological books an acknowledgement of the predecessors on whose works he drew. In two cases he left instructions that his marginal notes, which gave the details of his sources, should be preserved by the copyist, and he may have originally added marginal comments about his sources to others of his works. Where he does not specify, it is still possible to identify books to which he must have had access by quotations that he uses. A full catalogue of the library available to Bede in the monastery cannot be reconstructed, but it is possible to tell, for example, that Bede was very familiar with the works of Virgil. There is little evidence that he had access to any other of the pagan Latin writers—he quotes many of these writers, but the quotes are almost always found in the Latin grammars that were common in his day, one or more of which would certainly have been at the monastery. Another difficulty is that manuscripts of early writers were often incomplete: it is apparent that Bede had access to Pliny's
Encyclopaedia, for example, but it seems that the version he had was missing book xviii, since he did not quote from it in his
De temporum ratione.
Historical and astronomical chronology De temporibus, or
On Time, written in about 703, provides an introduction to the principles of Easter computus. This was based on parts of Isidore of Seville's
Etymologies, and Bede also included a chronology of the world which was derived from Eusebius, with some revisions based on Jerome's translation of the Bible. He also wrote several shorter letters and essays discussing specific aspects of computus.
On the Reckoning of Time (
De temporum ratione) included an introduction to the traditional ancient and medieval view of the
cosmos, including an explanation of how the
spherical Earth influenced the changing
length of daylight, of how the
seasonal motion of the Sun and Moon influenced the changing appearance of the
new moon at evening twilight. Bede also records the effect of the moon on
tides. He shows that the twice-daily timing of tides is related to the Moon and that the lunar monthly cycle of spring and neap tides is also related to the Moon's position. He goes on to note that the times of tides vary along the same coast and that the water movements cause low tide at one place when there is high tide elsewhere. Since the focus of his book was the computus, Bede gave instructions for
computing the date of Easter from the date of the
Paschal full moon, for calculating the motion of the Sun and Moon through the
zodiac, and for many other calculations related to the calendar. He gives some information about the months of the
Anglo-Saxon calendar. Any codex of Bede's Easter table is normally found together with a codex of his
De temporum ratione. His Easter table, being an exact extension of Dionysius Exiguus' Paschal table and covering the time interval AD 532–1063, contains a 532-year Paschal cycle based on the so-called classical Alexandrian 19-year lunar cycle, being the close variant of bishop
Theophilus' 19-year lunar cycle proposed by
Annianus and adopted by bishop
Cyril of Alexandria around AD 425. The ultimate similar (but rather different) predecessor of this Metonic 19-year lunar cycle is the one invented by
Anatolius around AD 260. For calendric purposes, Bede made a new calculation of the
age of the world since the
creation, which he dated as 3952 BC. Because of his innovations in computing the age of the world, he was accused of heresy at the table of Bishop Wilfrid, his chronology being contrary to accepted calculations. Once informed of the accusations of these "lewd rustics", Bede refuted them in his Letter to Plegwin. In addition to these works on astronomical timekeeping, he also wrote
De natura rerum, or
On the Nature of Things, modelled in part after the work of the same title by Isidore of Seville. His works were so influential that late in the ninth century
Notker the Stammerer, a monk of the
Monastery of St Gall in Switzerland, wrote that "
God, the orderer of natures, who raised the Sun from the East on the fourth day of Creation, in the sixth day of the world has made Bede rise from the West as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth".
Educational works Bede wrote some works designed to help teach grammar in the abbey school. One of these was
De arte metrica, a discussion of the composition of Latin verse, drawing on previous grammarians' work. It was based on Donatus's
De pedibus and
Servius's
De finalibus and used examples from
Christian poets as well as Virgil. It became a standard text for the teaching of Latin verse during the next few centuries. Bede dedicated this work to Cuthbert, apparently a student, for he is named "beloved son" in the dedication, and Bede says "I have laboured to educate you in divine letters and ecclesiastical statutes."
De orthographia is a work on
orthography, designed to help a medieval reader of Latin with unfamiliar abbreviations and words from classical Latin works. Although it could serve as a textbook, it appears to have been mainly intended as a reference work. The date of composition for both of these works is unknown.
De schematibus et tropis sacrae scripturae discusses the Bible's use of rhetoric. Similarly, his text on poetic metre uses only Christian poetry for examples.
Vernacular poetry According to his disciple Cuthbert, Bede was
doctus in nostris carminibus ("learned in our songs"). Cuthbert's letter on Bede's death, the
Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, moreover, commonly is understood to indicate that Bede composed a five-line vernacular poem known to modern scholars as ''Bede's Death Song''. As Opland notes, however, it is not entirely clear that Cuthbert is attributing this text to Bede: most manuscripts of the latter do not use a
finite verb to describe Bede's presentation of the song, and the theme was relatively common in Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. The fact that Cuthbert's description places the performance of the Old English poem in the context of a series of quoted passages from Sacred Scripture might be taken as evidence simply that Bede also cited analogous vernacular texts. On the other hand, the inclusion of the Old English text of the poem in Cuthbert's Latin letter, the observation that Bede "was learned in our song," and the fact that Bede composed a Latin poem on the same subject all point to the possibility of his having written it. By citing the poem directly, Cuthbert seems to imply that its particular wording was somehow important, either since it was a vernacular poem endorsed by a scholar who evidently frowned upon secular entertainment or because it is a direct quotation of Bede's last original composition. == Veneration ==