Episode 5: The Venerable Bede & Early English Church History Bede There, Done That

Episode 5: The Venerable Bede - Show Notes


Image Credit: Folio 5r from the Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1), Ezra the scribe. [Public Domain] Available at Wikimedia Commons.


Brief Chronology (most dates are approximate):
• 410 - Goths sack Rome
• 431 - Mission of Palladius to Ireland (probably close in time to Patrick's mission)
• 449 - Vortigern invites Angles and Saxons to Britain as mercenaries
• 563 - Columba reaches Iona in Scotland
• 597 - Augustine reaches Kent, beginning mission to the English
• 604 - Death of Pope Gregory the Great
• 627 - Conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria
• 664 - Synod of Whitby
• 673 - Bede's birth near Jarrow in Northumbria
• 674 - Wearmouth (St. Peter's) founded by Benedict Biscop
• 680 - Bede becomes oblate at Wearmouth
• 681 - Jarrow (St. Paul's) founded
• 692 - Bede ordained a deacon at age 19
• 702 - Bede ordained a priest at age 30
• 703 - Bede writes his first works
• 710 - Ceolfrith's letter to the Picts concerning Easter
• 716 - Ceolfrith leaves Jarrow for Rome with the Codex Amiatinus
• 731 - Bede completes his Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• 734 - Bede's letter to Bishop Egbert, dated Nov. 4
• 735 - Bede's death on May 25
• 794 - Vikings attack Jarrow
• 1899 - Bede is declared a Doctor of the Church


Summary:


As discussed in our St. Patrick episode, Britain struggled after the Roman military left. Germanic tribes called the Angles and Saxons soon took advantage of the situation, perhaps after originally being invited as mercenaries to protect the Britons left behind by the Romans. The Pagan Angles and Saxons forced the Christian Britons toward the western side of Britain (Wales and Cornwall now) and carved out several new kingdoms for themselves in the south-eastern part of Britain, such as Kent, Mercia, and Northumbria, to name only a few. The conversion of the newcomers did not get well underway for another century and a half, which is the story Bede tells in his Ecclesiastical History.


Although Anglo-Saxon England seems to have been unstable and often violent, Bede himself lived a quiet life as a priest and scholar at the monastery of Jarrow from a young age until his death. He was probably born about 673 close to Jarrow, located in the northern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. He was sent to Wearmouth at age 7 to be educated. The monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth had been founded relatively recently by a nobleman named Benedict Biscop, the community's first abbot, who travelled to Rome several times in his life and was enthusiastic about implementing what he learned there. Probably Bede left Wearmouth with Ceolfrith and others when the associated monastery of St. Paul was founded at Jarrow.


A plague seems to have swept the community at some point in Bede's childhood, leaving only the abbot Ceolfrith and a child (possibly Bede himself) well enough to chant the Psalter. Later in life, when Ceolfrith left Jarrow for a pilgrimage to Rome, Bede compared Ceolfrith to Eli, the priest to whom Hannah entrusted her child Samuel (Bede in this analogy). Ceolfrith died on the journey, but his gift to the pope, the Codex Amiatinus, survives to the present day. It was a rare single-volume version of the Bible created by Bede and his fellow monks.


Bede was ordained a deacon at the age of 19, then a priest at 30. He may never have ventured outside of his native Northumbria. (Ward, Give Love and Receive the Kingdom, ch. 2). He seems to have corresponded with people throughout Britain, gathering local information for his history of the English church.


Bede left behind a numerous books, including his landmark Ecclesiastical History of the English People, as well as other historical works and Biblical commentaries. In his Ecclesiastical History, completed in 731, he tells the story of how Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon England, then how the Anglo-Saxons came to b