St. Bede, Confessor and Father of the Church
A.D. 735.
THE CELEBRATED Dom. Mabillon 1 mentioning Bede as a most illustrious instance of learning in the monastic institute, says: “Who ever applied himself to the study of every branch of literature, and also to the teaching of others, more than Bede? yet who was more closely united to heaven by the exercises of piety and religion? To see him pray, says an ancient writer, one would have thought he left himself no time to study; and when we look at his books we admire he could have found time to do any thing else but write.” Camden calls him “the singular and shining light,” and Leland, “the chiefest and brightest ornament of the English nation, most worthy, if any one ever was, of immortal fame.” William of Malmesbury tells us, that it is easier to admire him in thought than to do him justice in expression. Venerable Bede, called by the ancients Bedan—who is not to be confounded with a monk of Lindisfarne of the same name, 2 but older—was born in 673, as Mabillon demonstrates from his own writings, in a village which soon after his birth became part of the estate of the new neighbouring monastery of Jarrow, but was gained upon by the sea before the time of Simeon of Durham. St. Bennet Biscop founded the abbey of St. Peter’s at Weremouth, near the mouth of the Were, in 674, and that of St. Paul’s at Girvum, now Jarrow, in 680, on the banks of the river Tyne, below the Capræ-caput, still called Goat’s-head or Gateshead, opposite to Newcastle. Such a harmony subsisted between the two houses that they were often governed by the same abbot, and called the same monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. St. Bennet was a man of extraordinary learning and piety, and enriched these monasteries with a large and curious library which he had collected at Rome, and in other foreign parts. To his care Bede was committed at seven years of age, but was afterwards removed to Jarrow, where he prosecuted his studies under the direction of the abbot Ceolfrid, who had been St. Bennet’s fellow-traveller. Among other able masters, under whom he made great progress, he names Trumbert, a monk of Jarrow, who had formerly been a disciple of St. Chad, bishop, first of York, afterwards of Litchfield, who had established a great school in his monastery of Lestingan in Yorkshire. The church music or chant Bede learned of John, formerly precentor of St. Peter’s of the Vatican, and abbot of St. Martin’s at Rome, whom Pope Agatho had sent over to England with St. Bennet Biscop. The Greek language our saint must have learned of Theodorus archbishop of Canterbury, and the abbot Adrian, by whose instruction that language became as familiar to several of their English scholars as their native tongue. For an instance of which Bede mentions Tobias bishop of Rochester. How great a master Bede was of that language appears from his Ars Metrica and other works. His poem on St. Cuthbert and other performances show him to have been a good poet for the age wherein he lived. But his comments on the holy scriptures, and his sermons prove that the meditation on the word of God, and the writings of the holy fathers chiefly engrossed his time and attention. 1 Continue reading
