Scott DeGregorio

Bede's "In Ezram et Neemiam" and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church

Recent study of the historical and hagiographical work of the Venerable Bede has taught us much about that work by attempting to understand the immediate and local circumstances that gave rise to it. It has become clear that the Historia ec clesiastica and the prose Vita S. Cuthberti are works of advocacy, concerned above all with reforming a decaying Northumbrian present, and that, because of this, they must be returned to the specific local circumstances of their genesis, not read sub specie aeternitatis.1 Their author, meanwhile, has come to be seen less as a reclusive monk and more as an active reformer, one who, as is shown by the incensed invective of his Epistola ad Ecgbertum Episcopum,2 was attuned to prob lems in the Northumbrian church and strove in his writings to remedy them. In the realm of exegesis, however, a different view has prevailed: that Bede was mainly a compiler, summarizing what past Fathers had said or, to use his preferred metaphor, following in their footsteps,3 without any contribution of his own, a view that implies a sort of detachment from the thorny issues of his own locale addressed in his nonexegetical writings.4 Recently this position has begun to change, as increasingly the originality and social engagement of Bedes exegesis

‘Nostrorum socordiam temporum’: the reforming impulse of Bede’s later exegesis

This paper attempts to provide a synoptic view of the thematic development of Bede’s exergesis. It examines a selection of his commentaries written at different periods in his career and, by placing them against the social and political background of early eighth–century Northumbria, tries to indicate some important differences amongst them. The core of my argument is that, in contrast to his early commentaries, Bede’s mature exegesis is decisively infused by the aims and concerns of his later non–exegetical works such as the Ecclesiastical History and the Letter to Ecgberht. It will be shown, for example, that earlier commentaries such as On the Apocalypse and On Acts devote less attention to pastoral concerns than do such later works as On Ezra and Nehemiah, On the Tabernacle and On the Temple. Further, the earlier commentaries contain fewer topical comments on the social and religious demise of contemporary Northumbria than the later exegesis (especially On Ezra and Nehemiah), comments whose substance and tone align this later work with the reform program of the Ecgberht letter. By considering these and other related issues, my analysis has a twofold aim: to provide a better sense of the overall shape and development of Bede’s commentaries, and to highlight the social investedness and intertextuality of his later writings as a whole.

Bede and history

Bede was in many ways a natural historian. He was deeply interested in the past. He liked to sort things out, get things right. Indeed he was so good at this that he has been viewed as a modern scholar avant la lettre . But that interest in accurate information is deceptive. Bede had an agenda. He was above all a Christian scholar and exegete, and for him, history, although unquestionably interesting for its own sake, had moral purpose. To study and to write history was to participate in a dynamic process: the unfolding of Gods purposes for mankind as the world moved towards final judgement and the end of time. Such an approach linked history with hagiography, the lives of the saints, which told of men and women through whom God had worked his purposes on earth. To the modern mind, these two disciplines might seem at odds. History is about particularity, about the specificity of the past, albeit searching out patterns in the flow of events. Hagiography as a genre is dominated by topoi , by models and conventions, for it seeks to show through the surface detail of particular and individual human lives the underlying quality common to the saints in their service to God. It is also much concerned with miracles, with Gods interventions in the natural world to demonstrate the holiness and power of his elect.

Monasticism and Reform in Book IV of Bede's ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’

The reform of the Northumbrian Church constitutes a predominant theme in much that Bede wrote in his later years. Recent analyses of his later biblical commentaries have confirmed this, although a tendency remains to treat his historiographic masterpiece, theEcclesiastical history of the English people, completed in c. 731, as only aloofly reformist in outlook. This article contests such a view through an analysis of the narrative and characters of book iv, which when scrutinised can be seen to amplify some of the key reform-oriented issues voiced in Bedes last and most openly reformist work, theLetter to Egbert.

The world of Latin learning

Arguably the two most famous products of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow are the massive Bible known as the Codex Amiatinus and Bede himself. The one we still have as a tangible monument to the cultural aspirations of that community, while the other remains more elusive, but present to us as the mind behind the many thousands of words that make up his prodigious output of Latin writings. Amiatinus is powerfully symbolic of the world of Latin learning to which Bede was both heir and prolific contributor, and it reminds us of two things: the Scriptures lay at the heart of that world, and secondly, most of what Bede knew about it he had gleaned from a long, fruitful immersion in books. To understand why Bede wrote what he did, and how he fits into the bigger picture of Latin learning in Anglo-Saxon England and indeed in Western Christendom, it is instructive to begin with some comparisons between the man and the book, which will then lead us to an exploration of his library.

Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses

Arguably the most important literary work of the early Middle English period, Ancrene Wisse is also a notoriously difficult text, in content no doubt but more so due to the challenges posed by the vocabulary and style of its distinctively West Midlands dialect. It is a text that all students of English literature should read but which few could in its original language, making a good modern translation an essential to the work’s modern dissemination. Bella Millett’s new translation is extremely valuable for this reason alone, but it is an additional boon in being the fruit of many years’ research on the original Middle English manuscripts by the current leading scholar in the field of Ancrene Wisse studies. Accordingly, her translation makes accessible the most recent research on Ancrene Wisse, and stands (to my knowledge) as the first complete modern English translation that thoroughly explores both the textual traditions and contemporary contexts of this vitally important work. The fifty-page introduction treats the contextual setting of the work, its sources and analogues, its formal characteristics, and questions of textual history. Particularly noteworthy here are the discussions of content and manuscript history. Millett naturally sets the text against the contemporary pieces collectively known as the ‘‘Katherine’’ and ‘‘Wooing’’ Groups, which help to localize Ancrene Wisse to the early thirteenth-century West Midlands, where it is likely, she contends, that an unidentifiable author of Dominican affiliation composed the work at least partly due to his dissatisfaction with the state of the clergy in general and with traditional monasticism in particular. But in addition, Millett offers several valuable pages on the wider English and European contexts which endeavour to place the text against those currents of new lay devotion associated with the so called ‘‘Medieval Reformation’’ or ‘‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’’. On the textual history of the work, she offers a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the seventeen known manuscripts of the work, with discussion of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 (1⁄4 Sigla A) as her chosen base text, before discussing at length how these manuscripts reveal the intricate processes of reception by which authors and scribes later sought to adapt the work for different audiences. Through various typographical settings, the text of the translation itself tracks such changes, using boldface to indicate significant alterations, additions, or revisions to A, English Studies Vol. 92, No. 4, June 2011, 464–475

The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (review)

hymns and shorter poems is particularly welcome (pp. 87–93), although Brown scuttles any hopes of considering the Old English “Death Song” a genuine work of Bede’s (p. 93). Many readers, coming to Bede’s work via his histories, will probably turn first to chapter 5, which opens with a consideration of Bede’s qualifications, as it were, for becoming a historian, and with a look at the less-studied Historia abbatum. Reasonably, though, the Historia ecclesiastica dominates the chapter: in addition to giving an overview of its contents, Brown’s discussion of this text does several important things. He explains what, generically, is meant by an ecclesiastical history, and how it affiliates Bede with earlier historical discourse (pp. 102–3; 112–13); what the choice to write in Latin says (and does not say) about the text’s purpose and audience (pp. 106–7); and Bede’s relation to his sources (pp. 104–5). The section on miracles (pp. 112–13) is particularly valuable for its demonstration of how Bede’s view of time was shaped by his patristic reading, and thus how his historical project was essentially in harmony with his Biblical commentary. The final chapter, on the afterlife of Bede’s works, is necessarily limited to describing the dimensions, rather than the details, of Bede’s effect on his successors. Brown provides physical evidence in the form of immense numbers of manuscripts and print editions (pp. 118–23), as well as an array of references by later scholars. Some indication of the respect the Scholastics had for Bede is given by their impressive number of citations of his work (pp. 127–30)—this is perhaps more surprising than his pervasive influence on medieval historiography, particularly in the twelfth century. Brown does not discuss why Bede’s works appealed to the likes of Peter Lombard and Bonaventure; although the fact that they did should spur future research. This hardback edition of the Companion is durably bound and well produced (though it would be nice if Boydell were to produce a paperback version). There are a few misprints; many in the Latin titles look to be the result of the depredations of a word processor’s spelling corrector. Otherwise, it is worth mentioning that Lot, not Abraham, slept with his daughters (p. 44), and “Wilfrid’s disciple and Bede’s diocesan” is Acca, not Aidan (p. 107). These are very minor points, though, in a book which is a reliable, capacious, and engaging guide to the immense and varied corpus of Anglo-Saxon England’s most influential author. Emily V. Thornbury University of California at Berkeley