Bede: England’s First Great Historian

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Along the narrow coastal plain of Northumbria, the River Tyne winds from Newcastle towards the North Sea, lined with oil tanks, heavy equipment, and the relics of the Tyne’s industrial importance. The scene is not picturesque. It’s hard to imagine that just over the crest of the riverbank lie the rural remnants of one of Europe’s most historic centres of learning, the ancient Saxon monastery of St. Paul’s, Jarrow.

About 1,300 years ago, however, under the reign of Northumbria’s sagacious King Aldfrith, this sparsely populated northern monarchy enjoyed a golden age. Jarrow’s most famous resident and the most important figure of this generation of art and learning was a humble monk named Bede. The Venerable Bede was early medieval Europe’s greatest scholar and the first to record the history of the English nation. His reputation alone made this one of the most important historical and religious sites in Europe.

King Ecgrith of Northumbria gave the land at Jarrow to the church in 681. Benedict Biscop, a Northumbrian nobleman, accepted the gift and sent an abbot named Ceolfrith along with 10 monks and 12 novices from St. Peter’s monastery at Wearmouth, 12 miles away, to found the new monastery of St. Paul’s.

The 12-year-old Bede was present at the consecration of the new church on 23rd April 685. ‘I was born on the lands of the monastery, he later wrote, and on reaching seven years of age, I was entrusted by my family first to the reverend Abbot Benedict and later to Abbot Ceolfrith for my education. I have spent all the remainder of my life in this monastery and devoted myself entirely to the study of Scriptures.

In truth, the humble monk’s studies encompassed a wide range of disciplines, including astronomy, classical languages, medicine, and seemingly everything else his imagination and resources would allow. Certainly, Bede’s intellectual range went much further than the Bible itself. While many of his 60 works are biblical commentaries, he also wrote on natural history, science, poetry, and history. It is, in fact, for his monumental Ecclesiastical History of the English People that Bede is best remembered.

The routine of the abbey day seems designed to deaden rather than awaken intellectual curiosity. Celebrating the offices of the canonical day itself was an arduous, time-consuming, and endless cycle. After the first office, sung at 2 am, any rest came in snatches before a general predawn rise to private prayer and manual duty. Daily life was ordered, shoe-horned in between the constant rhythm of the services from prime to lauds. In the midst of this ascetic and repetitive life, however, Bede wrote a prodigious canon of scholarship by any historical standard. It is impossible to appreciate the scope of Bede’s effort without recalling the conditions under which he wrote, working with hand-sharpened tools on coarse surfaces, minimal artificial light, and communication no faster than a horse on uneven ground. Services of worship that marked his priestly vocation regularly interrupted his attention, and for months at a time the Northumbrian climate was damp, chilly, and dark. Pen and paper, light and warmth would have been to Bede luxuries beyond imagination.

Exactly how Bede came to be called Venerable remains obscured by the passage of time. The popular account suggests that a monk, inscribing in stone upon his tomb, chiseled Here in this grave lie Bede’s bones and left the job incomplete when he quit for the day. The next morning, he discovered that an angel had added the word Venerable. Whatever its origin, the epithet has been regularly coupled with his name.

While many of Bede’s works have become relics of intellectual history, of course, his Ecclesiastical History of the English People remains singularly important. Beginning with Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain, Bede’s narrative spans almost 800 years of history, encompassing political, military, and social life as well as the coming of Christianity and the rise of the early church. His account is a primary source of information on such events as the martyrdom of St. Alban, the coming of the Saxons, St. Augustine’s arrival in Canterbury, and the Synod of Whitby.

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