by Bede
Anno DCCXLVII, Herefridus uir Dei obiit.
Anno DCCL, Cudretus rex Occidentalium Saxonum surrexit contra Aedilbaldum regem et Oengusum. Theudor atque Eanredus obierunt.
Eadberctus campum Cyil cum aliis regionibus suo regno addidit.
Anno DCCLIII. anno regni Eadbercti quinto, [quinto] Idus Ianuarias eclipsis solis facta est. Postea eodem anno et mense, hoc est nono Kalendarum Februariarum, luna eclipsim pertulit, horrendo et nigerrimo scuto, ita ut sol paulo ante, cooperta.
Anno DCCLIIII, Bonifacius, qui et Uinfridus, Francorum episcopus, cum quinquaginta tribus martyrio coronatur; et pro eo Redgerus consecratur archiepiscopus a Stephano papa.
Anno DCCLVII, Aedilbaldus rex Merciorum a suis tutoribus nocte morte fraudulenta miserabiliter peremptus occubuit; Beornredus regnare coepit; Cyniuulfus rex Occidentalium Saxonum obiit. Eodem etiam anno Offa, fugato Beornredo, Merciorum regnum sanguinolento quaesiuit gladio.
Anno DCCLVIII, Eadberctus rex Nordanhymbrorum Dei amoris causa, et caelestis patriae uiolentia, accepta sancti Petri tonsura, filio suo Osuulfo regnum reliquit.
Anno DCCLVIII, Osuulfus a suis ministris facinore occisus est;
et Edilualdus anno eodem a sua plebe electus intrauit in regnum;
cuius secundo anno magna tribulatio mortalitatis uenit et duobus ferme annis permansit, populantibus duris ac diuersis egritudinibus, maxime tamen dysenteriae languore.
Anno DCCLXI, Oengus Pictorum rex obiit, qui regni sui principium usque ad finem facinore cruento tyrannus perduxit carnifex; et Osuini occisus est.
Anno DCCLXV, Aluchredus rex susceptus est in regnum.
Anno DCCLXVI, Ecgberctus archiepiscopus prosapia regali ditatus, ac diuina scientia imbutus, et Frithubertus, uere fideles episcopi, ad Dominum migrauerunt.
In the year 739, Edilhart, king of the West-Saxons, died, as did Archbishop Nothelm.
In the year 740, Cuthbert was consecrated in Nothelm’s stead. Ethelbald, king of the Mercians, cruelly and wrongfully wasted part of Northumbria, their king, Eadbert, with his army, being employed against the Picts. Bishop Ethelwald died also, and Conwulf, was consecrated in his stead. Arnwin and Eadbert were slain.
In the year 741, a great drought came upon the country. Charles, king of the Franks, died; and his sons, Caroloman and Pippin, reigned in his stead.
In the year 745, Bishop Wilfrid and Ingwald, Bishop of London, departed to the Lord.
In the year 747, the man of God, Herefrid, died.
In the year 750, Cuthred, king of the West Saxons, rose up against king Ethelbald and Oengus; Theudor and Eanred died; Eadbert added the plain of Kyle and other places to his dominions.
In the year 753, in the fifth year of King Eadbert, on the 9th of January, an eclipse of the sun came to pass; afterwards, in the same year and month, on the 24th day of January, the moon suffered an eclipse, being covered with a gloomy, black shield, in like manner as was the sun a little while before.
In the year 754, Boniface, called also Winfrid, Bishop of the Franks, received the crown of martyrdom, together with fifty-three others; and Redger was consecrated archbishop in his stead, by pope Stephen.
In the year 757, Ethelbald, king of the Mercians, was treacherously and miserably murdered, in the night, by his own guards; Beornred began his reign; Cyniwulf, king of the West Saxons, died; and the same year, Offa, having put Beornred to flight, sought to gain the kingdom of the Mercians by bloodshed.
In the year 758, Eadbert, king of the Northumbrians, receiving St. Peter’s tonsure for the love of God, and to the end that he might take the heavenly country by force, left the kingdom to his son Oswulf.
In the year 755, Oswulf was wickedly murdered by his own thegns; and Ethelwald, being chosen the same year by his people, entered upon the kingdom; in whose second year there was great tribulation by reason of pestilence, which continued almost two years, divers grievous sicknesses raging, but more especially the disease of dysentery.
In the year 761, Oengus, king of the Picts, died; who, from the beginning to the end of his reign, continued to be a blood-stained and tyrannical butcher; Oswin was also slain.
In the year 765, King Aluchred came to the throne.
In the year 766 a.d., Archbishop Egbert, of the royal race, and endued with divine knowledge, as also Frithbert, both of them truly faithful bishops, departed to the Lord.
The Biographies
A reconstructed Anglo-Saxon farm — near the remains at Jarrow is ‘Bede’s World’, a museum dedicated to the life and times of Bede. The museum celebrates Anglo-Saxon cultural achievements, including a working example of a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon farm called Gyrwe after the Old English name for Jarrow.
BEDE by William Hunt
BEDE, or more accurately BÆDA (673–735), was born in the district which was the next year given for the foundation of the monastery of St. Peter’s, at Wearmouth, in what is now the county of Durham. The exact date of his birth has been disputed. It depends on the short account which he gives of himself at the end of the ‘Historia Ecclesiastica.’ He brings that work down to 731 — for the notice of the defeat of the Saracens in the following year is probably an insertion made later, either by himself or by some other hand — and he says that he had then reached his fifty-ninth year. Mabillon (Acta SS. O. B. iii. 505) is therefore probably right in fixing his birth in 673. Some, however (Pagi, Critic. in Ann. Baron. , followed by Stevenson), place it in 674, and others (Gehle, Disput. Hist. Theol. and Mon. Hist. Brit.) in 672. Besides the short account which Bæda gives of himself, and what we can glean from his writings and from incidental notices of him by others, we have no trustworthy materials for his life until we come to his last hours; for the two anonymous biographies of him (H. E. ed. Smith, App., and Mabillon, sæc. iii. 501) are one of the eleventh and the other of the twelfth century.
Early deprived, as it seems, of his parents, Bæda, when seven years old, was placed by his relations under the charge of Benedict Biscop, the abbot of Wearmouth. Shortly before his birth a great ecclesiastical revival began in England. The marriage of Oswiu of Northumbria to Eanfled led to the triumph of the Roman over the Celtic church in the north, and Wilfrith, the champion of St. Peter, was made bishop. Archbishop Theodore began to reform the episcopate after the Roman model, and in a national synod held at Hertford in 673 put an end to the unsystematic practices of the Celtic church. English bishops were for the future to keep to their own dioceses, and not to wander about wherever they would, like the Celtic missionary bishops. The introduction of the Benedictine rule in place of the primitive monachism of the Celts was a movement of a like nature. In this work Benedict Biscop, the guardian of Bæda, took a leading part. When, in 674, he founded St. Peter’s at Wearmouth, he sent for workmen from Gaul, who built his monastery after the Roman style. In 682 he founded the other home of Bæda, the monastery of St. Paul’s at Jarrow. Foreign artificers filled the windows of his two great houses with glass. The pictured forms of saints and the scenes of sacred history adorned the walls of his churches. Above all, he provided his monks with a noble collection of books, which he deemed necessary for their instruction (Vit. Abb. 11). He fetched John, the archcantor of St. Peter’s, from Rome, who taught them, and indeed all who came to learn, the ritual of the Roman church. And by his constant journeys abroad, Benedict brought his houses into the closest connection with the ecclesiastical life of the continent. At the same time there is evidence that there was no narrow spirit in the brotherhood which he formed, and that its relations with the Celtic church were not unfriendly (H. E. v. c. 21). Such, then, were the influences which were brought to bear on the youth of Bæda. They had a marked effect on his character and work.
When Ceolfrith was appointed to preside over the new foundation at Jarrow, Bæda seems to have gone with him. He can scarcely be said to have changed his home; for the two monasteries were in truth one, so close was the connection between them, and after the death of Benedict, Ceolfrith ruled over both alike (Vit. Abb. 15). We may venture to appropriate to
the boyhood of Bæda a story told by one of his contemporaries (Hist. Abb. Gyrv. auct. anon. 14). A pestilence so thinned the brotherhood at Jarrow, that there was not one monk left who could read or answer the responses save Ceolfrith and a little boy whom he had brought up. So the abbot was forced to order that the services should be sung without responses, save at matins and vespers. For one week this went on, until the abbot could no longer bear the dreariness of it. After that he and the child laboured day by day through the whole services, singing each in his turn alone, until others learned to take their part.
In his nineteenth year Bæda was ordained deacon. The early age at which he was allowed to receive ordination implies that he was distinguished by holiness and ability. He entered the priesthood at the canonical age of thirty. In both cases he was presented by his abbot, Ceolfrith, and received his orders from the hands of Bishop John of Beverley (H. E. v. c. 24). A tradition that Bæda visited Rome was current in the time of William of Malmesbury, and is mentioned by him (Gest. Reg. i. 57). Malmesbury gives a letter of Pope Sergius to Ceolfrith, telling him that he had need of a learned man to help him in certain matters of ecclesiastical law, and asking him to send Bæda to him–’Dei famulum Bedam venerabilis tui monasterii presbyterum.’ Now, as Sergius died in 701, Bæda could not have been a priest at the time of this invitation. The letter of Sergius, however, exists in a manuscript (Cotton, Tib. A. xv. 50-52) which is two centuries earlier than the time of Malmesbury. This manuscript, in place of ‘Bedam,’ has ‘N’ = nomen, signifying that a name was to be supplied, and the word ‘presbyterum’ is also left out in it. Both are interlined by a later hand. It is, however, possible that Bæda may have been specially invited to Rome; for Malmesbury may have copied from a still earlier manuscript, and the omission of his name in the Cotton MS. may have been through carelessness. As this manuscript stands (without ‘presbyterum’), it seems as if some word was left out, and ‘presbyterum’ may have been written in the original papal letter, through ignorance of the fact that Bæda had not at that time entered priest’s orders. Sergius, when in need of advice, may well have asked for Bæda. He would scarcely have asked Ceolfrith for one of his monks without naming any one in particular. Nor would it be wonderful that the pope should have heard of the learning of the young Northumbrian monk; for the visits of Benedict to Rome had drawn his monasteries into close connection with the papal see, and the letter, whichever way we read it, illustrates the high position which the houses of Wearmouth and Jarrow already held in Christendom. Some of Bæda’s fellow-monks were sent by Ceolfrith to Rome in 701, and came back with a papal privilege for their house. Bæda did not go with them (Vit. Abb. 15; De Temporum ratione, 47). The various legends which relate to his supposed visit to Rome may therefore be passed over. The story which takes him to Cambridge no longer demands refutation, though it once formed the subject of much bygone antiquarianism (T. Caii Vindiciæ, , &c. ed. Hearne, 1719).
With the exception of a few visits to friends, Bæda spent all his life at Jarrow from the time when he moved thither as a child. He studied the Scriptures with all his might, and while he was diligent in observing the discipline of his order, and in taking part in the daily services of the church, he loved to be always learning, teaching, or writing (H. E. v. 24). His character and opinions are to be gathered chiefly from his books. He was a man of gentle and cultivated feelings, full of kindly sympathies, and with a singular freshness of mind, which gave life and beauty to his stories. The chapter on the conversion of Northumbria, the tale of how poetic inspiration came to Cædmon, and of how he died, and the whole ‘Life of Cuthberht’ are but instances of his exquisite power of story-telling. With this power was combined a love of truth and fairness. His condemnation of the cruel and foolish war made by Ecgfrith, the benefactor of his house, against the Irish Scots (H. E. iv. 26), and his ungrudging record of the good deeds of Wilfrith (H. E. iv. 13, v. 19), are striking proofs of his freedom from prejudice. Brought, as he was from his earliest years, under the influences alike of Iona and Rome and Gaul and Canterbury, he had broad ecclesiastical sympathies. While he condemned and wrote against the Celtic customs concerning the date of Easter and the form of the tonsure, he dwelt much on the holiness of Aidan (H. E. iii. 5, 15-17), and he wrote the ‘Life of Cuthberht’ both in prose and verse. His love for the monastic profession led him to regard with evident admiration the powerful position held by the abbot of Iona (H. E. iii. 4), and the universal monachism of the church of Lindisfarne (Vit. S. Cuth. 16), though, as a zealous follower of the Benedictine order, which had found its way from the great houses of the continent to the new foundations of Northumbria, he disapproved the laxity of the Celtic rule. Filled with the desire of seeing an increase in the episcopate, he contemplated the possibility of providing for new bishops out of the possessions of those religious houses which were unfaithful to their profession, a plan which would have tended to purify the monasteries by reducing their means of luxury, and to exalt their power by closely connecting them with the episcopate (Ep. ad Ecgb. 10-12). With views so far-reaching and catholic, Bæda could have had little sympathy with the eager and narrow-minded Wilfrith. The circumstances of his life made Wilfrith look on Cuthberht and on John of Beverley as intruders (Hist. of York, Raine, xxxiv). To Bæda they were saints, and he records with evident disapproval how Eata and Cuthberht and their fellows were driven out of Ripon to make room for Wilfrith (Vit. S. Cuth. 8).
The names of several of the friends of Bæda are well known. Most of his works are dedicated to them, and some were written at their request. Among them were Nothelm, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and an ecclesiastic named Albinus. Both these helped Bæda in his ‘Historia Ecclesiastica,’ and Albinus more than any one urged him to undertake the work. Ecgberht, archbishop of York, and Acca and Frithhere, bishops of Hexham and Sherborne, were also his friends. To Acca he dedicated most of his theological works. From this bishop, who was also one of the most faithful friends of Wilfrith (Eddius, 56, 64), Bæda probably obtained the full information which he had about Wilfrith’s good deeds. Even Bæda had some enemies who seem to have been jealous of his literary pre-eminence. At a feast held by Wilfrith, bishop of York (d. 732), he was accused by some of the guests of having expressed heretical opinions in his ‘De Temporibus liber minor.’ The scandalous accusation was heard unrebuked by the bishop, and was probably circulated by one of his household. Bæda replied to it by a letter to a friend (Ep. ad Plegwinum), which was written with the expressed intention that it should be shown to Wilfrith. In it he speaks plainly of the unseemly revelry of the episcopal feast, and this reference (cf. Carmen de Pontif. Eccl. Ebor. 1. 1232) shows that the bishop in question was the second of that name and not the more famous Wilfrith.
Bæda loved to meditate and make notes on the Scriptures. Simeon of Durham (d. 1130) records (Hist. de Dunelm. Eccl. c. 14) that there used to be shown a stone hut (mansiuncula), where, secure from all interruption, he was wont to meditate and work. In the time of Leland (Collect. iv. , ed. 1720), the three monks of Jarrow, all who were then left of that once famous congregation, showed what is described as his oratory. The little boy who worked so hard with his abbot to keep up the antiphonal chant when all the burden of the singing lay on them alone, rejoiced all his life to take part in the services of the monastery church. Alcuin, writing after Bæda’s death to the monks of Wearmouth, tells them (Alc. E, ed. Migne), that he loved to say, ‘I know that angels visit the congregation of the brethren at the canonical hours, and what if they should not find me among the brethren? Would they not say, “Where is Bæda? Why comes he not with his brethren to the prayers appointed?”’ The attainments of Bæda prove that he must have been a diligent student. He has recorded the name of another of his teachers besides the abbot Ceolfrith. Trumberht, he tells us, used to instruct him in the Scriptures. He had been a pupil of Ceadda, and used to tell his scholar much about his old master (H. E. iv. 3). From him doubtless Beeda learned to reverence the holy men of the Celtic church. John
of Beverley is also said by Folcard (Vit S. Johan. c. 2) to have been his teacher. It may have been so, but, as Folcard lived in the middle of the eleventh century, he must not be regarded as an authority on this matter. It is not unlikely that Bæda received help from some of the disciples of Theodore and Hadrian, of whom he speaks with admiration (H. E. iv. 2), and he must certainly have come under the instruction of John the archcantor (Vit. Abb. 6; see Stevenson’s Introd. p. ix). Besides knowing Latin he understood Greek and had some acquaintance with Hebrew. He quotes Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Terence, and many other writers of less classical fame (Wright, Biog. Lit. i. 39-41). He was familiar with patristic literature, and was a diligent translator and compiler of extracts from that great storehouse. Like most of his countrymen at that age, he was a singer. His mind was well stored with the songs of his native land, and he had what was then in England the not uncommon gift of improvisation. Besides his powers as an historian and a biographer, he knew all the learning of his time, its grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, and physical science. All his talents were employed in the cause of his church and in the instruction of others. He was a diligent teacher, and found many scholars among the six hundred monks who in his days thronged the sister houses of St. Peter and St. Paul (Vit. Abb. 17). Some of these pupils, like Nothelm who has been already mentioned, Huætberht and Cuthberht, two successive abbots of Wearmouth, and Constantine, became the friends of after years, and were among those to whom Bæda dedicated his works.
A sentence in the ‘Ep. ad Wicredum de Paschæ Celebratione,’ which speaks of 776 as the current year, gave rise to the belief that Bæda lived at least to that date. Mabillon has however pointed out that the sentence is an interpolation by another hand (Pagi, Critic. Baron. xii. 401; Mabillon, Analect. i. 398). The day of his death is known to have been the Feast of the Ascension, 26 May 735, by a letter written by one of his pupils named Cuthberht to Cuthwine, his fellow scholar (Stevenson, Introd. xiv; Simeon of Durham, ; S. Bonifacii Op. e, ed. Giles). Bæda, Cuthberht says, suffered from a tightness of breath which grew rapidly worse during the month of April. Up to 26 May, however, he continued his lectures, and through the many sleepless hours of night was still cheerful, sometimes giving thanks to God, sometimes chanting words of Holy Scripture, or lines of English verse, which bade men remember how— ‘Before he need go forth, none can be too wise in thinking, how before his soul shall go, what good or ill deeds he hath done, how after death his doom shall be;’ or again he sang the antiphons, hoping to console the hearts of his scholars, but when he came to the words ‘Leave us not orphans,’ he wept much, and they wept with him. And so the days wore on, and in spite of his sickness he worked hard that he might finish his translation into English of the Gospel of St. John, for he knew that it would be of use to the church, and also of some extracts from Bishop Isidore, for ‘I do not want my boys,’ he said, ‘to read what is false, or to have to work at this without profit when I am dead.’ On the day of his death, when the rest had gone to the procession held on the festival, his scribe was left alone with him. ‘Dearest master,’ he said, ‘there is one chapter wanting, and it is hard for thee to question thyself’. ‘No, it is easy,’ he said; ‘take thy pen and write quickly.’ He spent the day in giving his little treasures of spice and incense to the priests of the house, in asking their prayers, and in bidding them farewell. The evening came, and his young scribe said, ‘There is yet one more sentence, dear master, to write out.’ He answered, ‘Write quickly.’ After a while the boy said, ‘Now It is finished.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thou hast spoken truly “It is finished.”’ Then he bade his friends place him where he could look on the spot on which he was wont to kneel in prayer. And lying thus upon the pavement of his cell, he chanted the ‘Gloria Patri,’ and as he uttered the words ‘the Holy Ghost’ he breathed his last, and ‘so he passed to the kingdom in heaven.’