Bible: Commentaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
Summary
Although Bede is now known primarily as an historian, he considered himself foremost a biblical exegete, and most of his works are exegetical. He emphasized this role in the bio-bibliographic note at the end of the HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM, which suggests that there were two overlapping phases in his study of the Bible. The first covered his entire intellectual and spiritual life, beginning when, at the age of seven, he was given to the abbey of Monkwearmouth (ed. Lapidge 2010 2.478-80; trans. Colgrave and Mynors 1969 p 567):
Qui natus in territorio eiusdem monasterii, cum essem annorum VII, cura propinquorum datus sum educandus reuerentissimo abbati Benedicto, ac deinde Ceolfrido, cunctumque ex eo tempus uitae in eiusdem monasterii habitatione peragens, omnem meditandis scripturis operam dedi, atque inter obseruantiam disciplinae regularis, et cotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut discere aut docere aut scribere dulce habui.
(I was born in the territory of this monastery. When I was seven years of age I was, by the care of my kinsmen, put into the charge of the reverend Abbot Benedict and then of Ceolfrith, to be educated. From then on I have spent all my life in this monastery, applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures; and amid the observance of the discipline of the Rule and the daily task of singing in the church, it has always been my delight to learn or to teach or to write.)
As this passage makes clear, his study of and meditation on scripture was a life-long occupation, fit in around his other duties in the monastery, observing the monastic rule, learning, teaching, and writing.
After describing his ordinations as a deacon and a priest at the ages of nineteen and thirty, Bede focused more specifically on his biblical commentaries: “ex quo tempore accepti presbyteratus usque ad annum aetatis meae LVIIII haec in scripturam sanctam meae meorumque necessitati ex opusculis uenerabilium patrum breuiter adnotare, siue etiam ad formam sensus et interpretationis eorum superadicere curaui” (ed. Lapidge 2010 2.480; “from the time I became a priest until the fifty-ninth year of my life I have made it my business for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy Scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation,” trans.
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- Information
- Bede Part 2 , pp. 39 - 146Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018