Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Bede’s Life and Times
- 2 Educational Works
- 3 The Biblical Commentaries
- 4 Homilies, Hagiography, Martyrology, Poems, Letters
- 5 The Histories
- 6 A Brief History of Bede’s Works through the Ages
- Works Cited
- Index of Bede’s Works
- General Index
- Anglo-Saxon Studies
6 - A Brief History of Bede’s Works through the Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Bede’s Life and Times
- 2 Educational Works
- 3 The Biblical Commentaries
- 4 Homilies, Hagiography, Martyrology, Poems, Letters
- 5 The Histories
- 6 A Brief History of Bede’s Works through the Ages
- Works Cited
- Index of Bede’s Works
- General Index
- Anglo-Saxon Studies
Summary
FROM the time of Bede's death in the eighth century until the present, his widely disseminated works have been read, studied, cited, and analyzed, but in each age in a different way and with different purposes and emphases. In general, history has been remarkably kind to Bede's writings as to him, even if not all of his works have received the same attention in each age.
Although Bede says at the end of the Ecclesiastical History that he wrote for his own benefit and for that of his monastic brothers, it is clear from his practice of sending out his works to various authorities for their instruction, comments, and suggestions, that his audience even in his lifetime extended far from Wearmouth-Jarrow. His works circulated widely in England, and he was scarcely in his grave when the demand for his works on the Continent overwhelmed the manuscript copyists at his Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery. “Now Bede lived hidden away in the extreme corner of the world,” wrote Symeon of Durham, “but after his death he lived on in his books and became known to everyone all over the world.” Dorothy Whitelock remarks of his importance and influence:
He has been called “the teacher of the whole Middle Ages”; his writings on orthography, rhetoric and metrics, intended in the first place for his own scholars, were for centuries the basic school-books on these subjects; similarly, all subsequent teaching on computation, chronology and science was based on his writings, which handed on the learning of antiquity, until the dawn in early modern times of new methods of scientific study; his commentaries on the Bible caused him to be regarded on a level with the Catholic Fathers and were in constant use throughout centuries, until the method of allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures went out of fashion; his historical work has been read continuously ever since it was written, and has formed a model for later writers.
By the end of the eighth century Bede's works were frequently transcribed on the Continent and widely distributed. Bernhard Bischoff has argued the Moore Bede (Cambridge University Library, MS Kk. 5. 16) was in the court library of Charlemagne, perhaps brought there by Alcuin, where it “spawned a large family of texts on the Continent.”
The Carolingians ranked Bede with the Fathers; he served as monastic mediator and continuator of the patristic legacy to the later ages.
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- A Companion to Bede , pp. 117 - 134Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010