lence, which devastated the monastery of which Beda was an inmate. It swept away every monk instructed in the choral service, with the exception of Ceolfrith and one little boy, who still continued, in the midst of his tears and sorrows, to chant the canonical hours. Dr. Lingard supposes that this "little boy" was no other than Beda himself; and the conjecture is probable. The mortality which was so fatal to others spared him, and in this monastery he spent the remainder of his days. The situation in which he was thus placed was well calculated to strengthen that taste for literature which he had probably derived from his earliest instructor Benedict, whose choice and extensive collection of books would at once stimulate and gratify his thirst for knowledge. On his death-bed the abbot gave particular instructions as to the preservation of his collection of books; and not only were these instructions attended to, but additions were made from time to time to the monastic library by his successors. A Benedictine monastery, consisting of more than six hundred monks,' endowed with princely revenues, and governed by an abbot deeply interested in the promotion of literature, must in all probability have produced many learned men, whose studies. and example were likely to have an influence on a young and enthusiastic scholar. 2 § 27. Such then was Jarrow, where Beda spent the greater portion of his life. His earlier years were occupied, as he himself tells us, in studying the Holy Scriptures, in observing the duties required by the monastic rules, and in joining in the psalmody which formed a prominent part of the daily services of the church. It is highly probable that he profited by the instructions of John, the arch-chanter, who had accompanied Benedict Biscop from Rome to England, and who afterwards resided at Wearmouth for a considerable period. It has also been conjectured that he was educated by some of the disciples of Theodore and Adrian, of Canterbury, whose intimate acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages he mentions in terms of the highest admiration. It is more certain, for we have it upon his own authority, that one of his instructors was Trumberht, who had studied under Ceadda, bishop of Lichfield. § 28. "In my nineteenth year," says Beda," "I received deacon's orders, and in my thirtieth I entered into the office of the priesthood;" circumstances which show not only that he had made considerable progress in his studies, but that his piety was well 1 See this volume, p. 617, § 17. It is stated, in the anonymous history of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, that these monasteries, at the time of Ceolfrith's death, had land belonging to them which was nearly equivalent to the support of one hundred and fifty families; a mode of reckoning which, when employed in Beda's "Historia Ecclesiastica," is rendered in the Saxon paraphrase by "hides." The term "hide" is, it is true, somewhat indefinite; but it signifies at least as much land as one plough could cultivate in one year, which, at the lowest calculation of the early glossarists, is one hundred acres. (Thus Brompton, Decem Script. col. 887:-" Hida autem Anglice vocatur terra unius aratri culture sufficiens per annum.") Thus, then, it appears that at this time Wearmouth and Jarrow possessed at least 15,000 acres of land. Eccl. Hist. § 306; Life of St. Benedict, § 6. 6 Ibid. § 454. known to his abbot, who presented him for ordination, and to the bishop of his diocese. For it had been decreed by several councils,' the authority of which was acknowledged in England,' that none should be admitted to the order of deacon until twenty-five years old; and the few exceptions which were made to this rule were always in favour of individuals of acknowledged intellectual attainments and sanctity of life. It may be added, that the priesthood was conferred upon Beda as soon as he could canonically receive it, that is, at the age of thirty; and that he was ordained both deacon and priest by the celebrated John of Beverley, bishop of Hexham, within whose diocese, and not that of Lindisfarne, the monastery of Jarrow must have been situated. 3 § 29. The historian, William of Malmesbury, informs us that so widely had Beda's reputation extended, that pope Sergius was anxious to have the advice of our countryman in the decision of certain questions of more than ordinary importance and difficulty. In confirmation of this statement he cites portions of a letter addressed by that pontiff to Ceolfrith, abbot of Jarrow, in which he is requested to lose no time in sending Beda to Rome. We have, however, his own authority for asserting that he was not one of the monks of Jarrow who visited Rome in 701 ;* and also for stating that the letters which he inserted in his Ecclesiastical History were procured for him from the papal Regesta, by the kindness of Nothelm, whose services would not have been required had Beda himself been upon the spot. He also tells us distinctly that the whole of his life was spent at Jarrow and within its immediate neighbourhood. These conflicting statements have given rise to much difference of opinion; some writers, as the Bollandists," rejecting the letter introduced by Malmesbury, as if it were a palpable forgery; while others are inclined to receive it as true, upon the supposition that Beda's stay in the papal court was too short to be regarded as any interruption to his residence in his own country. § 30. In an edition of the Historia Ecclesiastica, published by the English Historical Society in 1838, the editor of the present work endeavoured to solve this difficulty by the supposition that this statement originated with Malmesbury; who, having met with a copy of a letter from Sergius to Ceolfrith, in which the pope As for example, the Fourth Council of Arles (A.D. 524, ap. Labbe, iv. 1622), § 1, and the fourth canon of the Quini-Sext Council (A.D. 680-1, ibid. vi. 1149). See also Bingham, II. xx. § 20. See the Excerptiones Eegberti, arch. Ebor. ap. Thorpe's Ancient Laws and Institutes of England. § xciii. vol. ii. p. 110. 3 Gesta Regum, § 57, vol. i. p. 85, ed. Hardy, Lond. 1840; fol. 11, C, ed. Saville, Lond. 1596. De Temporum Ratione, cap. xlv. Opp. ii. 154, ed. Basil. 1563. "Denique, anno ab Ejus Incarnatione juxta Dionysium septingentesimo primo, indictione quartadecima, patres nostri, qui tunc fuere Romæ, hoc modo se in Natali Domini in cereis S. Mariæ scriptum vidisse, et inde descripsisse referebant, ‘A passione Domini nostri Jesu Christi anni sunt delxviii.'" * See Eccl. Hist. § 2. 7 Acta SS. Maii, vi. 719, § 8. 6 Ibid. § 454. * Mabillon, Vit. Bedæ, ap. Acta SS. ord. S. Bened. III. i. 509, § 10; Annal. ord. S. Bened, xviii. § 2. requested that the abbot would send one of his monks to Rome, hastily concluded that Beda must have been that individual; and without adverting to the chronological difficulties which attended such a supposition, unjustifiably interpolated Beda's name into his text; and further, that he designated him as "presbyter," a rank to which he did not attain until some time after the death of Sergius. In confirmation of this theory, the present editor then printed a copy of the letter as it stands in a manuscript,' written in the eleventh century, which, therefore, presents us with an authority earlier and better than that of Malmesbury; and he stated that in this version of the letter, the name of Beda, and his designation as "presbyter" does not occur. The letter is so important for the illustration of what is obviously a most interesting question connected with the life of our historian, that no apology is made for presenting the following translation of it to the reader, that he may be enabled the more readily to form his own conclusion upon the question. It is here translated from the Cotton manuscript : § 31. "Sergius, the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to Ceolfrith, the holy abbot and priest, sendeth greeting :With what words and in what manner can we declare the kindness and unspeakable providence of our God, and return fitting thanks for his boundless benefits towards us, who has led us out of darkness and the shadow of death to the light of the knowledge of Himself?.... We give you to understand that we have received the favour of the offering which your devout piety has sent to us by the present bearer, with the same joy and good-will with which it was transmitted; and we offer up our prayers to God and his apostles for the preservation of the purity of your conscience, that He, by whose preaching we have come to the light of the truth, would grant great favours in return for small ones, and an everlasting reward in the kingdom of heaven. "Yielding to the timely and worthy prayers of your laudable anxiety with the closest devotion, we entreat of your pious goodness, so acceptable to God, that since there have occurred certain points of ecclesiastical discipline, which should not be published without more matured deliberation, which have made it necessary for us to confer with a person skilled in the literature of the arts, as becomes an assistant of God's holy catholic mother-church, you would not delay paying ready obedience to this our admonition, but would send without loss of time to our lowly presence at the venerable church of the chief apostles, your friends and protectors, the lords Peter and Paul, a religious' servant of our God, belonging to your venerable monastery, whom, God willing, you may expect to return in safety, when, by God's permission, the necessary discussion of these aforesaid points shall have been solemnly completed. For whatever shall be advantageously added to the church. at large, and to the holy and devout college, will, we trust, be 1 MS. Cotton. Tiber. A. xv. fol. 6. b. Malmesbury here reads, "Beda, a religious servant of God, a venerable priest of your monastery." profitable to all those persons also who are committed to your own immediate care." § 32. On the other hand, it is contended by Hardy, and from him by Wright and Giles, that before it can be admitted as a just inference that Malmesbury interpolated the passage in question, it must be shown that this same Cottonian manuscript was the identical copy of the letter which he used; a conclusion which, as they affirm, cannot be fairly drawn, since it is incredible but that other copies of the letter must have been extant when Malmesbury wrote. They maintain also that it ought rather to be contended that the one which he saw must have contained the passage in dispute; for that historian (whose great integrity is admitted by all writers) several times expressly declares, that he declines inserting anything into his narrative for which he had not the best authority. present editor willingly admits the weight of these arguments, and accepts the solution which was long ago proposed by Alford, and from him by Cressy and Wilkins. Admitting, therefore, that Malmesbury's version of the letter is correct, and that Beda was invited by name, we may suppose, along with these authors, that the death of pope Sergius-intelligence of which must have reached England shortly after the arrival of the letter-released him from the labours of the journey. 8 The § 33. It is not difficult to imagine that Beda's reputation as a scholar and divine would draw around him a crowd of disciples. The names of some of his more favoured pupils are preserved by himself, in the dedications to such of his works as were undertaken at their suggestion, or for their especial benefit. Among these we may notice Huaetberht, to whom he dedicated his treatise" De Ratione Temporum," and his "Exposition upon the Revelation;' Wigberct, for whom he wrote his book "Upon the Art of Poetry;" Constantine, for whose use he composed a dissertation concerning the division of numbers; and, lastly, Nothelm," presbyter of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, at whose request he solved thirty questions which have reference to the books of Kings. Although there were probably other disciples, whose names he does not specify, yet we can by no means agree with Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum Histor. xxiii. 173), in including among the number Rhabanus Maurus, who was not born until fifty years after Beda's death, nor the more celebrated Alcuin, as some writers erroneously have done; a question for the investigation of which a 1 Baronius (Annal. A.D. 701, § 2,) prints the same letter, apparently from a manuscript copy of Malmesbury, but the variations are unimportant. Another copy is also extant in a MS. at Durham, but a comparison of its text with that from which the translation above given is made, and with Malmesbury, leads to no results worthy of notice. more appropriate opportunity will occur when we are employed in tracing the history of that eminent scholar. § 34. Beyond the few circumstances which have now been mentioned, there is little of any moment to state respecting the life of Beda. By identifying the history of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow with his biography, it might be easy to lay before the reader a summary of the events in which Beda probably took a share; but these, however interesting in themselves, are rather the history of the times than the individual; for we have no ground for supposing that he took any prominent part in the public transactions of either establishment. We are justified in concluding that his life glided on in the undisturbed tranquillity of monastic seclusion, occupied alternately in the duties of religion and in the service of literature, and, consequently, diversified by none of those changes of scene or occupation which furnish the legitimate materials for biography. His death was as quiet as his life; and in speaking of it we cannot do better than lay before our readers the touching picture which has been drawn by one of his own disciples who was present at his decease, and by him transmitted to another. $35." To Cuthwin,' his most dearly-beloved fellow-student in Christ, his fellow-disciple, Cudberct,' wishes eternal health in the Lord. I most gladly received the gift which you sent, and most gratefully did I read the letters written by your devotion and learning, in which I found (what indeed I chiefly desired), that you would diligently celebrate holy masses and prayers for Beda, the beloved master and father of us both, in God. Wherefore, out of my affection for him, it is the more gratifying to me to comply with your request, and to tell you briefly, but to the best of my ability, the manner in which he passed from this present world. "He had been labouring under a severe attack of difficulty of breathing, yet without pain, for nearly two weeks before the day of our Lord's Resurrection [April 17], and in this state continued, cheerful, and rejoicing, and giving thanks to Almighty God, both day and night, even every hour, until Ascension-day, the seventh day before the kalends of June3 [26th May]. He daily instructed us, his disciples, and spent the remainder of the day in the singing of psalms, and continued awake during the whole night, in joy and thanksgiving, excepting when interrupted by a moderate sleep. On awaking he returned to his accustomed occupations, and with outstretched hands ceased not to give thanks to God. He was, in truth, a blessed man. He chanted the passage from St. Paul, ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' [Heb. x. 31], and 1 This letter has been repeatedly printed, with various degrees of accuracy, and may be found in Leland's Collect. iii. 84; Simeon of Durham, p. 8; Mabillon, Acta SS. ord. S. Bened. III. i. 503; in the preface to Whelock's Beda; Baronii Annal. A.D. 731, § 20; Ep. Bonif. exiii.; Opp. Bedæ, viii. 1135, ed. 1563; Acta SS. Maii, vi. 721. It is here translated from a collation of the above texts with MS. Burney, 297; Harl. 3680; Digby, 211; Fairfax, 12; and Digby, 59. 2 Another letter written by this Cuthbert occurs among the Epistles of Boniface, in which he speaks with the greatest affection of his master Beda. There has been some misapprehension as to the exact day of Beda's death, but the chronological details of the text are too clear to admit of dispute or difficulty. |