Deep into Our Roots: Saint Bede
We are thrilled and honoured to have a patron like St. Bede, a man who to this day inspires us to carry on his great legacy, marked by the same values from which our educational community benefits and on which we are proud to feed.
St. Bede represents an example of faith and constancy for many Bedians,and thanks to his passion and love of learning, he is a reference for those who seek the truth through the fulfilment of God’s will. We are happy to be heirs of his Christian message because it allows us to strengthen our desire to be part of a great tradition.
The Venerable Bede
Bede was accepted as an oblate into the twin-abbeys of Wearmouth-Jarrow at the age of seven. At the early age of nineteen, he was made a sub-deacon and, upon reaching the age of thirty, he was ordained as priest. He would live out the entire rest of his life in the monastery at Jarrow, never straying further than York. We do not know from what family he came. He may have once been married as he alluded once in his writings to finding it difficult to balance his conjugal and spiritual obligations. It is likely that he came from an aristocratic background as placing a child in a religious community had become increasingly fashionable amongst Anglo-Saxon nobles.
The name he presumably adopted upon his entrance to the monastery has given its name to a place of learning in every time zone on earth, including our own College. He is the only native of the British Isles to be named Doctor of the Church. Although he is known today primarily as an historian, he was known in his own time as a teacher, poet, chronologist (the AD, BC ordering of time is his invention) and, above all, a Biblical scholar of international repute. His Latin translation of the Bible was still in use throughout the world until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. For the greatest of English writers it is also ironic that he wrote almost entirely in Latin. However, his choice of name for the people of his own country gave us the distinct national identity.
Although we know so little about Bede biographically we do know what his daily routine would have been. The seven year old Bede, having swapped his clothes for the standard monastic garb, would have had to quickly acclimatise himself to the rigorous life of his cloister. His daily life would have revolved strictly around the eight ‘canonical hours’, marked by the unrelenting chiming of the abbey bells. At midnight, Bede would have shuffled bleary eyed into chapel for Matins. Three short hours later he would return for Compline. As wax candles would not make an appearance until the fourteenth century, these services would be conducted almost entirely in the dark.
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Anglo-Saxon Script. Manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C II, fol. 87v.
Bède le Vénérable et Isidore de Séville : représentation symbolique du monde (Opuscula) manuscrit latin, Xe siècle, encres sur parchemin Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg
These nocturnal services usually consisted of the chanting of three psalms, three antiphons and three lessons. These could be modified to mark specific saints days and varied in length but inevitably restricted the community to only a few precious hours of sleep as they would be gathering for the office of Prime in the chapter house at six o’clock sharp. The daylight hours would be taken up with private masses, more services and physical, domestic labours as the monasteries had to be self sufficient. In their, admittedly not copious, spare time, monks were expected to contribute to the spiritual life of the abbey by copying precious manuscripts or teaching the oblates. It seems to have suited Bede as he never strayed far from home and never sought to rise in the hierarchy above the level of priest. He seems like someone utterly content in his calling.
For Bede, English History really begins with Gregory’s mission to convert the angelic heathens of the British Isles. There is a sense of destiny which colours Bede’s account of the coming of Christ’s teaching to England. Bede rejoiced in an England united under one God well before Alfred of Wessex dreamed of an England united under one king. Without the sense of common identity supplied by Bede, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms could not have been fused into one under Alfred’s grandson. By degrees, the resident Vikings converted. Their English capital would go on to boast one of the greatest of the medieval cathedrals. One nation, united under the Roman religion would rise from the ashes. Much of this was achieved by great feats of arms but the victory of the faith was as much Bede’s victory. By presenting the story of England the way he did, he created a bedrock of faith which inspired the English fightback and continues to inspire us today. Bede’s biblical commentaries allowed Bibical study to take root and gave Christian teaching a rootedness and depth it had lacked up to that time.
