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seek to know them," and he has generally been supposed to be Bede.
In the "Ecclesiastical History" (IV, 3) there is an allusion to Bede s teachers, one of whom,
Trumbert, educated at Lastingham under Ceadda, is mentioned by name. The monastery of
Wearmouth and Jarrow must have offered exceptional facilities for study. Benedict had enriched
it with many treasures which he brought with him from his travels. Chief among these was the
famous library which he founded and which was enlarged by Abbot Ceolfrid. Here Bede acquired
that wide and varied learning revealed in his historical, scientific, and theological works. He studied
with particular care and reverence the patristic writings; his theological treatises were, as he says,
"compiled out of the works of the venerable Fathers." He must have had a considerable knowledge
of Greek, probably he knew some Hebrew. Though he is not wholly free from the mediaeval
churchman s distrust of pagan authors, he constantly betrays his acquaintance with them, and the
sense of form which must unconsciously influence the student of classical literature has passed into
his own writings and preserved him from the barbarism of monkish Latin. His style is singularly
clear, simple, and fluent, as free from obscurity as from affectation and bombast.
Thus was the foundation laid of that sound learning upon which his widespread influence both
as a teacher and writer was reared. "I always took delight," he tells us, "in learning, or teaching, or
writing." Probably his writing was, as is so often the case, the outcome of his teaching; his object
in both is to meet "the needs of the brethren." One of his pupils was Archbishop Egbert, the founder
of the school of York, which gave a fresh impulse to learning, not only in England, but through
Alcuin in France, at a time when a revival was most to be desired.
It was to Egbert that he paid one of the only two visits which he records. In the "Epistola ad
Ecgbertum" he alludes to a short stay he had made with him the year before, and declines, on
account of the illness which proved to be his last, an invitation to visit him again. He visited
Lindisfarne in connection with his task of writing the life of Cuthbert. Otherwise we have no
authentic record of any absence from the monastery. The story that he went to Rome at the request
of Pope Sergius, founded on a statement of William of Malmesbury, is now regarded as highly
11
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England The Venerable Bede
improbable. The oldest MS. of the letter of Sergius, requesting Ceolfrid to send one of his monks
to Rome, has no mention of the name of Bede. If such an event had ever disturbed his accustomed
course of life, it is inconceivable that he should nowhere allude to it. Still less is the assertion that
he lived and taught at Cambridge one which need be seriously debated by the present generation.
We may fairly assume that, except for a few short absences such as the visits to York and Lindisfarne,
his whole life was spent in the monastery. It must have been a life of unremitting toil. His writings,
numerous. as they are, covering a wide range of subjects and involving the severest study, can only
have been a part of his work; he had, besides, his duties as priest, teacher, and member of a religious
community to fulfil. Even the manual labour of his literary work must have been considerable. He
did not employ an amanuensis, and he had not the advantages with regard to copyists which a
member of one of the larger monasteries might have had. "Ipse mihi dictator simul notarius
(=shorthand writer) et librarius (=copyist)," he writes. Yet he never flags. Through all the outward
monotony of his days his own interest remains fresh. He "takes delight" ("dulce habui") in it all. It
is a life full of eager activity in intellectual things, of a keen and patriotic interest in the wider life
beyond the monastery walls, which shows itself sadly enough in his reflections on the evils of the
times, of the ardent charity which spends itself in labour for the brethren, and, pervading the whole,
that spirit of quiet obedience and devotion which his own simple words describe as "the observance
of monastic rule and the daily charge of singing in the Church." We can picture him, at the appointed
hours, breaking off his absorbing occupations to take his place at the daily offices, lest, as he
believed, he should fail to meet the angels there. Alcuin records a saying of his, "I know that angels
visit the canonical hours and the congregations of the brethren. What if they do not find me among
the brethren? May they not say, Where is Bede? "
It is probably here, in this harmony of work and devotion, that we may find the secret of the
fascination in the record of his uneventful days. It reconciles the sharp antithesis between the active
and the contemplative life. It seems to attain to that ideal of "toil unsever d from tranquillity" which
haunts us all, but which we have, almost ceased to associate with the life of man under present
conditions. Balance, moderation, or rather, that rare quality which has been well called "the sanity
of saintliness," these give a unity to the life of Bede and preserve him from the exaggerations of
the conventual ideal. With all his admiration for the ascetic life, he recognizes human limitations.
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