Along with Thucydides, Herodotus, and Eusebius, St. Bede – often called the Venerable – is credited with helping establish the modern discipline we know as “history.”
The autobiographical section of his most famous work, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, explains how the young Bede was born in the territory of the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northeast England sometime around 673 AD, and at age 7 was put in the charge of the monks there. Dedicating his life to scholarship and the liturgy, he gathered with his fellow monks eight times throughout the day and night to chant the Divine Office for decades.
Thus, Bede was a quintessential Christian thinker steeped in liturgical prayer, the Old and New Testaments, and the writings of the Church Fathers. His contributions to theology include extensive paschal tables helping to settle a dispute between Gaelic and Roman Christians over the dating of Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox (a complicated matter that involved study of both the lunar and solar calendars), popularizing the Anno Domini (AD) dating system used by most of the world today, and highlighting Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory as the first “doctors” of the church.
In 1899, Pope Leo XIII included Bede himself among this ever-growing list of men and women recognized for their brilliance and sanctity.
A skilled linguist, bibliophile, astronomer and numerologist, Bede’s “historical” texts are much more widely read than his beloved commentaries on the Scriptures. But intricately decorated copies of biblical and pastoral texts from this period, such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, shed a light on the painstaking process of creating, copying and artistically embellishing such gorgeous finished products, which embodied the life of “ora et labora” (prayer and work) of so many generations of medieval scribes.
Bede was also respected as one of the era’s greatest teachers, hagiographers and poets.
Last week, I knelt silently in front of Bede’s tomb in Durham Cathedral in the last moments of twilight before the church closed. Other than the guards locking up outside, I was the only person in the enormous building, one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Europe and the setting which was digitally reworked to serve as Hogwart’s in the Harry Potter films.
Moments before, I had accepted a full-time position at Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies. In addition to my own academic research, a large part of my daily life in England will revolve around the Centre’s Receptive Ecumenism project, endorsed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The work seeks to reframe the dialogue between Catholics and other Christian brothers and sisters by asking not “What can we teach these other traditions?” but “What gifts can we receive from their life in Christ and the Spirit?”
For Bede, who supposedly never travelled further than York in his lifetime, my journey to follow Christ’s call across the Atlantic might well have been unfathomable. (Especially since my last trip over and back lasted a total of 60 hours from leaving the States to being asleep in my own bed). Yet, in those quiet, darkening moments I felt a connection to this revered scholar, historian and saint and drew strength from his intercession and dedication to Christ as the incarnate logos and wisdom of God. A number of times I reread Bede’s own words etched above his final resting place:
“Christ is the morning star, who when the night of this world is past, brings to his saints the promise of the light of life and opens to them everlasting day.”
Bede has been a light for Anglo-Saxons and the rest of Christianity for well over a thousand years. St. Boniface described him as “an inspired priest and student of the Sacred Scriptures, a lantern that shone forth in the church.” To live and work in such close proximity to his world will undoubtedly be a precious blessing in my own humble life’s journey, for “how much better is it to gain wisdom than gold, understanding rather than silver.”
Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., of Collingswood, is a Research Associate at Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies in Northeast England.
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