Changing the World with His Pen
I really don’t work night and day, but it is quite true that I do toil hard to reach a right judgment on all that I read.
Bede, in response to a letter from Acca of Hexham
There is a scene in the movie Amadeus that is difficult to forget. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is propped up in bed, dying. He is only thirty-five. Around the room candles cast a golden glow and flicker as if mimicking the fading life of the musician. Longtime nemesis Antonio Salieri has decided to help Mozart with the last parts of his Requiem. He jots down what Mozart says, barely able to keep up with the maestro’s machine-gun delivery. Soon after, Mozart dies with the work unfinished.
Long before the great composer lived, another man would be faced with a similar situation. He was a British monk named Bede, a man of unique ability, gentle disposition, and relentless drive. Bede was to scholarly research and history what Mozart was to music. He was a master.
Born in northern England, seven-year-old Bede found himself in the care of monks, perhaps as an orphan. He lived with the monks of Wearmouth Abbey, eventually moving with them to a new monastery a short distance away. He seldom left the grounds and the few times he did it was to visit nearby friends. Bede would live the rest of his life behind the walls of that abbey.
His first teacher was the abbot, or head of the abbey, Benedict Biscop. Biscop was a nobleman who gave up everything to become a monk at the age of twenty-five. One thing he didn’t surrender was his love of books. He often returned from his trips with new tomes and Bede wasted no time learning from them.
Bede loved to study Scripture, and learned Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. He was not just a scholar with a particular interest in history, but he was also a man of faith. Of the forty books Bede wrote, thirty-two of them deal with biblical matters. Considering this, it is somewhat odd that he is best remembered for his historical accounts.
Bede was ordained as a deacon at the age of nineteen. Usually a man could not be ordained to that office until he had reached age twenty-five. This was rare and is a testimony to the high regard he had earned. At the age of thirty, Bede was ordained as a priest. Each day he would carry out his duties as a monk: prayer, worship, teaching, and, in his case, study. He was so dedicated to his work that he turned down the opportunity to become abbot because its demands would take him away from what he considered his true calling.
“It has ever been my delight to learn or teach or write.”1 For some, deep study is boring and difficult. For Bede it was the purpose of his life. If the libraries of the day used the Dewey Decimal System, then Bede’s books would be in at least seven categories. He wrote educational works for his students, expository works on the Scriptures, letters, sermons, poetry, biographies of the saints, and history. It was his work in the last category that had the greatest impact on the world and Christian community.
The Ecclesiastical History of England covers the span between 55 BC to 73 AD. Bede also made use of “BC” (before Christ) and “AD” (anno Domini, “year of our Lord”). Prior to this, there had been no formal, unified history of Britain. By creating this work, he recorded many stories and accounts that would otherwise have been lost. He researched and interviewed, and did so with the goal of finding the facts. He wanted real accounts, not fabricated stories. The heroes were not warriors, as was common in the oral histories of the day, but people of great faith. He consulted and cited over 140 sources. Much of what we know about the history of England during that time we know because of Bede’s work.
To His Dying Breath
In 735, Bede grew ill. He sensed that his days were numbered. He had been working on a translation of the Gospel of John, translating it from Latin to English. As he felt his life slipping away, he pushed his pupil Cuthbert to write faster, fearing like Mozart did that he would die before the work was completed.
Some of his last words tell us much about the man.
I have some little articles of value in my chest, such as pepper, napkins and incense: run quickly, and bring the priests of our monastery to me, that I may distribute among them the gifts which God has bestowed on me. The rich in this world are bent on giving gold and silver and other precious things. But I, in charity, would joyfully give my brothers what God has given me.2
He also said, “It is time that I returned to him who formed me out of nothing: I have lived long; my merciful judge well foresaw my life for me; the time of my dissolution draws nigh; for I desire to die and be with Christ.”3
Bede finished his work. Back in his monastic cell, he knelt at his bed and began to sing the Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit . . .”
His fellow monks found him dead on the floor of his room.
Bede lived in an age not known for great scholarship. Yet he undertook the monumental task of writing a history of the English church, and did so in a time when gathering accurate information was difficult. This he did, and his other works as well, as a gift to God and the world. He raised the level of religious scholarship in his day. And he introduced a concept we use without question today: BC and AD.
He, like a handful of others, believed that what had happened in the past mattered in the present. Much of what we know about the early English church, we know because of a monk living behind the walls of an abbey.