Bede
- d. 735
English monk at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow; author of the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and works on various religious and theological subjects.
See also references for related subjects.
Ireland, Colin A., The Gaelic background of Old English poetry before Bede, Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2022.
Front matter -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Contents -- List of figures -- Introduction -- 1. Early vernacular poetic practice -- 2. Early historical poets before Bede -- 3. Professional poets and vernacular narratives -- 4. The church and the spread of bilingual learning -- 5. The ethnic mix of Anglo-Saxon empire -- 6. The long century of Anglo-Saxon conversion -- 7. Cædmon’s world at Whitby -- Afterword -- Bibliography -- Index.
abstract:
Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.
Joyce, Stephen J., The legacy of Gildas: constructions of authority in the early medieval West, Studies in Celtic History, 43, Martlesham: Boydell Press, 2022.
Figures -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: 1. Narratives for early medieval Britain and Ireland -- 2. Images of Gildas -- 3. Gildas’s De excidio: authority and the monastic ideal -- 4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great -- 5. Gildas and the Hibernensis -- 6. Bede and Gildas -- Conclusion: The legacy of Gildas -- Appendix: De communicatione Gildas -- Bibliography -- Index.
Aist, Rodney, From topography to text: the image of Jerusalem in the writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede, Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 30, Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
abstract:
A break-out study on Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the Jerusalem pilgrim texts, From Topography to Text uses new methodological findings on the Christian topography of Jerusalem to examine the source material, religious imagination and mental maps in the related writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede.
From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede uses topographical detail to examine the source material, religious imagination and the image of Jerusalem in three related Latin texts from the fifth, seventh and eighth centuries. The work introduces an original methodology for analyzing the Jerusalem pilgrim texts, defined by their core interest in the commemorative topography of the Christian holy places. By newly identifying the topographical material in Adomnán’s description of Jerusalem, the study exposes key distortions in the text, its exclusive intramural focus on the Holy Sepulchre and the eschatological image of New Jerusalem that emerges from its description of contemporary Jerusalem. The study verifies the post-Byzantine provenance of Adomnán’s topographical material, namely, the oral report of Arculf, thus redressing scholarly ambivalence regarding Adomnán’s contemporary source. The new insights into Adomnán’s De locis sanctis, including its mental map of Jerusalem, provide a template with which to analyze the text’s relationship with the writings of Eucherius and Bede. While Bede’s De locis sanctis has commonly been regarded as an epitome of Adomnán’s work, when the sequence, structure and images of the texts are compared, Eucherius not Adomnán is, for Bede, the authoritative text.
From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede uses topographical detail to examine the source material, religious imagination and the image of Jerusalem in three related Latin texts from the fifth, seventh and eighth centuries. The work introduces an original methodology for analyzing the Jerusalem pilgrim texts, defined by their core interest in the commemorative topography of the Christian holy places. By newly identifying the topographical material in Adomnán’s description of Jerusalem, the study exposes key distortions in the text, its exclusive intramural focus on the Holy Sepulchre and the eschatological image of New Jerusalem that emerges from its description of contemporary Jerusalem. The study verifies the post-Byzantine provenance of Adomnán’s topographical material, namely, the oral report of Arculf, thus redressing scholarly ambivalence regarding Adomnán’s contemporary source. The new insights into Adomnán’s De locis sanctis, including its mental map of Jerusalem, provide a template with which to analyze the text’s relationship with the writings of Eucherius and Bede. While Bede’s De locis sanctis has commonly been regarded as an epitome of Adomnán’s work, when the sequence, structure and images of the texts are compared, Eucherius not Adomnán is, for Bede, the authoritative text.
Ohashi, Masako, “The ‘real’ addressee(s) of Bede’s Letter to Wicthed”, in: Pádraic Moran, and Immo Warntjes (eds), Early medieval Ireland and Europe: chronology, contacts, scholarship. A Festschrift for Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, 14, Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 119–135.
abstract:
Bede’s letter ‘On the vernal equinox, after Anatolius’ was written between AD 725 and 731. The letter is addressed to his friend Wicthed, but the study of both the letter and the Historia ecclesiastica implies that Bede had a different readership in his mind. It is argued in this article that the ‘real’ addressees were the Irish monks expelled from Pictland in AD 717, who had access to the letter of Abbot Ceolfrith, which included a problematic passage on the vernal equinox; this Bede tried to rectify in the Letter to Wicthed.
Mac Carron, Máirín, “Bede, Irish computistica and annus Mundi”, Early Medieval Europe 23:3 (August, 2015): 290–307.
abstract:
Bede’s decision to diverge from the mainstream chronological tradition, based on the Septuagint, in favour of the Vulgate for chronology has generally been explained by his concerns about contemporary apocalypticism. This essay will argue that Bede’s choice of Annus Mundi was also greatly influenced by Irish computistica. These texts incorporate a chronological framework – influenced by Victorius of Aquitaine’s Easter Table – that was implicitly and explicitly apocalyptic and provided a date for the Passion that Bede objected to. Bede was greatly indebted to Irish computistica but adopting the Vulgate Annus Mundi allowed him to assert his own views on chronology.
(source: EME)
Darby, Peter, Bede and the end of time, Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. xv + 261 pp.
Warntjes, Immo, “Irische Komputistik zwischen Isidor von Sevilla und Beda Venerabilis: Ursprung, karolingische Rezeption und generelle Forschungsperspektiven”, Viator 42 (2011): 1–32.
abstract:
Computistical studies of the past centuries have primarily focused on the works of well-known individuals, while anonymous texts have been widely left unconsidered, leading to an immense overrating of the scientific achievements of the scholars known by name. Only within the past few years have the intellectual milieus that produced and influenced the known authors received some attention. This article defines on a textual basis Irish and Anglo-Saxon scientific milieus between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede by providing a survey of all known computistical works of this period. On this basis, the Irish scientific contribution to the Carolingian educational and intellectual renaissance is assessed before the more general desiderata in the modern study of early medieval computistica are outlined at the end of this paper.
Warntjes, Immo, The Munich computus: text and translation. Irish computistics between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its reception in Carolingian times, Stuttgart, 2010.
Schmidt, Jürgen, “Die irischen Weltannalen und Beda”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 57 (2009–2010): 113–123.
Sharman, Stephen, “Visions of divine light in the writings of Adomnán and Bede”, in: Rodney Aist, Thomas Owen Clancy, Thomas OʼLoughlin, and Jonathan M. Wooding (eds), Adomnán of Iona: theologian, lawmaker, peacemaker, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010. 289–302.
Bracken, Damian, “Virgil the Grammarian and Bede: a preliminary study”, Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006): 7–21.
abstract:
The chapters in Bede's De temporum ratione begin with an etymology for the name of the subject to be examined. Sources and analogues for some have not hitherto been identified. This article shows that some of these etymologies of words for the divisions of time come ultimately, though perhaps not directly, from bk XI of Virgil the Grammarian's Epitomae. These accounts of the origins of calendrical and cosmological terms wound their way through early western computistical works and eventually into Bede's De temporum ratione. The article identifies examples of Virgil's influence on anonymous early medieval biblical commentaries and discusses their significance as pointers towards their place of composition.
Lebecq, Stéphane, Michel Perrin, and Olivier Szerwiniack (eds), Bède le Vénérable: entre tradition et posterité, Centre de Recherche sur l'Histoire de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest, 34, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2005.
Proceedings
Hleno.revues.org: <link>
Flechner, Roy, “Dagán, Columbanus, and the Gregorian mission”, Peritia 19 (2005): 65–90.
abstract:
An attempt to sketch the biography of Dagán, the Irish bishop who met the Gregorian missionaries in Kent, and to establish whether the Irish church concerned itself with the mission. Several categories of sources are considered: contemporary epistles (by Gregory, Columbanus, Lawrence), annals, canon law (Hibernensis, Synodus Patricii) liturgical material (Stowe Missal, martyrologies), hagiography (saints’ Lives and genealogies), saga (Bórama), and Bede’s HE.
Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí, “Bede’s Irish computus”, in: Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Irish history and chronology, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003. 201–212.
Breeze, Andrew, “Elaphus the Briton, St Germanus, and Bede”, The Journal of Theological Studies NS 53:2 (October, 2002): 554–557.
Kirby, D. P., “Cuthbert, Boisil of Melrose and the Northumbrian priest Ecgberht: some historical and hagiographical connections”, in: Michael Richter, and Jean-Michel Picard (eds), Ogma: essays in Celtic studies in honour of Próinséas Ní Chatháin, Dublin: Four Courts, 2002. 48–53.
Foley, W. Trent, and Arthur G. Holder, Bede: a biblical miscellany, Translated Texts for Historians, 28, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.
Higham, N. J., An English empire: Bede and the early Anglo-Saxon kings, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Law, Vivien, “The study of Latin grammar in eighth-century Southumbria”, Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983): 43–71.
Jones, Charles W., Beda Venerabilis. Opera didascalica 3: Magnus circulus seu tabula paschalis. Kalendarium sive Martyrologium. De temporibus liber. Epistolae (ad Pleguinam, ad Helmwaldum, ad Wicthedum); Appendices, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 123 C, Turnhout: Brepols, 1980.
Anonymus — Accessus ad auctorem Bedam ( CPL 1565° ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Anonymus — De nativitate lunae (sive De initio primi mensis) ( CPL 2313, CHL 537 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Anonymus — Argumentum ad inveniendum locum XIIII lunae paschalis per XVIIII annos (sive De initio primi mensis) ( CPL 2314, CHL 537 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Anonymus — De ratione embolismorum ( CPL 2315, CHL 537 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis — De temporibus liber ( CPL 2318 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis — Epistula ad Pleguinam de aetatibus saeculi ( CPL 2319 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis — Epistula ad Wicthedum de paschae celebratione ( CPL 2321 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis — Magnus circulus seu Tabula paschalis annis Domini DXXXII ad MLXIII ( CPL 2321a ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis — Epistula ad Helmwaldum de bissexto ( CPL 2322 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis (dubium) — De cursu solis per mensem et signa qualiter bissextilem diem quarto suo compleat anno ( CPL 2323 ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Beda Venerabilis (dubium) — Ex Bedae computo (?) ( CPL 2323a ) — ed. C.W. Jones; Anonymus — Epistola de Pascha et cyclo ( CPL 2323b ) — ed. C.W. Jones.
Lapidge, Michael, “Some remnants of Bede’s lost Liber epigrammatum”, The English Historical Review 90:357 (October, 1975): 798–820.
Bischoff, Bernhard, Mittelalterliche Studien: ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols, vol. 1, Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966.
112 [XIII] “Zur Kritik der Heerwagenschen Ausgabe von Bedas Werken (Basel 1563)”
Derolez, R., Runica manuscripta: the English tradition, Rijksuniversiteit te Gent. Werken uitgegeven door de Faculteit van de Wijsbegeerte en Letteren, 118, Brugge: De Tempel, 1954.
