[11] The first of Beda’s incidents of the Barking monastery relates to a miraculous sign in the heavens showing where the cemetery was to be. It begins: “Cum tempestas saepe dictae cladis, late cuncta depopulans, etiam partem monasterii hujus illam qua viri tenebantur, invasisset, et passim quotidie raperentur ad Dominum.”
[12] “Erat in eodem monasterio [Barking] puer trium circiter, non amplius annorum, Æsica nomine, qui propter infantilem adhuc aetatem in virginum Deo dedicatarum solebat cella nutriri, ibique medicari. Hic praefata pestilentia tactus ubi ad extrema pervenit clamavit tertio unam de consecratis Christo virginibus, proprio eam nomine quasi praesentem alloquens ‘Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd’; et sic terminans temporalem vitam intravit aeternam. At virgo illa, quam moriens vocabat, ipso quo vocata est die de hac luce subtracta, et ilium qui se vocavit ad regnum coeleste secuta est.” Beda, p. 265. Then follows the story of a nun dying of the pestilence in the same monastery.
[13] Beda, Lib. IV. cap. 14. In addition to the instances in the text, which I have collected from Beda’s Ecclesiastical History, I find two mentioned by Willan in his “Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox,” (Miscell. Works, London, 1821, pp. 109, 110): “About the year 672, St Cedda, Bishop of the East Saxons, being on a visitation to the monastery of Lestingham, was infected with a contagious distemper, and died on the seventh day. Thirty monks, who came to visit the tomb of their bishop, were likewise infected, and most of them died” (Vita S. Ceddae, VII. Jan. p. 375. Cf. Beda, IV. 3). Again: “In the course of the year 685, the disease re-appeared at Lindisfarne, (Holy Island), St Cuthbert’s abbacy, and in 686 spread through the adjoining district, where it particularly affected children” (Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 33). Willan’s erudition has been used in support of a most improbable hypothesis, that the pestilence of those years, in monasteries and elsewhere, was smallpox.
[14] Historia Abbatum Gyrvensium, auctore anonymo, §§ 13 and 14. (App. to vol. II. of Beda’s works. Eng. Hist. Society’s edition, p. 323.)
§ 13. Qui dum transmarinis moraretur in locis [Benedict] ecce subita pestilentiae procella Brittaniam corripiens lata nece vastavit, in qua plurimi de utroque ejus monasterio, et ipse venerabilis ac Deo dilectus abbas Eosterwini raptus est ad Dominum, quarto ex quo abbas esse coeperat anno.
§ 14. Porro in monasterio cui Ceolfridus praeerat omnes qui legere, vel praedicare, vel antiphonas ac responsoria dicere possent ablati sunt excepto ipso abbate et uno puerulo, qui ab ipso nutritus et eruditus.
In the Article “Baeda,” Dict. Nat. Biog., the Rev. W. Hunt points out that the boy referred to in the above passage would have been Beda himself.
[15] The history of the name pestis flava ictericia is given by O’Donovan in a note to the passage in the Annals of the Four Masters, I. 275: “Icteritia vel aurigo, id est abundantia flavae bilis, per corpus effusae, hominemque pallidum reddentis,” is the explanation of P. O’S. Beare. The earliest mention of “yellow plague” appears to have been in an ancient life of St Gerald of Mayo, in Colgan’s Acta Sanctorum, at the calendar date of 13th March.
[16] Polychronicon, Rolls edition, V. 250.
[17] The Story of England, Rolls series, ed. Furnivall, II. 569.