[66] Sandys, i. 466; Camb. Eng. Lit., i. 75.
[67] Camb. Eng. Lit., i. 45.
[68] These foundations were regarded as one house, the inmates being bound together by “a common and perpetual affection and intimacy.”
[69] “Innumerabilem librorum omnis generis copiam apportavit.”—Vitae Abbatum, § 4.
[70] “Copiosissima et nobilissima bibliotheca.”—Ib. § 11.
[71] Lanciani, Anc. Rome, 201.
[72] Ceolfrid, Benedict Biscop’s successor, added a number of books to the library, among them three copies of the Vulgate, and one of the older version. One copy of the Vulgate Ceolfrid took with him to Rome (716) to give to the Pope. He died on the way. The codex did not go to Rome; now, it is in the Laurentian Library, Florence, where it is known as the Codex Amiatinus. The writing is Italian, or at any rate foreign, so it must have been imported, or written at Jarrow by foreign scribes. This volume is the chief authority for the text of Jerome’s translation of the Scriptures.
[73] H. E., v. 24.
[74] Bede frequently quotes Cicero, Virgil, and Horace; usually selecting some telling phrase, e.g. “caeco carpitur igni” (H. E. ii. 12). In his De Natura rerum he owes a good deal to Pliny and Isidore. In his commentaries on the Scriptures he displays an extent of reading which we have no space to give any idea of. His chronologies were based on Jerome’s edition of Eusebius, on Augustine and Isidore. In his H. E. he uses “Pliny, Solinus, Orosius, Eutropius, Marcellinus Comes, Gildas, probably the Historia Brittonum, a Passion of St. Alban, and the Life of Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius”; while he refers to lives of St. Fursa, St. Ethelburg, and to Adamnan’s work on the Holy Places. Cf. Sandys, i. 468; Camb. Lit., i. 80-81. Bede also got first-hand knowledge: the Lindisfarne records provided him with material on Cuthbert; information came to him from Canterbury about Southern affairs and from Lastingham about Mercian affairs. Nothelm got material from the archives at Rome for him.
[75] Tr. in Morley, Eng. Writers, ii. 160.