Beda was born in 672, in the neighbourhood of Wearmouth, two years before Biscop founded an abbey there. Of this abbey Beda became an inmate in his seventh year, under Abbot Biscop. He was afterwards moved to the sister foundation at Jarrow, under Abbot Ceolfrid, and there he lived, with rare absences, the remainder of his life. He was ordained deacon at the early age of nineteen; in his thirtieth year he was ordained priest; he died in his sixty-third year, A.D. 735. He was a very prolific author, and he has left us, at the end of his most considerable work, a sketch of his life, and a list of his writings, down to the fifty-ninth year of his age, A.D. 731. The bulk of his works are theological, chiefly in the form of commentaries, and they are little more than extracts from the best known of the Fathers. This was adapted to the needs of the time, and Bede’s commentaries were held in great esteem during the whole period. Ælfric, in the tenth century, used them largely for his “Homilies.”
Of all Bede’s works, the chronological made the greatest immediate impression, and was of most general use at the time and for some centuries afterwards. The computation of Easter was the groundwork of the ecclesiastical year, and every church felt the benefit of his services. Chronology was then in its early maturity, and the Christian era was not yet a familiar method of reckoning. Bede was the first historian who arranged his materials according to the years from the Incarnation. He had made himself completely master of this subject, and he left it in such order that nothing more had to be done to it, or could be improved upon it, for many centuries.
His fullest and most detailed work on chronology is entitled “De Temporum Ratione,” and to this is added a chronicle of the world. On this elaborate work he was working down to A.D. 726. We have the authority of Ideler for saying that this is a complete guide to the calculation of times and festivals. He treats of the several divisions of time; and under the months, he speaks of the moon’s orbit (c. xvii.), and its importance for the calendar, and the relation of the moon to the tides (c. xxix.); then of the equinoxes and solstices, the varying length of the days, the seasons of the year, the intercalary day, the cycle of nineteen years, the reckoning Anno Domini (c. xlvii.), indictions, epacts, the determination of Easter. All these things are taught with theoretical thoroughness, as well as also in their practical application. He also (c. lxv.) made a table for Easter from A.D. 532, “when Dionysius began the first cycle,” to A.D. 1063.[66] This is followed by the “Chronicle or Six Ages of this World,” altogether a work that was a growing nucleus, and went on expanding down to the invention of printing and the revival of classical literature.
But the works on which his eminence permanently rests, and by which he made all posterity indebted to him, are his historical and biographical writings. He wrote a poem on the miracles of St. Cuthbert, and afterwards he wrote a prose narrative “Of the Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne;” and in this, though a new and independent work, something of the poem is reproduced. It is in this prose work that we find the call of Cuthbert on the night of Aidan’s death, the details of his hermit life on the rocky islet of Farne, to which he had retired for greater rigour of devotion, from which he was called back to be bishop at Lindisfarne, and to which after two years’ episcopate he again retired for the remnant of his life.
He wrote also a prose life of St. Felix, drawing his materials from the metrical life of that saint in hexameters by Paulinus.
His greatest biographical work is “Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, namely, Benedict, Ceolfrid, Easterwini, Sigfrid, and Hwetbert.” These were the heads of the two sister foundations with which his career was identified; and some of them had been his own teachers. The Life of Benedict is the most interesting, as might be expected, and it fills the largest part of the book.
Finally, his greatest work, the work which is a gift for all time, is his “Church History of the Anglian People.” This was the work of the author’s mature powers, and some of his earlier writings are made use of in it. In this history, which is divided into five books, there is, first, a summary of the history of Britain, from the time of Julius Cæsar down to the time of Gregory the Great. This part occupies twenty-two chapters, and is drawn from Orosius and Gildas and Constantius. The proper narrative of Bede begins at chap. xxiii., and there the conversion and early history of Saxon Christianity is given down to the time of the restoration of the old church of St. Saviour (Canterbury Cathedral), and the institution of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul (St. Augustine’s). The last chapter is of the decisive battle of Degsastan, which determined the superiority of the Angles over the Scotti. The second book begins with the death of Gregory and goes down to the death of Æduini, King of Northumbria, A.D. 633. In this book occurs a remarkable speech made by one of Æduini’s nobles, in the debate about a change of religion:—
“The present life of man in the world, O king, is, by comparison with that time which is unknown, like as when you are sitting at table with your aldermen and thanes in the winter season, the fire blazing in the midst, and the hall cheerfully warm, while the whirlwinds rage everywhere outside and drive the rain or the snow; one of the sparrows comes in and flies swiftly through the house, entering at one door and out at the other. So long as it is inside, it is sheltered from the storm, but when the brief momentary calm is past, the bird is in the cold as before, and is no more seen. So this human life is visible for a time: but of what follows or what went before we are utterly ignorant. Wherefore, if this new doctrine should offer anything surer, it seems worthy to be followed.” (ii., 13.)
The third book goes down to the appointment of Theodore to be Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 665.
This book contains the decision for Roman unity, and the defeat and departure of Colman and his Scotian clergy. Bede was a hearty adherent of the Roman obedience, and his affectionate tribute to the work of the Irish is all the more remarkable. He pauses upon the record of their departure as upon the close of a good time that had been, and to which he looks wistfully back.