dimanche 27 mai 2012

Saint BÈDE LE VÉNÉRABLE, moine, confesseur et Docteur de l'Église


Saint Bède le Vénérable

Moine, Docteur de l'Eglise (+ 735)


On disait de lui: "C'est l'homme le plus savant de notre temps. Pourtant Bède n'est jamais sorti de son monastère anglais." C'était un petit orphelin de Wearmouth dans le Northamberland quand, à sept ans, on le confie à saint Benoît Biscop, abbé du monastère local. Le petit Bède trouve là sa vraie famille, la famille bénédictine. Quand il fut grand, l'abbé l'envoya fonder avec saint Ceolfrid l'abbaye-sœur de Jarrow. Il y demeura toute sa vie, réalisant en sa personne le modèle du moine bénédictin, partageant son temps entre le travail manuel (on dit de lui qu'il exerçait l'office de boulanger), l'étude et la prière. Son oeuvre, qu'il appelle lui-même une compilation d'extraits des anciens (la bibliothèque de monastère était d'une richesse étonnante pour un nouveau monastère) est considérable: œuvres exégétiques, historiques, liturgiques, poétiques. Il fut le premier historien de l'Angleterre, des origines à l'année 731, et nul historien de l'Europe ne peut s'en passer. Il introduisit la connaissance des Pères latins dans ce pays et fut le premier auteur à s'être servi de l'anglais dans ses écrits. Son oeuvre lui valut le surnom de vénérable. Sa mort fut humble et tranquille comme toute sa vie. La veille, il dictait encore, assis sur son lit, une traduction anglaise de l'évangile selon saint Jean.

Au cours de l'audience générale du 18 février 2009, Benoît XVI a tracé un portrait de Bède le vénérable, un saint anglais né vers 672 en Northumbrie. A sept ans ses parents le confièrent à un monastère bénédictin où il fut éduqué. Saint Bède est considéré comme un des principaux érudits du haut moyen-âge. "Son enseignement et la célébrité de ses écrits lui acquirent l'amitié des principaux personnages de son temps, qui encouragèrent des travaux qui profitaient à tant de personnes".

L'Ecriture, a rappelé le Pape, fut la source des réflexions théologiques de Bède qui voyait dans les évènements de l'Ancien comme du Nouveau Testament un chemin conduisant au Christ. Evoquant le premier Temple de Jérusalem, à la construction duquel prirent part des païens, en offrant les matériaux de prix et l'expérience de leurs maîtres, il a rappelé que les apôtres ont contribué à bâtir l'Eglise, qui a grandi ensuite grâce aux apports juifs, grecs et latins, puis grâce aux peuples comme les Celtes irlandais ou les Anglo-Saxons comme aimait à le souligner Bède.

Puis le Saint-Père a cité certaines œuvres de Bède le vénérable comme sa Grande Chronique dont la chronologie servit de base à un calendrier universel, ou son Histoire ecclésiastique des peuples angles, qui fit de lui le père de l'historiographie anglaise. L'Eglise dont Bède fit le portrait se caractérisait par sa catholicité, sa fidélité à la tradition et son ouverture au monde, mais aussi par sa "recherche de l'unité dans la diversité..., par son apostolicité et sa romanité. C'est pourquoi Bède considéra-t-il capital de convaincre les diverses Eglises celtiques irlandaises et pictes de célébrer ensemble Pâques selon le calendrier romain".

Bède fut aussi un "maître de premier ordre en théologie liturgique". Ses homélies habituèrent "les fidèles à célébrer dans la joie les mystères de la foi et de la vivre de manière cohérente dans l'attente de leur dévoilement final avec le retour du Seigneur... Grâce à un travail théologique intégrant Bible, liturgie et histoire, l’œuvre de Bède contient un message encore actuel pour les divers aspects de la vie chrétienne. Ainsi rappelle-t-il aux chercheurs leurs deux principaux devoirs, étudier les merveilles de la Parole de manière à les rendre attrayantes aux fidèles, et puis exposer les vérités dogmatiques hors de toute complication hérétique, en s'en tenant à la simplicité catholique qui est la vertu des petits et des humbles auxquels il plaît à Dieu de révéler les mystères du Royaume".

Selon l'enseignement de Bède, les pasteurs "doivent se consacrer avant tout à la prédication, qui ne doit pas se limiter aux sermons mais recourir à la vie des saints et aux images religieuses, aux processions et aux pèlerinages". Les personnes consacrées doivent s'occuper de l'apostolat, "en collaborant à l'action pastorale des évêques en faveur des jeunes communautés et en s'engageant dans l'évangélisation". Pour le saint érudit le Christ attend "une Eglise active...qui défriche de nouveaux terrains de culture..., qui insère l'Evangile dans le tissu social et dans les institutions culturelles". Il encourageait aussi "les laïcs à l'assiduité dans la formation religieuse...et leur expliquait comment prier de manière constante...en faisant de leurs actions une offrande spirituelle en union avec le Christ". L’œuvre de Bède le vénérable, qui mourut en mai 735, contribua fortement à la construction de l'Europe chrétienne. (source: VIS 090218)

Mémoire de saint Bède le Vénérable, prêtre et docteur de l’Église qui passa toute sa vie au service du Christ. Orphelin à l’âge de sept ans, il fut confié, au monastère de Wearmouth, à saint Benoît Biscop, puis par celui-ci à saint Céolfrid, au monastère de Jarrow en Northumbrie où il vécut comme moine tout le reste de sa vie, tout occupé à méditer et à commenter les saintes Écritures, à pratiquer avec soin l’observance régulière, à chanter chaque jour les louanges divines, trouvant son plaisir à apprendre, à enseigner et à écrire, jusqu’à sa mort en 735.

Martyrologe romain


SOURCE : http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/1213/Saint-Bede-le-Venerable.html

SAINT BÈDE LE VÉNÉRABLE

Confesseur et Docteur

(673-735)

Saint Bède naquit en Écosse, au bourg appelé aujourd'hui Girvan. A l'âge de sept ans, il fut donné au célèbre moine anglais saint Benoît Biscop, pour être élevé et instruit selon l'usage bénédictin. Son nom, en anglo-saxon, signifie prière, et qualifie bien toute la vie de cet homme de Dieu, si vénéré de ses contemporains qu'il en reçut le surnom de Vénérable, que la postérité lui a conservé.

A sa grande piété s'ajouta une science extraordinaire. A dix-neuf ans, il avait parcouru le cercle de toutes les sciences religieuses et humaines: latin, grec poésie, sciences exactes, mélodies grégoriennes, liturgie sacrée, Écriture Sainte surtout, rien ne lui fut étranger. Mais la pensée de Dieu présidait à tous ses travaux: "O bon Jésus, s'écriait-il, Vous avez daigné m'abreuver des ondes suaves de la science, accordez-moi surtout d'atteindre jusqu'à Vous, source de toute sagesse."

D'élève passé maître, il eut jusqu'à 600 disciples et plus à instruire; ce n'est pas un petit éloge que de citer seulement saint Boniface, Alcuin, comme des élèves par lesquels sa science rayonna jusqu'en France et en Allemagne. Étudier, écrire était sa vie; mais l'étude ne desséchait point son coeur tendre et pieux; il rédigeait tous ses immenses écrits de sa propre main: les principaux monuments de sa science sont ses vastes commentaires sur l'Écriture Sainte et son Histoire ecclésiastique d'Angleterre.

Le Saint eut à porter longtemps la lourde Croix de la jalousie et fut même accusé d'hérésie: ainsi Dieu perfectionne Ses Saints et les maintient dans l'humilité. Il n'avait que soixante-deux ans quand il se sentit pris d'une extrême faiblesse. Jusqu'à la fin, son esprit fut appliqué à l'étude et son coeur à la prière; tourné vers le Lieu saint, il expira en chantant: Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.

Abbé L. Jaud, Vie des Saints pour tous les jours de l'année, Tours, Mame, 1950

SOURCE : http://magnificat.ca/cal/fr/saints/saint_bede_le_venerable.html

Ni Dieu sans le prochain, ni le prochain sans Dieu

Le parfait amour est celui par lequel il nous est commandé d’aimer le Seigneur de tout notre cœur, de toute notre âme et de toute notre force et le prochain comme nous-mêmes. Et l’amour de l’un ne peut être parfait sans l’amour de l’autre, car on ne peut aimer vraiment ni Dieu sans le prochain ni le prochain sans Dieu. Aussi, chaque fois que le Seigneur demande à Pierre s’il l’aime et que celui-ci répond qu’il l’aime en le prenant lui-même à témoin, à chaque reprise il conclut : « Pais mes brebis » ou « Pais mes agneaux » (Jn 21, 17.15) ; c’est comme s’il disait ouvertement qu’il n’y a qu’une véritable preuve d’amour total de Dieu, l’ardeur à prendre bien soin des frères.

Car celui qui néglige l’acte de piété qu’il peut accomplir en faveur d’un frère montre bien qu’il aime moins son Créateur, dont il méprise le commandement de venir en aide aux besoins du prochain. Oui, il ne peut y avoir de charité sans la grâce de l’inspiration divine : le Seigneur le laisse penser d’une manière voilée lorsque, interrogeant Pierre au sujet d’elle, il l’appelle « Simon, fils de Jean », un nom que personne ne lui donne nulle part ailleurs.

St Bède le Vénérable

(Traduction de G. Bady pour Magnificat.)

Moine de l’abbaye de Jarrow, en Angleterre, saint Bède le Vénérable († 735) fut l’auteur de l’Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, ainsi qu’un fécond exégète. / Homélie 22, trad. de G. Bady pour Magnificat

SOURCE : https://fr.aleteia.org/daily-prayer/jeudi-8-juin-2/meditation-de-ce-jour-1/


Saint Bède le Vénérable

docteur de l'église catholique

672-735

Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique

I. VIE.

Bède, le plus grand personnage intellectuel de son pays et de son siècle, l’émule des Cassiodore et des Isidore de Séville, naquit en 673, à Jarrow, sur les terres de l’abbaye de Wearmouth, dans le Northumberland. Orphelin, il fut confié, dès l’âge de sept ans, par ses proches au saint et savant évêque abbé de Wearmouth, Benoit Biscop. Mais, trois ans après, celui-ci confia l’enfant à son coadjuteur Ceolfrid, qui allait fonder avec quelques religieux, près de l’embouchure de la Tyne, la colonie de Jarrow. C’est à que Bède reçut, à dix-neuf ans, le diaconat, et à trente ans, la prêtrise des mains de saint Jean de Beverley. C’est là qu’élève tour à tour et maître, il passa, sauf les voyages nécessités par ses études, le reste de sa vie, au milieu de ses confrères et de la foule des disciples qu’attirait sa renommée, en relations familières, sinon intimes, avec ce que l’Angleterre avait de plus grand et de meilleur, Ceowulf, roi de Northumbriens, saint Acca, évêque d’Hexham, Albin, le premier abbé anglo-saxon du monastère de saint Augustin à Cantorbéry, l’archevêque d’York, Egbert, etc., sans autre récréation que le chant quotidien du chœur, sans autre plaisir, à ce qu’il dit lui-même, que d’apprendre, d’enseigner et d’écrire. Bède mourut à Jarrow en odeur de sainteté, le 27 mai 735 ; ses reliques dérobées au XIe siècle et transportées à Durham, pour être réunie à celles de saint Cuthbert, n’échappèrent pas, sous Henri VIII, à la profanation générale des ossements des saints de la Northumbrie. La voix populaire, en saluant Bède, au IXe siècle, du nom de Vénérable, l’avait canonisé. Par un décret du 13 novembre 1899, Léon XIII l’a honoré du titre de docteur et a étendu sa fête à toute l’Eglise, en la fixant au 27 mai, jour de sa mort. Canoniste contemporain, 1900, p. 109-110. Cf. Analecta juris pontificii, Rome, 1855, t. I, col. 1317-1320.

II. OUVRAGES.

A la sincérité, à l’ardeur de la foi chrétienne, Bède allie, comme plus tard Alcuin, l’admiration, le goût, dirai-je le regret de la littérature classique. Saint Ambroise, saint Jérôme, saint Augustin, saint Grégoire le Grand, lui sont très familiers ; mais Aristote, Hippocrate, Cicéron, Sénèque et Pline, Lucrèce, Virgile, Ovide, Lucain, Stace, reviennent aussi dans sa mémoire. Il est théologien de profession ; mais l’astronomie et la météorologie, la physique et la musique, la chronologie et l’histoire, les mathématiques, la rhétorique, la grammaire, la versification le préoccupent vivement. C’est un moine, un prêtre, la lumière de l’Eglise contemporaine ; mais c’est en même temps un érudit, un lettré. L’humble moine de Jarrow maniait également le vers et la prose, l’anglo-saxon et le latin ; et nul doute qu’il sût le grec.

1° Vers.

Les œuvres poétiques de Bède sont, relativement, de peu de valeur. Dans la liste que Bède a rédigée lui-même, Hist. eccl., l. V, c. XXIV, P. L., t. XCV, col. 289-290, trois ans avant sa mort, de ses quarante-cinq ouvrages antérieurs, il mentionne deux recueils de poésies, un livre d’hymnes, les unes métriques, les autres rythmiques, et un livre d’épigrammes. Le Liber epigrammatum est perdu ; quant aux hymnes qui ont trouvé place dans les éditions de Bède, P. L., t. XCIV, col. 606-638, l’authenticité en est contestée. Un Martyrologe en vers, attribué à Bède, est tenu pareillement pour apocryphe, Ibid., col. 603-606. Le poème Vita metrica sancti Cuthberti episcopi Lindisfarnensis, ibid., col. 575-596, témoigne, sinon du génie poétique de l’auteur, du moins de son goût et de sa rare culture d’esprit. Bède nous a conservé, en l’insérant dans son Histoire, l. IV, c. XX, P. L., t. XCV, col. 204-205, l’hymne métrique, hymnus virginitatis, qu’il avait dédié à la reine Etheldrida, l’épouse vierge d’Egfrid, un bienfaiteur insigne de l’abbaye de Wearmouth. Des vers anglo-saxons de Bède il ne nous reste rien, hormis les dix vers qu’un de ses disciples, témoin oculaire de ses derniers jours, avait recueillis sur les lèvres du moribond.

2° Prose.

Bien autre est l’importance de ses ouvrages en prose. On peut les diviser en quatre classes :

1. œuvres théologiques ;

2. œuvres scientifiques et littéraires ;

3. œuvres historiques ;

4. lettres.

1. Les œuvres théologiques de Bède, avant que la théologie chrétienne n’eût revêtu le caractère et la forme d’une vaste synthèse, ne pouvaient guère être que des études d’exégèse sacrée. De fait, ce sont, ou des commentaires sur divers livres de l’Ecriture, ou des dissertations soit sur quelques parties isolées, soit sur quelques passages difficiles du texte sacré, ou des homélies, destinées primitivement aux religieux de Jarrow et vite répandues dans les autres cloîtres bénédictins. Selon Mabillon, nous n’avons plus de Bède que quarante-neuf homélies authentiques, P. L., t. XCIV, col. 9-268 ; de ce nombre n’est pas la soi-disant homélie LXX, ibid., col. 450 sq., que le bréviaire romain fait lire le jour et dans l’octave de la Toussaint. Partout l’interprétation allégorique et morale prédomine ; les pensées et les textes des Pères fournissent la trame et le fond du travail. Dans la matière de la grâce, Bède suit saint Augustin et le transcrit presque mot à mot.

Les écrits exégétiques de Bède embrassaient l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament et formaient une somme biblique complète. Tous ne sont pas parvenus jusqu’à nous. Ceux qui sont publiés, P. L., t. XCI-XCIII, sont ou bien des résumés substantiels, clairs et méthodiques des commentaires antérieurs des Pères grecs et latins, ou bien des œuvres personnelles, dans lesquelles le sens allégorique et moral est recherché au détriment de l’interprétation littérale. Pour les détails, voir le Dictionnaire de la Bible, de M. Vigouroux, t. I, col. 1539-1541.

Aux œuvres théologiques on peut rattacher un Martyrologe en prose, où il est assez malaisé de reconnaître la main de Bède sous les retouches et les additions postérieures, P. L., t. XCIV, col. 797-1148 ; ? le Pénitentiel qui porte le nom de Bède, sans que celui-ci, dans le catalogue précité, en dise mot ; voir Martène, Thesaurus novus anedoctum, Paris, 1717, t. IV, p. 31-56 ; Mansi, Concil., supplément, t. I, col. 563-596 ; le Liber de locis sacris, qui probablement ne fait qu’un avec l’abrégé, composé par l’infatigable travailleur, Hist. eccles., l. V, c. XV-XVII, P. L., t. XCV, col. 256-258, du livre d’Adamnan, abbé d’Iona, De situ urbis Jerusalem.

2. Les ouvrages scientifiques et littéraires sont au nombre de quatre :

a. De orthographia liber, P. L., t. XC, col. 123-150.

b. De arte metrica liber ad Wigbertum levitam, ibid., col. 149-176, rédigés tous les deux par Bède à l’usage des disciples monastiques ; le second, offre par les citations des poètes chrétiens latins comme par les explications que Bède en propose, un intérêt particulier. ?

c. Un petit traité de rhétorique pratique est intitulé De schematis et tropis sacræ Scripturæ liber, ibid., col. 175-186 ; l’auteur en appuie les préceptes sur des exemples de la Bible et y relève notamment, après Cassiodore, les beautés littéraires des psaumes. ?

d. Un autre ouvrage de la même classe a pour titre, De natura verum, ibid., 187-278, et date de l’an 703. C’est un résumé méthodique et précis de ce qui survivait alors de l’astronomie et de la cosmographie des anciens, en même temps qu’un premier essai de géographie générale.

3. Les travaux chronologiques et historiques de Bède sont d’une très haute valeur.

En 703, le docte Anglo-Saxon, prélude par l’opuscule De temporibus, ibid., col. 277-292, à son grand ouvrage, De temporum ratione, ibid., col. 293-518, lequel en est une refonte et nous donne, au témoignage d’Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, t. II, p. 292, " un manuel complet de chronologie pour les dates et les fêtes. " Ici et là, Bède se prononce nettement contre le comput pascal des Eglises d’Ecosse et d’Irlande, et tient pour le comput alexandrin, suivi par Denys le petit. Au De temporum ratione il rattacha, en 725 et en 726, son Chronicon sive de sex ætatibus mundi, ibid., col. 520-571. Comme saint Isidore, il y divise l’histoire du monde en six âges ; mais, à la différence de saint Isidore, il calcule les années depuis Adam jusqu’à Abraham selon l’original hébreu, non pas selon le texte des Septante. Saint Augustin est son guide, Eusèbe et saint Jérôme sont les sources auxquelles il vient puiser.

Quelques années plus tard, Bède publiait son chef-d’œuvre, cette Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, P. L., t. XCV, col. 21-290, qui lui a mérité le titre de père de l’histoire l’anglaise et qui suffirait pour immortaliser son nom. Elle se partage en cinq livres ; après être remontée aux premières relations des Bretons et des Romains et s’être faite comme l’écho de Gildas, d’Orose, de saint Prosper d’Aquitaine, elle prend vite une allure et ton personnels et s’arrête à l’an 731. Les affaires de l’Eglise et les affaires civiles, les traditions religieuses et les évènements de tout genre y sont enchâssés dans une seule narration ; pas plus que saint Grégoire de Tours, Bède ne sépare les destinées des laïques et des clercs. Au fond, c’est une chronique, aussi bien que les ouvrages analogues de Grégoire de Tours, des Jornandès, des Isidore de Séville, des Paul Diacre, un recueil d’histoires, suivant l’ordre chronologique et d’après l’ère chrétienne. Mais les juges les plus compétents reconnaissent en Bède un chroniqueur instruit et pénétré du sentiment de sa responsabilité, un critique habile et pénétrant, un écrivain exact, clair, élégant, qui se lit avec plaisir et a le droit d’être cru. L’Historia ecclesiastica se continue, pour ainsi dire, et se complète dans la biographie des cinq premiers abbés de Wearmouth et Jarrow, que Bède avait tous personnellement connus. P. L., t. XCIV, col. 713-730. Elle avait été précédée par un récit en prose de la vie de saint Cuthbert, que Bède ne tenait que des moines de Lindisfarne, et qui renferme, au milieu des miracles dont il fourmille des détails, des détails assez curieux pour l’histoire des mœurs. Ibid., col. 733-790 ; Acta sanctorum, martii, t. III, p. 97-117. La Vie de saint Félix, évêque de Nole, d’après les poèmes de saint Paulin, nous reporte à l’âge des persécutions. Ibid., col. 789-798. La Vie et passion de saint Anastase semble bien perdue.

4. Seize lettres

Parmi les seize lettres que nous avons de Bède, l’une De æquinoctio, est un opuscule scientifique ; la lettre De Paschæ celebratione est reproduite deux fois, P. L., t. XC, col. 599-606 ; t. XCIV, col. 675-682 ; une autre, Ad pleigwinum, s’élève contre la manie de vouloir déterminer l’année de la fin du monde, P. L.¸ t. XCIV, col. 669-675 ; sept sont adressées au plus intime ami de l’auteur, saint Acca, et traitent de questions exégétiques ; une est écrite à l’abbé Albin, pour le remercier de son appui dans la composition de l’Historia ecclesiastica. Ibid., col. 655-657. La longue lettre écrite à l’archevêque d’York, Egbert, est une espèce de traité sur le gouvernement spirituel et temporel de la Northumbrie ; en jetant une vive et franche lumière sur l’état de l’Eglise anglo-saxonne, elle fait honneur à la clairvoyance comme au courage du Vénérable Bède. Ibid., col. 657-668.

III. INFLUENCE.

La renommée de Bède se répandit promptement de son pays natal dans tout l’Occident, et ses ouvrages, qui prirent place dans les bibliothèques des monastères à côté de ceux des Ambroise, des Jérôme, des Augustin, etc., perpétuèrent son influence à travers le moyen âge. De son vivant, ses compatriotes, saint Boniface en tête, Epist., XXXVIII, à Egbert, P. L., t. LXXXIX, col. 736, l’avaient tenu pour le plus sagace des exégètes. Lui mort, ses œuvres théologiques impriment à l’exégèse une impulsion vigoureuse et fraient la voie aux travaux d’Alcuin, de Raban Maur et leurs plus illustres émules. S. Lull, Epist., XXV, XXXI, P. L., t. XCVI, col. 841, 846 ; Alcuin, Epist., XIV ? XVI, LXXXV, P. L.¸ t. C, col. 164, 168, 278, 279 ; Smaragde, Collectaneum, præf., P. L., t. CII, col. 123 ; Raban Maur, In Gen., P. L., t. CVII, col. 443 sq. ; In Matth., ibid., col. 728 sq. ; In IV Reg., præf., P. L., t. CIX, col. 1 ; Paschase Radbert, Exposit. in Matth., prol., P. L., t. CXX, col. 35 ; Walafrid Strabon, Glossa ordinaria, P. L., t. CXIII, CXIV ; Notker, De interpretibus S. Script., P. L., t. CXXXI, col. 996. Dès le temps de Paul Diacre, on se servait en nombre de cloîtres et notamment au mont Cassin des homélies de Bède. Dans son Institution laïque, l. I, c. XIII, P. L., t. CVI, col. 147-148, etc., l’évêque d’Orléans, Jonas, rangera le moine de Jarrow parmi les Pères de l’Eglise, et le vieil auteur de l’Héliand s’inspirera ici et là des commentaires sur saint Luc et saint Marc. Vers la fin du Xe siècle, Adelfrid de Malmesbury ne se fera pas faute, dans ses deux premiers recueils d’homélies, d’emprunter à Bède. Le diacre Florus de Lyon avait gagné, du moins en partie, sa réputation à remanier le Martyrologe ; ce Martyrologe, ainsi refondu, servira de base et de canevas, vers le milieu du IXe siècle, à celui de Raban Maur comme à celui de Wandelbert. Les liturgistes Annalaire de Metz, De eccl. officiis, l. I, c. I, VII, VIII ; l. IV, c. I, III, IV, VII, P. L., t. CV, col. 994, 1003, 1007, 1165, 1170, 1177, 1178 ; Florus de Lyon, De exposit. missæ, P. L., t. CXIX, col. 15 ; les théologiens et les canonistes, Loup de Ferrières, Epist., CXXVIII, ibid., col. 603, Collectaneum, col. 665 ; Remi de Lyon, Liber de tribus epist., c. VII, P. L., t. CXXI, col. 1001 ; Hincmar de Reims, Epist. ad Carol., P. L., t. CXXV, col. 54 ; De prædestinatione, c. XXVI, ibid., col. 270 ; les ascètes, saint Benoît d’Aniane, Concordia regularum, c. XXXVI, 6, P. L., t. CIII, col. 1028 sq. recourent à l’autorité de Bède.

Les œuvres historiques de Bède seront également citées et mises à contribution. Paul Diacre, par exemple, dans son Histoire romaine et dans son Histoire des Lombards, prendre pour guide, entre autres, la Chronique ; Frékulf et saint Adon au IXe siècle, Réginon de Prüm au Xe, en relèveront et y puiseront à pleines mains. L’Histoire ecclésiastique sera traduite, hormis quelques coupures, en anglo-saxon par Alfred le Grand ; elle sera aussi la grande mine exploitée par Paul Diacre, dans sa Vie de saint Grégoire le Grand ; par Jean Diacre, cent ans plus tard, dans sa biographie du même pontife ; par Radbod dans son panégyrique de saint Suitbert ; par Hucbald dans sa vie de saint Lébuin ; et l’archevêque de Reims, Hincmar, s’en autorisera pour publier les versions de Bernold. Raban Maur, dans son traité Du comput, pillera des pages entières du De temporum ratione. Adelfrid de Malmesbury à son tour traduira le Liber de temporibus, et le savant Hérix d’Auxerre l’enrichira de ses gloses.

Les œuvres scientifiques et littéraires du moine de Jarrow ne resteront pas non plus sans influence. Le traité De l’orthographe marquera visiblement de son empreinte l’opuscule d’Alcuin sur le même sujet ; et Bridferth, au Xe siècle, devra sa réputation de mathématicien à ses gloses latines sur le De natura rerum et sur le De temporum ratione, P. L., t. XC, col. 187 sq.

I. EDITIONS.

Les premières éditions des œuvres complètes de Bède, Paris, 1544, 1554 ; Bâle, 1563 ; Cologne, 1613, 1688, fourmillaient de lacunes et d’erreurs. Grâce aux travaux de Cassandre, d’Henri Canisius, de Mabillon, etc., le tri de l’apocryphe et de l’authentique s’est fait peu à peu ; les lacunes ont été comblées par d’heureuses trouvailles. Smith donna une meilleure édition à Londres en 1721 ; une autre, supérieure encore, bien qu’elle ne dise pas le dernier mot, est celle de Giles, 6 vol., Londres, 1844, reproduite et complétée, P. L., t. XC-XCV ; nouvelle édition par Plummer, 2 vol., 1896. L’Histoire ecclésiastique a été édité par Robert Hussey, Oxford, 1865 ; par Mayor et Lumby, 1878 ; par Holder, 1882. Mommsen a réédité à part le Chronicon de sex ætatibus mundi, dans Monumenta germanica historica, Auctatores antiquissimi, Berlin, 1895, t. XIV. La vie de saint Cuthbert a été éditée par les bollandistes, Acta sanct., martii, t. III.

II. TRAVAUX.

Prolegomena de l’édition de Migne, P. L., t. XC, col. 9-124, où se trouvent réunies plusieurs vies de Bède, avec les jugements de divers critiques :

Gehle, De Bedæ venerabilis vita et scriptis, Leyde, 1838 (dis.) ; Montalembert, Les moines d’Occident, Paris, 1867, t. V, p. 59-104 ; Werner, Beda der Ehrwürdige une seine Zeit, Vienne, 1881 ; A. Ebert, Histoire générale de la littérature du moyen âge en Occident, trad. franç, Paris, 1883, p. 666-684 ; Kraus, Histoire de l’Eglise, trad. franç., Paris, 1902, t. II, p. 100-101 ; dom Plaine, Le vénérable Bède, docteur de l’Eglise, dans la Revue anglo-romaine, 1896, t. III, p. 49-96 ; H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques, Paris, 1908.

P. GODET. Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique

JesusMarie.com

SOURCE : http://jesusmarie.free.fr/bede_le_venerable.html


BENOÎT XVI

AUDIENCE GÉNÉRALE

Mercredi 18 février 2009

Bède le vénérable

Chers frères et sœurs,

Le saint que nous évoquons aujourd'hui s'appelle Bède et naquit dans le Nord-Est de l'Angleterre, plus exactement dans le Northumberland, en 672/673. Il raconte lui-même que ses parents, à l'âge de sept ans, le confièrent à l'abbé du proche monastère bénédictin, afin qu'il l'instruise: "Depuis lors - rappelle-t-il -, j'ai toujours vécu dans ce monastère, me consacrant intensément à l'étude de l'Ecriture et, alors que j'observais la discipline de la Règle et l'engagement quotidien de chanter à l'église, il me fut toujours doux d'apprendre, d'enseigner ou d'écrire" (Historia eccl. Anglorum, v, 24). De fait, Bède devint l'une des plus éminentes figures d'érudit du haut Moyen-Age, pouvant utiliser les nombreux manuscrits précieux que ses abbés, revenant de leurs fréquents voyages sur le continent et à Rome, lui portaient. L'enseignement et la réputation de ses écrits lui valurent de nombreuses amitiés avec les principales personnalités de son époque, qui l'encouragèrent à poursuivre son travail, dont ils étaient nombreux à tirer bénéfice. Etant tombé malade, il ne cessa pas de travailler, conservant toujours une joie intérieure qui s'exprimait dans la prière et dans le chant. Il concluait son œuvre la plus importante, la Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, par cette invocation: "Je te prie, ô bon Jésus, qui avec bienveillance m'a permis de puiser aux douces paroles de ta sagesse, accorde-moi, dans ta bonté, de parvenir un jour à toi, source de toute sagesse, et de me trouver toujours face à ton visage". La mort le saisit le 26 mai 735: c'était le jour de l'Ascension.

Les Saintes Ecritures sont la source constante de la réflexion théologique de Bède. Après une étude critique approfondie du texte (une copie du monumental Codex Amiatinus de la Vulgate, sur lequel Bède travailla, nous est parvenue), il commente la Bible, en la lisant dans une optique christologique, c'est-à-dire qu'il réunit deux choses: d'une part, il écoute ce que dit exactement le texte, il veut réellement écouter, comprendre le texte lui-même; de l'autre, il est convaincu que la clef pour comprendre l'Ecriture Sainte comme unique Parole de Dieu est le Christ et avec le Christ, dans sa lumière, on comprend l'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament comme "une" Ecriture Sainte. Les événements de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament vont de pair, ils sont un chemin vers le Christ, bien qu'ils soient exprimés à travers des signes et des institutions différentes (c'est ce qu'il appelle la concordia sacramentorum). Par exemple, la tente de l'alliance que Moïse dressa dans le désert et le premier et le deuxième temple de Jérusalem sont des images de l'Eglise, nouveau temple édifié sur le Christ et sur les Apôtres avec des pierres vivantes, cimentées par la charité de l'Esprit. Et de même qu'à la construction de l'antique temple contribuèrent également des populations païennes, mettant à disposition des matériaux précieux et l'expérience technique de leurs maîtres d'œuvre, à l'édification de l'Eglise contribuent les apôtres et les maîtres provenant non seulement des antiques souches juive, grecque et latine, mais également des nouveaux peuples, parmi lesquels Bède se plaît à citer les celtes irlandais et les Anglo-saxons. Saint Bède voit croître l'universalité de l'Eglise qui ne se restreint pas à une culture déterminée, mais se compose de toutes les cultures du monde qui doivent s'ouvrir au Christ et trouver en Lui leur point d'arrivée.

L'histoire de l'Eglise est un autre thème cher à Bède. Après s'être intéressé à l'époque décrite dans les Actes des Apôtres, il reparcourt l'histoire des Pères et des Conciles, convaincu que l'œuvre de l'Esprit Saint continue dans l'histoire. Dans la Chronica Maiora, Bède trace une chronologie qui deviendra la base du Calendrier universel "ab incarnatione Domini". Déjà à l'époque, on calculait le temps depuis la fondation de la ville de Rome. Bède, voyant que le véritable point de référence, le centre de l'histoire est la naissance du Christ, nous a donné ce calendrier qui lit l'histoire en partant de l'Incarnation du Seigneur. Il enregistre les six premiers Conciles œcuméniques et leurs développements, présentant fidèlement la doctrine christologique, mariologique et sotériologique, et dénonçant les hérésies monophysite et monothélite, iconoclaste et néo-pélagienne. Enfin, il rédige avec beaucoup de rigueur documentaire et d'attention littéraire l'Histoire ecclésiastiques des peuples Angles, pour laquelle il est reconnu comme le "père de l'historiographie anglaise". Les traits caractéristiques de l'Eglise que Bède aime souligner sont: a) la catholicité, comme fidélité à la tradition et en même temps ouverture aux développements historiques, et comme recherche de l'unité dans la multiplicité, dans la diversité de l'histoire et des cultures, selon les directives que le Pape Grégoire le Grand avait données à l'Apôtre de l'Angleterre, Augustin de Canterbury; b) l'apostolicité et la romanité: à cet égard, il considère comme d'une importance primordiale de convaincre toutes les Eglises celtiques et des Pictes à célébrer de manière unitaire la Pâque selon le calendrier romain. Le Calcul qu'il élabora scientifiquement pour établir la date exacte de la célébration pascale, et donc tout le cycle de l'année liturgique, est devenu le texte de référence pour toute l'Eglise catholique.

Bède fut également un éminent maître de théologie liturgique. Dans les homélies sur les Evangiles du dimanche et des fêtes, il accomplit une véritable mystagogie, en éduquant les fidèles à célébrer joyeusement les mystères de la foi et à les reproduire de façon cohérente dans la vie, dans l'attente de leur pleine manifestation au retour du Christ, lorsque, avec nos corps glorifiés, nous serons admis en procession d'offrande à l'éternelle liturgie de Dieu au ciel. En suivant le "réalisme" des catéchèses de Cyrille, d'Ambroise et d'Augustin, Bède enseigne que les sacrements de l'initiation chrétienne constituent chaque fidèle "non seulement chrétien, mais Christ". En effet, chaque fois qu'une âme fidèle accueille et conserve avec amour la Parole de Dieu, à l'image de Marie, elle conçoit et engendre à nouveau le Christ. Et chaque fois qu'un groupe de néophytes reçoit les sacrements de Pâques, l'Eglise s'"auto-engendre" ou, à travers une expression encore plus hardie, l'Eglise devient "Mère de Dieu" en participant à la génération de ses fils, par l'œuvre de l'Esprit Saint.

Grâce à sa façon de faire de la théologie en mêlant la Bible, la liturgie et l'histoire, Bède transmet un message actuel pour les divers "états de vie": a) aux experts (doctores ac doctrices), il rappelle deux devoirs essentiels: sonder les merveilles de la Parole de Dieu pour les présenter sous une forme attrayante aux fidèles; exposer les vérités dogmatiques en évitant les complications hérétiques et en s'en tenant à la "simplicité catholique", avec l'attitude des petits et des humbles auxquels Dieu se complaît de révéler les mystères du royaume; b) les pasteurs, pour leur part, doivent donner la priorité à la prédication, non seulement à travers le langage verbal ou hagiographique, mais en valorisant également les icônes, les processions et les pèlerinages. Bède leur recommande l'utilisation de la langue vulgaire, comme il le fait lui-même, en expliquant en dialecte du Northumberland le "Notre Père", le "Credo" et en poursuivant jusqu'au dernier jour de sa vie le commentaire en langue vulgaire de l'Evangile de Jean; c) aux personnes consacrées qui se consacrent à l'Office divin, en vivant dans la joie de la communion fraternelle et en progressant dans la vie spirituelle à travers l'ascèse et la contemplation, Bède recommande de soigner l'apostolat - personne ne reçoit l'Evangile que pour soi, mais doit l'écouter comme un don également pour les autres - soit en collaborant avec les évêques dans des activités pastorales de divers types en faveur des jeunes communautés chrétiennes, soit en étant disponibles à la mission évangélisatrice auprès des païens, hors de leur pays, comme "peregrini pro amore Dei".

En se plaçant dans cette perspective, dans le commentaire du Cantique des Cantiques, Bède présente la synagogue et l'Eglise comme des collaboratrices dans la diffusion de la Parole de Dieu. Le Christ Epoux veut une Eglise industrieuse, "le teint hâlé par les efforts de l'évangélisation" - il y a ici une claire évocation de la parole du Cantique des Cantiques (1, 5) où l'épouse dit: "Nigra sum sed formosa" (je suis noire, et pourtant belle) -, occupée à défricher d'autres champs ou vignes et à établir parmi les nouvelles populations "non pas une cabane provisoire, mais une demeure stable", c'est-à-dire à insérer l'Evangile dans le tissu social et dans les institutions culturelles. Dans cette perspective, le saint docteur exhorte les fidèles laïcs à être assidus à l'instruction religieuse, en imitant les "insatiables foules évangéliques, qui ne laissaient pas même le temps aux apôtres de manger un morceau de nourriture". Il leur enseigne comment prier continuellement, "en reproduisant dans la vie ce qu'ils célèbrent dans la liturgie", en offrant toutes les actions comme sacrifice spirituel en union avec le Christ. Aux parents, il explique que même dans leur petit milieu familial, ils peuvent exercer "la charge sacerdotale de pasteurs et de guides", en formant de façon chrétienne leurs enfants et affirme connaître de nombreux fidèles (hommes et femmes, mariés ou célibataires), "capables d'une conduite irrépréhensible, qui, s'ils sont suivis de façon adéquate, pourraient s'approcher chaque jour de la communion eucharistique" (Epist. ad Ecgberctum, ed. Plummer, p. 419).

La renommée de sainteté et de sagesse dont, déjà au cours de sa vie, Bède jouit, lui valut le titre de "vénérable". C'est ainsi également que l'appelle le Pape Serge i, lorsqu'en 701, il écrit à son abbé en lui demandant qu'il le fasse venir pour un certain temps à Rome afin de le consulter sur des questions d'intérêt universel. Après sa mort, ses écrits furent diffusés largement dans sa patrie et sur le continent européen. Le grand missionnaire d'Allemagne, l'Evêque saint Boniface (+ 754), demanda plusieurs fois à l'archevêque de York et à l'abbé de Wearmouth de faire transcrire certaines de ses œuvres et de les lui envoyer de sorte que lui-même et ses compagnons puissent aussi bénéficier de la lumière spirituelle qui en émanait. Un siècle plus tard, Notkero Galbulo, abbé de Saint-Gall (+ 912), prenant acte de l'extraordinaire influence de Bède, le compara à un nouveau soleil que Dieu avait fait lever non de l'orient, mais de l'occident pour illuminer le monde. Hormis l'emphase rhétorique, il est de fait que, à travers ses œuvres, Bède contribua de façon efficace à la construction d'une Europe chrétienne, dans laquelle les diverses populations et cultures se sont amalgamées, lui conférant une physionomie unitaire, inspirée par la foi chrétienne. Prions afin qu'aujourd'hui également, se trouvent des personnalités de la stature de Bède pour maintenir uni tout le continent; prions afin que nous soyons tous prêts à redécouvrir nos racines communes, pour être les bâtisseurs d'une Europe profondément humaine et authentiquement chrétienne.

* * *

Je salue cordialement les pèlerins de langue française, particulièrement les groupes du diocèse de Créteil, avec leur Évêque Mgr Michel Santier, les prêtres du diocèse de Grenoble-Vienne, avec Mgr Guy de Kérimel, les nombreux jeunes des lycées et des aumôneries ainsi que les groupes provenant de diverses paroisses. À l’exemple de Bède le Vénérable, prenez le temps de scruter les merveilles de la Parole de Dieu, pour en faire votre nourriture. Que Dieu vous bénisse!

© Copyright 2009 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

SOURCE : http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090218_fr.html

Saint Bède le vénérable

La vie paisible et laborieuse de saint Bède le Vénérable s’écoula toute entière à l’ombre du cloître où, orphelin, il fut recueilli dès l’âge de huit ans. Les principales dates de sa vie sont connues par quelques lignes qu’il écrivit à la fin de son Histoire ecclésiastique où il se donne cinquante-neuf ans ; l’ouvrage étant achevé en 731, on peut en déduire qu’il naquit en 672 ou 673. Accueilli à l’abbaye de Wearmouth par saint Benoît Biscop, Bède fut, trois ans plus tard, confié à saint Ceolfrid qui allait fonder l’abbaye de Jarrow où il passa toute sa vie ; diacre à dix-neuf ans, prêtre à trente ans, il mourut à Jarrow le 26 mai 735. Il se décrit lui-même « Tout occupé de l’étude des saintes Ecritures, de l’observance de la disciline régulière, du souci de chanter chaque jour la louange divine dans l’église, trouvant son plaisir à apprendre, à enseigner et à écrire. »

Initié à la culture classique, Bède le Vénérable connaît le latin et le grec ; il possède Aristote et Hippocrate, Cicéron, Sénèque, Pline, Virgile, Ovide et Lucain ; il manie la prose et les vers ; encore qu’il fut surtout exégète et historien, son œuvre contient à peu près toute la science de son temps (orthographe, métrique, cosmologie...), au point que Burke l’appelle le père de l’érudition anglaise. Grand lecteur des Pères de l’Eglise, il se fit surtout le disciple de saint Ambroise, de saint Jérôme, de saint Augustin et de saint Grégoire le Grand. Outre ses récits hagiographiques, ses œuvres grammaticales, ses écrits scientifiques, ses lettres, ses prières et ses ouvrages historiques dont son Histoire ecclésiastique, on a de lui des commentaires de presque toute l’Ecriture (48 livres) et des sermons dont deux groupes de vingt-cinq homélies qu’il prêcha aux moines de Jarrow. Il s’inspire de saint Jérôme pour le sens littéral, de saint Augustin pour le sens moral et de saint Grégoire le Grand pour le sens allégorique.

Bède le Vénérable, parfait moine, qui était mort en disant : Gloire au Père, au Fils, et au Saint-Esprit, comme il était au commencement, maintenant et toujours, pour les siècles des siècles, fut enterré dans l’église abbatiale Saint-Paul de Jarrow. En 1020, ses reliques furent portées à Durham et mises dans une châsse que l’évêque Hugues fit somptueusement refaire en 1155. Henri VIII fit détruire les reliques dont il ne reste plus qu’un vieux siège de bois que l’on montre à Jarrow.

Commentaire de l'évangile selon saint Luc

Le Seigneur m'a fait une telle grâce qu'aucune parole humaine ne saurait l'exprimer et que je puis à peine, au fond de ma conscience, la comprendre : c'est pourquoi j'offrirai à mon Dieu, pour lui exprimer ma reconnaissance, toutes les forces de mon âme ; et tout ce que j'ai de vie, de sentiment, d'intelligence, je l'emploierai de tout coeur à contempler la grandeur de celui qui est infini ... Le psalmiste avait indiqué une disposition semblable quand il disait : Mon âme a tressailli dans le Seigneur et elle se délectera dans son salut. (...) Un seul regard de Dieu sur sa créature la plus pauvre (et ceci elle le dit encore à la gloire de Dieu), suffit pour amener cette créature à la grandeur et à la béatitude. C'est pourquoi elle sait, qu'à cause de ce regard de Dieu sur elle, on l'appellera bienheureuse.

Saint Bède le Vénérable

SOURCE : http://missel.free.fr/Sanctoral/05/25.php

St Bède le vénérable, confesseur et docteur

Mort à l’abbaye de Jarrow le 25 mai 835, veille de l’Ascension. Son nom est joint à celui de saint Augustin de Cantorbéry le 26 mai dans les calendriers anglais du XIe siècle.

Baronius l’inscrivit à la date du 27 mai dans le martyrologe en 1584. C’est ce jour qui fut choisi en 1899 pour inscrire sa fête au calendrier sous le rite double quand Léon XIII le proclama docteur.

Leçons des Matines avant 1960

Quatrième leçon. Bède, prêtre de Jarrow, né sur les confins de la Grande-Bretagne et de l’Écosse, n’avait que sept ans quand son éducation fut confiée à saint Benoît Biscop, abbé de Wearmouth. Devenu moine, il régla sa vie de telle sorte que, tout en se donnant entièrement à l’étude des arts et des sciences, il n’a jamais rien omis des règles monastiques. Il n’est pas de science qu’il n’ait acquise, grâce à des études approfondies ; mais il apporta surtout ses soins les plus assidus aux divines Écritures ; et, pour les posséder plus pleinement, il apprit le grec et l’hébreu. A trente ans, sur l’ordre de son supérieur, il fut ordonné prêtre et aussitôt, à la demande d’Acca, évêque d’Exham, il donna des leçons d’Écriture sainte ; il les appuyait si bien sur la doctrine des Saints Pères, qu’il n’avançait rien qui ne fût fortifié par leur témoignage, se servant souvent presque des mêmes expressions. Le repos lui était en horreur il passait de ses leçons à l’oraison pour retourner de l’oraison à ses leçons ; il était si enflammé par les sujets qu’il traitait, que souvent les larmes accompagnaient ses explications. Pour ne pas être distrait par les soucis temporels, il ne voulut jamais accepter la charge d’abbé qui lui fut bien des fois offerte.

Cinquième leçon. Bède s’acquit un tel renom de science et de piété, que la pensée vint à Saint Sergius, pape, de le faire venir à Rome, pour qu’il travaillât à la solution des difficiles questions que la science sacrée avait alors à étudier. Il fit plusieurs ouvrages, dans le but de corriger les mœurs des fidèles, d’exposer et de défendre la foi, ce qui lui valut à un tel point l’estime générale que saint Boniface, évêque et martyr, l’appelait la lumière de l’Église ; Lanfranc, docteur des Angles, et le concile d’Aix-la-Chapelle, docteur admirable. Bien plus, ses écrits étaient lus publiquement dans les églises, même de son vivant. Et quand le fait avait lieu, comme il n’était pas permis de lui donner le nom de saint, on l’appelait vénérable, et ce titre lui a été attribué dans les siècles suivants. Sa doctrine avait d’autant plus de force et d’efficacité qu’elle était confirmée par la sainteté de sa vie et la pratique des plus belles vertus religieuses. Aussi, grâce à ses leçons et à ses exemples, ses disciples, qui étaient nombreux et remarquables, se distinguèrent-ils autant par leur sainteté que par leurs progrès dans les sciences et dans les lettres.

Sixième leçon. Enfin, brisé par l’âge et les travaux, il tomba dangereusement malade. Cette maladie, qui dura plus de cinquante jours, n’interrompit ni ses prières, ni ses explications ordinaires des Saintes Écritures : c’est pendant ce temps, en effet, qu’il traduisit en langue vulgaire, à l’usage du peuple des Angles, l’Évangile de Saint Jean. La veille de l’Ascension, sentant sa fin approcher, il voulut se fortifier par la réception des derniers sacrements de l’église. Puis il embrassa ses frères, se coucha à terre sur son cilice, répéta deux fois : Gloire au Père, et au Fils et au Saint-Esprit et s’endormit dans le Seigneur. On rapporte qu’après sa mort, son corps exhalait l’odeur la plus suave : il fut enseveli dans le monastère de Jarrow et ensuite transporté à Dublin avec les reliques de Saint Cuthbert. Les Bénédictins, d’autres familles religieuses et quelques diocèses l’honoraient comme docteur : le Saint Père Léon XIII, d’après un décret de la sacrée congrégation des Rites, le déclara Docteur de l’Église universelle et rendit obligatoires pour tous, au jour de sa fête, la Messe et l’Office des Docteurs.

Au troisième nocturne.

Lecture du saint Évangile selon saint Matthieu. Cap. 5, 13-19.

En ce temps-là : Jésus dit à ses disciples : Vous êtes le sel de la terre. Mais si le sel s’affadit, avec quoi le salera-t-on ?. Et le reste.

Homélie de saint Bède le Vénérable, Prêtre.

Septième leçon. Par la terre, entendez la nature humaine ; par le sel, la sagesse. Le sel, de sa nature, fait perdre à la terre sa fécondité. Nous lisons de certaines villes, qui ont passé par la colère des vainqueurs, qu’elles ont été ensemencées de sel. Et ceci convient bien à la doctrine apostolique : le sel de la sagesse, semé sur la terre de notre chair, empêche de germer, et le luxe du siècle, et la laideur des vices. S’il n’y a plus de sel, avec quoi salera-t-on ? C’est-à-dire, si vous, qui devez servir aux peuples de condiment, vous perdez le royaume des cieux par crainte de la persécution, par une vaine terreur, il n’est pas douteux que, sortis de l’Église, vous ne deveniez le jouet de vos ennemis.

Huitième leçon. « Vous êtes la lumière du monde » : c’est-à-dire, vous qui avez été éclairés de la vraie lumière, vous devez être la lumière de ceux qui sont dans le monde. « Une cité bâtie sur la montagne ne peut se cacher » : il s’agit de la doctrine apostolique, fondée sur le Christ ; ou de l’Église, bâtie sur le Christ, formée de beaucoup de nations unies par la foi, et cimentée par la charité. Elle offre un asile sûr à ceux qui entrent, elle est d’un accès difficile à ceux qui approchent ; elle garde ceux qui l’habitent et elle refoule tous ses ennemis.

Neuvième leçon. « Et on n’allume point une lampe pour la mettre sous le boisseau, mais sur un chandelier ». Or celui-là met la lumière sous le boisseau qui obscurcit, voile la lumière de la doctrine en la faisant servir à des avantages temporels. Et celui-là met la lumière sur le chandelier qui se soumet de telle sorte au ministère de-Dieu, qu’il mette bien au-dessus de la servitude du corps la doctrine de la vérité. Ou bien encore : le Sauveur allume la lumière, lui qui a éclairé notre nature humaine par la flamme de la divinité ; et il a placé cette lumière sur le chandelier, c’est-à-dire sur l’Église, en marquant sur notre front la foi de son Incarnation. Cette lumière n’a pu être placée sous le boisseau, c’est-à-dire enfermée dans les dimensions de la foi et dans la Judée seulement, mais elle a éclairé le monde tout entier.

Dom Guéranger, l’Année Liturgique

La bénédiction que le Seigneur donnait à la terre en s’élevant au ciel atteint les plus lointaines frontières de la gentilité. Trois jours de suite, le Cycle nous montre les grâces qu’elle annonçait concentrant sur l’extrême Occident leurs énergies : c’est le fleuve de Dieu [1], dont les eaux débordées se font plus impétueuses à la limite qu’elles ne dépasseront pas.

Hier, l’expédition évangélique que le roi Lucius avait sollicitée du Pontife Éleuthère quittait Rome pour la future Ile des Saints. Demain, dans la terre des Bretons devenue celle des Angles, elle sera suivie par le chef du second apostolat, Augustin, l’envoyé de Grégoire le Grand. Aujourd’hui, impatiente de justifier ces célestes prodigalités, Albion produit devant les hommes son illustre fils, Bède le Vénérable, l’humble et doux moine dont la vie se passe à louer Dieu, à le chercher dans la nature et dans l’histoire, mais plus encore dans l’Écriture étudiée avec amour, approfondie à la lumière des plus sûres traditions. Lui qui toujours écouta les anciens prend place aujourd’hui parmi ses maîtres, devenu lui-même Père et Docteur de l’Église de Dieu. Entendons-le, dans ses dernières années, résumer sa vie :

« Prêtre du monastère des bienheureux Pierre et Paul, Apôtres, je naquis sur leur territoire, et je n’ai point cessé, depuis ma septième année, d’habiter leur maison, observant la règle, chantant chaque jour en leur église, faisant mes délices d’apprendre, d’enseigner ou d’écrire. Depuis que j’eus reçu la prêtrise, j’annotai pour mes frères et pour moi la sainte Écriture en quelques ouvrages, m’aidant des expressions dont se servirent nos Pères vénérés, ou m’attachant à leur manière d’interprétation. Et maintenant, bon Jésus, je vous le demande : vous qui m’avez miséricordieusement donné de m’abreuver à la douceur de votre parole, donnez-moi bénignement d’arriver à la source, ô fontaine de sagesse, et de vous voir toujours [2]. »

La touchante mort du serviteur de Dieu ne devait pas être la moins précieuse des leçons qu’il laisserait aux siens. Les cinquante jours de la maladie qui l’enleva de ce monde s’étaient passés comme toute sa vie à chanter des psaumes ou à enseigner. Comme on approchait de l’Ascension du Seigneur, il redisait avec des larmes de joie l’Antienne de la fête : « O Roi de gloire qui êtes monté triomphant par delà tous les cieux, ne nous laissez pas orphelins, mais envoyez-nous l’Esprit de vérité selon la promesse du Père. » A ses élèves en pleurs il disait, reprenant la parole de saint Ambroise : « Je n’ai pas vécu de telle sorte que j’eusse à rougir de vivre avec vous ; mais je ne crains pas non plus de mourir, car nous avons un bon Maître. » Puis revenant à sa traduction de l’Évangile de saint Jean et à un travail qu’il avait entrepris sur saint Isidore : « Je ne veux pas que mes disciples après ma mort s’attardent à des faussetés et que leurs études soient sans fruit. »

Le mardi avant l’Ascension, l’oppression du malade augmentait les symptômes d’un dénouement prochain se montrèrent. Plein d’allégresse, il dicta durant toute cette journée, et passa la nuit en actions de grâces. L’aube du mercredi le retrouvait pressant le travail de ses disciples. A l’heure de Tierce, ils le quittèrent pour se rendre à la procession qu’on avait dès lors coutume de faire en ce jour avec les reliques des Saints. Resté près de lui :»Bien-aimé Maître, dit l’un d’eux, un enfant, il n’y a plus à dicter qu’un chapitre ; en aurez-vous la force ? » — « C’est facile, répond souriant le doux Père : prends ta plume, taille-la, et puis écris ; mais hâte-toi. » A l’heure de None, il manda les prêtres du monastère, et leur rit de petits présents, implorant leur souvenir à l’autel du Seigneur. Tous pleuraient. Lui, plein de joie, disait : « Il est temps, s’il plaît à mon Créateur, que je retourne à Celui qui m’a fait de rien quand je n’étais pas ; mon doux Juge a bien ordonné ma vie ; et voici qu’approche maintenant pour moi la dissolution ; je la désire pour être avec le Christ : oui, mon âme désire voir mon Roi, le Christ, en sa beauté. »

Ce ne furent de sa part jusqu’au soir qu’effusions semblables ; jusqu’à ce dialogue plus touchant que tout le reste avec Wibert, l’enfant mentionné plus haut : « Maître chéri, il reste encore une phrase.— Écris-la vite. » Et après un moment : « C’est fini, dit l’enfant. —Tu dis vrai, répartit le bienheureux : c’est fini ; prends ma tête dans tes mains et soutiens-la du côté de l’oratoire, parce que ce m’est une grande joie de me voir en face du lieu saint où j’ai tant prié. » Et du pavé de sa cellule où on l’avait déposé, il entonna : Gloire au Père, et au Fils, et au Saint-Esprit ; quand il eut nommé l’Esprit-Saint, il rendit l’âme [3].

Gloire au Père, et au Fils, et au Saint-Esprit ! C’est le chant de l’éternité ; l’ange et mme n’étaient pas, que Dieu, dans le concert des trois divines personnes, suffisait à sa louange : louange adéquate, infinie, parfaite comme Dieu, seule digne de lui. Combien le monde, si magnifiquement qu’il célébrât son auteur par les mille voix delà nature, demeurait au-dessous de l’objet de ses chants ! Toutefois la création elle-même était appelée à renvoyer au ciel un jour l’écho de la mélodie trine et une ; lorsque le Verbe fut devenu par l’Esprit-Saint fils de l’homme en Marie comme il l’était du Père, la résonance créée du Cantique éternel répondit pleinement aux adorables harmonies dont la Trinité gardait primitivement le secret pour elle seule. Depuis, pour l’homme qui sait comprendre, la perfection fut de s’assimiler au fils de Marie afin de ne faire qu’un avec le Fils de Dieu, dans le concert auguste où Dieu trouve sa gloire.

Vous fûtes, ô Bède, cet homme à qui l’intelligence est donnée. Il était juste que le dernier souffle s’exhalât sur vos lèvres avec le chant d’amour où s’était consumée pour vous la vie mortelle, marquant ainsi votre entrée de plain-pied dans l’éternité bienheureuse et glorieuse. Puissions-nous mettre à profit la leçon suprême où se résument les enseignements de votre vie si grande et si simple !

Gloire à la toute-puissante et miséricordieuse Trinité ! N’est-ce pas aussi le dernier mot du Cycle entier des mystères qui s’achèvent présentement dans la glorification du Père souverain par le triomphe du Fils rédempteur, et l’épanouissement du règne de l’Esprit sanctificateur en tous lieux ? Qu’il était beau dans l’Ile des Saints le règne de l’Esprit, le triomphe du Fils à la gloire du Père, quand Albion, deux fois donnée par Rome au Christ, brillait aux extrémités de l’univers comme un joyau sans prix de la parure de l’Épouse ! Docteur des Angles au temps de leur fidélité, répondez à l’espoir du Pontife suprême étendant votre culte à toute l’Église en nos jours, et réveillez dans l’âme de vos concitoyens leurs sentiments d’autrefois pour la Mère commune.

[1] Psalm. XLV, 5.

[2] BED. Hist. eccl. Cap. ultimum.

[3] Epist. CUTHBERTI.

Bhx Cardinal Schuster, Liber Sacramentorum

La fête de cet ancien moine anglo-saxon fut introduite dans le calendrier de l’Église universelle par Léon XIII, après que la Sacrée Congrégation des Rites lui eût reconnu ce titre de docteur que, depuis de longs siècles, lui avaient décerné les suffrages de l’univers. Cette vénération pour Bède avait même déjà commencé à se manifester de son vivant, si bien que, lors de la lecture publique de ses œuvres, ses contemporains ne pouvant encore lui attribuer le titre de saint l’appelaient venerabilis presbyter, et c’est sous ce titre que Bède est passé à la postérité.

A une science vraiment encyclopédique, Bède unit les plus éclatantes vertus du moine bénédictin, faisant alterner dans sa vie la prière et l’étude. Ora et labora. Il eut de nombreux disciples et laissa tant d’écrits que, durant le haut moyen âge, ceux-ci constituèrent pour ainsi dire toute la bibliothèque ecclésiastique des Anglo-Saxons. La vaste érudition de ce moine rappelle d’une certaine manière celle de saint Jérôme à qui il ressemble quelque peu. Saint Boniface, l’apôtre de l’Allemagne, salua saint Bédé comme la lumière de l’Église, et le Concile d’Aix-la-Chapelle lui donna le titre de docteur admirable.

Bédé mourut très âgé, le 26 mai 735, et sa dernière prière fut l’antienne de l’office (de l’Ascension) : O Rex gloriae, qui triumphator hodie super omnes caelos ascendisti, ne derelinquas nos orphanos, sed mitte promissum Patris in nos Spiritum veri-tatis. Au moment d’expirer, il entonna le Gloria Patri.

Le collège ecclésiastique anglais de Rome est dédié à la mémoire de saint Bédé le Vénérable.

La messe est du Commun des Docteurs, sauf la première collecte qui est propre : « Seigneur, qui avez voulu illuminer votre Église au moyen de la science merveilleuse de votre bienheureux confesseur Bédé le docteur, faites que nous, vos serviteurs, fassions toujours notre trésor de sa doctrine, et que nous soyons aidés par ses mérites. »

Voici ce que rapportent les historiens de saint Bédé le Vénérable : Numquam torpebat otio, numquam a studio cessabat ; semper legit, semper scripsit, semper docuit, semper oravit, sciens quod amator scientiae salutaris vitia carnis facile superaret. Quelle leçon pour notre sensualité, qui se nourrit justement dans l’oisiveté et la frivolité !

Dom Pius Parsch, le Guide dans l’année liturgique

Le docteur de la sagesse biblique.

Saint Bède. — Jour de mort : 26 mai 735 à Jarrow. Tombeau : à Durham, en Angleterre. Image : On le représente en bénédictin, avec le livre du docteur à la main. Vie : L’importance de saint Bède réside dans ce fait qu’il forme la transition entre l’époque des Pères de l’Église et les premiers progrès des peuples germaniques devenus chrétiens. Il transmet les traditions de culture et de science romano-chrétiennes au moyen âge. Ses écrits étaient lus publiquement dans les églises, de son vivant. C’est pourquoi on le vénérait. Comme on ne pouvait pas encore le nommer « saint », on lui donna le titre de « vénérable ». Ce titre lui resta plus tard comme surnom. — Le jour de l’Ascension, il sentit que la mort approchait. Il se munit alors des derniers sacrements. Il embrassa ensuite ses frères, se fit coucher sur un dur cilice et, en prononçant doucement ces paroles : « Gloire au Père et au Fils et au Saint-Esprit », il s’endormit dans le Seigneur.

Pratique : Saint Bède est notre docteur dans la sagesse biblique. Celui qui veut vivre avec l’Église doit avoir à la main le livre des Saintes Écritures, pendant la semaine, pendant sa vie. Saint Bède a expliqué ce livre à d’autres. Peut-être avons-nous t’occasion et la possibilité d’en faire autant. — La messe (In medio) est du commun des docteurs.

SOURCE : http://www.introibo.fr/27-05-St-Bede-le-venerable#nh4

Br. Kenneth Hosley, O.P.C.: the Venerable Bede.


Saint Bede the Venerable

Also known as

Venerable Bede

Father of English History

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25 May

formerly 27 May

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Born around the time England was finally completely Christianized, Bede was raised from age seven in the abbey of Saints Peter and Paul at Wearmouth-Jarrow, and lived there the rest of his life. Benedictine monk. Spiritual student of the founder, Saint Benedict BiscopOrdained a priest in 702 by Saint John of Beverley.

Bede was considered the most learned man of his day. He worked as both teacher and authorwriting about historyrhetoricmathematicsmusicastronomypoetry, grammar, philosophyhagiographyhomiletics, and Bible commentary. His writings began the tradition of dating this era from the incarnation of Christ. The central theme of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica is of the Church using the power of its spiritual, doctrinal, and cultural unity to stamp out violence and barbarism. Our knowledge of England before the 8th century is mainly the result of Bede’s writing. He was declared a Doctor of the Church on 13 November 1899 by Pope Leo XIII.

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672 at Wearmouth, England

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25 May 735 of natural causes

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He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbour. – Saint Bede the Venerable

On Tuesday before the feast of the Ascension, Bede’s breathing became labored and a slight swelling appeared in his legs. Nevertheless, he gave us instruction all day long and dictated cheerfully the whole time. It seemed to us, however, that he knew very well that his end was near, and so he spent the whole night giving thanks to God. At daybreak on Wednesday he told us to finish the writing we had begun. We worked until nine o’clock, when we went in procession with the relics as the custom of the day required. But one of our community, a boy named Wilbert, stayed with him and said to him, “Dear master, there is still one more chapter to finish in that book you were dictating. Do you think it would be too hard for you to answer any more questions?” Bede replied: “Not at all; it will be easy. Take up your pen and ink, and write quickly,” and he did so. At three o’clock, Bede said to me, “I have a few treasures in my private chest, some pepper, napkins, and a little incense. Run quickly and bring the priest of our monastery, and I will distribute among them these little presents that god has given me.” When the priests arrived he spoke to them and asked each one to offer Masses and prayers for him regularly. They gladly promised to do so. The priests were sad, however, and they all wept, especially because Bede had said that he thought they would not see his face much longer in this world. Yet they rejoiced when he said, “If it so please my Maker, it is time for me to return to him who created me and formed me out of nothing when I did not exist. I have lived a long time, and the righteous Judge has taken good care of me during my whole life. The time has come for my departure, and I long to die and be with Christ. My soul yearns to see Christ, my King, in all his glory.” He said many other things which profited us greatly, and so he passed the day joyfully till evening. When evening came, young Wilbert said to Bede, “Dear master, there is still one sentence that we have not written down.” Bede said, “Quick, write it down.” In a little while, Wilbert said, “There; now it is written down.” Bede said, “Good. You have spoken the truth; it is finished. Hold my head in your hands, for I really enjoy sitting opposite the holy place where I used to pray; I can call upon my Father as I sit there.” And so Bede, as he lay upon the floor of his cell, sang, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” And when he had named the Holy Spirit, he breathed his last breath. – from a letter on the death of Saint Bede written by the monk Cuthbert

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, any my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” With these words Mary first acknowledges the special gifts she has been given. Above all other saints, she alone could truly rejoice in Jesus, her savior, for she knew that he who was the source of eternal salvation would be born in time in her body, in one person both her own son and her Lord. “For the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Mary attributes nothing to her own merits. She refers all her greatness to the gift of one whose essence is power and whose nature is greatness, for he fill with greatness and strength the small and the weak who believe in him. She did well to add: “and holy is his name,” to warn those who heard, and indeed all who would receive his words, that they must believe and call upon his name. For they too could share in everlasting holiness and true salvation according to the words of the prophet: “and it will come to pass, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This is the name she spoke of earlier when she said “and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” – from a homily by Saint Bede

MLA Citation

“Saint Bede the Venerable“. CatholicSaints.Info. 23 March 2022. Web. 8 June 2023. <https://catholicsaints.info/saint-bede-the-venerable/>

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-bede-the-venerable/

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 18 February 2009

Bede, the Venerable

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Saint we are approaching today is called Bede and was born in the north-east of England, to be exact, Northumbria, in the year 672 or 673. He himself recounts that when he was seven years old his parents entrusted him to the Abbot of the neighbouring Benedictine monastery to be educated: "spending all the remaining time of my life a dweller in that monastery". He recalls, "I wholly applied myself to the study of Scripture; and amidst the observance of the monastic Rule and the daily charge of singing in church, I always took delight in learning, or teaching, or writing" (Historia eccl. Anglorum, v, 24). In fact, Bede became one of the most outstanding erudite figures of the early Middle Ages since he was able to avail himself of many precious manuscripts which his Abbots would bring him on their return from frequent journeys to the continent and to Rome. His teaching and the fame of his writings occasioned his friendships with many of the most important figures of his time who encouraged him to persevere in his work from which so many were to benefit. When Bede fell ill, he did not stop working, always preserving an inner joy that he expressed in prayer and song. He ended his most important work, the Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, with this invocation: "I beseech you, O good Jesus, that to the one to whom you have graciously granted sweetly to drink in the words of your knowledge, you will also vouchsafe in your loving kindness that he may one day come to you, the Fountain of all wisdom, and appear for ever before your face". Death took him on 26 May 737: it was the Ascension.

Sacred Scripture was the constant source of Bede's theological reflection. After a critical study of the text (a copy of the monumental Codex Amiatinus of the Vulgate on which Bede worked has come down to us), he comments on the Bible, interpreting it in a Christological key, that is, combining two things: on the one hand he listens to exactly what the text says, he really seeks to hear and understand the text itself; on the other, he is convinced that the key to understanding Sacred Scripture as the one word of God is Christ, and with Christ, in his light, one understands the Old and New Testaments as "one" Sacred Scripture. The events of the Old and New Testaments go together, they are the way to Christ, although expressed in different signs and institutions (this is what he calls the concordia sacramentorum). For example, the tent of the covenant that Moses pitched in the desert and the first and second temple of Jerusalem are images of the Church, the new temple built on Christ and on the Apostles with living stones, held together by the love of the Spirit. And just as pagan peoples also contributed to building the ancient temple by making available valuable materials and the technical experience of their master builders, so too contributing to the construction of the Church there were apostles and teachers, not only from ancient Jewish, Greek and Latin lineage, but also from the new peoples, among whom Bede was pleased to list the Irish Celts and Anglo-Saxons. St Bede saw the growth of the universal dimension of the Church which is not restricted to one specific culture but is comprised of all the cultures of the world that must be open to Christ and find in him their goal.

Another of Bede's favourite topics is the history of the Church. After studying the period described in the Acts of the Apostles, he reviews the history of the Fathers and the Councils, convinced that the work of the Holy Spirit continues in history. In the Chronica Maiora, Bede outlines a chronology that was to become the basis of the universal Calendar "ab incarnatione Domini". In his day, time was calculated from the foundation of the City of Rome. Realizing that the true reference point, the centre of history, is the Birth of Christ, Bede gave us this calendar that interprets history starting from the Incarnation of the Lord. Bede records the first six Ecumenical Councils and their developments, faithfully presenting Christian doctrine, both Mariological and soteriological, and denouncing the Monophysite and Monothelite, Iconoclastic and Neo-Pelagian heresies. Lastly he compiled with documentary rigour and literary expertise the Ecclesiastical History of the English Peoples mentioned above, which earned him recognition as "the father of English historiography". The characteristic features of the Church that Bede sought to emphasize are: a) catholicity, seen as faithfulness to tradition while remaining open to historical developments, and as the quest for unity in multiplicity, in historical and cultural diversity according to the directives Pope Gregory the Great had given to Augustine of Canterbury, the Apostle of England; b) apostolicity and Roman traditions: in this regard he deemed it of prime importance to convince all the Irish, Celtic and Pict Churches to have one celebration for Easter in accordance with the Roman calendar. The Computo, which he worked out scientifically to establish the exact date of the Easter celebration, hence the entire cycle of the liturgical year, became the reference text for the whole Catholic Church.

Bede was also an eminent teacher of liturgical theology. In his Homilies on the Gospels for Sundays and feast days he achieves a true mystagogy, teaching the faithful to celebrate the mysteries of the faith joyfully and to reproduce them coherently in life, while awaiting their full manifestation with the return of Christ, when, with our glorified bodies, we shall be admitted to the offertory procession in the eternal liturgy of God in Heaven. Following the "realism" of the catecheses of Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine, Bede teaches that the sacraments of Christian initiation make every faithful person "not only a Christian but Christ". Indeed, every time that a faithful soul lovingly accepts and preserves the Word of God, in imitation of Mary, he conceives and generates Christ anew. And every time that a group of neophytes receives the Easter sacraments the Church "reproduces herself" or, to use a more daring term, the Church becomes "Mother of God", participating in the generation of her children through the action of the Holy Spirit.

By his way of creating theology, interweaving the Bible, liturgy and history, Bede has a timely message for the different "states of life": a) for scholars (doctores ac doctrices) he recalls two essential tasks: to examine the marvels of the word of God in order to present them in an attractive form to the faithful; to explain the dogmatic truths, avoiding heretical complications and keeping to "Catholic simplicity", with the attitude of the lowly and humble to whom God is pleased to reveal the mysteries of the Kingdom; b) pastors, for their part, must give priority to preaching, not only through verbal or hagiographic language but also by giving importance to icons, processions and pilgrimages. Bede recommends that they use the vulgate as he himself does, explaining the "Our Father" and the "Creed" in Northumbrian and continuing, until the last day of his life, his commentary on the Gospel of John in the vulgate; c) Bede recommends to consecrated people who devote themselves to the Divine Office, living in the joy of fraternal communion and progressing in the spiritual life by means of ascesis and contemplation that they attend to the apostolate no one possesses the Gospel for himself alone but must perceive it as a gift for others too both by collaborating with Bishops in pastoral activities of various kinds for the young Christian communities and by offering themselves for the evangelizing mission among the pagans, outside their own country, as "peregrini pro amore Dei".

Making this viewpoint his own, in his commentary on the Song of Songs Bede presents the Synagogue and the Church as collaborators in the dissemination of God's word. Christ the Bridegroom wants a hard-working Church, "weathered by the efforts of evangelization" there is a clear reference to the word in the Song of Songs (1: 5), where the bride says "Nigra sum sed formosa" ("I am very dark, but comely") intent on tilling other fields or vineyards and in establishing among the new peoples "not a temporary hut but a permanent dwelling place", in other words, intent on integrating the Gospel into their social fabric and cultural institutions. In this perspective the holy Doctor urges lay faithful to be diligent in religious instruction, imitating those "insatiable crowds of the Gospel who did not even allow the Apostles time to take a mouthful". He teaches them how to pray ceaselessly, "reproducing in life what they celebrate in the liturgy", offering all their actions as a spiritual sacrifice in union with Christ. He explains to parents that in their small domestic circle too they can exercise "the priestly office as pastors and guides", giving their children a Christian upbringing. He also affirms that he knows many of the faithful (men and women, married and single) "capable of irreproachable conduct who, if appropriately guided, will be able every day to receive Eucharistic communion" (Epist. ad Ecgberctum, ed. Plummer, p. 419).

The fame of holiness and wisdom that Bede already enjoyed in his lifetime, earned him the title of "Venerable". Pope Sergius I called him this when he wrote to his Abbot in 701 asking him to allow him to come to Rome temporarily to give advice on matters of universal interest. After his death, Bede's writings were widely disseminated in his homeland and on the European continent. Bishop St Boniface, the great missionary of Germany, (d. 754), asked the Archbishop of York and the Abbot of Wearmouth several times to have some of his works transcribed and sent to him so that he and his companions might also enjoy the spiritual light that shone from them. A century later, Notker Balbulus, Abbot of Sankt Gallen (d. 912), noting the extraordinary influence of Bede, compared him to a new sun that God had caused to rise, not in the East but in the West, to illuminate the world. Apart from the rhetorical emphasis, it is a fact that with his works Bede made an effective contribution to building a Christian Europe in which the various peoples and cultures amalgamated with one another, thereby giving them a single physiognomy, inspired by the Christian faith. Let us pray that today too there may be figures of Bede's stature, to keep the whole continent united; let us pray that we may all be willing to rediscover our common roots, in order to be builders of a profoundly human and authentically Christian Europe.

To special groups

I offer a warm welcome to the pilgrimage group from the Diocese of Arlington led by Bishop Paul Loverde, and to the School Sisters of Notre Dame taking part in a programme of spiritual renewal. I also greet the many student groups present. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims, especially the visitors from England, Ireland, Sweden, Japan and the United States, I cordially invoke God's Blessings of joy and peace!

Lastly, I address a greeting to the young people, the sick and the newlyweds. Dear young people, prepare yourselves to face the important stages of life with spiritual commitment, building every one of your projects on the solid foundations of fidelity to God. Dear sick people, always be aware that by offering your sufferings to the heavenly Father in union with those of Christ, you are contributing to building the Kingdom of Heaven. And you, dear newlyweds, make your family grow every day by listening to God so that your reciprocal love will continue to be sound and open to welcoming the neediest.

And my cordial thanks to you all. Thank you for your patience, in the wind and with the cold. I thank you all.

© Copyright 2009 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

SOURCE : https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090218.html



The Venerable Bede

Historian and Doctor of the Church, born 672 or 673; died 735. In the last chapter of his great work on the "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" Bede has told us something of his own life, and it is, practically speaking, all that we know. His words, written in 731, when death was not far off, not only show a simplicity and piety characteristic of the man, but they throw a light on the composition of the work through which he is best remembered by the world at large. He writes:

Thus much concerning the ecclesiastical history of Britain, and especially of the race of the English, I, Baeda, a servant of Christ and a priest of the monastery of the blessed apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, which is at Wearmouth and at Jarrow (in Northumberland), have with the Lord's help composed so far as I could gather it either from ancient documents or from the traditions of the elders, or from my own knowledge. I was born in the territory of the said monastery, and at the age of seven I was, by the care of my relations, given to the most reverend Abbot Benedict [St. Benedict Biscop], and afterwards to Ceolfrid, to be educated. From that time I have spent the whole of my life within thatmonastery, devoting all my pains to the study of the Scriptures, and amid the observance ofmonastic discipline and the daily charge of singing in the Church, it has been ever my delight to learn or teach or write. In my nineteenth year I was admitted to the diaconate, in my thirtieth to thepriesthood, both by the hands of the most reverend Bishop John [St. John of Beverley], and at the bidding of Abbot Ceolfrid. From the time of my admission to the priesthood to my present fifty-ninth year, I have endeavored for my own use and that of my brethren, to make brief notes upon the holyScripture, either out of the works of the venerable Fathers or in conformity with their meaning and interpretation.

After this Bede inserts a list or Indiculus, of his previous writings and finally concludes his great work with the following words:

And I pray thee, loving Jesus, that as Thou hast graciously given me to drink in with delight the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst mercifully grant me to attain one day to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom and to appear forever before Thy face.

It is plain from Bede's letter to Bishop Egbert that the historian occasionally visited his friends for a few days, away from his own monastery of Jarrow, but with such rare exceptions his life seems to have been one peaceful round of study and prayer passed in the midst of his own community. How much he was beloved by them is made manifest by the touching account of the saint's last sickness and death left us by Cuthbert, one of his disciples. Their studious pursuits were not given up on account of his illness and they read aloud by his bedside, but constantly the reading was interrupted by their tears. "I can with truth declare", writes Cuthbertof his beloved master, "that I never saw with my eyes or heard with my ears anyone return thanks so unceasingly to the living God." Even on the day of his death (the vigil of the Ascension, 735) the saint was still busy dictating a translation of the Gospel of St. John. In the evening the boy Wilbert, who was writing it, said to him: "There is still one sentence, dear master, which is not written down." And when this had been supplied, and the boy had told him it was finished, "Thou hast spoken truth", Bede answered, "it is finished. Take my head in thy hands for it much delights me to sit opposite any holy place where I used to pray, that so sitting I may call upon my Father." And thus upon the floor of his cell singing, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost" and the rest, he peacefully breathed his last breath.

The title Venerabilis seems to have been associated with the name of Bede within two generations after his death. There is of course no early authority for the legend repeated by Fuller of the "dunce-monk" who in composing an epitaph on Bede was at a loss to complete the line: Hac sunt in fossa Bedae . . . . ossa and who next morning found that the angels had filled the gap with the word venerabilis. The title is used byAlcuin, Amalarius and seemingly Paul the Deacon, and the important Council of Aachen in 835 describes him as venerabilis et modernis temporibus doctor admirabilis Beda. This decree was specially referred to in thepetition which Cardinal Wiseman and the English bishops addressed to the Holy See in 1859 praying that Bede might be declared a Doctor of the Church. The question had already been debated even before the time ofBenedict XIV, but it was only on 13 November, 1899, that Leo XIII decreed that the feast of Venerable Bede with the title of Doctor Ecclesiae should be celebrated throughout the Church each year on 27 May. A local cultus of St. Bede had been maintained at York and in the North of England throughout the Middle Ages, but his feast was not so generally observed in the South, where the Sarum Rite was followed.

Bede's influence both upon English and foreign scholarship was very great, and it would probably have been greater still but for the devastation inflicted upon the Northern monasteries by the inroads of the Danes less than a century after his death. In numberless ways, but especially in his moderation, gentleness, and breadth of view, Bede stands out from his contemporaries. In point of scholarship he was undoubtedly the most learned man of his time. A very remarkable trait, noticed by Plummer (I, p. xxiii), is his sense of literary property, an extraordinary thing in that age. He himself scrupulously noted in his writings the passages he had borrowed from others and he even begs the copyists of his works to preserve the references, a recommendation to which they, alas, have paid but little attention. High, however, as was the general level ofBede's culture, he repeatedly makes it clear that all his studies were subordinated to the interpretation ofScripture. In his "De Schematibus" he says in so many words: "Holy Scripture is above all other books not only by its authority because it is Divine, or by its utility because it leads to eternal life, but also by its antiquity and its literary form" (positione dicendi). It is perhaps the highest tribute to Bede's genius that with so uncompromising and evidently sincere a conviction of the inferiority of human learning, he should have acquired so much real culture. Though Latin was to him a still living tongue, and though he does not seem to have consciously looked back to the Augustan Age of Roman Literature as preserving purer models of literarystyle than the time of Fortunatus or St. Augustine, still whether through native genius or through contact with the classics, he is remarkable for the relative purity of his language, as also for his lucidity and sobriety, more especially in matters of historical criticism. In all these respects he presents a marked contrast to St. Aldhelmwho approaches more nearly to the Celtic type.

Writings and editions

No adequate edition founded upon a careful collation of manuscripts has ever been published of Bede's works as a whole. The text printed by Giles in 1884 and reproduced in Migne (XC-XCIV) shows little if any advance on the basic edition of 1563 or the Cologne edition of 1688. It is of course as an historian that Bede is chieflyremembered. His great work, the "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum", giving an account of Christianity in England from the beginning until his own day, is the foundation of all our knowledge of British history and a masterpiece eulogized by the scholars of every age. Of this work, together with the "Historia Abbatum", and the "Letter to Egbert", Plummer has produced an edition which may fairly be called final (2 vols., Oxford, 1896). Bede's remarkable industry in collecting materials and his critical use of them have been admirably illustrated in Plummer's Introduction (pp. xliii-xlvii). The "History of the Abbots" (of the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow), the Letter to Egbert", the metrical and prose lives of St. Cuthbert, and the other smaller pieces are also of great value for the light they shed upon the state of Christianity in Northumbria inBede's own day. The "Ecclesiastical History" was translated into Anglo-Saxon at the instance of King Alfred. It has often been translated since, notably by T. Stapleton who printed it (1565) at Antwerp as a controversial weapon against the Reformation divines in the reign of Elizabeth. The Latin text first appeared in Germany in 1475; it is noteworthy that no edition even of the Latin was printed in England before 1643. Smith's more accurate text saw the light in 1742.

Bede's chronological treatises "De temporibus liber" and "De temporum ratione" also contain summaries of the general history of the world from the Creation to 725 and 703, respectively. These historical portions have been satisfactorily edited by Mommsen in the "Monumenta Germaniae historica" (4to series, 1898). They may be counted among the earliest specimens of this type of general chronical and were largely copied and imitated. The topographical work "De locis sanctis" is a description of Jerusalem and the holy places based upon Adamnan and Arculfus. Bede's work was edited in 1898 by Geyer in the "Itinera Hierosolymitana" for the Vienna "Corpus Scriptorum". That Bede compiled a Martyrologium we know from his own statement. But the work attributed to him in extant manuscripts has been so much interpolated and supplemented that his share in it is quite uncertain.

Bede's exegetical writings both in his own idea and in that of his contemporaries stood supreme in importance among his works, but the list is long and cannot fully be given here. They included a commentary upon the Pentateuch as a whole as well as on selected portions, and there are also commentaries on the Books ofKings, Esdras, Tobias, the Canticles, etc. In the New Testament he has certainly interpreted St. Mark, St. Luke, the Acts, the Canonical Epistles, and the Apocalypse. But the authenticity of the commentary on St. Matthew printed under his name is more than doubtful. (Plaine in "Revue Anglo-Romaine", 1896, III, 61.) The homilies of Bede take the form of commentaries upon the Gospel. The collection of fifty, divided into two books, which are attributed to him by Giles (and in Migne) are for the most part authentic, but thegenuineness of a few is open to suspicion. (Morin in "Revue Bénédictine", IX, 1892, 316.)

Various didactic works are mentioned by Bede in the list which he has left us of his own writings. Most of these are still preserved and there is no reason to doubt that the texts we possess are authentic. The grammatical treatises "De arte metricâ" and "De orthographiâ" have been adequately edited in modern times by Keil in his "Grammatici Latini" (Leipzig, 1863). But the larger works "De naturâ rerum", "De temporibus", "De temporium ratione", dealing with science as it was then understood and especially with chronology, are only accessible in the unsatisfactory texts of the earlier editors and Giles. Beyond the metrical life of St. Cuthbert and some verses incorporated in the Ecclesiastical History" we do not possess much poetry that can be assigned to Bede with confidence, but, like other scholars of his age, he certainly wrote a good deal of verse. He himself mentions his "book of hymns" composed in different meters or rhythms. So Alcuin says of him: Plurima versifico cecinit quoque carmina plectro. It is possible that the shorter of the two metricalcalendars printed among his works is genuine. The Penitential ascribed to Bede, though accepted as genuine by Haddan and Stubbs and Wasserschleben, is probably not his (Plummer, I, 157).

Venerable Bede is the earliest witness of pure Gregorian tradition in England. His works "Musica theoretica" and "De arte Metricâ" (Migne, XC) are found especially valuable by present-day scholars engaged in the study of the primitive form of the chant.

Thurston, Herbert. "The Venerable Bede." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907.29 May 2015 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Paul Knutsen.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

Copyright © 2021 by Kevin Knight. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

SOURCE : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm

Bede the Venerable ca. 673-735

St. Augustine of Canterbury: ¬ Whereas the Faith is one and the same, why are there different customs in different churches? and why is one custom of masses observed in the holy Roman Church, and another in the Gallican Church?

Pope St. Gregory the Dialogist: ¬ You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church in which you remember you were bred up. But it pleases me, that if you have found anything, either in the Roman, or the Gallican, or any other church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you carefully make choice of the same, and sedulously teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the Faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from every church those things that are pious, religious, and upright, and when you have, as it were, made them up into one body, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto. (Ecclesiastical History of the English Bk. 1.27)

Filed Under: Bede the Venerable ca. 673-735, By Saint, Holy Fathers, Liturgy/Worship, St. Augustine of Canterbury 6th cent., St. Gregory the Dialogist ca. 540-604, Worship (ancient)

On Moses and Elijah

They were not forbidden to listen to Moses and Elias, that is, the Law and the Prophets, but listening to the Son was to take precedence, since He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. It is impressed upon them that the light of Gospel truth was to be put before all the types and obscure signs of the Old Testament. (Homily 1.24, 242)

St. Bede on Binding and Loosing

Although it may seem that this power of loosing and binding was given by the Lord only to Peter, we must nevertheless know without any doubt that it was also given to the other Apostles, as Christ Himself testified when, after the triumph of His Passion and Resurrection, He appeared to them and breathed upon them and said to them all: ‘Receive ye the Holy Spirit: if ye forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven to them; if ye retain the sins of any, they are retained [Jn. 20:22,23].’ Indeed, even now the same office is committed to the whole Church in Her bishops and priests. (Homily 1.20, The Orthodox New Testament: Endnotes — Matthew pg. 106)

SOURCE : http://classicalchristianity.com/category/bysaint/bedevenerable/

St. Bede the Venerable

St. Bede “the Venerable” was the first great English scholar. He was born in Northumbria (according to tradition, at Monkton, Durham, east of Newcastle) 672 or 673 and died at the monastery of Jarrow on May 25, 735. Almost all that is known of his life is contained in a notice added by himself to his great work Historia ecclesiastica (v, 24), which states that he was placed in the monastery at Wearmouth at the age of seven, that he became deacon in his nineteenth year, and priest in his thirtieth.

He was trained by the abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid, and probably accompanied the latter to Jarrow in 682. There he spent his life, finding his chief pleasure in being always occupied in learning, teaching, or writing, and zealous in the performance of monastic duties.

His works show that he had at his command all the learning of his time. He was proficient in patristic literature, and quotes from Puny the Younger, Vergil, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace, and other classical writers, but with some disapproval. He knew Greek and a little Hebrew. His Latin is clear and without affectation, and he is a skilful story-teller.

His works were so widely spread throughout Europe and so much esteemed that he won the name of “the teacher of the Middle Ages.”

Bede became known as Venerable Bede soon after his death, but this was not linked to consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. His scholarship and importance to Catholicism were recognized in 1899 when he was declared a Doctor of the Church.

SOURCE : http://www.ucatholic.com/saints/saint-bede/

James Doyle Penrose  (1862–1932),  The Last Chapter. The Venerable Bede translating the Gospel of John on his deathbed, 1902, Royal Academy summer exhibitionBurlington House, http://www.bible-researcher.com/bede.jpg

James Doyle Penrose  (1862–1932),  The Last Chapter. The Venerable Bede translating the Gospel of John on his deathbed, 1902, Royal Academy summer exhibitionBurlington House, http://www.bible-researcher.com/bede.jpg


Bede, Priest, Doctor (RM)

Born in Northumbria, England, 673; died at Jarrow, England, on May 25, 735; named Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1899. In the days when Northumbria was a great scholastic center with famous schools at Jarrow and York, Bede was the most distinguished of its scholars. Beginning at age seven (or three?), he was educated at the newly-founded monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow under Abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid. In 703, he was received as a monk by Saint Benedict Biscop and ordained a priest at age 30 by Saint John of Beverley. Except for a few brief visits elsewhere, Bede spent the rest of his life in Jarrow; never going further afield than Lindisfarne and York.

"I have spent my whole life," he says, "in the same monastery, and while attentive to the rule of my order and the service of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning or teaching or writing." He numbered 600 monks among his pupils and became the Father of English learning. "I have devoted my energies to the study of Scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church."

Bede was a prodigious worker, the author of 45 volumes, including commentaries, text-books, and translations. His range was encyclopedic, embracing the whole field of contemporary knowledge. He wrote grammatical and chronological works, hymns and other verse, letters, and homilies, and compiled the first martyrology with historical notes. These are in Latin, but Bede was also the first known writer of English prose (since lost). Bede's Biblical writings were extensive and important in their time, but it is as an historian that he is famous. The Latin of the hymns 'The hymn for conquering martyrs raise' and 'Sing we triumphant hymns of praise' was written by Bede

His supreme achievement, completed in 731, was his History of the English Church and People, in the laborious preparation of which he searched the archives of Rome (? most sources say he never left England), collecting and collating documents, and set forth in detail the first authoritative history of Christian origins in Britain. To this he added Lives of five early abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow. Nor until his last illness had he any assistance: "I am my own secretary; I dictate, I compose, I copy all myself."

Many stories have gathered round his name. This one is probably mythic: On a visit to Rome with other scholars, he found them puzzled by an inscription of cryptic letters upon an iron gate. A passing Roman citizen, seeing their confusion, sneered at Bede and rudely called him an English ox, when, to his surprise, Bede at once read out the meaning. From that time, because of the range of his wisdom and the keenness of his intellect, he was given the title of venerable.

But the best-known story is related by his contemporary Saint Cuthbert of how when illness and weakness came upon him at the end of his life, his translation of Saint John's Gospel into the English tongue was still unfinished. Despite sleepless nights and days of weariness, he continued his task, and though he made what speed he could, he took every care in comparing the text and preserving its accuracy. "I don't want my boys," he said, "to read a lie or to work to no purpose after I am gone." His friends begged him to rest, but he insisted on working. "We never read without weeping," remarked one of them.

When it came to the last day, he called his scribe to him and told him to write with all possible speed. "There is still a chapter wanting," said the boy, as the day wore on; "had you not better rest for a while?" But Bede persisted with his task. "Be quick with your writing," he answered, "for I shall not hold out much longer."

When night fell, the boy said: "There is yet one sentence not written." "Write quickly," Bede replied; and when it was done, he said: "All is finished now," then after sending for his fellow monks and distributing to them his few belongings, in a broken voice he sang the Gloria and passed to his reward on Ascension Eve.

Of all the writers in Western Europe from the time of Saint Gregory the Great until Saint Anselm, Saint Bede was perhaps the best known and most influential, especially in England. He was a careful scholar and distinguished stylist. His works De Temporibus and De Temporum Ratione established the idea of dating events anno domini (A.D.).

Already in 853 a church council in Aachen referred to him as 'the venerable,' i.e., worthy of honor. Saint Boniface called Bede 'a light of the church, lit by the Holy Spirit.' To Alcuin, himself the 'schoolmaster of his age,' he was 'blessed Bede, our master.' (Alcuin claimed Bede's relics worked miraculous cures.) Bede is the only Englishman whom Dante names in the Paradiso. The center of Bede's cultus is Durham, where his shrine is located, and York (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Duckett, Gill, Hamilton Thompson, White).

A good deal of further information on Saint Bede is available on the Internet, including his Life of St. Cuthbert. Saint Bede is depicted in art as an old monk writing with a quill and rule. He might also be shown (1) studying a book, (2) holding up a pitcher with light from heaven falling on him, or (3) supported by monks as he is dying (Roeder). He is the patron saint of scholars and historians (White). 

SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0525.shtml


May 27

St. Bede, Confessor and Father of the Church

From the short account he has given of himself in the last chapter of his Ecclesiastical History; his disciple Cuthbert’s relation of his death; his two short anonymous lives extant, one in Capgrave, the other quoted by F. Maihew; also from Simeon of Durham, Hist. Dunelm. c. 14, 15, et l. de Pontif. Eborac. in manuscript. Cotton. Malmesb. de Reg. Angl. l. 2, c. 4; Matt. of West. ad an. 734. See Mabillon, sæc. 3, Ben. p. 1, p. 539. Bulteau, t. 2, p. 316. Cave, Hist. Lit. t. 1. ed. noviss. Ceillier, t. 18, p. 1. Tanner, Bibl. Script. Brit. p. 86, Biographia Brit. t. 1, V. Bede; and Smith in app. after Bede’s Eccl. Hist. p. 791.

A.D. 735.

THE CELEBRATED Dom. Mabillon 1 mentioning Bede as a most illustrious instance of learning in the monastic institute, says: “Who ever applied himself to the study of every branch of literature, and also to the teaching of others, more than Bede? yet who was more closely united to heaven by the exercises of piety and religion? To see him pray, says an ancient writer, one would have thought he left himself no time to study; and when we look at his books we admire he could have found time to do any thing else but write.” Camden calls him “the singular and shining light,” and Leland, “the chiefest and brightest ornament of the English nation, most worthy, if any one ever was, of immortal fame.” William of Malmesbury tells us, that it is easier to admire him in thought than to do him justice in expression. Venerable Bede, called by the ancients Bedan—who is not to be confounded with a monk of Lindisfarne of the same name, 2 but older—was born in 673, as Mabillon demonstrates from his own writings, in a village which soon after his birth became part of the estate of the new neighbouring monastery of Jarrow, but was gained upon by the sea before the time of Simeon of Durham. St. Bennet Biscop founded the abbey of St. Peter’s at Weremouth, near the mouth of the Were, in 674, and that of St. Paul’s at Girvum, now Jarrow, in 680, on the banks of the river Tyne, below the Capræ-caput, still called Goat’s-head or Gateshead, opposite to Newcastle. Such a harmony subsisted between the two houses that they were often governed by the same abbot, and called the same monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. St. Bennet was a man of extraordinary learning and piety, and enriched these monasteries with a large and curious library which he had collected at Rome, and in other foreign parts. To his care Bede was committed at seven years of age, but was afterwards removed to Jarrow, where he prosecuted his studies under the direction of the abbot Ceolfrid, who had been St. Bennet’s fellow-traveller. Among other able masters, under whom he made great progress, he names Trumbert, a monk of Jarrow, who had formerly been a disciple of St. Chad, bishop, first of York, afterwards of Litchfield, who had established a great school in his monastery of Lestingan in Yorkshire. The church music or chant Bede learned of John, formerly precentor of St. Peter’s of the Vatican, and abbot of St. Martin’s at Rome, whom Pope Agatho had sent over to England with St. Bennet Biscop. The Greek language our saint must have learned of Theodorus archbishop of Canterbury, and the abbot Adrian, by whose instruction that language became as familiar to several of their English scholars as their native tongue. For an instance of which Bede mentions Tobias bishop of Rochester. How great a master Bede was of that language appears from his Ars Metrica and other works. His poem on St. Cuthbert and other performances show him to have been a good poet for the age wherein he lived. But his comments on the holy scriptures, and his sermons prove that the meditation on the word of God, and the writings of the holy fathers chiefly engrossed his time and attention.

His great piety and endowments supplying the defect of age, by the order of his abbot Ceolfrid, he was ordained deacon in 691, at nineteen years of age, by St. John of Beverley, who was at that time bishop of Hexham, in which diocess Jarrow was situated, there being then no episcopal see at Durham. From this time he continued his studies, till, at thirty years of age, in 702, he was ordained priest by the same St. John who was made bishop of Hexham in 685, and bishop of York in 704. In King Alfred’s version Bede is styled mass-priest, because it was his employment to sing every day the conventual mass. He tells us, that the holy abbot and founder St. Bennet Biscop, like the rest of the brethren, used to winnow the corn and thrash it, to give milk to the lambs and calves, and to work in the bakehouse, garden, and kitchen. Bede must have sometimes had a share in such employments, and he was always cheerful, obedient, and indefatigable. But his studies and writings, with assiduous meditation and prayer, must have chiefly employed him. He often copied books. From the time that he was promoted to priestly order he began to compose books; and he had a great school, in which he brought up many eminent and holy scholars, and instructed his fellow monks, who amounted to the number of six hundred. Bede tells us of himself that he applied himself wholly to the meditation of the holy scriptures, and amidst the observance of regular discipline, and the daily care of singing in the church, it was his delight to be always employed either in learning, teaching, or writing. He says, that from the time of his being made priest, to the fifty-ninth year of his age when he wrote this, he had compiled several books for his own use, and that of others, gathering them out of the works of the venerable fathers, or adding new comments according to their sense and interpretation. 3 He gives a list of forty-five different works which he had then composed, of which thirty, and many of those are divided into several books, consist of comments on the Old and New Testament. He wrote several other works after this. All the sciences and every branch of literature were handled by him; natural philosophy, the philosophical principles of Aristotle, astronomy, arithmetic, the calendar, grammar, ecclesiastical history, and the lives of the saints; though works of piety make up the bulk of his writings. The ornaments of rhetoric were not his study; but perspicuity, (the first qualification in writing,) an unaffected honesty and simplicity, and an affecting spirit of sincere piety and goodness of heart and charity run through all his compositions, and cannot fail to please. An honest candour and love of truth are so visibly the characteristics of his historical works, that if some austere critics have suspected him sometimes of credulity, no man ever called in question his sincerity. If on the scriptures he often abridged or reduced to a methodical order the comments of St. Austin, St. Ambrose, St. Jerom, St. Basil, and other fathers, this he did, not out of sloth or for want of genius, (as some later writers have done,) but that he might stick closer to tradition in interpreting the sacred oracles; and in what he found not done by other eminent fathers, he still followed their rules lest he should in the least tittle deviate from tradition. In the original comments which he wrote, he seems in the opinion of good judges, not inferior in solidity and judgment to his ablest masters among the fathers. John Bale, the apostate Carmelite friar, and the sworn enemy of the monks and fathers, who was bishop of Ossory under Edward VI., and died canon of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth, could not refuse Bede the highest encomiums, and affirms, that he certainly surpassed Gregory the Great in eloquence and copiousness of style, and that there is scarcely anything in all antiquity worthy to be read which is not found in Bede. Dr. John Pitts 4 advances, that Europe scarcely ever produced a greater scholar; and that even whilst he was living, his writings were of so great authority, that a council ordered them to be publicly read in the churches. Folchard, a very learned monk of Christ Church, in Canterbury, and abbot of Thorney, in the days of St. Edward the Confessor, and the Conqueror, originally from Sithiu, in his life of St. John of Beverley, quoted by Leland, says of Bede, “It is amazing how this great man became so perfect in all the branches of those sciences to which he applied himself, whereby he conquered all difficulties, and brought those of his own nation to form right notions; so that from the rude and boorish manners of their ancestors they began to be exceedingly civilized and polite through their desire of learning, of which he not only taught them the grounds whilst living, but in his works left them a kind of Encyclopædia (or universal library) for the instruction of youth after his decease.” Fuller writes of him: “He expounded almost all the Bible, translated the Psalms and New Testament into English, and lived a comment on those words of the apostle—shining as a light in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” What we most admire in Bede is the piety with which he pursued and sanctified his studies, and the use which he made of them. What he says of St. Chad was a transcript of his own life, that he studied the holy scriptures so as to meditate assiduously on the mysteries of faith and the maxims and rules of piety, treasuring up in his heart the most perfect sentiments of divine love, humility, and all virtues, and diligently copying them in his whole conduct. Hence his life was a model of devotion, obedience, humility, simplicity, charity, and penance. He declined the abbatial dignity which was pressed upon him. Malmesbury gives us a letter of Pope Sergius, 5 by which with many honourable expressions he was invited to Rome, that pope desiring to see and consult him on certain matters of the greatest importance. This must have happened about the time that he was ordained priest. Bede out of modesty suppressed this circumstance. What hindered his journey thither we know not; but we have his word for it that he lived from his childhood in his monastery without travelling abroad, that is, without taking any considerable journey. His reputation drew to him many visits from all the greatest men in Britain, particularly from the pious king Ceolwulp. Ecgbright or Egberct, brother to Eadbyrht, king of Northumberland, who was consecrated archbishop of York in 734, had been a scholar of Bede. At his pressing invitation our saint went to York, and taught there some months, but excused himself from leaving his monastery the following year. 6 This school set up at York became very flourishing, and Alcuin, one of its greatest ornaments, is said to have been himself a scholar of Bede. Our saint died soon after Ecgbright’s accession to the see of York; but lived long enough to write him a letter of advice upon his advancement. Herein he puts him in mind that it was a most essential part of his duty to place everywhere able and learned priests, to labour strenuously himself in feeding his flock, in correcting all vice, and endeavouring to convert all sinners, and to take care that every one knew the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, and was thoroughly instructed in the articles of our holy religion. He gives it as an important piece of advice, that all among the laity whose lives are pure, (or free from vice,) communicate every Sunday, and on the festivals of the apostles and martyrs, as he says Ecgbright had seen practised at Rome; but Bede requires that the married persons prepare themselves by continence to receive the holy communion, 7 which was formerly a precept repeated in several councils; but is now by disuse looked upon as no more than a counsel, but a counsel which St. Charles Borromeo recommends to be inculcated. Bede died within the compass of a year after he wrote this letter. Cuthbert, called also Antony, one of his scholars, to whom the saint dedicated his book De Arte Metrica, wrote to one Cuthwin a monk, who had formerly been his schoolfellow under Bede, an account of the death of their dear master. This Cuthbert was afterwards abbot of Jarrow, in which dignity he succeeded Huethbert, called also Eusebius, another scholar of Bede.

The letter of Cuthbert 8 deserves to have a place in the life of Bede, though it is here something abridged:—“To his most beloved in Christ, and fellow-reader Cuthwin, his schoolfellow Cuthbert wishes eternal salvation in our Lord. Your small present was very acceptable, and your letter gave me much satisfaction, wherein I found what I greatly desired, that masses and prayers are diligently said by you for Bede, the beloved of God, our late father and master. For the love I bear him, I send you in few words an account of the manner in which he departed this world, understanding it is what you desire. He began to be much troubled with a shortness of breath about two weeks before Easter, yet without pain: thus he lived cheerful and rejoicing, giving thanks to Almighty God every day and night, nay, every hour, till the day of our Lord’s Ascension, which was the 26th of May. He daily read lessons to us his scholars; the rest of the day he spent in singing psalms; he also passed all the night awake in joy and thanksgiving, only when he was interrupted by a short slumber; but awakening, he repeated his accustomed exercises, and ceased not to give thanks to God, with hands expanded. O truly happy man! He sung that sentence of St. Paul: It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; and much more out of holy writ. Being well skilled in English verses, he recited some things in our tongue. He said in English: ‘No man is too wise to consider what good or evil he has done, before the necessary departure:’ that is, to examine the state of his soul sufficiently before his death. He also sung anthems, according to his and our custom; one of which is: ‘O glorious King, Lord of Hosts, who triumphing this day didst ascend above all the heavens; leave us not orphans, but send down the Father’s Spirit of truth upon us: Alleluia.’ When he came to that word ‘leave us not,’ he burst into tears, and wept much; and an hour after he began to repeat the same anthem he had commenced, and we hearing it, grieved with him. By turns we read, and by turns we wept; nay, we always wept even when we read. In such joy we passed the fifty days, and he rejoiced much, and gave God thanks because he deserved to be so infirm. He often repeated, that God scourgeth every son whom he receiveth; and much more out of the scripture; also that sentence of St. Ambrose: ‘I have not lived so as to be ashamed to live among you; nor am I afraid to die, because we have a good God.’ During these days, besides the daily lessons he gave, and the singing of psalms, he composed two works for the benefit of the church; the one was a translation of St. John’s gospel into English, as far as those words: But what are these among so many? the other, some collections out of St. Isidore’s book of notes; for he said, ‘I will not have my scholars read a falsehood after my death, and labour without advantage.’ On Tuesday before the Ascension he began to be much worse in his breathing, and a small swelling appeared in his feet; but he passed all that day pleasantly, and dictated in school, saying now and then, ‘Go on quickly; I know not how long I shall hold out, and whether my Maker will soon take me away.’ To us he seemed very well to know the time of his departure. He spent the night awake in thanksgiving. On Wednesday morning he ordered us to write speedily what he had begun. After this, we made the procession according to the custom of that day, 9 walking with the relics of the saints till the third hour (or nine o’clock in the morning); then one of us said to him: ‘Most dear master, there is still one chapter wanting. Do you think it troublesome to be asked any more questions?’ He answered: ‘It is no trouble. Take your pen and write fast.’ He did so. But at the ninth hour (three in the afternoon) he said to me: ‘Run quickly; and bring all the priests of the monastery to me.’ When they came, he distributed to them some pepper-corns, little cloths or handkerchiefs, and incense which he had in a little box, 10 entreating every one that they would carefully celebrate masses and say prayers for him; which they readily promised to do. They all wept at his telling them, they should no more see his face in this world; but rejoiced to hear him say: ‘It is now time for me to return to him who made me, and gave me a being when I was nothing. I have lived a long time; my merciful Judge most graciously foresaw and ordered the course of my life for me. The time of my dissolution draws near. I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ. Yes; my soul desires to see Christ my king in his beauty.’ Many other things he spoke to our edification, and spent the rest of the day in joy till the evening. The above-mentioned young scholar, whose name was Wilberth, said to him: ‘Dear master, there is still one sentence that is not written.’ He answered, ‘Write quickly.’ The young man said: ‘It is now done.’ He replied: ‘You have well said; it is at an end: all is finished. Hold my head that I may have the pleasure to sit, looking towards my little oratory where I used to pray; that whilst I am sitting I may call upon my heavenly Father, and on the pavement of his little place sing, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.’ Thus he prayed on the floor, and when he had named the Holy Ghost he breathed out his soul. All declared that they had never seen any one die with such great devotion and tranquillity; for so long as his soul was in his body, he never ceased, with his hands expanded, to give thanks and praise to God, repeating Glory be to the Father, &c., with other spiritual acts. I have many other things I could relate of him; and I have a thought of writing more amply on this subject,” &c.

Ranulph Higden 11 relates the manner of his holy departure: “After teaching all day, it was his custom to watch much in the nights. Finding by the swelling of his feet that death approached, he received extreme unction, and then the Viaticum on the Tuesday before the Ascension of the Lord, and gave the kiss of peace to all his brethren, imploring their pious remembrance after his death. On the feast of the Ascension, lying on sackcloth spread on the floor, he invited the grace of the Holy Ghost; and continued in praise and thanksgiving in which he breathed forth his holy soul.” St. Bede died in the year 735, of his age sixty-two, 12 on Wednesday evening the 26th of May, after the first vespers of our Lord’s Ascension; whence many authors say he died on the feast of the Ascension; for our Saxon ancestors reckoned festivals from the first vespers. Thus from repeating the divine praises here in the most pure and profound sentiments of compunction, humility, zeal, and love, he passed, as it were without intermission, to sing eternally the same praises with affections at once infinitely dilated with inexpressible holy joy, ardour, and love, in the glorious choirs of the blessed, and in the beatific contemplation of God, whom he praised and loved. His feast was kept in England in some places on the 26th of May, with a commemoration only in the office of St. Austin; in others it was deferred to the 27th, on which it occurs in the Roman Martyrology. In the constitution of John Alcock, bishop of Ely, for the festivals of his diocess, printed in 1498 by Pynson, Bede’s feast is ordered to be kept with an office on the 13th of March, the day of his death being taken up by the office of St. Austin. Certain congregations of the Benedictin Order have long kept his office on the 29th of October, perhaps, on account of some translation. On the same day it is celebrated at present in England, and by a special privilege, the office is said by all English priests who live in foreign countries, by an indult or grant of Pope Benedict XIV. given in 1754; which grant, at least with regard to those clergymen or regulars who are in England, was interpreted at Rome to imply a precept.

Alcuin 13 having extolled the learning and virtues of this holy doctor, says that his sanctity was attested by the voice of heaven after his death; for a sick man was freed from a fever upon the spot by touching his relics. St. Lullus, archbishop of Mentz, wrote to his scholar Cuthbert, then abbot of Weremouth and Jarrow, to beg a copy of Bede’s works, and sent him a cloak for his own use, and a silk vest to cover the shrine of this great servant of God. At that time a vest was a usual present even to kings. Bede was buried in St. Paul’s church in Jarrow, where a porch on the north side bore his name. In 1020 his sacred remains were conveyed to Durham, and laid in a bag and wooden trunk in the shrine of St. Cuthbert, as Simeon of Durham relates. In 1155 they were taken up by Hugh bishop of Durham, and inclosed in a rich shrine of curious workmanship, adorned with gold, silver, and jewels, as we learn from the appendix to the history of Durham, compiled by Simeon of Durham, who wrote from the memoirs of Turgot the learned prior of Durham in the reign of Edward the Confessor, made archbishop of St. Andrew’s in the reign of the Conqueror, whose declared enemy he was. Hence Turgot’s history has been by some ascribed to him. At the change of religion in England the shrines of the saints were plundered by the royal commissioners, but these were anticipated by private robbers in many places. At the same time the relics were scattered or publicly burnt. This latter part of the commission, which was rigorously executed near the court and in the southern provinces, was not much regarded in the more remote northern counties, where they were usually interred in the churches where their shrines were kept, as we see in St. Cuthbert’s, St. John of Beverley’s, &c. Speed, in his Theatre of Britain, says his marble monument subsisted, when he wrote, in our Lady’s chapel in the western part of the church of Durham. Sir George Wheeler, who died prebendary of Durham, and was a great admirer of Bede, according to his will, is buried within the cathedral, near the foot of Bede’s tomb, and has an inscription, whereas none is now found over St. Bede’s. Mr. Smith has given a type of the remains which are now standing, 14 and another of the altar of St. Cuthbert and St. Bede, delineated from the paintings of the Eastern window. 15 Nevertheless the monks of Glastenbury laid claim to St. Bede’s relics, or a portion of them. 16 Boniface calls St. Bede the lamp of the English church; St. Lullus, Alcuin, and other writers from the time of his death exceedingly extol his learning and sanctity. By Lanfranc and many others he is styled the doctor and father of the English. Trithemius imagined that the title of “Venerable” was conferred on him in his life-time. But Mabillon shows from the silence of all former writers, that it was begun to be given him, out of a peculiar respect, only in the ninth age, when it was used by Amalarius, Jonas, Usuard, &c. 17 He was styled Saint, and placed in foreign Martyrologies long before that time, by Hincmar, Notker, 18 in the litany of St. Gall’s, &c. Rabanus Maurus mentions an altar at Fulde, of which Bede was titular saint. The second council of Aix la Chapelle, in 836, calls him “The venerable, and in the modern times admirable doctor,” &c.

It was the happiness of venerable Bede, that receiving his education under the direction of saints, by their example, spirit, and instructions he learned from his infancy the maxims and practice of perfect sanctity. St. Chrysostom 19 wished that parents would breed up their children in monasteries till they are to be produced in the world. Several Roman senators and other noblemen committed the education of their sons to St. Bennet. The most austere and regular monasteries have been chosen by virtuous parents of the first rank, whose principal desire was that their children should be brought up among saints, where their passions would be in no danger of being flattered, and where their minds would be filled with Christian verities and Christ’s spirit, and their hearts formed to piety, grounded in the love, and exercised in habits of all virtues. This is the first and essential advantage which parents are bound to procure their children, upon which their temporal and eternal happiness depends, and all other advantages and qualifications are to be founded. Let them not be neglected, but let this be secured in the first place, and at all rates.

Note 1. Tr. des Etudes Monast. t. 1, p. 111, ed. Par. 1692. [back]

Note 2. Vit. S. Cuthbert. c. 37. See Mabil. Anal. t. 4, pp. 521, 522. [back]

Note 3. Bede wrote his Church History of the English in the year 731, the fifty-ninth of his age, at the request of Ceolwulph, (to whom it was dedicated,) a very learned and pious king of the Northumbrians, who three years after Bede’s death resigned his kingdom to his son Edbert, and became a monk at Lindisfarne, where he died in 740. Milton and some others complain of omissions of dates and civil transactions. But Bede’s undertaking was only a history of the English Church; a work suitable to his profession and piety. He speaks sparingly of the British churches, because they fell not directly under his plan. If he relate many visions and miracles, he usually names his vouchers. The best editions of this history are those of Abr. Wheloc with notes, at Cambridge, in 1644; of Peter Fr. Chifflet, a Jesuit, with notes, at Paris, in 1681, and especially of Dr. John Smith at Cambridge, in 1722, in folio, with Bede’s other historical works, as his Chronicle, or on the six ages of the world; his Lives of St. Cuthbert and St. Felix, his Letters to Archbishop Ecgberct, his book on the Holy Places, (p. 315,) his Genuine Martyrology, (p. 327,) first published without the posterior additions of Florus, monk of St. Tron’s, and others, by the Bollandists, (Mart. t. 2, Proleg.) Bede’s Lives of the five first abbots of Weremouth (St. Bennet Biscop, St. Ceolfrid, Estervin, Sigefrid, and Witbert) is accurately published by Sir James Ware, at Dublin, in 1664, and by Henry Wharton, at London, in 1693. The life of St. Cuthbert he wrote both in prose and verse: that of St. Felix he only translated into prose from the poems of St. Paulinus. Several lives published among Bede’s works belong to other authors; that of St. Gregory the Great, to Paul the deacon; those of SS. Columban, Attalus, Eustatius, Bertulfus, and Fara, to Jonas, the disciple of St. Columban; that of St. Vedastus to an anonymous Frenchman; that of St. Patrick to Probus. The other works of Bede are comments on the scripture, and several homilies or sermons; others treat on poesy, grammar, rhetoric, astronomy, music, the art of notation or of memory, the calendar, on Easter or the Equinox, &c. His book on the Holy Places is an abridgment of Adamnan, &c. His hymns and epigrams are lost. The works of Bede were printed at Paris in 1499 and in 1545, in three tomes; and at Basil in 1563, in eight tomes; at Cologne in 1612 and 1688. See Fabricius, Bibl. Lat. 254. Mabillon, sæc. Ben. iii. in Elogio Historico de Beda, ejusque Scriptis; Cave, Hist. Liter, t. 1, p. 612. Tanner, Bibl. Brit. p. 86, and Boston Buriens, p. 29, ap. Tan. in Præf. Cave calls it a disgrace to our nation that no accurate or complete edition of Bede’s works has been set forth, especially as many genuine valuable writings of this father are found in manuscripts, which have never been published, of which catalogues are given by Cave and Tanner. The former has published Bede’s Prologue to the Canonical Epistles, (p. 614,) pretending that the primacy of St. Peter seems to have been unknown to the author. Bede indeed thinks the epistle of St. James may have been placed first, because the gospel began to be preached at Jerusalem, and because St. James wrote his epistle before St. Peter. But see this prologue more correctly given by Trombelli, a canon regular of St. Saviour, at Bologna, in 1755. (Bedæ Claudii Taurinensis aliorumque Veterum Patrum Opuscula.) This piece is published by the warmest abetters of St. Peter’s supremacy; so far are they from industriously suppressing it, as Cave insinuates. Neither can any one form from it an objection to that article, which no one more manifestly establishes than Bede in many parts of his works. Nor can Bede’s religion as to any other points of controversy in faith be ambiguous to any one who is the least conversant in his writings, especially as to the doctrine of praying for the dead, invoking saints, venerating their relics and holy images, &c., to all which practices he ascribes miracles, &c. He proves that God in the decalogue forbade only idols, not all holy images; for he commanded himself the brazen serpent, &c. (l. De Templo Solom. c. 19, t. 8, p. 40.) His Church History, which is in every one’s hands, may suffice alone to speak for him. See him also on praying for the dead. (Hom. 2, t. 5. Anecd. Martenne, p. 239, &c.) It may seem worth notice that (l. De Nat. Rerum. p. 46. Op. t. 2, p. 37,) he teaches the world and the earth to be round. The Protestants would be unwilling to stand by his verdict or testimony of the church’s faith; though they have not refused him the just tribute of praise. Melanchton (De Corrigendis Studiis) confesses Venerable Bede to have been a person singularly skilled in Greek and Latin; also in mathematics, philosophy, and sacred literature. Bishop Tanner (p. 86,) gives this character of him: “He was a prodigy of learning in an unlearned age, whose erudition we can never cease admiring. If we think that he sometimes failed in his judgment or by credulity, when we take a view of all his writings together, we shall confess that he alone is a library and a treasure of all the arts.” The geography of Bede, even in his descriptions of foreign countries, is incomparably exact, though he never travelled abroad; which shows how careful he was in procuring the best information, which he also discovers in his preface to his history, where he speaks of the sources of his intelligence. [back]

Note 4. De Script. Angl. [back]

Note 5. L. 1, de Reg. c. 3. [back]

Note 6. Bed. ep. Ecgbright, ap. Smith, p. 306. [back]

Note 7. Bed. ep. Ecgbright, ap. Smith, p. 311. [back]

Note 8. Ap. Simeon. Dunelm. Hist. Dunelm. l. 1, c. 15, et ap. Smith, p. 792. [back]

Note 9. Usque ad tertiam horam, ambulavimus deinde cum reliquiis sanctorum, ut consuetude diei illius poscebat, p. 793, ed. Smith. This was the procession of the Rogations on the eve of Ascension-day. [back]

Note 10. Piperem, oraria et incensa. The incense was used to burn at high mass, as Gemmulus, a deacon of Rome, mentions, (Ep. ad S. Bonifac. inter ep. Bonif. 149,) who sent the like present to St. Boniface. Oraria means little cloths to wipe the mouth, as Vossius shows, (c. 3, De Vitiis Serm. c. 31.) Bede by these little presents desired to give tokens of mutual charity, and memorials to put others in mind to remember him in the divine office, as Mabillon and Smith observe. Monks were then allowed, with the abbot’s tacit consent, to leave such little tokens as memorials, as is clear from St. Bennet’s rule. St. Lullus sent to the Abbess Kaneboda a present of pepper, incense, and cinnamon. The epistles of St. Boniface and others furnish several like instances. Such little tokens were intended to put persons in mind to pray for one another. Fortunatus, returning thanks for such a present of herbs, chesnuts, and plums, says, “Munere in angusto cernitur amplus amor.”—L. 11, epigr. 23. See Mabillon, loco cit. § 8. De Xeniolis. Smith, loc. cit. [back]

Note 11. Polychron. l. 5, ad an. 732. [back]

Note 12. This calculation of Mabillon agrees with the saint’s writings and history, and with the Paschal Cycle of that year; though some make him to have lived only fifty-nine years; and the life of Alcuin seems to say that he died in his ninetieth year; consequently that he lived thirty years after he had written his Church History; which system is adopted by Bishop Tanner, who says he died in 762, ninety years old. Bibl. Britan. p. 92. [back]

Note 13. Alcuin, Carm. de Pontif. et Sanct. Eccl. Eborac. v. 1305. [back]

Note 14. App. ad Hist. Bedæ, p. 805. [back]

Note 15. Frontispiece, ib. [back]

Note 16. See Monast. Angl. t. 1, and John of Glastenbury. [back]

Note 17. Mab. ib Elog. Hist. et ap. Smith in App. p. 807. [back]

Note 18. Notker ad 13, Cal. Apr. [back]

Note 19. St. Chrys. l. 3, contr. Vitup. Vitæ. monast. pp. 94, 95, 99, t. 1, ed. Ben. [back]

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73).  Volume V: May. The Lives of the Saints.  1866.

SOURCE : http://www.bartleby.com/210/5/272.html

Golden Legend – Venerable Bede

Article

Here followeth the Life of the holy and Venerable priest Bede.

The holy and venerable Bede was born in England, and when he was seven years of his age he was delivered to Benet Biscop of Jarrow, for to learn, and after his death he was put to Ceolfrith, abbot of the same place, and learned and profited much in holy life and conning. And the nineteenth year of his age he was made deacon, of John, bishop of York, and in the thirtieth year of his age he was made priest. Then began he to write and to study and to expound holy writ, whereupon he made many noble homilies, and notwithstanding his great business, was daily in the service of religion, as in singing and praying in the church. He had great sweetness and liking to learn, to teach and to write; he wrote seventy eight books; he accounted the books and years from the beginning of the world in Historia Anglicana.

In the book of Polycronicon is rehearsed that is wonder, that a man that is without use of school made so many noble volumes in so sober words in so little space of his life time. It is said he went to Rome for to show there his books, for to see them according to holy writ and to the lore of holy church, but hereof some doubt, and say that he never went to Rome. Also it is said that when he was blind he went about for to preach, and his servant that led him brought him whereas were many hopples of stones, to whom he made a noble sermon, and when he had all finished his sermon the stones answered and said, Amen.

Also it is said that he found a writing of three R’s and three F’s over the gate of Rome, which he expounded thus: The first R betokened regna, the second ruent, the third Rome, that is: Regna ruent Rome. And the first F betokened ferro, the second flamma, the third fame, that is: Ferro, flamma, famæque. Also pope Sergius wrote a letter to the abbot Ceolfrith and prayed for to have Bede come to Rome for to assoil certain questions that were there moved. Here is to be noted, that how noble and worthy the court of Rome held him, when so noble a court had need to have him for to declare and assoil the questions that were there moved. Also we ought to hold him noble and holy by the manner of his living and his teaching. He must needs be virtuous and eschew vices that was so well occupied in spending his wit and thought in expounding of holy writ, and his cleanness was much seen at his last end. For his stomach had indignation of meat seven weeks continually, and of drink, so that unnethe he might retain any meat, and was strait and short-breathed, but for all that he spared not the travail of lecture and of books, and every day among the detty travail of service and of psalms, he taught his disciples in lessons and in questions. He transiated Saint John’s Gospel into English, and said to his scholars: Learn ye, my small children, whiles I am alive and with you; I wot not how long I shall abide with you, and alway among he said that saw of Saint Ambrose: I have not so lived among you that me shameth to live, neither me dreadeth to die, for we have a good Lord.

On night’s time when he had no man to teach then would he devoutly be in prayers and thanking our Lord of all his gifts. The Tuesday tofore Ascension-day his death approached, and his feet began to swell; he was houseled, anointed and kissed his brethren, and prayed them all to remember him, and he gave to divers of his servants things that he had in privity. On the Ascension-day the hair was spread, and he laid him down thereon, and prayed for the grace of the Holy Ghost, and said: O king of bliss, and Lord of virtues, that hast the prize and art this day styed up above all heavens, leave thou us not fatherless, but send thou in to us that behest of the Father, the ghost of soothfastness. And when he had ended that, he gave up the last breath with a sweet dour and savour, and there he was then buried, but the common fame telleth that he now lieth at Durham with Saint Cuthbert.

There was a devout clerk, which laboured in his mind for to make his epitaph, and in no wise he could make true metre, wherefore on a time he went to the church and prayed God to give him conning to make a true verse. And after came unto his tomb and saw there written by an angel:

Hic sunt in fossa
Bedæ venerabilis ossa.

Then let us pray to this holy man that he pray for us, that after this life we may come to everlasting life.

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/golden-legend-venerable-bede/

Tomba del Venerabile Beda nel duomo di Durham


Bede

Definition

by Wesley Fiorentino

published on 10 May 2017 

Available in other languages: FrenchSpanish

Bede (c. 673-735 CE) was an English monk, historian, and scholar who lived in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He is at times referred to as the Venerable Bede or Bede the Venerable. He was a monk at the double monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow. Bede was a prolific writer and many of his works have survived to the present day. His work was extremely influential in the generations after his death. His most famous work, the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), has been a vital source for the study of early English history for centuries. For this reason, he is remembered by some as the 'Father of English History.'

Life

Very little is known about Bede's life outside of what he himself writes in the final chapter of the Historia Ecclesiastica. Bede was born in either 672 or 673 CE; he claims to have been born on the very grounds of the monastery of Jarrow. This would mean he was born in Bernicia, the northernmost of the two Northumbrian kingdoms (Bernicia and Deira were already united into the Kingdom of Northumbria by the time of his birth), in what is now Sunderland. Bede says virtually nothing about his early life and very little external evidence exists. There seems to be some likelihood that he came from a noble family. Throughout his life, he had connections with the wealthy and powerful in Northumbria. In addition to this, some scholars have pointed to the name Beda (Old English for Bede) in a list of Kings of Lindsey (adjacent to Northumbria) as evidence that he was born to a wealthy or influential family.

Bede claims to have been sent to the monastery of Monkwearmouth on the River Wear to be educated by the abbot Benedict Biscop (c. 628 CE - 690 CE). Bede was raised at Monkwearmouth until about 682 CE when he was transferred to the new abbey at Jarrow, founded by Saint Ceolfrith (c. 642-716 CE). Bede was made a deacon at the age of 19, several years prior to the canonical age of 25, which may be a sign of his exceptional abilities. He was fully ordained as a priest at the age of 30, and he seems to have written his earliest works around the turn of the 8th century CE for use in teaching in the monastery. His works cover the subjects of history, theology, and science, as well as a range of exegesis and hagiography. Bede is widely credited with helping to spread the use of the anno domini dating method, discussed in his work on chronology, De Temporum Ratione. Bede's adoption of the AD system, used at times in his Historia Ecclesiastica, popularized it for his contemporaries and subsequent generations.

Bede knew and communicated with many of the prominent clergymen and laymen of his day. As a young man he met Adomnan, then abbot of the important monastery of Iona. He was educated by Saints Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith, who played crucial roles in the formation of the Church in northern England. He was ordained as a deacon and later as a full priest by Saint John of Beverley, who was the bishop of Hexham and of York at different points in his life and founded the town of Beverley in modern-day East Yorkshire. He regularly communicated with Saint Ecgbert of York, and correspondence between the two of them still survives today. Nothelm, an Archbishop of Canterbury, helped Bede find source material for the Historia Ecclesiastica. On a number of occasions, Bede encountered Wilfrid, the controversial Bishop of York. At one point, he wrote a letter to Wilfrid defending himself against an accusation of heresy. Bede was clearly known to the Northumbrian royalty as well, and he dedicated his greatest work to King Ceolwulf (reigned c. 729-737 CE) who consulted him regularly.

Bede died in May of 735 CE. According to one of his disciples who wrote an account of Bede's final days, he died singing a hymn. The account of Bede's death is quite detailed, describing Bede's illness, his last wishes, and his interactions with those around him. He apparently composed poetry on his deathbed as well. Following his death, he was buried at Jarrow. Though he was considered a saint soon after his death, he was not formally canonised until the end of the 19th century CE. However, he was also named a Doctor of the Church, the only native of Britain to hold this title.

Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

Bede's most well-known work is a history of the Christian Church in England. While Bede also provides an in-depth history of England up to his own lifetime, his main focus is the spread of Christianity in his native country. A lengthy discussion of the development of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms up to the 8th century CE is complemented with a catalogue of saints, converted kings, and miracles. Bede pays particular attention to the rivalry between Rome-centered Church practice and the Celtic Christian communities which had been present in Britain and Ireland for centuries before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Bede's work is considered one of the most important sources of Anglo-Saxon history for modern-day scholarship. It is a major source for political, social, and religious history in England during the early Anglo-Saxon age.

BEDE'S WORK IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY FOR MODERN-DAY SCHOLARSHIP.

Bede had an exceptionally wide array of sources available to him while writing the Historia Ecclesiastica. The monastery at Jarrow had a famous library which gave the monastic community a reputation as a centre of learning in Northumbria. For the earliest parts of his work, Bede follows classical authors such as Pliny, Eutropius, and Orosius, while his account of the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons is drawn largely from Gildas' De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain). For the history of the early English kingdoms up until his own lifetime, Bede relies heavily on more contemporary sources such as Eddius Stephanus' Life of Saint Wilfrid, which contains important accounts of events in the late 7th century CE. He also clearly draws on correspondence and interviews with witnesses of the great events of his own lifetime.

The major subject of Bede's history is the growth of the Church in the English, i.e. Anglo-Saxon, kingdoms up to the 8th century CE. Religious figures and events throughout this period are described, often in great detail. The lives and careers of secular rulers are recounted as well, though largely in relation to their roles in the spread of Christianity in England. Bishops, monks, saints, and martyrs are profiled throughout the work, as are the kings who sponsored them. A common theme in the Historia Ecclesiastica is the responsibility of kings in the religious issues within their domains. Bede is clearly biased toward the kings of his own homeland of Northumbria. He has particularly strong praise for Edwin and Oswald of Northumbria while also writing largely favourable portrayals of other Northumbrian kings including Æthelfrith and Oswiu.

The Historia Ecclesiastica is comprised of five separate books, with a preface in which Bede dedicates his work to Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria at the time of his writing. The first book is largely concerned with the arrival of the Romans in Britain beginning with Caesar's invasion in 55 BCE. Much of the book details the spread of Christianity in Britain, and Bede recounts the stories of early martyrs like Saint Alban. He also writes of Britain's struggles in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, describing in detail numerous imperial usurpations that shook Romano-British society. He describes heresies such as Arianism and Pelagianism, which took root in Britain and caused significant social upheaval. The book ends with the arrival of Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 CE to convert King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity.

Augustine sent to Æthelberht to say that he had come from Rome bearing the best of news, namely the sure and certain promise of eternal joys in heaven and an endless kingdom with the living and true God to those who received it - Bede, Historia Ecclesiastic, 39 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

The next two books chronicle the spread and setbacks of Augustine's Roman mission and the coinciding political and military events that often determined the fate of the Church in different places and times. Æthelberht's heirs abandoned the Christian faith for the pagan deities of their ancestors. This is a pattern in a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms throughout the Historia Ecclesiastica. Bede heaps scorn on these apostate kings and he simultaneously praises kings like Edwin and Oswald of Northumbria, two of the heroes of his history. Both adopted Christianity and vigorously spread the faith in Northumbria, both also died in battle and were venerated as martyrs soon after their deaths. The third book culminates in the Synod of Whitby, in 664 CE, where King Oswiu of Northumbria settled the Easter Controversy. He decided to follow the Roman practice in the dating of the holiday and against the conflicting native Celtic practice.

King Oswiu began by declaring that it was fitting that those who served one God should observe one rule of life and not differ in the celebration of the heavenly sacraments - Historia Ecclesiastica, 154

The fourth and fifth books detail the reign of Ecgfrith and the decline of the Northumbrian supremacy. Bede also recounts the careers of famous churchmen of the late 7th century CE such as Theodore of Tarsus, the Northumbrian bishop Wilfrid of Ripon, and the great Northumbrian Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The fifth and final book of the Historia Ecclesiastica covers missionary efforts overseas to regions such as Frisia. Here Bede also provides a detailed history of the Easter Controversy. He vigorously denounces the Celtic practice in dating Easter, even going so far as to criticise Saint Cuthbert himself for following it. Bede writes of his own relief that, by the time he was writing, the Irish had been saved from the egregious error of celebrating Easter on the wrong day.

Legacy

Bede's work was widely renowned almost immediately after his death. He was venerated as a saint in the Jarrow monastic community and his posthumous reputation spread throughout neighbouring Anglo-Saxon territories. He was remembered as an authority on theological doctrine as well as for his history and was extremely influential in terms of the chronological systems used by future historians. His work was also looked to by later generations of English scholars, clergy, and statesmen as a foundational text of English identity.

The translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica into Old English at the court of Alfred the Great in the 9th century CE has been seen as an important step in the development of English identity, as opposed to the number of unique regional identities of the earlier Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The use of the term 'English' in Bede's work is a sign of his own notion of a wider cultural identity shared by those living in the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms with th https://www.worldhistory.org/Bede/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Bede/ose living in Northumbria.

SOURCE : https://www.worldhistory.org/Bede/

Bartolomé Román  (1587–1647), San Beda, Primera mitad del siglo XVII, 205 x 110, Museo del Prado


San Beda detto il Venerabile Sacerdote e dottore della Chiesa

25 maggio

- Memoria Facoltativa

Monkton in Jarrow (Inghilterra) 672-673 - Jarrow, 25 maggio 735

Fu seguace di San Benedetto Biscop e di S. Ceolfrido, dedicandosi solo alla preghiera, allo studio e all'insegnamento del monastero di Jarrow. Fu anche amanuense e il Codex Amiatinus, uno dei più preziosi e antichi codici della Volgata, conservato nella biblioteca Laurenziana di Firenze, sarebbe stato eseguito sotto la sua guida. Della sua vasta produzione letteraria restano opere esegetiche, ascetiche, scientifiche e storiche. Tra queste c'è L'Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, un monumento letterario universalmente riconosciuto da cui emerge la Romanità (universalità) della Chiesa. Studioso di tempra eccezionale e gran lavoratore, ha lasciato nei suoi scritti l'impronta del suo spirito umile sincero, del suo discernimento sicuro e della sua saggezza.

Patronato: Studiosi

Martirologio Romano: San Beda il Venerabile, sacerdote e dottore della Chiesa, che, servo di Cristo dall’età di otto anni, trascorse tutta la sua vita nel monastero di Jarrow nella Northumbria in Inghilterra, dedito alla meditazione e alla spiegazione delle Scritture; tra l’osservanza della disciplina monastica e l’esercizio quotidiano del canto in chiesa, sempre gli fu dolce imparare, insegnare e scrivere.

Beda e basta. Le sue generalità cominciano e finiscono lì. Non conosciamo i suoi genitori. La data di nascita è incerta. Sappiamo soltanto che a sette anni viene affidato per l’istruzione ai benedettini del monastero di San Pietro a Wearmouth (oggi Sunderland) e che passerà poi a quello di San Paolo di Jarrow, contea di Durham, centri monastici fondati entrambi dal futuro san Benedetto Biscop, che è il primo a prendersi cura di lui. 

E tra i benedettini Beda rimane, facendosi monaco e ricevendo, verso i trent’anni, l’ordinazione sacerdotale. Dopodiché basta: non diventa vescovo né abate: tutta la sua vita si concentra sullo studio e sull’insegnamento. Unici suoi momenti di “ricreazione” sono la preghiera e il canto corale. 

La sua materia è la Bibbia. E il metodo è del tutto insolito per il tempo, ma ricco d’interesse per gli scolari, mentre i suoi libri raggiungeranno presto le biblioteche monastiche del continente europeo. In breve, Beda insegna la Sacra Scrittura mettendo a frutto tutta la sapienza dei Padri della Chiesa, ma non si ferma lì. Inventa una sorta di personale didattica interdisciplinare, che spiega la Bibbia ricorrendo pure agli autori dell’antichità pagana (Beda conosce il greco) e utilizzando le conoscenze scientifiche del suo tempo. 

Gran parte di questo insegnamento si tramanda, perché Beda scrive, scrive moltissimo e di argomenti diversi, anche modesti; come il libretto De orthographia. E anche insoliti, come il Liber de loquela per gestum digitorum, famoso in tutto il Medioevo perché insegna a fare i conti con le dita. Si dedica ai calcoli astronomici per il computo della data pasquale, indicandola fino all’anno 1063. E ai suoi compatrioti il monaco benedettino offre la storia ecclesiastica d’Inghilterra, molto informata anche sulla vita civile, e soprattutto non semplicemente riferita, ma anche esaminata con attenzione critica. 

Già da vivo lo chiamano “Venerabile”. E l’appellativo gli rimarrà per sempre, sebbene nel 1899 papa Leone XIII lo abbia proclamato santo e dottore della Chiesa. È stato uno dei più grandi comunicatori di conoscenza dell’alto Medioevo. E un maestro di probità, col suo costante scrupolo di edificare senza mai venire meno alla verità, col grande rispetto per chi ascoltava la sua voce o leggeva i suoi libri. A più di dodici secoli dalla morte, il Concilio Vaticano II attingerà anche al suo pensiero, che viene citato nella Costituzione dogmatica Lumen gentium sulla Chiesa e nel decreto Ad gentes sull’attività missionaria. Beda muore a Jarrow, dove ha per tanto tempo insegnato, e lì viene sepolto. Ma il re Edoardo il Confessore (1004-1066) farà poi trasferire il corpo nella cattedrale di Durham.

Autore: Domenico Agasso

SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/27350

BENEDETTO XVI

UDIENZA GENERALE

Piazza San Pietro
Mercoledì, 18 febbraio 2009

Beda il Venerabile


Cari fratelli e sorelle,

il Santo che oggi avviciniamo si chiama Beda e nacque nel Nord-Est dell’Inghilterra, esattamente in Northumbria, nell’anno 672/673. Egli stesso racconta che i suoi parenti, all’età di sette anni, lo affidarono all’abate del vicino monastero benedettino perché venisse educato: “In questo monastero – egli ricorda – da allora sono sempre vissuto, dedicandomi intensamente allo studio della Scrittura e, mentre osservavo la disciplina della Regola e il quotidiano impegno di cantare in chiesa, mi fu sempre dolce o imparare o insegnare o scrivere” (Historia eccl. Anglorum, V, 24). Di fatto, Beda divenne una delle più insigni figure di erudito dell’alto Medioevo, potendo avvalersi dei molti preziosi manoscritti che i suoi abati, tornando dai frequenti viaggi in continente e a Roma, gli portavano. L’insegnamento e la fama degli scritti gli procurarono molte amicizie con le principali personalità del suo tempo, che lo incoraggiarono a proseguire nel suo lavoro da cui in tanti traevano beneficio. Ammalatosi, non smise di lavorare, conservando sempre un’interiore letizia che si esprimeva nella preghiera e nel canto. Concludeva la sua opera più importante la Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum con questa invocazione: “Ti prego, o buon Gesù, che benevolmente mi hai permesso di attingere le dolci parole della tua sapienza, concedimi, benigno, di giungere un giorno da te, fonte di ogni sapienza, e di stare sempre di fronte al tuo volto”. La morte lo colse il 26 maggio 735: era il giorno dell’Ascensione.

Le Sacre Scritture sono la fonte costante della riflessione teologica di Beda. Premesso un accurato studio critico del testo (ci è giunta copia del monumentale Codex Amiatinus della Vulgata, su cui Beda lavorò), egli commenta la Bibbia, leggendola in chiave cristologica, cioè riunisce due cose: da una parte ascolta che cosa dice esattamente il testo, vuole realmente ascoltare, comprendere il testo stesso; dall’altra parte, è convinto che la chiave per capire la Sacra Scrittura come unica Parola di Dio è Cristo e con Cristo, nella sua luce, si capisce l’Antico e il Nuovo Testamento come “una” Sacra Scrittura. Le vicende dell’Antico e del Nuovo Testamento vanno insieme, sono cammino verso Cristo, benché espresse in segni e istituzioni diverse (è quella che egli chiama concordia sacramentorum). Ad esempio, la tenda dell’alleanza che Mosè innalzò nel deserto e il primo e secondo tempio di Gerusalemme sono immagini della Chiesa, nuovo tempio edificato su Cristo e sugli Apostoli con pietre vive, cementate dalla carità dello Spirito. E come per la costruzione dell’antico tempio contribuirono anche genti pagane, mettendo a disposizione materiali pregiati e l’esperienza tecnica dei loro capimastri, così all’edificazione della Chiesa contribuiscono apostoli e maestri provenienti non solo dalle antiche stirpi ebraica, greca e latina, ma anche dai nuovi popoli, tra i quali Beda si compiace di enumerare gli Iro-Celti e gli Anglo-Sassoni. San Beda vede crescere l’universalità della Chiesa che non è ristretta a una determinata cultura, ma si compone di tutte le culture del mondo che devono aprirsi a Cristo e trovare in Lui il loro punto di arrivo.

Un altro tema amato da Beda è la storia della Chiesa. Dopo essersi interessato all’epoca descritta negli Atti degli Apostoli, egli ripercorre la storia dei Padri e dei Concili, convinto che l’opera dello Spirito Santo continua nella storia. Nei Chronica Maiora Beda traccia una cronologia che diventerà la base del Calendario universale “ab incarnatione Domini”. Già da allora si calcolava il tempo dalla fondazione della città di Roma. Beda, vedendo che il vero punto di riferimento, il centro della storia è la nascita di Cristo, ci ha donato questo calendario che legge la storia partendo dall’Incarnazione del Signore. Registra i primi sei Concili Ecumenici e i loro sviluppi, presentando fedelmente la dottrina cristologica, mariologica e soteriologica, e denunciando le eresie monofisita e monotelita, iconoclastica e neo-pelagiana. Infine redige con rigore documentario e perizia letteraria la già menzionata Storia Ecclesiastica dei Popoli Angli, per la quale è riconosciuto come “il padre della storiografia inglese”. I tratti caratteristici della Chiesa che Beda ama evidenziare sono: a) la cattolicità come fedeltà alla tradizione e insieme apertura agli sviluppi storici, e come ricerca della unità nella molteplicità, nella diversità della storia e delle culture, secondo le direttive che Papa Gregorio Magno aveva dato all’apostolo dell’Inghilterra, Agostino di Canterbury; b) l’apostolicità e la romanità: a questo riguardo ritiene di primaria importanza convincere tutte le Chiese Iro-Celtiche e dei Pitti a celebrare unitariamente la Pasqua secondo il calendario romano. Il Computo da lui scientificamente elaborato per stabilire la data esatta della celebrazione pasquale, e perciò l’intero ciclo dell’anno liturgico, è diventato il testo di riferimento per tutta la Chiesa Cattolica.

Beda fu anche un insigne maestro di teologia liturgica. Nelle Omelie sui Vangeli domenicali e festivi, svolge una vera mistagogia, educando i fedeli a celebrare gioiosamente i misteri della fede e a riprodurli coerentemente nella vita, in attesa della loro piena manifestazione al ritorno di Cristo, quando, con i nostri corpi glorificati, saremo ammessi in processione offertoriale all’eterna liturgia di Dio nel cielo. Seguendo il “realismo” delle catechesi di Cirillo, Ambrogio e Agostino, Beda insegna che i sacramenti dell’iniziazione cristiana costituiscono ogni fedele “non solo cristiano ma Cristo”. Ogni volta, infatti, che un’anima fedele accoglie e custodisce con amore la Parola di Dio, a imitazione di Maria concepisce e genera nuovamente Cristo. E ogni volta che un gruppo di neofiti riceve i sacramenti pasquali, la Chiesa si “auto-genera”, o con un’espressione ancora più ardita, la Chiesa diventa “madre di Dio”, partecipando alla generazione dei suoi figli, per opera dello Spirito Santo.

Grazie a questo suo modo di fare teologia intrecciando Bibbia, Liturgia e Storia, Beda ha un messaggio attuale per i diversi “stati di vita”: a) agli studiosi (doctores ac doctrices) ricorda due compiti essenziali: scrutare le meraviglie della Parola di Dio per presentarle in forma attraente ai fedeli; esporre le verità dogmatiche evitando le complicazioni eretiche e attenendosi alla “semplicità cattolica”, con l’atteggiamento dei piccoli e umili ai quali Dio si compiace di rivelare i misteri del Regno; b) i pastori, per parte loro, devono dare la priorità alla predicazione, non solo mediante il linguaggio verbale o agiografico, ma valorizzando anche icone, processioni e pellegrinaggi. Ad essi Beda raccomanda l’uso della lingua volgare, com’egli stesso fa, spiegando in Northumbro il “Padre Nostro”, il “Credo” e portando avanti fino all’ultimo giorno della sua vita il commento in volgare al Vangelo di Giovanni; c) alle persone consacrate che si dedicano all’Ufficio divino, vivendo nella gioia della comunione fraterna e progredendo nella vita spirituale mediante l’ascesi e la contemplazione, Beda raccomanda di curare l’apostolato - nessuno ha il Vangelo solo per sé, ma deve sentirlo come un dono anche per gli altri - sia collaborando con i Vescovi in attività pastorali di vario tipo a favore delle giovani comunità cristiane, sia rendendosi disponibili alla missione evangelizzatrice presso i pagani, fuori del proprio paese, come “peregrini pro amore Dei”.

Ponendosi da questa prospettiva, nel commento al Cantico dei Cantici Beda presenta la Sinagoga e la Chiesa come collaboratrici nella diffusione della Parola di Dio. Cristo Sposo vuole una Chiesa industriosa, “abbronzata dalle fatiche dell’evangelizzazione” – è chiaro l’accenno alla parola del Cantico dei Cantici (1, 5), dove la sposa dice: “Nigra sum sed formosa” (Sono abbronzata, ma bella) –, intenta a dissodare altri campi o vigne e a stabilire fra le nuove popolazioni “non una capanna provvisoria ma una dimora stabile”, cioè a inserire il Vangelo nel tessuto sociale e nelle istituzioni culturali. In questa prospettiva il santo Dottore esorta i fedeli laici ad essere assidui all’istruzione religiosa, imitando quelle “insaziabili folle evangeliche, che non lasciavano tempo agli Apostoli neppure di prendere un boccone”. Insegna loro come pregare continuamente, “riproducendo nella vita ciò che celebrano nella liturgia”, offrendo tutte le azioni come sacrificio spirituale in unione con Cristo. Ai genitori spiega che anche nel loro piccolo ambito domestico possono esercitare “l’ufficio sacerdotale di pastori e di guide”, formando cristianamente i figli ed afferma di conoscere molti fedeli (uomini e donne, sposati o celibi) “capaci di una condotta irreprensibile che, se opportunamente seguiti, potrebbero accostarsi giornalmente alla comunione eucaristica” (Epist. ad Ecgberctum, ed. Plummer, p. 419)

La fama di santità e sapienza di cui Beda godette già in vita, valse a guadagnargli il titolo di “Venerabile”. Lo chiama così anche Papa Sergio I, quando nel 701 scrive al suo abate chiedendo che lo faccia venire temporaneamente a Roma per consulenza su questioni di interesse universale. Dopo la morte i suoi scritti furono diffusi estesamente in Patria e nel Continente europeo. Il grande missionario della Germania, il Vescovo san Bonifacio (+ 754), chiese più volte all’arcivescovo di York e all'abate di Wearmouth che facessero trascrivere alcune sue opere e glie­le mandassero in modo che anch'egli e i suoi compagni potessero godere della luce spirituale che ne emanava. Un secolo più tardi Notkero Galbulo, abate di San Gallo (+ 912), prendendo atto dello straordinario influsso di Beda, lo paragonò a un nuovo sole che Dio aveva fatto sorgere non dall’Oriente ma dall’Occidente per illuminare il mondo. A parte l’enfasi retorica, è un fatto che, con le sue opere, Beda contribuì efficacemente alla costruzione di una Europa cristiana, nella quale le diverse popolazioni e culture si sono fra loro amalgamate, conferendole una fisionomia unitaria, ispirata alla fede cristiana. Preghiamo perché anche oggi ci siano personalità della statura di Beda, per mantenere unito l’intero Continente; preghiamo affinché tutti noi siamo disponibili a riscoprire le nostre comuni radici, per essere costruttori di una Europa profondamente umana e autenticamente cristiana.

Saluti:

Chers frères et soeurs,

Je salue cordialement les pèlerins de langue française, particulièrement les groupes du diocèse de Créteil, avec leur Évêque Mgr Michel Santier, les prêtres du diocèse de Grenoble-Vienne, avec Mgr Guy de Kérimel, les nombreux jeunes des lycées et des aumôneries ainsi que les groupes provenant de diverses paroisses. À l’exemple de Bède le Vénérable, prenez le temps de scruter les merveilles de la Parole de Dieu, pour en faire votre nourriture. Que Dieu vous bénisse!

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I offer a warm welcome to the pilgrimage group from the Diocese of Arlington led by Bishop Paul Loverde, and to the School Sisters of Notre Dame taking part in a program of spiritual renewal. I also greet the many student groups present. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims, especially the visitors from England, Ireland, Sweden, Japan and the United States, I cordially invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace!

Liebe Brüder und Schwestern!

Einen herzlichen Gruß richte ich an die deutschsprachigen Pilger und Besucher hier auf dem Petersplatz. Der heilige Beda soll uns durch das Studium der Heiligen Schrift und die Teilnahme an der Liturgie eine immer lebendigere Freude am Glauben finden helfen. Ebenso soll, wie es bei ihm war, unser Gebet und unser Leben Lob Gottes und Dienst für unsere Brüder und Schwestern sein. Der Herr segne euch und eure Familien.

Queridos hermanos y hermanas:

Saludo con afecto a los peregrinos de lengua española, en particular los miembros de la Comisión Promotora del monumento en Sevilla al Papa Juan Pablo II y a los componentes de la Fundación “Padre Leonardo Castillo”, de esa misma ciudad, acompañados por el Señor Cardenal Carlos Amigo Vallejo; a los Seminaristas y fieles de la Diócesis de Cartagena, con su Obispo, Monseñor Juan Antonio Reig Plá, así como a los demás grupos venidos de España, Chile, México y otros países de Latinoamérica. Que la palabra y el ejemplo de san Beda el Venerable os ayuden en vuestra vida cristiana. Muchas gracias.

Amados peregrinos de língua portuguesa, queridos estudantes brasileiros de Criciúma, possa a vossa vinda a Roma cumprir-se nas vestes de um verdadeiro peregrino que, sabendo de não possuir ainda o seu Bem maior, põe-se a caminho decidido a encontrá-Lo! Sabei que Deus Se deixa encontrar por quantos assim O procuram; e, com Ele e n’Ele, a vossa vida não poderá deixar de ser feliz. Sobre vós e vossas famílias desça a minha Bênção.

Saluto in lingua croata:

Srdačnu dobrodošlicu upućujem hrvatskim hodočasnicima, osobito vjernicima iz župe Svetog Mihajla iz Dubrovnika. Pohodeći grob apostola Petra, nasljedujte njegovo svjedočanstvo vjere prepoznavajući u Isusu iz Nazareta Sina Božjega i svoga Spasitelja. Hvaljen Isus i Marija!

Ttaduzione italiana:

Rivolgo un cordiale benvenuto ai pellegrini croati, particolarmente ai fedeli della parrocchia di San Michele di Dubrovnik. Visitando la tomba dell’apostolo Pietro, seguite la sua testimonianza di fede, riconoscendo in Gesù di Nazaret il Figlio del Dio e il vostro Salvatore. Siano lodati Gesù e Maria!

Saluto in lingua polacca:

Drodzy pielgrzymi z Polski. Sercem i modlitwą obejmuję was i waszych najbliższych. Nawiedzenie grobów apostolskich niech umacnia was w wierze, budzi miłość do Chrystusa i utwierdza w jedności ze wspólnotą Kościoła powszechnego. Niech Bóg wam błogosławi!

Traduzione italiana:

Cari pellegrini provenienti dalla Polonia. Abbraccio con cuore e con la preghiera voi e i vostri cari. La visita alle tombe degli apostoli vi consolidi nella fede, ravvivi l’amore per Cristo e rafforzi l’unione con la comunità della Chiesa universale. Dio vi benedica.

Saluto in lingua slovacca:

Srdečne pozdravujem slovenských pútnikov z Nitry a Močenka ako aj Základnú umeleckú školu svätej Cecílie z Bratislavy.

Bratia a sestry, milí mladí, spievajte Pánovi novú pieseň predovšetkým svojim príkladným kresťanským svedectvom. S láskou žehnám vás i vašich drahých vo vlasti.
Pochválený buď Ježiš Kristus!

Traduzione italiana:

Saluto cordialmente i pellegrini slovacchi provenienti da Nitra e Močenok come pure la Scuola elementare d’arte di Santa Cecilia da Bratislava. Fratelli e sorelle, cari giovani, cantate al Signore un canto nuovo soprattutto con una esemplare testimonianza cristiana.

Volentieri benedico voi e le vostre famiglie in Patria.

Sia lodato Gesù Cristo!

Saluto in lingua slovena:

Lepo pozdravljam romarje iz Slovenije, še posebej birmance iz župnije Sveti Križ - Podbočje. Bodite odprti za darove Svetega Duha in vneto skrbite, da z leti v vas ne bodo zamrli, ampak bodo prinašali obilne sadove krščanske ljubezni in zvestobe! Naj bo z vami moj blagoslov!

Traduzione italiana:

Rivolgo un cordiale saluto ai pellegrini provenienti dalla Slovenia, ed in particolare i cresimandi della Parrocchia Sveti Križ - Podbočje. Siate aperti ai doni dello Spirito Santo e abbiate cura che, nel corso degli anni, non svaniscono ma portino abbondati frutti della fedeltà e della carità cristiana! Vi accompagni la mia Benedizione!

Saluto in lingua ungherese:

Isten hozta a magyar híveket, elsősorban azokat, akik Bajáról és Munkácsról érkeztek! Kedves Testvéreim, örömmel látlak titeket és azt kívánom, hogy zarándoklatotok gyümölcsöző legyen Számotokra és egyházközségeitek számára. Ehhez kérem a jó Isten áldását Mindnyájatokra.

Dicsértessék a Jézus Krisztus!

Traduzione italiana:

Rivolgo un cordiale saluto ai fedeli di lingua ungherese, specialmente a quelli di Baja ed al gruppo di Mukachevo! Cari fratelli e sorelle, vi accolgo volentieri ed auspico di cuore che il vostro pellegrinaggio apporti frutti di bene a voi ed alle vostre comunità. Con la particolare Benedizione Apostolica a voi tutti! Sia lodato Gesù Cristo!

* * *

Rivolgo un cordiale benvenuto ai pellegrini di lingua italiana. In particolare, saluto i fedeli dell'Arcidiocesi di Brindisi-Ostuni, che, guidati dall'Arcivescovo Monsignor Rocco Talucci, sono venuti a ricambiare la mia visita alla loro Comunità diocesana. Cari amici, vi ringrazio per la vostra presenza così numerosa e vi incoraggio a vivere il vostro Sinodo diocesano come una importante tappa di crescita nella comunione ecclesiale. Saluto voi, pellegrini provenienti dall’Arcidiocesi di Ancona-Osimo, accompagnati dal vostro Pastore Mons. Edoardo Menichelli, ed assicuro la mia preghiera perché si rafforzi in ciascuno il fermo desiderio di annunciare a tutti Gesù Cristo, unico Salvatore del mondo. Saluto il pellegrinaggio promosso dai Chierici Regolari di San Paolo – Barnabiti, ed auspico che voi possiate testimoniare con sempre più forte ardore apostolico nella Chiesa il vostro specifico carisma paolino. Saluto le Suore Figlie di Maria Santissima dell’Orto, riunite per il Capitolo generale, e prego il Signore perché da questa assemblea scaturiscano generosi propositi di vita evangelica per l’intero Istituto.

Infine il mio saluto si rivolge ai giovani, ai malati e agli sposi novelli. Cari giovani, preparatevi ad affrontare le importanti tappe della vita con impegno spirituale, edificando ogni vostro progetto sulle solide basi della fedeltà a Dio. Cari malati, siate sempre consapevoli che, offrendo le vostre sofferenze al Padre celeste in unione a quelle di Cristo, voi contribuite alla costruzione del Regno di Dio. E voi, cari sposi novelli, fate crescere ogni giorno la vostra famiglia grazie all'ascolto di Dio, perché saldo resti il vostro reciproco amore e si apra all'accoglienza dei più bisognosi.

© Copyright 2009 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

SOURCE : https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/it/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090218.html

BEDA, il Venerabile, santo e dottore della Chiesa

di Carlo SILVA-TAROUCA - Enciclopedia Italiana (1930)

Nato nel 672-3, ancor settenne venne dai parenti offerto al santo abate Benedetto Biscop, per essere educato nel monastero dei Ss. Pietro e Paolo di Wearmouth-Yarrow (Northumbria). "Da questo tempo in poi ho passato tutta la mia vita in questo monastero, consacrandomi interamente alla meditazione delle Scritture, e tra l'osservanza della disciplina regolare e la cura quotidiana di cantare l'ufficio in chiesa, ebbi sempre carissimo lo studio, l'insegnare e lo scrivere" (Historia eccles. gentis Anglorum, V, 24, ed. C. Plummer, Baedae opera historica, I, Oxford 1896, p. 357). Con queste parole "il più grande erudito dell'alto Medioevo", come lo chiama il Manitius, ci dà la nota distintiva della sua vita. Gravemente ammalato, continuava a dettare ai discepoli la versione anglo-sassone di alcuni capitoli di Isidoro e del Vangelo di S. Giovanni, gli ultimi versetti del quale egli tradusse mentre entrava in placida agonia, conchiusa col canto del Gloria Patri.

Ad eccezione delle opere storiche, quanto ci resta di Beda è frutto del suo insegnamento. Da lui stesso abbiamo l'elenco dci suoi scritti, inserito nell'ultimo capitolo della storia della chiesa anglo-sassone (ed. cit., I, p. 357 segg., cfr. p. cxlv segg.). Sono innanzi tutto commentarî sopra tutte le parti del sacro testo, compresi in una sessantina di libri; in essi segue per lo più le esposizioni dei Padri, quelle specialmente dei Ss. Ambrogio, Agostino, Gregorio e Girolamo. Ai Commentarî tengono dietro gli opuscoli grammaticali: De metrica arte (ed. H. Keil, Grammatici latini, VII, 219 segg.), De schematibus et tropis (ed. C. Halm, Rhetores latini minores, 607 segg.), De orthographia (ed. H. Keil, op. cit., VII, 261 segg.). Fra queste opere didattiche di Beda ve ne hanno alcune che fecero di lui il dottore per eccellenza del Medioevo: sono queste le opere cosmografiche e cronologiche: De temporibusDe natura rerumDe ratione temporum. Per quest'opera specialmente il ciclo pasquale di Dionigi, continuato da Beda fino all'anno 1063 e inserito al cap. 65 del De ratione temporum, venne divulgato in tutta l'Europa occidentale e centrale. Anche le due Cronache, una minore (capitoli 16-22 del De temporibus) ed una maggiore (cap. 66 del De ratione temporum, cfr. Mommsen, in Mon. Ger. Hist., Auctores antiquissimi, 13, 223 segg.), ebbero notevolissimo influsso sui cronisti del Medioevo.

La gloria più grande di Beda è la sua Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (ed. C. Plummer, op. cit.), nella quale, di su documenti locali e notizie desunte di fuori (compresovi l'archivio della S. Sede), narrò le gesta della sua nazione fino all'anno 731, tenendo speciale conto degli avvenimenti d'ordine ecclesiastico: essa è la migliore opera storica che la letteratura cristiana fino a quei tempi abbia prodotto, e anche nei secoli seguenti dobbiamo arrivare fino alla Storia della chiesa di Amburgo di Adamo di Brema (1075) per trovare un'altra opera storica che possa gareggiare con l'Historia ecclesiastica, la quale ebbe per i posteri speciale importanza anche sotto l'aspetto cronologico, avendo introdotto il modo di computare gli anni ab Incarnatione Domini: dietro questo esempio tale sistema fu adottato negli Annali dell'Evo Carolino e da questi poi propagato per tutto il mondo cristiano. Sue opere storiche di minor mole sono la Vita Cudbercti, vescovo di Lindisfarne, e la storia degli abati del monastero di Wearmouth-Yarrow (Historia sanctorum abbatum monast. in Wiremutha et Gyruum), lavoro pregevole specialmente per le notizie intorno al fondatore S. Benedetto Biscop.

Bibl.: Sulla vita e le opere di Beda, ottima l'introduzione alla citata ed. del Plummer; v. specialmente a p. 4, n. 3, l'elenco degli autori citati da Beda. Si veda inoltre M. Manitius, Gesch. der latein. Literatur im Mittelalter, I, Monaco 1911, p. 70 segg. Edizioni critiche non esistono, tranne quelle indicate di Plummer, Keil, Halm, Mommsen; per tutte le altre opere bisogna ricorerre all'edizione mediocre del Giles, Londra 1843 segg., ristampata in Migne, Patrol. Lat., XC-XCV, o a quella di Colonia 1688.

SOURCE : https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/beda-il-venerabile-santo-e-dottore-della-chiesa_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/

Voir aussi : https://www.arlima.net/ad/bede_le_venerable.html