23927002

Literature & Theology, Vol. 17. No. 3, September 2003, pp. 227-243

REASSESSING EXEGETICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF BEDE'S

HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM

Sharon M. Rowley

Abstract

This essay explores the role of miracles in Bede's construction of history to argue that, while reading miracles according to Bede's sense of

exegetical history begins analysis, modem scholars should also look beyond the exegetical paradigm to better understand how Bede uses miracles to

engage and understand the world. After a brief discussion of Casdmon's

miracle as an example of how miracles ought to work, this essay contrasts

Bede's account of Edwin with his account of Oswald to question Bede's

presentation of Edwin as a saint-king, and to discuss the ways in which

these episodes allow us to see Bede, as an historian, at work.

I. INTRODUCTION

'Having its own properties, the world may then prove intractable. It can well

defy the concepts that are indexed to it.'1

Bede'S Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum {HE, 731) is one of our primary sources of information about the settlement and conversion of Anglo-Saxon

England.2 Bede (673-735) was a monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow, in Northumbria. According to the short account of his life that he includes at the end of the HE, his kinsmen gave him into the care of the monastery at the

age of seven.3 He lived the hfe of a scholar monk, devoting himself to learning, teaching, and writing. In addition to the HE, which Peter Hunter Blair and M.L.W. Laistner agree is 'by universal consent "the supreme example of Bede's genius" Bede also wrote textbooks on natural history and the

calculation of Easter, a history of the abbots of Wearmouth-Jarrow, homilies, and an extensive collection of exegetical works.4 According to Sir Frank

Stenton, Bede's greatness derives from his ability to coordinate 'fragments of information' from many sources, so that, 'in an age when little was attempted

Literatlire & Theology 17/3

Oxford University Press 2003; all rights reserved.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC

228 BEDE'S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM

beyond the registration of fact, [Bede] had reached the conception of history'.'^ Dorothy Whitelock points out that Bede's sense of evidence has been described as modern, and that his 'historical work has been read continuously ever since it was written, and it has formed a model for later writers'.6

Bede's inclusion of miracle stories, however, remains one of the key dilemmas for modem readers. From Charles Plummers 1896 edition of the HE to the work of C.W. Jones and Bertram Colgrave in the mid-twentieth

century, scholars rejected Bede's miracles, often suggesting that Bede himself knew that they were false.7 More recently, scholars have discussed the miraculous elements as a part of Bede's medieval Christian world view.8 Within Bede's ideology, miracles provide unequivocal evidence of God's active role in human history. As such, miracles constitute the interpretive cornerstone of the exegetical historiography with which he attempts to

explain all events in history, whether miraculous or mundane. For Bede, miracles confirm the status of the English as a chosen people, whose conversion to Christianity earns them sovereignty of the island of Britain.

English history, in this framework, is a progression towards the unification of the island, and the incorporation of the English church and people into the

larger unity of the universal Roman Church. Flowever, while 'exegetical reading is ... an authentically medieval mode of understanding', exegetical interpretations of the HE tend to focus narrowly on the meaning of miracles

and the unity of Bede's text within that paradigm.9 Using the miracle of Caedmon as a concise example of how miracles are

supposed to work in the HE, this essay explores the role of miracles in Bede's construction of history, with a primary focus on the conversion of

King Edwin. I argue that with Casdmon's miracle, as with Oswald's kingship and relics, Bede presents positive models for the function of the miraculous and the interpretation of history in the HE. I discuss these miracles in relation to Bede's Augustinian sense of grace, and in contrast to his account

of King Edwin, especially the absence of miracles surrounding his relics in the HE. Comparing Bede's account of Edwin with the miraculous account in the anonymous Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, I question Bede's

presentation of Edwin as a saint-king in order to discuss the ways in which these episodes allow us to see Bede, as an historian, at work.10 By exploring

the function of miracles beyond the exegetical paradigm in these episodes, we can see the seams of Bede's historiography and better understand how

he uses miracles in the HE to engage and understand the world.

II. EXEGETICAL READINGS OF THE HE

Robert Hanning provides one of the earlier and more insightful readings of the HE as exegetical history in The Vision of History in Early Britain. Flanning

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC

SHARON M. ROWLEY 229

articulates the connection between exegesis and Western history in Bede's

use of the idea that God 'gave to man, in the biblical record of Israel, an account of human actions which also illustrates and explains God's

providence and the purpose of history'.11 Hanning argues that Bede bases his treatment of miracles in history on the model of Eusebius' Historia

ecclesiastica, rather than the model of Augustine's City of God. As I argue below, I see the Eusebian dynamic Hanning articulates as being complicated by Bede's Augustinian sense of grace. In Eusebius' schema, miracles connect

contemporary history with biblical history, enabling Hanning to envision a medieval historiography that represents:

a synthesis of national history and biblical narrative with its exegetical

interpretation... a national history of salvation organised around the triumph of Christianity and its beneficent effects and realised in the typifying personages of Christian social heroes.12

Such a description of the HE reflects the extent to which Bede's

historiography is unifying and monologic, with the miracles functioning to confirm the place of the English as a chosen people.

According to Hanning, King Oswald typifies the social hero. Oswald, whose earthly success is 'a sure sign of his piety', frees England from the rule of apostates and pagans, then unifies the country.13 'From this episode of national significance,' Hanning reports, 'Bede moves at once to consider the

miracles of the martyred king, now St Oswaldmiracles which prove his closeness to God as an individual.'14 Hanning does not discuss the specific nature of Oswald's miracles, because, according to this schema, the details

are less significant than their confirmation of Oswald's sanctity and place in divine history.

Most modem scholars have either accepted Hanning's account of Bede's

text as an example of a exegetical historiography, or have taken a similar

approach to the HE. However, while Hanning uses his study of the

exegetical structure of Bede's history to address the question of Bede's

political agenda in portraying the English as a chosen people in the HE, other historians tend to treat exegetical meaning as an explanation for and

key to the miracles, which they treat as ahistorical despite their prominence in the HE. For example, Roger Ray argues that 'we should in all fairness

interpret typical features of the Historia with [Bede's] own biblical ideals

clearly in mind'.13 These ideals, as Benedicta Ward explains, mark the sole

significance of miracles: all miracles cause wonder and 'the wonder is always subservient to the main issue, which is salvation'.16 Similarly, Paul Meyvaert asserts that a scholar need only analyse the 'scriptural pegs' on which Bede

hangs his 'doctrinal thoughts' in order to find the 'real key to the inner

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC

230 BEDE'S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGEORUM

preoccupations of the writer'.17 This approach presumes not only that Bede's

intentions are transparent, but also that both the scriptural pegs and the

doctrinal thoughts will function in the same way in every situation to which

Bede applies them. At this level, exegetical historicism reinscribes Bede's

unifying historiography rather than analyses it.

Reading Bede's miracles according to the exegetical paradigm limits the

reading of the HE by asserting the precedence of biblical ideals over miracles

as a form of cultural reproduction in Anglo-Saxon England. By setting miracles apart as having a separate kind of symbolic meaning from the rest of

the text, exegesis fails to examine the miracles as constitutive elements of

the HE. Calvin Kendall and Gail Ivy Berlin, for example, emphasise the

separate, systematic conventionality of miracles in what Kendall calls 'God's

rhetoric'.18 They see miracles as having marked meaning within a 'system of

events generally and traditionally acknowledged' as signs from God.19 The

biblical precedent of the miracle and ecclesiastical authority of the teller, for

Berlin, subsume any question of evidence for the medieval thinker, whose

view of such authority she considers 'simplistic'.20 Such a view of miracles

treats them as signs embedded in the symbolic structures of precedent, unrelated to any question of fact, and uninfluenced by the thought of the

Middle Ages. Consequently, although Ward notes that Caedmon's story is also one about poetry and literary criticism, she subordinates those ideas to

the importance of Caedmon's miracle as 'a splendid instance ... of God's

goodness towards the English nation'.21 As Seth Lerer has argued, however,

Bede's miracles often have significance in contemporary Anglo-Saxon culture and operate at a level reflective of their contemporary context.22

While reading miracles according to the exegetical paradigm helps explain Bede's world view, it also renders miracles ahistorical. If miracles always refer

to salvation and Christian authority, they remain separate from local history, even if we acknowledge that Bede genuinely believed in them. Emphasising Bede's interpretive orthodoxy and the paradigmatic nature of the miracles

diffuses any question of the truth-value of miracles and ultimately reasserts

the status of Bede as an historian according to post-Enlightenment standards.

For Bede, the meaning of miracles in both contexts remains crucial.

Miracles connect the specific history of England to the universal history of the Roman Church and Christian eternity. But England also contributes to

universal history as it becomes a part of it, so that by the end of the HE, when Bede describes the Holy Land from the point of view of Adamnan, his account of sites of biblical miracles resonates with their analogues in

English history.23 In Islands of History, Marshall Sahlins provides a way to

think about the relationship between eternity and local history that goes

beyond the classical Western dichotomies of fact vs. fiction, and past vs.

present. According to Sahlins, 'culture functions as a synthesis of stability and

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


change, past and present, diachrony and synchrony'.24 For Sahlins, the

question is one of the dialogue between sense and reference, the way that

humans use cultural concepts to 'engage the world'. First, 'the seeing eye is

the organ of tradition', so that acts of reference for human subjects are

always also acts of classification. However, each time we recognise and

identify an event, we do so according to a cultural concept. But in the act of

engaging that concept, we may also change it.25 The key point here for

reading miracles is the way in which 'history is present in current action', but current action revises cultural meaning. For Sahlins, 'people embed the

present in the past' when they use cultural concepts to understand the

world. With each use, however, 'meaning is risked in a cosmos fully capable of contradicting the symbolic systems that are presumed to describe it', a

dynamic which we will see in the Edwin episodes.26 When Bede's system works, as we can see in the Caedmon episode, miracles signify both in terms of biblical history and in terms of English history. Caedmon's gift is where the local and the universal, old traditions and new learning, English poetry and salvation history meet.27

III. C/DMON'S GIFTAND THE QUESTION OF GRACE

In Bede's account of Caedmon's receiving the gift of song, a secular, uneducated brother of the Whitby monastery miraculously becomes able to

compose 'extremely delightful and moving poetry, in English'.28 At the same time Caedmon's miracle marks the inception of writing Christian

history in English, it also provides information about reading history; that is, about the spiritual significance of interpreting history for Bede. As Caedmon

memorises, ruminates, and composes verse, he demonstrates Bede's

Benedictine-influenced idea of the transformation of learning into knowl

edge as a process enacted through the body and leading to spiritual enlightenment.29 His metrical renditions of sacred history not only inspire others to despise the world, they tum his teachers into his audience. As they do so, Caedmon's divinely inspired poems reveal the crucial role of grace in human history. At the same time that Caedmon's gift illustrates the power of

grace, it also marks a tension between the necessity for, but uncertainty of,

grace in the pursuit of true knowledge and salvation. Caedmon's miraculous enlightenment demonstrates the role of God in granting knowledge. That Caedmon recites history, which Bede then records for the edification of his readers, also calls attention to writing as an act of

interpretation, as well as to the interplay between grace and the

interpretation of history for Bede.

Because Caedmon's gift allows him to recite accounts of biblical history more moving to his audience than any others has many implications about

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


the nature and power of grace in the text. Bede emphasises the role of

inspiration in his account of Caedmon in such a way as to also mark the

inadequacy of human study unaided by grace.30 In order to do so, Bede

establishes Caedmon's character to be that of a man uninterested in the study of poetry before receiving his gift. He reports that Caedmon 'had never

learned any songs', and that he used to leave the feast rather than take up

the harp and sing.31 When Caedmon does finally sing, his poetry is more

melodious and more moving because it is inspired:

It is true that after him other Englishmen attempted to compose religious poems,

but none could compare with him. For he did not learn the art of poetry from

men nor through a man but he received the gift of song freely by the grace of

God.32

In contrast to many of Bede's healing miracles, which manifest grace in the

health and wholeness of a body, Caedmon's miracle literalises his grace in

language, articulating the relationship between body and soul, as well as

language and meaning in the HE.

Caedmon's body remains instrumental to the production of his miraculous

poetry in the same way the body of any monk would, theoretically, be part of the process of his study and composition. Despite his gift, Caedmon still has to learn history, which he would 'ruminate' over 'like some clean animal chewing the cud'.33 With this comparison, Bede engages the Benedictine-influenced idea of learning as a process enacted through the

body. Paradoxically, although the image of a clean animal chewing the cud is an image of complete physicality, it is also an image of heavenly contemplation and the search for profound understanding.34

As Jean Leclercq explains in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God,

reading and learning, for the monks, meant reading aloud and meditating on the text, a process which always involved remembering 'by heart'.

According to Leclercq, this meant learning in:

the fullest sense of the expression, that is with one's whole body: with the body since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory, which fixes it, with the

intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to

put it into practice.35

By beginning at the physical level and moving through the body into the

memory and into the very being of the monk, the wholehearted act of

reading becomes an enactment of the proper use of the things of this world,

including history, for spiritual advancement. The thorough reading of a text, in its ability to lead from the physical to the spiritual, functions, theoretically, in the same way as a miraculous healing of a body would cure the soul.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


There nevertheless remains one significant difference between the physical

practice discussed by LeClerq and Caedmon's gift: the agent. Human agency or willthe 'desire for god' alonecan never produce spiritual enlight enment. According to Scripture, salvation requires grace, which no amount

of study can provide. Consequently, a key lesson of the Caedmon's episode is that study alone is not enough. No matter how closely anyone attempts to

imitate Caedmon, that person can never match Caedmon's skill nor attain his level of enlightenment without grace. Bede's focus on the gift of God calls attention to the ultimate inadequacy of the human pursuit of

knowledge and salvation without grace. Because of Bede's emphasis on learning through history and the use of the

body as a means of attaining spiritual enlightenment in the HE, Caedmon's

gift exemplifies the standing tension between grace and free will in Christian

theology. This conflict resurfaces throughout the HE in an underlying anxiety about the interpretation of events in history. Bede, with Augustine as a precedent, sees the ability to read correctly as contingent upon, and reflective of, spiritual enlightenment. The ability to interpret and understand obscure passages of Scripture or events reflects not only extensive

knowledge, but also faith and the promise of salvation. As Thomas

Keating observes: 'the senses of Scripture are not just an elaborate and

fanciful method of exegesis: literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical. They manifest ascending levels of faith and consciousness'.36 This ascending consciousness forms a motif in the HE, as Bede's sense of history remains

entangled with his Augustinian sense of the moral burden of interpretation. For Augustine and for Bede, all mundane historical events are part of God's

plan and should be, ultimately, as legible as miracles. Like Scripture, however, events are 'modulated', so that 'the more open places present themselves

to hunger and the more obscure places may deter a disdainful attitude'.37

As Peter Brown explains, 'to Augustine, God had expressed Himself in the

past like a consummate stylist in the late Roman manner. He delighted to talk allusively, in elaborate circumlocutions'.38 Notably, the allusiveness and circumlocutions of God's 'language' of events present intentional moral and

visionary barriers to the understanding of historical events as signs.

Consequently, Augustine sees the ability or failure to recognise and interpret the figurative meaning of events in history correctly as directly related to, and indicative of, the moral status of the interpreter.39 An incorrect or even

inconsistent interpretation of a sign or event reflects an error of human

understanding, and a lack of, or slipping of, faith that leads to spiritual death. As the inability to understand and interpret correctly can, in tum, be read as

moral death, the act of interpretation itself becomes a highly charged activity. With a typical circularity, the unified Christian view asserts itself over any

potential diversity of meaning: the meaning behind the more obscure places,

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


remains, for Augustine, the same as in the open places: 'whoever ... thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbour does not understand it at all'.40 Moreover, if a student persists in following an inconsistent interpretation, 'he will be overcome by it. "For we walk by faith and not by sight" [2 Cor.

5:7], and faith will stagger if the authority of the Divine Scriptures wavers'.41 The desire for unity of meaning in exegetical interpretation generates an

exclusionary dynamic which denies any interpretation that resists the structures of the exegetical paradigm. This dynamic supplies Bede with a precedent for

treating problematic events in history as shrouded or obscured, and therefore still a part of his unified schema. Bede's account of the conversion of King Edwin manifests this dynamic of resistance and incorporation via shrouding. However, although Bede treats part of Edwin's conversion as obscured but

legible, the fact that Edwin's acts as king and the symbolic weight that Bede

assigns to him never coalesce points not simply toward the inability of Bede's

paradigm to describe historical reality. In Bede's account of Edwin, we can see events escaping Bede's interpretive scheme, which permits, I believe, a meditation on the way that Bede's historiography is both a part of, and an affront to, our ownboth literally and conceptually.

IV. THE CONVERSION OF KING EDWIN

Colgrave and Mynors attribute Bede's 'somewhat confused account' of

Edwin's conversion to his desire to tell all three circulating versions of the

story, culminating with the most popular story of the sparrow flying through the hall in winter and the desecration of the pagan temple. They suggest that 'Bede makes Edwin hesitate to redeem his pledge in the first two instances' in order to combine the three stories.42 We have no evidence,

however, to suggest that Bede 'made' Edwin hesitate to incorporate three

extant stories. Rather, Bede's characterisation of Edwin as 'a man of great natural sagacity', teamed with his references to 2 Corinthians and his use of letters from Pope Boniface, focus the account on issues of revelation,

knowledge, and grace.43 Such repetition and emphasis suggests that the internal pressures of Bede's paradigm, and his related discomfort with the

implications of Edwin's hesitation, may allow an alternative reading of these

episodes, one that denies Edwin grace and demonstrates how Bede's desire to find Christian meaning literalised in Edwin's success and embodied in his bones is frustrated by the events and physical fragments he uses as evidence.

The lack of miracles in Edwin's reign leads Bede to seek evidence of Edwin's sanctity elsewhere in history. Because Bede works hard to make the events surrounding King Edwin seem at all Christian or significant, it is here that Bede's methodology shows the effect of stress. Indeed, while

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


Karl Lutterkort 'detects' a miracle story here, he acknowledges that 'other

scholars may judge differently'. He concludes that Bede:

did everything in his power to make the conversion of Edwin appear what to

him it actually was: a major event in English history. He achieved this aim by

presenting Edwin's conversion as a miracle story in which the omnipotent power of God as a decisive factor in shaping the form of English history becomes

abundandy clear.44

On the one hand, Lutterkort's reading affirms that Bede deploys miracle stories as critical pieces of evidence. On the other hand, his language reflects the problem that Bede has to work the evidence to 'make' this key event what it is to him, and 'present' it as a miracle story.

Bede's efforts in the account of Edwin reveal more clearly his dependence on a sense of historical evidence grounded on the unequivocal evidence of miracles. Within Bede's paradigm, the developing unity of England as a nation signals that people's status as chosen and charts its progression towards

salvation. Because Edwin is the first Bretwalda to unite the entire island

(except Kent), his success reflects his coming conversion:

The king's earthly power had increased as an augury that he was to become a

believer and have a share in the heavenly kingdom. So, like no other English king before him, he held under his sway the whole realm of Britain, not only English

kingdoms but those mied over by the Britons as well.43

While Edwin's successor, Oswald, grounds his own success in his

Christianity, Edwin does not.46 Rather, Edwin refuses to convert not only after his recovery from an assassin's poisoned dagger,47 but also after Paulinus

gives him the sign he had promised to follow during a vision at Raedwald's court.48 In contrast to Oswald's clear profession of faith, many healing

miracles, and acting as a translator in order to bring Christianity to his

people, Edwin remains without miracles and silent.49 In an attempt to appropriate Edwin's kingly qualities as signs of his innate

Christian virtue, Bede emphasises Edwin's wise and thoughtful nature. Rather than being moved to an intuitive acceptance of faith, for example, Edwin's conversion is marked by his careful consideration of religions:

He himself being a man of great natural sagacity would often sit alone for long

periods in silence, but in his innermost thoughts he was deliberating with himself

as to what he ought to do and which religion he should adhere to.50

Bede tells us repeatedly that Edwin was predisposed to sit alone, outwardly silent, and think. In keeping with this characterisation, Bede reports that

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


Edwin requests that he be allowed to learn Christianity systematically and to consult with his advisors before converting.51

As it echoes Caedmon's silent rumination, Edwin's thoughtfulness potentially reflects his chosen status. However, Edwin's repeated hesitation to recognise the clear validity of Christianity contrasts starkly with Caedmon's miraculous enlightenment, and creates a dilemma for Bede. In Edwin's failure (or refusal) to recognise the connection between Christianity and his own success as king, he questions the transparency of God's active role in English history. His hesitation creates a pause in which one could construe an initial rejection of

Christianity, despite Bede's presentation of these events from the first as clearly indicative of Edwin's place in the history of English conquest and salvation.

Bede's narration of the vision during Edwin's conversion provides an example of his attempting to explain events according to received

concepts, and control the interpretation of events in the HE

rhetorically. In the episode, Paulinus gives Edwin the sign of

laying his right hand on the king's head, causing Edwin to remember a 'vision' he had as an exile at Raedwald's court. In the vision, a

stranger comes to Edwin when he is sitting alone. The stranger assures Edwin that he will receive great power and benefits if Edwin takes his advice. Edwin agrees, the stranger lays his right hand on Edwin's head, telling him to remember his promise when this sign comes to him again. As the stranger leaves, his disappearance causes

Edwin to realise that he was a spirit. Notably, Bede's account is reserved in comparison to the account of Edwin's conversion in

The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great. In this anonymous Life, which Bede apparently did not know, although Colgrave argues that it

predates the HE, Edwin has a vision in which a lovely, crowned man bearing Christ's cross comes to him and extracts a similar promise.52

The beauty of the man in the anonymous account is much more in

keeping with the appearance of heavenly messengers in the Middle

Ages, and even in the HE, where they usually wear shining white robes.53 With the subtlety of this stranger, Bede distinguishes this vision from others in the HE, which may suggest an unwillingness to stray from his sources even when a more wondrous tradition

may exist. And, although I am arguing that Bede deploys information in his account of Edwin so as to work Edwin into his historiographical paradigm, the contrast between his account of this vision and that of the anonymous Life may affirm that Bede was unwilling to embroider on his sources or fabricate a miracle, even when one would have suited him.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


Later in the HE, while hesitating, Edwin recognises the sign that Paulinus makes as the same as the one that he saw in his vision. But it is Paulinus who connects the meaning of the visitation and Edwin's earthly success:

First you have escaped with God's help from the hands of the foes you feared;

secondly you have acquired by His gift the kingdom you desired; now in the

third place, remember your own promise; do not delay in fulfilling it but receive

the faith and keep the commandments of Him who rescued you from your

earthly foes and raised you to the honor of an earthly kingdom.54

While Edwin's hesitation could reflect doubt, Bede includes Paulinus'

reading of the events to intercept and offset any such interpretation. Instead, Bede construes Edwin's hesitation as a desire for knowledge and presents the words of the bishop as confirmation.

In order to account for Edwin's repeated resistance to Paulinus, Bede, like

Augustine, resorts to 2 Corinthians and God's withholding of knowledge. Faced with Paulinus' failure to convert the Northumbrians, Bede explains that 'The god of this world blinded the minds of them that believed not lest

the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them' (2 Cor.

4:4).55 Rather than allow the idea that Edwin's thought may bring him to

reject Christianity, Bede suggests instead that God withholds knowledge from Edwin. This way, even Edwin's initial rejection of Christianity fits into Christian history. By citing this passage, Bede not only enjoins God's power to veil as well as reveal knowledge, he brings into play a notion of the

physicalisation of meaning as well as the transference of that meaning from the literal to the figurative that drive his interpretation of English history.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul makes explicit the connection between embodiment of divine meaning and revealed knowledge. 'You show that you are a letter

from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not in ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of the human heart'

(2 Cor. 3:3). The idea of'writing' on the human heart rather than in stone

requires the transference of meaning from literal to metaphorical. For Paul,

the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is the

revelation of meaning in Christthe humanisation of historywhich removes the 'veil' from the minds of men and allows them to perceive the 'Lord's glory'. The removal of the veil with the Incarnation, is at once,

paradoxically, both the embodiment of meaning and the requirement to

transfer meaning from the literal to the figurative. For Paul, the New Covenant is literally written on the hearts of men but always more importantly

remains of the spirit, 'for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life' (2 Cor. 3:6). As Bede evokes this passage, he evokes the paradoxical relationship

between grace and free will, body and soul that we see in the Casdmon

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC

238 BEDE'S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGEORUM

episode. However, without the transparent evidence of miracles, meaning

remains opaque in the Edwin episode. Bede echoes Virgil, 'caeco carperetur igni' ['consumed with an inner fire'], in order to depict Edwin's inner turmoil and to control the opacity of Edwin's heart.56 While caecus also has connotations of 'having no light, opaque, blind', this particular reference comes from the beginning of Book IV, as Dido, 'consumed with an inner

fire', and madly in love with Aeneas, discloses her feelings to her sister.57 At the same time Bede refers to the inaccessibility of Edwin's heart, he also

refers to a moment of revelation and the ultimate legibility of a famous

secret. Bede's reference to blindness and sight also sets up Edwin as the

stereotypical blind man, ready to be enlightened by grace. Bede also uses a letter from Pope Boniface to authorise his reading of the

Edwin episodes as obscured but legible. Boniface attempts to convert Edwin and explain the mysteries of Christianity by describing the sublimity of

God and the inability of men to comprehend him without inspiration:

Human speech can never explain the power of the most high God, consisting as

it does in its own invisible, unsearchable, and eternal greatness, so that no wisdom

can comprehend or express how great it is. Yet in His goodness, He opens the

doors of the heart so that He Himself may enter, and by His secret inspiration

pours into the human heart a revelation of Himself.58

Boniface's sense of the inadequacy of human speech, which could be

construed as a formulaic statement about sublimity, resonates with Edwin's hesitation. As Edwin sits silently, debating which religion to follow, he becomes symbolic of Bede's own interpretive dilemma. Boniface's emphasis on the secrecy of the inner heart and the invisibility of divine meaning also serves as a reminder of the opacity of signs, the internal nature of the

new covenant, and the spiritual significance of interpretation. While Bede's

image of Caedmon's rumination allows him to read Caedmon's historical

verse as a sign of his body's transparent reflection of his grace, Edwin's silent meditation resists such a reading. Bede's inclusion of the papal letter,

however, draws on the authority of Boniface to reinforce his interpretation of Edwin's refusal to convert as part of God's great scheme. In this context,

Bede's repeated references to inspiration and the divine obscuring of

knowledge serve as a reminder of interpretation as a spiritual activity and

suggest a degree of anxiety surrounding the reading of these events.

Even with Edwin's eventual conversion, not all the parts of his kingship fall neatly into Bede's paradigm. While his reign brings unprecedented peace to England, Edwin falls in battle six years after his conversion to Caedwalla,

King of the Britons and Penda, King of the Mercians. These kings, one a

pagan, one a Christian 'barbarian who was even more cruel than a heathen',

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


join forces to defeat both Edwin andeven more problematically for BedeOswald.51 Bede refrains from interpreting the defeat of Edwin and Oswald at the hands of apostates and pagans. In the context of the HE, such

restraint becomes a marked absence. While he reports the torture of

the English people and the destruction of their land, he makes no active connection to a slipping of faith or failure to leam from history, as he does with the Britons. Indeed, unlike his account of the defeat of the Britons in Book I, in which he interprets their defeat as divine retribution for the sins of the nation, Bede makes no observations as to the moral nature of these

setbacks for the English.60 Instead, he strikes the year of Caedwalla's one

year of rule from the calendar and focuses on Oswald's miracles rather than

his defeat.61 In his attempt to equate Edwin and Oswald as saint-kings representative

of the promise of salvation for the English, Bede composes parallel accounts of their deaths. However, Bede's focus on the continued proof of the kings' sanctity calls attention to the difference between the efficacy of their relics.

Upon Edwin's death, Bede reports that 'the head of King Edwin was

brought to York and ... placed in the church of the apostle St. Peter'.62

Later, Bede reports that Edwin was buried at Whitby. As Colgrave and

Mynors observe, however, '[Bede] does not refer again to the missing head',

although it is his body that had been missing.63 Such an oversight is striking for Bede, who reports in detail how Oswald's head was separated from the rest of his body, then buried at Lindisfarne.64 The rest of Oswald's relics later

reveal themselves when left outside hallowed ground overnight, and are

eventually properly buried in Lindsey.65 Finally, Oswald's arm, which had been blessed by Aidan, was cut off after his death and enshrined in St. Peter's Church in Bamburgh, where it remained, uncorrupted, in Bede's time.66

While all of the pieces of Oswald, and even shards of the cross he erected at Heavenfield, or dirt from the place he died, manifest Oswald's sanctity and the truth of Christian history, the fragments of Edwin do not.67

Although the separation of his head and body generates the opportunity for accounts of miracles in both places, miracles don't happenat least not in

Bede's account. Again, The Earliest Life of St Gregory includes an account of Edwin's relics that reflects the existence of at least one miracle tradition

concerning them. In the Life, Edwin's relics persistently reveal themselves to a man named Trimma in dreams until he retrieves and enshrines them at

Whitby.68 Bede reports no such miracle. Despite Edwin's eventual conversion to Christianity, miracles never confirm Bede's interpretation of

his conversion in the HE. Because the bones of Oswald and other saints

forge the link between English history and Christian eternity, the lack

of miracles surrounding Edwin's relics in the HE is troublesome for

Bedeespecially in light of Edwin's historical significance. Although Bede

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


construes the events surrounding Edwin's reign as signs of his grace and eventual conversion, Edwin's repeated hesitation, teamed with his final defeat at the hands of pagans and lack of evidentiary miracles, could be construed within the terms of Bede's paradigm as signs of his ultimate lack of grace.

Because the exegetical paradigm requires every event and every earthly body to fit into its harmonious totality as testimony to the 'double love of God and our neighbour', the resistances that surface in the account of Edwin become problematic. As the first king to rule over 'all the inhabitants of

Britain, English and Britons alike, except for Kent only', Edwin is a figure that Bede needs to fit into his unifying historical paradigm.69 But he does so

only with difficulty. While miracles prove that Oswald's death at the hands of pagans was a martyrdom, no miracles attest to Edwin's sanctity. As

Edwin's troubled conversion resists Bede's historiographical paradigm, that resistance demonstrates that reading the HE only according to the exegetical paradigm cannot fully assess the text. From within the exegetical paradigm, we must accept Edwin's delayed conversion as a deferral of the grace of Godbut this deferral does not contain his death at the hands of pagans and the absence of miracles surrounding his relics.

Bede's exegetical historiography allows him to synthesise many fragments of information through a conception of English history as a story of the

triumph of Christianity and unification of England. But the events

surrounding Edwin, like the separate parts of his body, remain at once

signs of a longed for historical unity and fragments of history that fall outside that unity. Now, the miraculous evidence upon which Bede bases his history falls outside of our historiography. Understanding the roles of miracles and

exegesis in Bede's historiography, but going beyond what they meant to Bede allows for a reading of the HE that questions not only the exegetical context and its relationship to the text, but also the theoretical implications of Bede's miracles on the writing of his history as history. Reading Bede's miracles not only as he does, as embodiments of divine intention, but also as cultural concepts through which he understands and seeks to explain the world allows for a dialogue between medieval and modem historiography that recognises history as a cultural object. Interpreting history as synthesis of

past and present, and interrogating the concepts with which Bede explains events, allows us to read the miracles in the HE not only as irreconcilable marks of the past, but as ways to perceive and understand the role of

conceptual change in our own construction of history.

Department of English, Christopher Newport University, Neivport News, Virginia 23606-2998

sharonrowley@earthlink. net

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


REFERENCES

M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago:

Chicago UP, 1985), p. 149. ' Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, ed.

and trans., Colgrave and Mynots (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). On Bede's miracles

in general, see B. Colgrave, 'Bede's Miracle

Stories' in H. Thompson (ed.), Bede: His

Life, His Times, His Writings: Essays in

Commemoration of the 12th Centenary of His Death (London: Clarendon Press,

1935), pp. 201-29. See also, G. Bonner

(ed.), Famulus Christi: Essays in Commem

oration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede (London: Oxford UP, 1976), hereafter cited as

FC: J- Davidse, 'On Bede as Christian

Historian' in L.A.J.R. Huowen and

A. A. MacDonald (eds), Beda Venerabilis:

Historian, Monk, Northumbrian (Mediaevalia

Groningana 19), (Groningen: Egbert

Forsten, 1996) pp. 115. Beda Venerabilis

will be cited below as BV; S. DiGregorio, 'The Venerable Bede on Prayer and

Contemplation', Traditio 54 (1999) 1-39;

and J.-M. Picard, 'Bede, Adomnin, and the

Writing of History', Peritia 3 (1984) 50-70. Bede and His World: The farrow Lectures 1958

78, 2 vols (Cambridge: Ashgate, 1994), hereafter cited as JL. HE, 5.24, pp. 566-71. P.H. Blair, 'Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the

English Nation and its Importance Today',

JL I, p. 21. See also M.L.W. Laistner,

The Intellectual Heritage of the Early Middle

Ages (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1957), p. 99. Sir Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England,

3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971), p. 187.

D. Whitelock, 'The Old English Bede',

Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture

(1962), reprinted in E.G. Stanley (ed.), British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon

England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990),

p. 245; and 'After Bede', JL I, p. 37.

For an overview of this issue, see R. Ray, 'Bede's Vera Lex Historiae', Speculum 55(1)

(1980) i21, an essay in which Ray rethinks

his earlier position, as articulated in 'Bede,

The Exegete, as Historian', FC, pp. 125

40. See also C.W. Jones, 'Bede as

Early Medieval Historian' in Medievalia

et humanistica, vol. IV (Boulder: Summit

Press, 1946), p. 33; Colgrave, 'Bede's

Miracle Stories' in Thompson, p. 228.

and C. Plummer, 'Introduction',

Venerabilis Bed opera historica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), p. lxiv.

See B. Ward, 'Miracles and History: A Reconsideration of the Miracle

Stories Used by Bede', FC, pp. 70-6; R. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early

England (New York: Columbia UP,

1966); P. Meyvaert, 'Bede the Scholar',

FC, 40-69; J. Rosenthal, 'Bede's Use

of Miracles in "The Ecclesiastical

History'", Traditio 31 (1975) 328-35; K. Lutterkort, 'Beda Hagiographicus:

Meaning and the Function of Miracle

Stories in the Vita Cuthberti and The

Historia Ecclesiastica', BV, pp. 81-106.

William MacCready, in contrast, rejects Bede's miracles as literary and derivative

of Gregory the Great. Miracles and the

Venerable Bede, Studies and Texts 118

(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of

Medieval Studies, 1994). Thomas

MacKay also suggests that Bede 'winked'

at factual accuracy in 'Bede's Hagiogra

phical Method: His Knowledge and

Use of Paulinus of Nola', FC, p. 87. See also, L.W. Barnard, 'Bede and

Eusebius as Church Historians', FC,

pp. 106-24. 9

L. Patterson, Negotiating the Past

(Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1987), p. 6.

B. Colgrave (ed. and trans.), The Earliest

Life of Gregory the Great (Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1968), pp. 100-5. 11

Hanning, p. 34. 12

Ibid., p. 42 13

Ibid., p. 85. 14

Ibid., pp. 84-5. 13

Ray, 'Bede, the Exegete', p. 132. 16

Ward, p. 72. 17

Meyvaert, p. 46.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


C. Kendall, 'Bede's Historia ecclesiastica:

The Rhetoric of Faith' in J.J. Murphy

(ed.), Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the

Theories and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric

(Berkeley: California UP, 1978), p. 162.

G.I. Berlin, 'Bede's Miracle Stories: Notions

of Evidence and Authority in Old English

History', Neophilologus 74 (1990) 437.

Berlin, p. 442.

Ward, p. 73. Lerer discusses the way in which the

episodes of Imma and Caedmon juxtapose a Germanic past and a Christian present in the HE. S. Lehrer, Power and Literacy

(Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1991), p. 47.

HE, 5-U-I7

Sahlins, p. 144. 'The use of conventional concepts in

empirical contexts subjects the cultural

meanings to practical revaluations.' Sahlins,

p. 145.

Sahlins, pp. 146, 149. See A. Frantzen, Desire for Origins: New

Language, Old English, and Teaching the

Tradition (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP,

1990); K.S. Kiernan, 'Reading Caedmon's

"Hymn" with Someone Else's Glosses'

in Representations 32 (1990) 157-74; K. O'Brien O'Keeffe, 'Orality and the

Developing Text of Caedmon's Hymn in a

Comparative Context' in Speculum 62(1)

(1987) 1-20; and C.A. Lees and G.R.

Overing, 'Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Bede, Hild, and The Relations of

Cultural Production', Exemplaria 6 (1994)

3565

HE, 4.24, pp. 414-15. On influence of the Benedictine Rule on

Bede and Benedict Biscop, see H.M.R.E.

Mayr-Harting, 'The Venerable Bede,

The Rule of St. Benedict, and Social

Class', JL I, p. 413.

Ward, p. 72.

HE, 4.24, pp. 414-15. Ibid.

Ibid., pp. 418-19.

See M. King, 'Grammatica Mystica: A Study of Bede's Grammatical Curriculum' in

King and W.M. Stevens (eds), Saints,

Scholars, and Heroes: Studies in Medieval

Culture in Honor of Charles W. Jones, vol. 2

(Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic

Manuscript Library, St John's Abbey and University, 1979), p. 153, as well

as A. Crpin, 'Bede and the Vernacular',

FC, pp. 170-92. 35

J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and

the Desire for God (New York: Fordham

UP, 1982), p. 17. 36 T. Keating, 'The Dynamics of Lectio

Divina' in Word and Spirit 7 (Petersham, MA: St Bede's Publications, 1985), p. 81.

King also highlights the connection

of grammar and interpretation to monastic

spirituality, p. 153. 37

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans.

D.W. Robertson (New York: Macmillan,

1958), 2.6, p. 8. 38

P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: California UP, 1967), p. 318.

39 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 3.5, p. 9.

40 Ibid., 1.36, p. 40.

41 Ibid., 1.37, p. 31.

42 HE, pp. i82-3n.

43 Ibid., 2.9, p. 167.

44 Lutterkort, p. 94m p. 99.

45 HE, 2.9, pp. 162-3.

46 Ibid., 3.2, pp. 214-15.

47 Ibid., 2.9, pp. 164-5.

48 Ibid., pp. 180-1.

49 Oswald's activity as a translator for

Bishop Aidan makes him an especially resonant figure in the context of the

focus on language and faith in Christianity. Oswald not only brings the 'Word' to

his people, he also translates it and renders

it understandable. In this sense he stands

in an even starker contrast with Edwin.

For Oswald's healing miracles, see HE,

3.2, pp. 214-19; for his acting as a

translator, see HE, 3.3, pp. 220-1. 50

HE, 2.10, pp. 166-7. Later, Bede repeats that 'as we have said, [Edwin] used to sit

alone for hours at a time, earnestly

debating within himself what he ought to do and what religion he should follow',

HE, 2.12, p. 181. 51

HE, 2.9, pp. 166-7; HE, 2.13, pp. 182-3.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC


B. Colgrave (ed. and trans.), The Earliest Life

of Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1985), pp. 98101. On the date of the

text and relationship to Bede, see Colgrave's 'Introduction', pp. 45-9 and pp. 56-9. Bede usually identifies heavenly visitors

right away, and they are often accompanied

by light. For example, Bede immediately identifies St Peter, the 'blessed prince of the

apostles', as the man who comes to Laurence

to stop him from fleeing Britain (2.6,

pp. 154-5). A company of angels descends,

singing with 'unspeakable sweetness' to

inform Chad of his death (4.3, p. 341).

Dryhthelm's guide appears in shining white

robes (4.12, pp. 488-99). Egbert's teacher

appears to him several times to keep him

from going to Gaul (5.9, pp. 476-9).

Tortgyth has a vision of her abbess

/Ethelburh (4.9, pp. 362-3). Wilfrid sees

the archangel Michael, 'a glorious being in

white robes', who tells him ofhis upcoming death (5.19, pp. 527-9). Caedmon's visitor,

who simply appears and orders Caedmon

to sing, also provides an exception.

HE, 2.12, pp. 180-3.

Ibid., 2.9, pp. 164-5.

Ibid., 2.12, p. 179. Vergil's Aeneid, ed.

C. Pharr (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath,

1964), 4.1, p. 2.

C.T. Lewis and C. Short (eds), A Latin

Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1879), p. 261.

HE, 2.10, pp. 166-7.

Ibid., 2.20, pp. 202-3. With the defeat of the British at the hands

of the Germanic tribes, Bede states:

'the fire kindled by the hands of the

heathen executed the just vengeance of God on the nation for its crimes',

HE, 1.1j, pp. 52-3.

HE, 3.2, pp. 214-15.

Ibid., 2.20, pp. 204-5.

Ibid., p. 204m

Colgrave and Mynors confirm that

Oswald's head was enshrined in the tomb

of Cuthbert, moved with that tomb, and

found when the tomb was opened in

1827. HE, p. 252m

HE, 3.11, pp. 246-7.

Ibid., 3.6, pp. 230-1. For example, the site of Oswald's death

cures a traveller's sick horse. Bede tells

us that 'when the rider, who was an

intelligent man, saw this, he realised that

there must be some special sanctity associated with the place', HE, 3.9, pp.

242-3. Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, pp. 101-3.

HE, 2.5, pp. 148-9.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 01:55:23 UTC

Documents

23927002