26
May 735 A.D. Chanting
“Glory Be to God” Venerable Bede Passes
Graves, Dan. “Chanting `Glory Be to God’ Bede Dies.” Christianity
Today. Apr 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/601-900/chanting-glory-be-to-the-father-bede-died-11629747.html.
Accessed Apr 24 Apr 2014.
Suffering from a lung infection,
Bede sang, and prayed, and urged his pupils to learn quickly, for he did not
have much time left to live. What a fearful thing it is to fall unprepared into
the hands of the living God, he warned them. Then he divided his few prized
possessions, including a little precious pepper, among his fellow monks. His
sufferings did not make him bitter; on the contrary, he thanked God, believing
his pains were a scourging at the hands of a loving Father. He labored hard to
complete the Gospel of John and to make some extracts from the works of
Isidore.
On this evening, May 26, 735, his
secretary, a lad named Wilbert, said, "Dear master, there is one sentence
still unfinished." "Very well," he replied, "write it
down." After a short while, the lad said, "Now it is finished."
"You have spoken truly," Bede replied. "It is well finished. Now
raise my head in your hands, for it would give me great joy to sit facing the
holy place where I used to pray, so that I may sit and call on my Father."
Chanting "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son," he died. So passed
one of the noblest men who lived.
Bede is known as "the
venerable," a name rarely applied to major figures of history. He is also
called the Father of English History. No student need dig deep to appreciate
why both names are deserved. His life was filled with piety and his
Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation is almost our only satisfactory
source of material on the early history of the Anglo-Saxons in England. Bede selected
his anecdotes with care, crediting his sources when possible. Although filled
with miracles, the history has narrative interest and lucidity. Its events are
reported without prejudice, but with wide learning in a dignified tone.
In an autobiographical sketch, he
tells of many of his other writings, the bulk of them scriptural
interpretations. He informs us that he was a servant of Christ and priest at
the monastery of Peter and Paul at Wearmouth and Jarrow. "I was born on
the lands of this monastery, and on reaching seven years of age, I was
entrusted by my family first to the most reverend Abbot Benedict and later to
Abbot Ceolfrid for my education." There is speculation his parents died
while he was very young. "I have spent all the remainder of my life in
this monastery and devoted myself entirely to the study of the scriptures. And
while I have observed the regular discipline and sung the choir offices daily
in church, my chief delight has always been in study, teaching and writing. I
was ordained deacon in my nineteenth year, and priest in my thirtieth...
."
As a young man he survived a
plague which wiped out most of the choir. He had cheated death once, but not
again. The prayer with which he closed his history would aptly fit his death:
"I pray you, noble Jesus, that as you have graciously granted me joyfully
to imbibe the words of Your Knowledge, so You will also of Your bounty grant me
to come at length to Yourself, the fount of all wisdom, and to dwell in Your
presence forever."
Bibliography:
- Asimov, Isaac. "Bede." Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology; the living stories of more than 1000 great scientists from the age of Greece to the space age, chronologically arranged. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964.
- Bede. A History of the English Church and People [Ecclesiastical History of England]. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1968.
- "Beda, Bede, or Baeda." Kunitz, Stanley L. British Authors Before 1800; a biographical dictionary. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1952.
- "Bede or Baeda." Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921 - 1996.
- "Bede, St." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
- "Bede, the Venerable." Dictionary of Scientific Biography; edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. New York: Scribner, 1970 - 1980.
- Blair, Peter Hunter. The World of Bede. London: Secker and Warburg, 1970.
- D'Souza, Dinesh. The Catholic Classics. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1986.
- Kunitz, Stanley L. British Authors Before 1800; a biographical dictionary. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1952.
- Thurston, Herbert. "The Venerable Bede." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
- Various encyclopedia and internet articles and references in histories of English literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment