Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
My plan to read the works of Bede has begun at the end of his earthly life, as told to me by his student Wilbert.
Wilbert says, “Then at the ninth hour he gathered everyone together and gave away the earthly things he treasured — pepper, incense and a swath of linen. Then he said, ‘The time of my departure is at hand, and my soul longs to see Christ my King in His beauty.’ “
“When he had declared it finished, he asked me to raise his head so that he could see the church where he used to pray. He chanted, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit” Footnote 1
“So, he left his pepper and incense and a piece of linen, and all these books and books of words describing all of earthly time, everything in the world revealed to him in a tiny earthly room.”
I ask Wilbert why he thought Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People begins with the Romans and not with Creation or with the birth of Christ. Apparently, that is a delicate issue here at Jarrow, and Wilbert thinks my concern over ages in time is just picking at an old sore.
Wilbert argues, “You are referring to an old accusation made of heresy.”
“Heresy? No, I am surely not accusing Bede of anything at all against God. I mean, I haven’t even read his books yet.”
“He already dealt with that accusation made by that lewd rustic Plegwin accusing Bede of placing Christ in a Seventh Age of the Six Ages of Man. I myself, and others of us here have prepared copies of Bede’s letter in response to the accusation. Footnote 2 He makes it very clear, because if Christ were born in the Sixth age, the sun and the moon would set all of the measures of time awry, and the date for Easter would not be as the pope in Rome declared it to be.”
Oh, so that’s what this is about.
I answer the old librarian, “I only intend to read the history not to argue it’s alternative.”
But maybe I did come here looking for that argument. The controversy that seems narrow and set like an old Roman stack of stones in the midst of a spring garden, has spread to the great concentric realms of heaven, so that the blame for the wrong date for Easter is the edict of the sun and the moon, beyond human control.
Footnote 1: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/05/27/103796-venerable-bede-the-church-historian Retrieved 2-20-25
Footnote 2: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-real-venerable-bede.html Retrieved 2-20-25
(Continues Tuesday, November 4)
Lazarus Ink 