IV

But perhaps we have dwelt too long on the poetic side of the book. For no one must suppose that Bede’s story is a mere tissue of fantasy, such as later hagiographers loved to weave. This element gains its effectiveness from the sober realism of the entire narrative. Character is the central miracle of the world, and the final value of Bede’s writings is that he shows us English character in the making. Our respect for this noble people rises as we read on. Critics have often pointed out how their distinctive traits shine out during the slow process of their conversion. A practical and ethical bent is central with them; not sentiment nor reasoning, but the spectacle of holy lives, converted the English folk. The grave hesitancy of Edwin, the tolerance and patience of other princes, the seriousness and freedom from impulsiveness in the whole proceeding, strikingly evince the honesty and judicial fairness and deep conscientiousness of the English temper. Other races placed the emphasis elsewhere. Even in pre-Christian times, emotion preponderated among the Irish just as truly as moral instinct among the Anglo-Saxons; nor is the distinction less true because Christianized emotion recreated the entire ethical life of the Celt, while, as we have just seen, the new moral ideal quickened a new emotional sensibility Edition: current; Page: [xxi] among the English. The fascinating legends of Irish saints, so rich in sentiment and fantasy—above all, that most entertaining and human document, the story of the hot-headed Irishman S. Columba—prove that the appeal of Christianity in the Celtic world was primarily to the imagination and the heart. If, on the other hand, the noble output of English prose and verse during the eighth century is poorer in elements of imaginative beauty than the literature of Ireland, it is correspondingly richer in the searching record of ethical experience. If we turn away from both Irish and Anglo-Saxon, toward that Roman genius already evident, and destined later to express itself through the Normans, we shall see a temper that delights in efficiency and administration, in the construction to the glory of God of great buildings and of theological systems equally firm. These instincts, like those of the Celt, Bede shows us at work, energizing and leavening the English race. But in this race the conscience had first to be won: it was the central citadel, and only when it had yielded did the whole nature of the man enter into faithful allegiance. If we see the deep temperamental gloom of the Anglo-Saxons softened and brightened, and the curious paralysis that sometimes seems to oppress them yielding to wise energy, it is because they have found in Christianity a sure and necessary stay for their moral nature. They were a people that could never attain true development till they rested on a sustaining force. That force, Law in the outer universe, was Duty within, and the faith in it once gained was destined never to fail through the long unfolding of national life.

To such music of the English future does Bede’s great story already march.

And in Bede himself do we not find the same union of Edition: current; Page: [xxii] qualities, and the same central impulse? With no strained interpretation, we may well consider him the first complete Englishman; for in him three centuries before the Conquest, six centuries before Chaucer, the gifts of the races have met and blended. He was “brought from his earliest years under the influences alike of Iona and Rome and Gaul and Canterbury”; and the union of all these influences may well be the explanation of the surprising modernness with which, as we said at the beginning, his personality and work impress us. Heir of the scholarship of Theodore and Hadrian, he dearly loved the fine art of Christian living, and a quiet zest for knowledge imparts to his peaceful pages a fine excitement. He adheres, moreover, to the Roman party, and contemplates with enthusiasm the orderly development of the Church. Yet deeply though he respected the powers so necessary to the continuity of Christendom, his heart was with the Celts; how otherwise should his treatment of them be marked with that tender grace and lingering affection which place these portions of his work among the dearest classics in Christian letters? Beneath Celtic instinct and Latin training, however (base and source of all his being), is the sturdy Anglo-Saxon moral nature, marked by sanity, moderation, depth and self-control. “Bede,” says ten Brink, “embodies the energetic working power, the positive historic sense, the love of simplicity and truth, that perhaps form the determining elements in the nobler side of English nationality.” His serious and reflective temper is unmistakably English—the temper of a Colet, a Johnson, a Cowper, a Tennyson. And as he stands before us a characteristic Englishman, whose strength is modified, enriched, but never overcome by elements brought from without, so we see in him a singularly complete Christian. He effaces himself in his story, yet the ages rejoice to recognize in him a high example of that Christian manliness in which the ruling instincts are poverty of spirit, sympathy, meekness, mercifulness, aspiration for justice and firm desire to serve the cause of peace. Nor, finally, are we permitted to doubt that even during the earthly life of this Edition: current; Page: [xxiii] our first historian, his was the blessing of the pure in heart, who see God no less in the changing order of the world than in the eternal glory of the heavens.

Works by the Venerable Bede:

Historia Ecclesiastica, first edition undated (Strasburg, 1475?). First edition published in England, ed. A. Wheloc, 1643, 1644 (with Anglo-Saxon version); ed. J. Smith (with Anglo-Saxon), 1722; B. Hussey, 1846; G. H. Moberley, 1869; C. Plummer, 1896; J. F. Welsh (second edition), 1893; C. S. Wallis and C. H. Gill, 1909.

Works enumerated by Bede himself in his Historia: on First Part of Genesis, on the Tabernacle, etc., on First Part of Samuel, Allegorical Exposition of the Building of the Temple, Thirty Questions concerning the Book of Kings, on the Proverbs, on the Song of Solomon, Extracts from S. Jerome, on Ezra and Nehemiah, on Habakkuk, on Book of Tobit, Readings in the Pentateuch, etc.; on the Books of Kings and Chronicles, on Job, on Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, on Isaiah, Ezra and Nehemiah, on Mark, on Luke, Homilies on the Gospel, Extracts from S. Augustine, on the Acts, on the General Epistles, on the Apocalypse, Readings in the New Testament, Letters (of the Six Ages, Resting-places of Israel, Words of Isaiah xxiv. 22, of Bissextile, of Anatolius on the Equinox), on Histories of Saints, and Life of S. Felix, Translation of Greek Life of S. Anastasius, Life of S. Cuthbert (prose and verse), History of Three Abbots, Martyrology, Book of Hymns, Book of Epigrams, on the Nature of Things, on Chronology, on Orthography, on the Art of Metre and Modes of Speech in the Scriptures. A Pœnitentiate, Retractationes, and a Work on the Holy Places, are also his. The translation of St. John’s Gospel is lost.

Works: ed. J. A. Giles (Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ), 1843-44; Milne (Patrologiæ Cursus Completus), 1844; Historical Works (Eng. Hist. Soc.), 1841, etc.; Epistolæ (Caxton Soc.), 1844.

Translations: Ecclesiastical History, Stapleton, 1565; Stevens, 1723; Hurst, 1814; Stevens, revised by Giles (Bohn), 1840, 1847; L. Gidley, 1870; L. C. Jane (Temple Classics), 1903; A. M. Sellar, 1907.

Historical works, J. Stevenson, 1870; Life of S. Cuthbert, J. Stevenson, 1887; Explanation of the Apocalypse, G. Marshall, 1878.

The Early English Text Society has published the Anglo-Saxon Versions of the Ecclesiastical History, and of the Latin Hymn, De Die Judicii.

Life: Early, Anonymous, published by Caxton Society, 1844; by F. A. Gasquet, 1901; H. D. Raunsley, 1904.