The Age of Bede (Penguin Classics) Read online

  THE AGE OF BEDE

  ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE

  ST BRENDAN was born in Kerry c. A.D. 486 and died at Annadown c. 575. He became a monk and a priest; he founded several monasteries of which Clonfert in Galway was the most famous. The story of his voyage was very widely read in Latin and in several vernacular languages.

  BEDE was born in 673. He himself tells us that he became a monk at an early age and lived most of his life at Jarrow. Scholar, teacher and writer, he wrote biblical and other works. He has been described as the ‘Father of English History’. His historical works include Life of Cuthbert and Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, both in The Age of Bede (a Penguin Classic). Bede died in 735.

  Little is known of the priest EDDIUS STEPHANUS except that he wrote his Life of Wilfrid between 710 and 720 A.D. He knew Wilfrid well and accompanied him on one of his journeys to Rome.

  J. F. WEBB is a priest of the RC diocese of Wrexham, N. Wales.

  D. H. Farmer (B.Litt. Oxon) was Reader in History at Reading University until 1988. He is author and editor of several books on ecclesiastical and monastic history such as Benedict’s Disciples (2nd edition, 1999), The Age of Bede (a Penguin Classic, 1983), St Hugh of Lincoln (3rd edition, 2000) and The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (1978; 4th edition, 1997). This has been translated into Italian, Slovakian and Roumanian. A work on Anglo-Saxon missionaries in Europe is in preparation. He has also been principal consultant for the new twelve-volume edition of Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1995–9).

  The Age of Bede

  Bede: Life of Cuthbert

  Eddius Stephanus: Life of Wilfrid

  Bede: Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

  The Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith

  with The Voyage of St Brendan

  Translated by J. F. WEBB

  Edited with an introduction by D. H. FARMER

  Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

  and The Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith

  translated by D. H. FARMER

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd. 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcon Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, II Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd. Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd. 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 1965

  Reprinted with revisions and new introduction 1983

  Reprinted with revisions 1988, 1998

  Reprinted 2004

  11

  Translation copyright © J. F. Webb. 1965

  Introduction and Notes copyright © D. H. Farmer, 1983, 1988

  Translation of Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

  and of The Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith

  copyright © D.H. Farmer, 1983, 1998

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition Including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-191524-1

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  BEDE: LIFE OF CUTHBERT

  EDDIUS STEPHANUS: LIFE OF WILFRID

  BEDE: LIVES OF THE ABBOTS OF WEARMOUTH AND JARROW

  THE ANONYMOUS HISTORY OF ABBOT CEOLFRITH

  THE VOYAGE OF ST BRENDAN

  FURTHER READING

  MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES

  MAP OF WESTERN EUROPE

  INDEX

  Introduction

  by D. H. Farmer

  THE five texts presented in this volume are important sources for the early history of the Christian Church in England and Ireland. The saints described in them lived in the sixth and seventh centuries. Each was an attractive pioneer both of monasticism and of the primacy of the spiritual. In an age and environment in which the heroic was deeply appreciated, each of them embodied a heroism comparable to, yet different from, that of mythical gods and warriors. They fought spiritual battles against invisible diabolical enemies with the weapons of prayer, fasting and solitude; yet each also contributed powerfully to building Christian cities, communities of monks. Each obtained posthumous and permanent, as well as transient, glory.

  These men came from different backgrounds and had contrasting temperaments. Brendan was the earliest, an Irish monk, abbot and founder. But his Navigatio is the latest of the five documents and arguably the least rich in authentic personal detail. It is, however, both an attractive and a rewarding document, part fact and part fiction, which represents a long Irish monastic tradition of which the historical Brendan (d. 575) is one famous example. Better known personalities in the same tradition are Columbanus (d. 615), whose writings, missionary activity and monasteries (especially Bobbio and Saint-Gall) made him the most famous Irish apostle in Western Europe, and Columba of Iona (d. 597), especially important in south-west Scotland and through his disciples in Northumbria also.

  Cuthbert was a Northumbrian, born in 634. He was trained as a young man by Irish monks at Melrose. After a few years as guestmaster in the abortive foundation at Ripon, followed by the famous Synod of Whitby (663/4), he became prior of Lindisfarne. He was attracted, however, to a more complete solitude, realized first on St Cuthbert’s Isle close by and later on the island of the Inner Farne, where he lived as a hermit until 685 when he was called to be a bishop. Lindisfarne was his see, but he lived as bishop for only two years. He died in 687 at the age of fifty-three.

  Wilfrid was a Northumbrian also. Like Cuthbert, he became both monk and bishop, being trained first by Irish monks at Lindisfarne and later at Rome, the centre of Christendom. He went to Rome for the first time as a young man, staying for a while at Lyons on his way. Here he experienced the ideals and lifestyle of the Merovingian bishops. After his return to England he became the spokesman for the ‘Roman’ side at the Synod of Whitby and, soon afterwards, bishop of Northumbria. He experienced extremes of favour and disgrace, was expelled from his see and appealed to Rome for reinstatement. After a second expulsion he again appealed to Rome, not against the division of the Northumbrian diocese but against his virtual deposition and loss of monasteries he had founded in Northumbria, Mercia and even Sussex, whose apostle he had become in exile. Eventually he was reinstated as bishop of Hexham, where he died in 709. Important as a church builder, as the propagator of the Rule of St Benedict and as a pioneer missionary in Frisia as well as Sussex, he was also a controversial figure in life and after death. His Life by Eddius Stephanus, now often called simply Stephen, a fervent partisan, was written in about 720. Whatever its faults, it has the merit of being the first historical biography to be written by an Anglo-Saxon.

  Bede’s Lives of the Abbots is a document rather different from the others. First, it concerns several abbots, not just one. Secondly it is a work of local history as well as biography. Thirdly it was written by England’s pioneer histori
an within the monastery ruled by the abbots it describes, probably within ten years of the death of one of its principal characters, Ceolfrith. Of the five works included in this volume it is the shortest, but also the richest in authentic detail. It provides attractive character sketches, vivid details about the daily life, the endowments and the art treasures of England’s largest monastery of the seventh century. It is now completed by the contemporary anonymous Life of Ceolfrith.

  The Voyage of St Brendan was immensely popular in the Middle Ages. This is shown by the unusually large number – 116 – of surviving Latin manuscripts, and by the existence of vernacular translations in Middle English, French, German, Flemish, Italian, Provençal and Old Norse. It is still immensely readable today. Recently the journeys of Dr Timothy Severin in his ship Brendan have proved the possibility of the Hebrides, the Faeroes, Iceland and Newfoundland being reached by a craft built on traditional early medieval principles. His book The Brendan Voyage is a fascinating record of his journey.

  Nevertheless, great caution is necessary in claiming that the Navigatio is an authentic biography. For one thing the work appears c. 200 years after the death of the historical Brendan (c. 486–575). He was a monk and abbot whose main area of activity was western Ireland: Mount Brandon in the Dingle peninsula is named after him. His most important monasteries were Clonfert, Annadown, Inishadroum and Ardfert. He is said to have visited Columba at Hinba (Argyll), to have founded a monastery at Llancarvan (Wales) and journeyed in Brittany with St Malo. These stories reveal a tradition that, like some other Irish abbots of his time, he was a great traveller. His cult can be traced back to the ninth century, but could well be older. However, both his Life and the Navigatio were most probably written in the eighth century.

  The earliest surviving manuscript of the Navigatio dates from the ninth century. It is an abridged copy, so it is witness to at least one earlier manuscript, of uncertain date. It is written in a Carolingian minuscule hand: it belonged to, and was quite likely written at, the monastery of St Maximin at Trier. It is now in the British Library (Add. MS 36,736). It is clearly the product of an environment very different from that of Brendan himself: its handwriting contrasts sharply with the Irish or Northumbrian scripts of the Cathach of Columba, the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Kells.

  The Navigatio is usually, and probably correctly, described as the work of an expatriate Irish monk of the late eighth century. His name is unknown. He was familiar with Irish hagiography, geography and folklore: he wrote good Latin but with some insular characteristics. The six earliest surviving manuscripts all come from the Rhineland or the Low Countries. Monks of Irish origin had settled in this area, either through voluntary exile for Christ or because they had taken refuge there from Viking harassment. Their monasteries were built at such places as Metz. Trier, Liège, Cologne and Utrecht. There presumably they would have followed the Rules of Columbanus or another Irish abbot before the Rule of St Benedict replaced them.

  The author of the Navigatio knew the Life of Brendan and wrote his attractive story to harmonize with it. As it stands, his work is a fascinating mixture of fact, fantasy and literary borrowing. Its basic theme, the quest for a paradise on earth, can be traced back through early Christian writings to Greek, Roman and Egyptian literature. Parallels can be drawn with the Book of Enoch or the Shepherd of Hermas. But the closest resemblances are to the literature of Visions, some of which originated in Ireland and probably made use of pre-Christian Irish elements. The story of an adventurous sea-voyage is common in early Irish literature.

  The appearance of Judas Iscariot in the story as an example of the damned and of a Hibernicized Paul the First Hermit as an example of the saved show, with other passages, that this is no historical biography. The use of numbers seems to be symbolical, not historical. His companions number thirty-three, he goes round an island for three days, forty days are spent in preparatory fasting, supplies are also for forty days, for forty years the hermit Paul was brought up in ‘Patrick’s monastery’, and the island was so wide that forty days’ wandering did not bring the travellers to the further shore.

  The general influence of Scripture and the monastic rule are clear in these and other passages. Wherever the monks go they sing the psalms: so also do the birds. The journeys are marvellously timed to coincide with the Christian festivals. But this dream world has some genuine details. Travelling monks may well have encountered whales, icebergs and volcanoes; Irish settlement in some northern islands has been confirmed by archaeologists, while Viking sagas of Iceland tell of the displacement of Irish monks who had settled there before them. Given the long time-gap between Brendan’s death and the appearance of the Navigatio, there is little chance of its recording accurately the speech and the journeys of the historical Brendan and his community, whose comradeship in prosperity and adversity is such an attractive feature of the story. Brendan and his followers are written about as representatives of the Irish monastic system who embarked with faith into the unknown. Whatever may be thought of identifying striking details of the story, there can be no doubt of the imaginative charm of this fairy-like tale or of the skilful ingenuity of its author.

  Irish monasticism, glimpsed in the Navigatio, was a movement of great interest and significance. Its dependence on Eastern regimes as well as the unusual circumstances of Irish society combined to give it a character of its own. This was in many ways unlike that of most Benedictine monasteries in the West.

  The principal apostle of Ireland, St Patrick, a Briton who set up his episcopal see at Armagh, was not a monk himself, but his writings show that he encouraged monasticism for men and women. But within a century of his death in c. 461 the monasteries emerged as the most important element in the life of the Christian Church in Ireland. Lack of evidence prevents our knowing exactly how this happened. There were no towns in Ireland, nor had it ever been part of the Roman Empire. This meant that the structure of civil government in dioceses, into which the organization of the Christian Church fitted so admirably elsewhere, was lacking. Owing to the absence of towns an Irish urban episcopate could not flourish. Irish society was tribal in structure: the extended family was the significant unit. When the family became Christian, it was natural for it to remain together as a group. From this developed the early Irish monasteries.

  Monasteries were numerous and often large numbers of inmates were claimed for them. Within them several different forms of life were represented. Often there were a few hermits, esteemed and influential. There were also cenobites, or community monks, who lived under the verbal rule of the local abbot or one of the written rules such as that of Columbanus. But, it would seem, there were also even larger numbers of married layfolk attached to the monastery, still part of the family unit, who pursued normal lay occupations such as agriculture and cattle-rearing. Such people were, however, called ‘monks’. Presumably this section of the monastery was the one which became involved in cattle-rustling and even in ‘wars’ mentioned in Irish chronicles. Their existence makes less incredible the claim that Irish monasteries sometimes numbered some thousands of inmates. The head of the whole establishment was the abbot: he was of the same family as the founder and even sometimes a layman. Monasteries would often remain in the hands of the same family from one generation to another.

  The importance of the abbot in Ireland led in practice to the diminution of the power of the bishop. The bishop remained superior to the abbot in his Orders, which he could receive only from another bishop. But sometimes he seems to have been subordinate to, and dependent on, the abbot. Bede, who heard of this system at Iona, rightly regarded it as novel and unheard of. It was certainly quite different from the tradition, doctrine and practice of the rest of the Christian Church, both in East and West. Long before this time the Christian Church had been organized in territorial sees, situated in towns, whose dioceses were often coterminous with the units of civil administration. From these urban centres Christianity eventually spread into the countryside: it i
s often forgotten that the word pagani (pagans) originally meant country-dwellers.

  The mission of Augustine to England in 597 (the very year of Columba’s death on Iona) brought Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons who had settled extensively in the south and east of Britain. By the conversion of Ethelbert, king of Kent, then the most important of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and the establishment of dioceses at Canterbury, Rochester and later London, a small but firm bridgehead was built. In spite of reverses after Augustine’s early death in 604, Christianity spread throughout the whole country through the labours of Irish and Frankish as well as Italian missionaries. Within less than a century a fully articulated, normal diocesan system under one metropolitan (later two) was set up over the whole of Anglo-Saxon England. In this ultimate fulfilment of the grand strategy, if not of all the details of Gregory the Great (the pope who had sent Augustine), Theodore of Tarsus was the most important single influence. This Greek monk, unexpectedly promoted to the see of Canterbury by the Pope after a plague had wiped out most of the English episcopate, ruled from 665 until his death in 690 at the age of nearly ninety.

  The contact between ‘Irish’ and ‘Roman’ Christianity in England, sometimes in conflict but eventually in fusion, is illustrated in the other Lives printed in this volume. The dramatic confrontation at the Synod of Whitby, with Wilfrid as the principal spokesman for the Roman side and Colman for the ‘Irish’, soon led to the consolidation of local centres of diverse origin into a united, organized, nationwide church under territorial bishops. These were more numerous than before, and were in closer contact with each other and with the papacy, whose influence was considerable in England in the seventh century. English monastic missionaries such as Willibrord and particularly Boniface would be its principal supporters in Western Europe in the eighth century. This creative synthesis, of cultural as well as religious importance, was achieved in England partly through the achievements of Wilfrid, Cuthbert and the abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow.