The Venerable Bede

I used to wonder what he ever did to earn that title, but after reading his book, I think I knew. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People is a very precise, very accurate, sometimes dry, but also mystical exploration of the Church’s founding and history.

Bede’s history is rich in all the historical details—who was king when, which people groups moved where and when, who executed whom. But the real beauty of the work is the miraculous. The book is mystically top-heavy. Without the knowledge that Bede personally authenticated all his recorded accounts, and the knowledge that modern historians have been unable to discount any of them, one would assume that he was simply making up stories.

Incorruptible corpses, chips from tombs that cure diseases of all kinds, springs that burst forth from the ground where martyrs were slain, all occur repeatedly within its pages. In many ways it is an optimist’s version of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It is a book about death, but an intrinsically hopeful view of death. Most of those mentioned die of natural causes—many of extreme old age. Most have lived lives of great piety and virtue, most are given visions of the exact time of their deaths. Their friends and compatriots are given visions of them escorted to heaven by angels of Christ himself. Death is inevitable, but it is either the gateway to eternal and everlasting beauty, or it is the gateway to misery beyond any human comprehension.

Amid the constant visions of heaven, one is forced to consider, do I take heaven seriously enough. Am I living as if I seriously consider that there is heaven and not reaching it is quite literally, “a fate worse than death.”

The more irreverent might wonder, “did those old Christians do anything besides die?” Well, they say “the blood of the saints is the seed of the Church” and Bede would prove them right. Every peaceful death of every Abbess, abbot, chaste queen, king turned monk, bishop, and eccentric laymen spurred on a new concentration of devotion and piety. Tentative lesson? Your manner of leaving life might be just as important as how you lived it. Now that is a thought to make one shudder.

We know how the saints died, but, how did they live? According to Bede, they lived by a code of constant self-denial, humility, chastity, study, and asceticism. In his praise of their lives there is a strong influence, and the accompanying weaknesses of Old-School Catholicism (such as if everyone was perfectly chaste producing the next generation might be a problem). But in a model that presents men and women who pursued the study of the world and Christ with never-ending fervor and willingly gave up meals two days a week to pray, at the very least one can’t complain about a measly getting up at 7:00 to go to church again. Protestants are quite amazing about how saying asceticism is unnecessary to true faith, but in reading Bede’s history I am forced to wonder what we are missing. Can 2000 years of church history be entirely wrong?

Bede’s work is readable, well-researched, convicting, and a thoroughly good read for anyone with any interest in church history or the balance between faith and reason.