Another bit I found just a bit ago because I was searching on Nonius Marcellus who apparently preserved bits from a lot of otherwise totally lost ancient authors in his dictionary. The following is full of interesting little tidbits.
Now, a bit about our Lupus guy:
Now, what about his pal, Einhard???
Okay, what about the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin??
I guess we should keep going back and look at Ecbert and Bede:
Now, Bede:
So, we stop for today. We still have some mysterious manuscripts floating around and don't quite know who had what, when.
How the text of Nonius Marcellus reaches us
March 4th, 2011 by Roger Pearse
The 4th century Latin dictionary by Nonius Marcellus is our main source for the fragments of lost Latin literature from the Roman republic — works like Accius, the satirist Lucillius, Varro’s Menippean Satires, the Tragedies of Ennius, Sissena and the Historiae of Sallust. The format of the work is a word, a definition, and then one or more quotations to show the usage of the word.
The work was in 20 books, as was traditional for works of grammar. But the books are of very uneven length. In the three volume Teubner edition by W. M. Lindsay from 1903 — still the standard, I believe — volume 1 contains books 1-3; volume 2 contains only book 4, which is vast, and volume 3 contains books 5-20. Book 20 is just a single sheet. The manuscripts reveal that the work was split into these chunks for transmission also.
Three forms of the text have reached us.
The first contains what is known as the ‘pure’ text. This is pretty much untampered with, although subject to the usual perils of transmission. Copying a dictionary composed of short quotes and spotting errors in it is quite a challenge if your Latin is not that good, and Angelo Mai, when he printed the first edition of the text of Cicero’s previously lost De re publica in 1822, described the text as A vertice, ut aiunt, usque ad extremum unguem ulcus est — as ulcerated from top to toe.
The second form of the text is known as the ‘doctored’ text. In some places this is actually more faithful to the original than the corrupted ‘pure’ text. But mostly it has been edited. Some scholar of the Carolingian period revised the text to produce a more readable version, in the interests of those trying to learn Latin. This was a very successful revision, and copies of this version out-number the pure text.
The third form is the ‘extract’ version. The word and definition is included, but the quotations have been omitted in most cases. The result is a glossary, doubtless intended for handier use in monasteries.
All three versions derive from a single archetype, in which a leaf from book 4 had fallen out, and been replaced for safe-keeping immediately after the first leaf of book 1. The transmission is also rather mix-and-match: a single manuscript may use the first form for books 1-3, and the doctored text for book 4.
All the manuscripts are 9th century or later, and all of them, for all three versions, seem to be connected to Tours and the Loire valley in France. In particular the literary activity of Lupus of Ferrieres there in the 9th century seems to be pivotal.
{I'll insert a bit about Lupus after.}
The pure text is represented by the following manuscripts:
L – Leiden, Voss. Lat. F. 73, dated to the start of the 9th century, from Tours.
F – Florence, Lauren. 48.1, 9th century, corrected and annotated by Lupus of Ferrieres.
H – British Library, Harley 2719, 9-10th century. Contains glosses in Breton, so was written in or near Britanny, not far from the Loire. Online.
E – Escorial M.III.14, mid-late 9th century, from Auxerre. The book was at St. Peter’s Ghent during the 11th century.
Gen. – Geneva lat.84, 9th century, from Fulda in Germany, with which Lupus had connections.
B – Berne 83, 9th century, written at Reims in the time of Hincmar.
Cant. – Cambridge University Library Mm.5.22, end of the 9th century, from Bourges.
P – Paris lat. 7667, 10th century, from Fleury.
L contains all three sections of the text, and is a fine and carefully written book made at Tours in the early years of the 9th century, probably while Alcuin was still abbot of St. Martins there. For books 1-3 it is the ancestor of all the other surviving manuscripts above. It incorporates corrections from the doctored and extract families.
The corrections to F are interesting. F3 contains readings and supplements known from no other source, and clearly right. It must be inferred that this corrector had access to another old manuscript — perhaps the archetype of all the manuscripts itself, or a copy taken before the rot had set in.
For book 4, things change. Book 4 of E is descended from book 4 of L, but the best manuscript of this book is Gen. which is NOT descended from book 4 in L, but from some common ancestor. And Gen. was undoubtedly written at Fulda in Lower Germany. There were links between Tours and Fulda, as we can see from the transmission of Apicius and Suetonius, and again we think of Lupus of Ferrieres, whose strong links with Fulda explain why a German manuscript appears in what is otherwise a bunch of manuscripts all written in one area of France. Some of the notes may even be in his hand. We can be reasonably certain that this book was brought from Fulda to the Loire area. Book 4 in B is a cousin of Gen., written rather badly, and the other manuscripts are descended from Gen.
The chunk comprising books 5-20 is different again, with these books in L descended from the archetype, while H, P and E are all cousins of L via one or more now lost intermediaries.
The ‘doctored’ text does not tell us much more about how the text moved around in the Dark Ages. The only complete representative of the whole family is G, Wolfenbuttel Gud.lat. 96. This was written, yes, at Tours between 800-850.
The ‘extract’ family exists in a bunch of manuscripts, and, once again, they are all connected with Tours, Reims, and Auxerre.
Nonius, then, was popular during the 9th century. But he is a difficult author, and after this period he was not copied. Only two medieval book catalogues (St. Vincent, Metz, s. XI, and St.Amand, s.XII) mention a copy. The text did not circulate widely again until the 15th century.
Now, a bit about our Lupus guy:
Lupus, was born into an influential family within the Archdiocese of Sens. Many of his family held influential positions in the Church or court. His father was Bavarian and his mother Frankish. He assumed the nickname of Servatus in commemoration of his miraculous escape from danger either in a serious illness or on the battlefield....
He began his education at the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul in Ferrières-en-Gâtinais under St. Aldric, then abbot of the monastery. ...
Lupus was not fond of the required learning but developed a passion for Classical studies. Abbot Aldric saw fit to send him to deepen his theological education at the Abbey of Fulda under Rabanus Maurus. Spending years in study and writing he developed a reputation as a scholar. Rabanus made use of his pupil, having him translate and compose bodies or works. During his residence at Fulda (c. 830–36) he became an intimate friend and disciple of the learned Einhard, whose Vita Karoli magni he was one of the first to read and praised it because of its style (epist. 1, 5). Lupus had written a letter to Einhard expressing his admiration and asked for a loan of Einhard's secular works (this would become a common practice of Lupus).
His opinion was that education should be esteemed and intended not for a certain purpose, but as a good of its own value (epist. 1, 5). He was interested therefore not only in Christian but also in pagan classical authors and even those who not belonged to the reading canon of the Carolingian schools like Suetonius, of whom he was one of very few readers in the early Middle Ages, and Cicero, whose nearly entire work he seems to know, not only as usual his rhetorical writings, and whom he mentions and cites very often. He borrowed manuscripts from Einhard (epist. 1, 6) and from the library of the monastery of Fulda and corresponded therefore with Abbot Markward (epist. 10, 4; 91, 4).
{Read the rest of the history part here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupus_Servatus }
During the reign of Charles the Bald an enormous amount of written material was produced. Lupus' letters, of which 132 remain, are distinguished for literary elegance and valuable historical information. Most of these letters were written to church officials, monks in neighboring monasteries, clergymen, Popes Benedict III and Nicholas I, Charles the Bald and Lothair. His own writings show him as a classicist and admirer of the Ciceronian style. He made his vast translation of Cicero's letters serve as a code of communicating with other well-read individuals.
Lupus made a tireless quest of manuscripts of classic authors, as it has long been known to readers of his letters.[9] It is because of his passion for copying and preserving manuscripts so that they may be passed on that he is regarded as an influential literate figure and the first humanist. Though his personal works and letters discuss theological matters it was not his chief interest.[7] Philology was his desired area of expertise. Scholars have increasingly become aware of the detailed examination that Lupus undertook when studying his acquired texts.
The scholar E.K. Rand of Harvard University reveals:
"...no less than five manuscripts that contain the corrections or collations of Lupus and one that is entirely written by that scholar himself."
These manuscripts are rewrites of Cicero's De Oratore, his De Inventione and his Letters, a Commentary on Virgil and a revision of Codex Bernensis 366.
Over the years modern scholars have made investigations as to what Lupus had participated in. Charles H. Beeson has been the foremost scholar on Lupus Servatus. Beeson took to studying the different handwriting styles of manuscripts according to area of the Early Middle Ages. He concluded that Lupus had written or been a part of copying texts more than originally thought. Lupus had a rigid adherence to the rules of the Roman grammarians for the division of syllables, whereby any pronounceable group of consonants is placed with the following vowel.[10] Lupus not only conformed to this rule in his personal practice, but also made the texts that he collected adhere to the style.
Graipey, Robert J. (1967). Lupus of Ferrieres and the Classics. The Monographic Press
Laitner, M.L.W. (1931) Thought and Letters in Western Europe-A.D. 500–900. New York
Regenos, Graydon W. (1966). The Letters of Lupus Servatus. Martinus Nijoff. The Hague
Now, what about his pal, Einhard???
Einhard (also Eginhard or Einhart; c. 775 – March 14, 840) was a Frankish scholar and courtier. Einhard was a dedicated servant of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious; his main work is a biography of Charlemagne, the Vita Karoli Magni, "one of the most precious literary bequests of the early Middle Ages."
Einhard was from the eastern German-speaking part of the Frankish Kingdom. Born into a family of relatively low status, his parents sent him to be educated by the monks of Fulda - one of the most impressive centres of learning in the Frank lands - perhaps due to his small stature (Einhard referred to himself as a "tiny manlet") which restricted his riding and sword-fighting ability, Einhard concentrated his energies towards scholarship and especially to the mastering of Latin. Despite such humble origins, he was accepted into the hugely wealthy court of Charlemagne around 791 or 792. Charlemagne actively sought to amass scholarly men around him and established a royal school led by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin. Einhard evidently was a talented builder and construction manager, because Charlemagne put him in charge of the completion of several palace complexes including Aachen and Ingelheim. Despite the fact that Einhard was on intimate terms with Charlemagne, he never achieved office in his reign. In 814, on Charlemagne's death his son Louis the Pious made Einhard his private secretary. Einhard retired from court during the time of the disputes between Louis and his sons in the spring of 830.
He died at Seligenstadt in 840.
...
The most famous of Einhard's works is his biography of Charlemagne, the Vita Karoli Magni, "The Life of Charlemagne" (c. 817–836), which provides much direct information about Charlemagne's life and character, written sometime between 817 and 830. In composing this he relied heavily upon the Annals of the Frankish Kingdom. Einhard's literary model was the classical work of the Roman historian Suetonius, the Lives of the Caesars, though it is important to stress that the work is very much Einhard's own, that is to say he adapts the models and sources for his own purposes. His work was written as a praise of Charlemagne, whom he regarded as a foster-father (nutritor) and to whom he was a debtor "in life and death". The work thus contains an understandable degree of bias, Einhard taking care to exculpate Charlemagne in some matters, not mention others, and to gloss over certain issues which would be of embarrassment to Charlemagne, such as the morality of his daughters; by contrast, other issues are curiously not glossed over, like his concubines.
Okay, what about the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin??
Alcuin of York (Latin: Alcuinus, c. 735 – 19 May 804), also called Ealhwine, Albinus or Flaccus, was an English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne,[1] he is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era....
Alcuin was born in Northumbria, presumably sometime in the 730s.[2] Virtually nothing is known of his parents, family background, or origin....
The young Alcuin came to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Ecgbert and his brother, the Northumbrian King Eadberht. Ecgbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who urged him to raise York to an archbishopric. King Eadberht and Archbishop Ecgbert oversaw the re-energising and re-organisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun. Ecgbert was devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage. It was in York that Alcuin formed his love of classical poetry, though he was sometimes troubled by the fact that it was written by non-Christians...
The York school was renowned as a centre of learning in the liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters.[6] It was from here that Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. He revived the school with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hraban wrote one on the quadrivium....
In 781, King Elfwald sent Alcuin to Rome to petition the Pope for official confirmation of York's status as an archbishopric and to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I. On his way home he met Charlemagne (whom he had met once before), this time in the Italian city of Parma....
Alcuin's love of the church and his intellectual curiosity allowed him to be reluctantly persuaded to join Charlemagne's court. He joined an illustrious group of scholars that Charlemagne had gathered around him, the mainsprings of the Carolingian Renaissance: Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad. Alcuin would later write that "the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles."...
From 782 to 790, Alcuin taught Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, the young men sent to be educated at court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf, and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionised the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning, to the extent that the institution came to be known as the 'school of Master Albinus'.
In this role as adviser, he tackled the emperor over his policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing, "Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe." His arguments seem to have prevailed – Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.
In 790 Alcuin returned from the court of Charlemagne to England, to which he had remained attached. He dwelt there for some time, but Charlemagne then invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy which was at that time making great progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain. He is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism. At the Council of Frankfurt in 794, Alcuin upheld the orthodox doctrine and obtained the condemnation of the heresiarch Felix of Urgel. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home.
He was back at Charlemagne's court by at least mid-792, writing a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, dealing with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 793. These letters and Alcuin's poem on the subject, De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii, provide the only significant contemporary account of these events.
In his description of the Viking attack, he wrote: "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain. Behold the church of St Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of God's priests, robbed of its ornaments."
In 796 Alcuin was in his sixties. He hoped to be free from court duties and was given the chance upon the death of Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at Tours, when Charlemagne put Marmoutier Abbey into Alcuin's care, with the understanding that he should be available if the king ever needed his counsel.
Alcuin died on 19 May 804, some ten years before the emperor, and was buried at St. Martin's Church under an epitaph that partly read:
Dust, worms, and ashes now ...
Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved,
Pray, reader, for my soul.
He was later canonised as a saint, and remains recognised within the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox traditions.
The majority of details on Alcuin's life come from his letters and poems. There are also autobiographical sections in Alcuin's poem on York and in the Vita Alcuini, a Life written for him at Ferrières in the 820s, possibly based in part on the memories of Sigwulf, one of Alcuin's pupils....
Alcuin made the abbey school into a model of excellence and many students flocked to it. He had many manuscripts copied using outstandingly beautiful calligraphy, the Carolingian minuscule based on round and legible uncial letters. He wrote many letters to his English friends, to Arno, bishop of Salzburg and above all to Charlemagne. These letters (of which 311 are extant) are filled mainly with pious meditations, but they form an important source of information as to the literary and social conditions of the time and are the most reliable authority for the history of humanism during the Carolingian age. Alcuin trained the numerous monks of the abbey in piety, and it was in the midst of these pursuits that he died.
Alcuin is the most prominent figure of the Carolingian Renaissance, in which three main periods have been distinguished: in the first of these, up to the arrival of Alcuin at the court, the Italians occupy a central place; in the second, Alcuin and the Anglo-Saxons are dominant; in the third (from 804), the influence of Theodulf, the Visigoth is preponderant....
Alcuin is credited with inventing the first known question mark, though it didn't resemble the modern symbol.[11]
Alcuin transmitted to the Franks the knowledge of Latin culture which had existed in Anglo-Saxon England. A number of his works still exist. His letters and his poetry are equally interesting. Besides some graceful epistles in the style of Venantius Fortunatus, he wrote some long poems, and notably he is the author of a history (in verse) of the church at York, Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Eboracensis ecclesiae....
while at Aachen, Alcuin bestowed pet names upon his pupils – derived from mainly from Virgil's Eclogues).
Frederick Lorenz. The life of Alcuin (Thomas Hurst, 1837).
Rolph Barlow Page. The Letters of Alcuin (New York: Forest Press, 1909).
E. M. Wilmot-Buxton. Alcuin (P J Kennedy, 1922).
Stephen Allot. Alcuin of York, his life and letters ISBN 0-900657-21-9
Andrew Fleming West. Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools (C. Sscribner's Sons, 1912) ISBN 0-8371-1635-X
Eleanor Shipley Duckett. Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne, (1951)
Eleanor Shipley Duckett. Carolingian Portraits, (1962)
F. L. Ganshof. The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy ISBN 0-582-48227-5
I guess we should keep going back and look at Ecbert and Bede:
Ecgbert (died 766) was an eighth century Archbishop of York and correspondent of Bede and Boniface. After he became bishop, his diocese was elevated to an archbishopric. In 737, Ecgbert's brother became king of Northumbria and the two siblings worked together on ecclesiastical issues....
Ecgbert was the son of Eata, who was descended from the founder of the kingdom of Bernicia. His brother Eadberht was king of Northumbria from 737 to 758. Ecgbert went to Rome with another brother, and was ordained deacon while still in Rome.[1] Ecgbert has been claimed to have been a student of Bede, who much later visited with Ecgbert in 733 at York,[4] but this statement may simply mean that Ecgbert was a student of Bede's writings, and not that he was formally taught by Bede.
...some of Eadberht's coins feature Ecbert's image on the opposite face....
Ecgbert's problems with the monasteries in his diocese came from the secular practice of families setting up monasteries that were totally under their control as a way of making the family lands book-land and free from secular service. Book-land was at first an exclusive right of ecclesiastical property. By transferring land to a family-controlled monastery, the family would retain the use of the land without having to perform any services to the king for the land....
The school Ecgbert founded at York is held by the modern historian Peter Hunter Blair to have equalled or surpassed the famous monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow.[10] The school educated not just the cathedral clergy but also the offspring of nobles.[11] Blair also calls the library that was established at York "a library whose contents were unequalled in the western Europe of its day".[12] Among the students at the school was Alcuin, who was placed by his family with Ecgbert.[1][13] Both Liudger, later the first Bishop of Munster, and Aluberht, another bishop in Germany, also studied at the school in York.
{So, where did they get THEIR manuscripts?}
...Bede wrote Ecgbert a letter dealing with monastic issues as well as the problems of large dioceses.[1] The letter, written in 734, became known as the Epistola ad Ecgberhtum episcopum.[15] Bede urged Ecgbert to study Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care,[1] and held up Aidan and Cuthbert as examples of model bishops.[16] The main thrust of Bede's letter was to urge Ecgbert to reform his church to more closely resemble Gregory the Great's original plan for it....
Boniface wrote to Ecgbert, asking for support against Æthelbald of Mercia. Boniface also asked the archbishop for some of Bede's books, and in return sent wine to be drunk "in a merry day with the brethern."...
Ecgbert wrote the Dialogus ecclesiasticae institutionis, which was a legal code for the clergy, setting forth the proper procedures for many clerical and ecclesiastical issues including weregild for clerics, entrance to clerical orders, deposition from the clergy, criminal monks, clerics in court, and other matters.[1] It survives as one complete manuscript, with a few excerpts in other manuscripts.[3][c] Because Ecgbert was the senior archbishop in England after the death of Nothhelm in 739, it is possible that the Dialogus was intended not just for the Northumbrian church but for the entire church in England.[22] The Dialogus details a code of conduct for the clergy and how the clergy was to behave in society.[23] The exact date it was composed is unclear, but it was probably after 735, based on the mention of the archiepiscopal status of Ecgbert in one title as well as the internal evidence of the work.
Blair, Peter Hunter (1990). The World of Bede (1970 reprint ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39819-3.
Blair, Peter Hunter; Blair, Peter D. (2003). An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Third ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53777-0.
Coates, Simon (1996). "The Role of Bishops in the Early Anglo-Saxon Church: A Reassessment". History 81 (262): 177–196. doi:10.1111/j.1468-229X.1996.tb02256.x.
Cubitt, Catherine (1999). "Finding the Forger: An Alleged Decree of the 679 Council of Hatfield". The English Historical Review 114 (459): 1217–1248. doi:10.1093/ehr/114.459.1217. JSTOR 580246.
Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X.
Hindley, Geoffrey (2006). A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons: The Beginnings of the English Nation. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7867-1738-5.
Now, Bede:
Bede (672/673 – 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede (Latin: Bēda Venerābilis), was an English monk at the monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Monkwearmouth-Jarrow), Northeast England, both of which were located in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History".
In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII, a position of theological significance; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation (Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy). Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work made the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons, contributing significantly to English Christianity. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius, among many others.
{A "superb library"???}
... Bede says nothing of his origins, but his connections with men of noble ancestry suggest that his own family was well-to-do. ... Bede's first abbot was Benedict Biscop, and the names "Biscop" and "Beda" both appear in a king list of the kings of Lindsey from around 800, further suggesting that Bede came from a noble family.
...The name "Bede" was not a common one at the time. The Liber Vitae of Durham Cathedral includes a list of priests; two are named Bede, and one of these is presumably Bede himself. Some manuscripts of the Life of Cuthbert, one of Bede's works, mention that Cuthbert's own priest was named Bede; it is possible that this priest is the other name listed in the Liber Vitae. These occurrences, along with a Bieda who is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 501, are the only appearances of the name in early sources....
At the age of seven, he was sent to the monastery of Monkwearmouth by his family to be educated by Benedict Biscop and later by Ceolfrith.[15] Bede does not say whether it was already intended at that point that he would be a monk.[16] It was fairly common in Ireland at this time for young boys, particularly those of noble birth, to be fostered out; the practice was also likely to have been common among the Germanic peoples in England.[17] Monkwearmouth's sister monastery at Jarrow was founded by Ceolfrith in 682, and Bede probably transferred to Jarrow with Ceolfrith that year.[10] The dedication stone for the church has survived to the present day; it is dated 23 April 685, and as Bede would have been required to assist with menial tasks in his day-to-day life it is possible that he helped in building the original church.[17] In 686, plague broke out at Jarrow. The Life of Ceolfrith, written in about 710, records that only two surviving monks were capable of singing the full offices; one was Ceolfrith and the other a young boy, who according to the anonymous writer had been taught by Ceolfrith. The two managed to do the entire service of the liturgy until others could be trained. The young boy was almost certainly Bede, who would have been about 14....
When Bede was about 17 years old, Adomnan, the abbot of Iona Abbey, visited Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. Bede would probably have met the abbot during this visit, and it may be that Adomnan sparked Bede's interest in the Easter dating controversy. ...
In about 701 Bede wrote his first works, the De Arte Metrica and De Schematibus et Tropis; both were intended for use in the classroom.[20] He continued to write for the rest of his life, eventually completing over 60 books, most of which have survived. Not all his output can be easily dated, and Bede may have worked on some texts over a period of many years....
In 733, Bede travelled to York to visit Ecgbert, who was then bishop of York. ... Bede also travelled to the monastery of Lindisfarne, and at some point visited the otherwise-unknown monastery of a monk named Wicthed, a visit that is mentioned in a letter to that monk. Because of his widespread correspondence with others throughout the British Isles, and due to the fact that many of the letters imply that Bede had met his correspondents, it is likely that Bede travelled to some other places, although nothing further about timing or locations can be guessed....
It seems certain that he did not visit Rome, however, as he would have mentioned it in the autobiographical chapter of his Historia Ecclesiastica.[32] Nothhelm, a correspondent of Bede's who assisted him by finding documents for him in Rome, is known to have visited Bede, though the date cannot be determined beyond the fact that it was after Nothhelm's visit to Rome....
Bede wrote scientific, historical and theological works, reflecting the range of his writings from music and metrics to exegetical Scripture commentaries. He knew patristic literature, as well as Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace and other classical writers. He knew some Greek. His Latin is generally clear, but his Biblical commentaries are more technical....
Bede's best-known work is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People,[47] completed in about 731. Bede was aided in writing this book by Albinus, abbot of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury.[48] The first of the five books begins with some geographical background, and then sketches the history of England, beginning with Caesar's invasion in 55 BC....
The monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow had an excellent library. Both Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith had acquired books from the Continent, and in Bede's day the monastery was a renowned centre of learning.[55] It has been estimated that there were about 200 books in the monastic library....
{Acquired books from the continent???}
Bede drew on earlier writers, including Solinus.[4][57] He had access to two works of Eusebius: the Historia Ecclesiastica, and also the Chronicon, though he had neither in the original Greek; instead he had a Latin translation of the Historia, by Rufinus, and Saint Jerome's translation of the Chronicon.[58] He also knew Orosius's Adversus Paganus, and Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum, both Christian histories,[58] as well as the work of Eutropius, a pagan historian.[59] He used Constantius's Life of Germanus as a source for Germanus's visits to Britain.[4][57] Bede's account of the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons is drawn largely from Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae...
He also drew on Josephus's Antiquities, and the works of Cassiodorus,[61] and there was a copy of the Liber Pontificalis in Bede's monastery.[62] Bede quotes from several classical authors, including Cicero, Plautus, and Terence, but he may have had access to their work via a Latin grammar rather than directly.[63] However, it is clear he was familiar with the works of Virgil and with Pliny the Elder's Natural History, and his monastery also owned copies of the works of Dionysius Exiguus....
Bede's stylistic models included some of the same authors from whom he drew the material for the earlier parts of his history. His introduction imitates the work of Orosius,[4] and his title is an echo of Eusebius's Historia Ecclesiastica.[1] Bede also followed Eusebius in taking the Acts of the Apostles as the model for the overall work: where Eusebius used the Acts as the theme for his description of the development of the church, Bede made it the model for his history of the Anglo-Saxon church.[71] Bede quoted his sources at length in his narrative, as Eusebius had done....
Bede's account of the early migrations of the Angles and Saxons to England omits any mention of a movement of those peoples across the channel from Britain to Brittany described by Procopius, who was writing in the sixth century. Frank Stenton describes this omission as "a scholar's dislike of the indefinite"; traditional material that could not be dated or used for Bede's didactic purposes had no interest for him.... {Or he didn't know Procopius.}
The Historia Ecclesiastica was copied often in the Middle Ages, and about 160 manuscripts containing it survive. About half of those are located on the European continent, rather than on the British Isles.[85] Most of the 8th- and 9th-century texts of Bede's Historia come from the northern parts of the Carolingian Empire....
Some historians have questioned the reliability of some of Bede's accounts. One historian, Charlotte Behr, thinks that the Historia's account of the arrival of the Germanic invaders in Kent should not be considered to relate what actually happened, but rather relates myths that were current in Kent during Bede's time.[92]
It is likely that Bede's work, because it was so widely copied, discouraged others from writing histories and may even have led to the disappearance of manuscripts containing older historical works....
Bede synthesised and transmitted the learning from his predecessors, as well as made careful, judicious innovation in knowledge (such as recalculating the age of the earth – for which he was censured before surviving the heresy accusations and eventually having his views championed by Archbishop Ussher in the sixteenth century – see below) that had theological implications. In order to do this, he learned Greek, and attempted to learn Hebrew. He spent time reading and rereading both the Old and the New Testaments. He mentions that he studied from a text of Jerome's Vulgate, which itself was from the Hebrew text. He also studied both the Latin and the Greek Fathers of the Church. In the monastic library at Jarrow were a number of books by theologians, including works by Basil, Cassian, John Chrysostom, Isidore of Seville, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Pope Gregory I, Ambrose of Milan, Cassiodorus, and Cyprian. ... He had a Latin translation by Evagrius of Athanasius's Life of Antony, and a copy of Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin....
Bede sometimes included in his theological books an acknowledgement of the predecessors on whose works he drew. In two cases he left instructions that his marginal notes, which gave the details of his sources, should be preserved by the copyist, and he may have originally added marginal comments about his sources to others of his works. Where he does not specify, it is still possible to identify books to which he must have had access by quotations that he uses. A full catalogue of the library available to Bede in the monastery cannot be reconstructed, but it is possible to tell, for example, that Bede was very familiar with the works of Virgil. There is little evidence that he had access to any other of the pagan Latin writers–he quotes many of these writers but the quotes are almost all to be found in the Latin grammars that were common in his day, one or more of which would certainly have been at the monastery. Another difficulty is that manuscripts of early writers were often incomplete: it is apparent that Bede had access to Pliny's Encyclopedia, for example, but it seems that the version he had was missing book xviii, as he would almost certainly have quoted from it in his De temporum ratione. ...
In addition to these works on astronomical timekeeping, he also wrote De natura rerum, or On the Nature of Things, modelled in part after the work of the same title by Isidore of Seville.[119] His works were so influential that late in the 9th century Notker the Stammerer, a monk of the Monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, wrote that "God, the orderer of natures, who raised the Sun from the East on the fourth day of Creation, in the sixth day of the world has made Bede rise from the West as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth".
So, we stop for today. We still have some mysterious manuscripts floating around and don't quite know who had what, when.
