satisfaction to me to sit facing my holy place, where I was wont to pray, that I may also sitting call
upon my Father." And thus on the pavement of his little cell, singing, "Glory be to the Father, and
to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," when he had named the Holy Ghost, he breathed his last, and
so departed to the heavenly kingdom."
Bede’s body was buried in the church at Jarrow, but between 1021 and 1042 it was stolen
and removed to Durham by Elfred, a priest of its cathedral, who put it in the same chest with the
body of St. Cuthbert. In 1104 the bodies were separated, and in 1154 the relics of Bede were placed
in a shrine of gold and silver, adorned with jewels. This shrine was destroyed by an ignorant mob
in Henry VIII’s time (1541), and only a monkish inscription remains to chronicle the fact that Bede
was ever buried there.
The epithet, "Venerable," now so commonly applied to Bede, is used by him to denote a
holy man who had not been canonized, and had no more reference to age than the same name
applied to-day to an archdeacon in the Church of England. By his contemporaries he was called
either Presbyter or Dominus. He is first called the Venerable in the middle of the tenth century.
Bede’s Writings are very numerous, and attest the width and profundity of his learning, and
also the independence and soundness of his judgment. "Having centred in himself and his writings
nearly all the knowledge of his day, he was enabled before his death, by promoting the foundation
of the school of York, to kindle the flame of learning in the West at the moment that it seemed both
in Ireland and in France to be expiring. The school of York transmitted to Alcuin the learning of
Bede, and opened the way for culture on the continent, when England under the terrors of the Danes
was relapsing into barbarism." His fame, if we may judge from the demand for his works immediately
after his death, extended wherever the English missionaries or negotiators found their way."^1044
Bede himself, perhaps in imitation of Gregory of Tours,^1045 gives a list of his works at theconclusion of his History.^1046 There are few data to tell when any one of them was composed. The
probable dates are given in the following general account and enumeration of his genuine writings.
Very many other, writings have been attributed to him.^1047
I. Educational treatises. (a) On orthography^1048 (about 700). The words are dividedalphabetically. (b) On prosody^1049 (702). (c) On the Biblical figures and tropes.^1050 (d) On the nature
of things^1051 (702), a treatise upon natural philosophy. (e) On the times^1052 (702). (f) On the order
of times^1053 (702). (g) On the computation of time^1054 (726). (h) On the celebration of Easter.^1055
(i) On thunder.^1056
(^1044) Beda in Smith and Wace, Dict. Chr. Biog. I. 301, 302.
(^1045) See last paragraph of §154, this vol.
(^1046) Hist. V. 24 (Bohn’s ed., pp. 297-299).
(^1047) Stubb’s art., p. 301.
(^1048) De orthographia in Migne, XC. col. 123-150.
(^1049) De arte metrica. Ibid., col. 149-176.
(^1050) De schematis et tropis sacrae scripturae. Ibid., col. 175-186.
(^1051) De natura rerum. Ibid., col. 187-278.
(^1052) De temporibus. Ibid., col. 277-292.
(^1053) De temporum ratione. Ibid., col. 293-578.
(^1054) De ratione computi. Ibid., col, 579-600.
(^1055) De Paschae celebratione. Ibid., col. 599-606.
(^1056) De tonitruis. Ibid., col. 609-614.