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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2011
This paper adopts an exegetical approach to Bede's narrative of the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria in the Historia ecclesiastica ii. 9–14. HE ii. 12–13, which is loosely based on passages in the Whitby Life of Gregory the Great, diverge significantly from the latter in order to explore biblical parallels. Bede's description of Coifi's ride to the pagan shrine at Goodmanham in order to throw a lance into it is an inversion of the account of the piercing of Christ's side in John xix.34: just as water flowed from Christ's side so the piercing of the shrine led to the baptism of the Northumbrians.
1 Ray Page, ‘Anglo–Saxon paganism: the evidence of Bede’, in T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians: the interplay between Christian Latin and traditional Germanic cultures in early medieval Europe, Groningen 1995, 99–129 at p. 129.
2 Ibid. 102–7, 109–22.
3 D. K. Fry, ‘The art of Bede: Edwin's council’, in M. H. King and W. M. Stevens (eds), Saints, scholars and heroes: studies in medieval culture in honour of Charles W. Jones, Collegeville, Mi 1979, i. 197–207.
4 Danuta Shanzer, ‘Bede's style: a neglected historiographical model for the style of the Historia ecclesiastica?’, in C. D. Wright, F. D. Biggs and T. N. Hall (eds), Source of wisdom: Old English and early medieval Latin studies in honour of Thomas D. Hill, Toronto 2007, 329–52 at p. 335. Almost exactly the same phrase occurs in Luke xii.6, on which Bede commented: Bedae venerabilis opera, II/3: In Lucae evangelium expositio; In Marci evangelium expositio, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL cxx, Turnhout 1960, 247.
5 Roger Ray, ‘The triumphs of Greco-Roman rhetorical assumptions in pre-Carolingian historiography’, in Christopher Holdsworth and T. P. Wiseman (eds), The inheritance of historiography, 350–900, Exeter 1986, 67–84. See also Ray, Roger, Bede, rhetoric, and the creation of Latin Christian culture (Jarrow Lecture 1997), esp. p. 15, and Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism’, 108–9Google Scholar.
6 Higham, N. J., (Re-)Reading Bede: the Ecclesiastical history in context, London 2006Google Scholar; Church, S. D., ‘Paganism in conversion-age Anglo-Saxon England: the evidence of Bede's Ecclesiastical history reconsidered’, History xciii (2008), 161–80Google Scholar.
7 Ian Wood, ‘Constantinian crosses in Northumbria’, in C. E. Karkov, S. L. Keefer and K. L. Jolly (eds), The place of the cross in Anglo-Saxon England, Woodbridge 2006, 3–13.
8 For recent work on Bede's biblical commentaries see Thacker, Alan, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: history and figure in sacred text (Jarrow Lecture 2005), 1 n. 1, and nn. 10, 26 belowGoogle Scholar.
9 Walter Berschin, ‘Opus deliberatum ac perfectum: why did the Venerable Bede write a second prose Life of St Cuthbert?’, in Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (eds), St Cuthbert, his cult and his community to AD 1200, Woodbridge 1989, 95–102; Knibbs, Eric, ‘Exegetical hagiography: Bede's prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti’, Revue bénédictine cxiv (2004), 233–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a similar vein see Laynesmith, Mark D., ‘Stephen of Ripon and the Bible: allegorical and typological interpretations of the Life of St Wilfrid, EME ix (2006), 163–82Google Scholar.
10 DeGregorio, Scott, ‘Nostrorum socordiam temporum: the reforming impulse of Bede's later exegesis’, EME xi (2002), 107–22Google Scholar, and ‘Bede's In Ezram et Neemiam and the reform of the Northumbrian Church’, Speculum lxxix (2004), 1–25Google Scholar.
11 James Campbell, ‘Some considerations on religion in early England’, in Martin Henig and T. J. Smith (eds), Collectanea antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, Oxford 2007, 67–73.
12 North, Richard, Heathen gods in Old English literature, Cambridge 1997, 326–36Google Scholar. See also Dunn, Marilyn, The Christianization of the Anglo–Saxons, c. 597–c. 700: discourses of life, death and afterlife, London 2009, 82–3, 98–9Google Scholar.
13 John Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines and their prototypes’, in David Griffiths (ed.), Anglo–Saxon studies in archaeology and history, viii, Oxford 1995, 1–28, esp. pp. 22–4, followed by Yorke, Barbara, The conversion of Britain, 600–800, Harlow 2006, 104–5, 127–8Google Scholar. Cautious acceptance is given to the story by Ian Wood, ‘Pagan religions and superstitions east of the Rhine from the fifth to the ninth century’, in Giorgio Ausenda (ed.), After empire: towards an ethnology of Europe's barbarians, Woodbridge 1995, 253–68 at pp. 256–7, and by Higham, N. J., The convert kings: power and religious affiliation in early Anglo-Saxon England, Manchester 1997, 167–9, 176Google Scholar. Higham observes that Bede may have obtained some of the material, for example the attempt to murder Edwin, from a saga.
14 Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford 1969, 2 (HE, preface).
15 Bede's account of Edwin's conversion, with its elements of marriage to a foreign bride, military victory and hesitation, strongly resembles Gregory of Tours's account of Clovis's conversion in his Decem libri historiarum ii. 27–31: Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum i/1, Hanover 1937, 71–8. See Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people: a historical commentary, Oxford 1988, 66Google Scholar. On Bede's use of Gregory see Wilhelm Levison, ‘Bede as historian’, in A. Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: his life, times, and writings, Oxford 1935, 111–51 at p.132.
16 Lilla is described by Bede as ‘minister regi amicissimus’ or ‘thegn most friendly to the king’: Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 164 (HE ii. 9), where this phrase is translated as ‘a most devoted thegn’. Friendship in this period was a formal political alliance between individuals or families, and those who entered into it were expected to display loyalty to each other: Julia Barrow, ‘Friends and friendship in Anglo-Saxon charters’, in Julian Haseldine (ed.), Friendship in medieval Europe, Stroud 1999, 106–23.
17 ‘eatenus abominandis idolis serviens’: Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 172–3. On the dating issue see Kirby, D. P., ‘Bede and Northumbrian chronology’, EHR lxxviii (1963), 514–27 at p. 522CrossRefGoogle Scholar, decisively countered by Wood, Susan, ‘Bede's Northumbrian dates again’, EHR xcviii (1983), 280–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For comment on the transmission of these letters see Meyvaert, Paul, ‘The Registrum of Gregory the Great and Bede’, Revue bénédictine lxxx (1970), 162–6 at p. 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in his Benedict, Gregory, Bede and others, London 1977, no. xi.
18 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 172–5.
19 Ibid. 168–9. Boniface mistakenly thought that Kent and Northumbria were near to each other.
20 HE ii. 9.
21 The earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. Bertram Colgrave, Kansas 1968, repr. Cambridge 1985, ch. xvi at pp. 98–101.
22 Wallace-Hadrill, , Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 70–1Google Scholar.
23 Baedae opera historica, ed. Charles Plummer, Oxford 1896, ii. 98.
24 ‘We may suspect that the atmosphere of the Psalms hangs heavily over his account of the exiled Edwin at the court of Raedwald, promised by a mysterious visitor a secure heritage like David's and menaced like David by “bloody men” whose “right hand is full of bribes”’: George Henderson, Bede and the visual arts (Jarrow Lecture 1980), 4.
25 ‘Die Erzählung ist absolut nicht kirchlich, und wurde von Beda nur notdürftig der Bekehrungsgeschichte angepasst’: František Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger, Prague 1965, 417 n. 686.
26 Bede, Libri quatuor in principium Genesis usque ad nativitatem Isaac et eiectionem Ismahelis adnotationum, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL cxviiiA, Turnhout 1967, 241–2 (hereinafter cited as In Genesim) iv, lines 1728–31; Bede, On Genesis, trans. Calvin B. Kendall, Liverpool 2008, 321, and comment at pp. 8–9. Bede's wording is based on that of Augustine in his comment on 1 Corinthians x. 6, 11 and Colossians ii.16–17 in Contra Faustum vi. 2: Augustine, De utilitate credenda; De duabus animabus; Contra Fortunatum; Contra Adimantum; Contra epistulam fundamenti; Contra Faustum, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL xxiv, Vienna 1891, 285–6. On Bede's use of Contra Faustum see Thacker, ‘Bede and Augustine’, 5, 21–2.
27 ‘habito cum sapientibus consilio’: Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 182.
28 In the Vulgate both Matthew and Luke refer to Caiaphas as ‘princeps sacerdotum’, while Mark, who does not name Caiaphas, has ‘summus sacerdotum’: Matt. xxvi.57; Luke xxii. 54; Mark xiv.53. In commenting on Luke xxii.54 and Mark xiv.53, Bede uses the term ‘pontifex’: In Lucae evangelium expositio; In Marci evangelium expositio, 390, 620. Caiaphas is mentioned as being in hell in a vision of the afterlife in HE v. 14. In his In Ezram et Neemiam Bede says that the term pontifex (which he uses to describe Ezra) is equivalent to archiepiscopus (‘pontificem, id est archiepiscopum’): De tabernaculo; De templo; In Ezram et Neemiam, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL cxixA, Turnhout 1969, 327, line 1587 (In Ezram et Neemiam, ii); for translation see Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah, trans. with introduction and notes by Scott DeGregorio, Liverpool 2006, 138–9. For discussion see DeGregorio, ‘Bede's In Ezram et Neemiam’, 18–20.
29 Alcuin, The bishops, kings, and saints of York, ed. and trans. Peter Godman, Oxford 1982, 18, line 168; The Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. Thomas Miller (Early English Text Society o.s. xcv–xcvi, cx–cxi, 1890–8), i. 134, 136.
30 Liber Vitae, fo. 37r: The Durham Liber Vitae, ed. David Rollason and Lynda Rollason, London 2007, i. 121; ii. 171–2. Mats Redin was doubtful about whether Ceefi was the same name as Coifi: Studies on uncompounded personal names in Old English, Uppsala 1919, 133.
31 North argues that Coifi derives from Latin cofium or cofia, ‘hood’ or ‘coif’, in particular headgear worn by bishops, and that Bede was depicting Coifi as a pagan bishop: Heathen gods, 333. On the term see Niermeyer, J. F. and Van de Kieft, C., Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, rev. J. W. J. Burgers, Leiden–Boston 2002, i. 256Google Scholar, s.v. ‘cofea’, and Latham, R. E. and Howlett, D. R., Dictionary of medieval Latin from British sources, I: A–L, Oxford 1975–97, 375Google Scholar, s.v. ‘coifa’.
32 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 182: ‘nihil utilitatis’, the words Bede puts into Coifi's mouth, echo a phrase in The earliest Life of Gregory the Great, 96–7. In this work, the followers of Edwin are temporarily prompted to believe the new song of Christianity to be ‘nihil utile’ when they hear a crow and interpret it as a bad augury; see text at n. 36 below.
33 Baedae opera historica, ii. 99.
34 Ibid. ii. 99.
35 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 182–5.
36 The earliest Life of Gregory the Great, 96–9. It is worth noting that Alcuin, when recounting Edwin's conversion in his York poem, omits the story of the sparrow in the hall and instead has a passage where Paulinus tells Edwin and the Northumbrians to abandon pagan practices, specifically blood sacrifice and divination, both by looking at entrails and by listening to the singing of birds: Bishops, kings and saints 16, lines 157–62.
37 Bertram Colgrave chose ‘jackdaw’ as a translation for corvus in his edition and translation of Felix's Life of St Guthlac, on the grounds that the behaviour described by Felix resembled that of jackdaws, while noting that the word corvus more normally means a raven: Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, Cambridge 1956, 187.
38 Bede, In Genesim, 123 (ii. 8.7); for a translation see Bede, On Genesis, 194; Bede, Homeliarum evangelii libri II, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL cxxii, Turnhout 1955, 86–7 (Homelia i.xii, on Matt.iii. 13–17). See also Gatch, Milton McC., ‘Noah's raven in Genesis A and the illustrated Old English Hexateuch’, Gesta xiv (1975), 3–15 at p. 5Google Scholar, and Marsden, Richard, ‘Manus Bedae: Bede's contribution to Ceolfrith's Bibles’, Anglo–Saxon England xxvii (1998), 65–85 at pp. 77–8Google Scholar. Note also Luke xii. 24, in which God feeds the ravens.
40 Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, 78–9, 82–3, 116–27.
41 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH, Epistolae Selectae i, Berlin 1916, 11 (Boniface, Epistolae, x).
42 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 490–1; Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, 104–5; Visio Sancti Pauli, in James, M. R., Apocrypha anecdota, Cambridge 1893, 11–42 at p. 31 (ch. xxxix)Google Scholar. For comment on birds and on icy cold in afterlife literature see Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and literature in western England, 600–800, Cambridge 1990, 259–60, and for a general overview of Christian visions of the afterlife in the earlier Middle Ages see Jane Baun, ‘Last things’, in Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (eds), The Cambridge history of Christianity, III: Early medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100, Cambridge 2008, 606–24.
43 Jerome, Breviarium in Psalmos, Psalm cxi, PL xxvi. 1242A at ‘Peccator videbit’.
44 ‘vitae salutis et beatitudinis eternae dona’: Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 184–5.
45 Alcuin altered Bede's story here to make Edwin order Coifi to pollute the shrine: Bishops, kings and saints, 18, lines 168–72.
46 Church, ‘Paganism’, 174.
47 HE iii. 5, 14; iv. 3.
48 Alan Thacker shows how Bede moved away from the line taken in the Anonymous life of Cuthbert in order to present Cuthbert as a committed pastor, and comments on Bede's portrayal of Cuthbert as the ideal bishop: ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, in Patrick Wormald with Donald Bullough and Roger Collins (eds), Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, Oxford 1983, 130–53 at pp. 138–41, 141–2. Both the author of the Anonymous life and Bede describe how a small child rebuked Cuthbert in his boyhood for foolish play, addressing him as ‘holy bishop and priest’: Two lives of St Cuthbert: a life by an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne and Bede's prose life, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave, Cambridge 1940, 64 (Anonymous life, i.3: ‘sancte episcope et presbiter’), 156 (Bede, Prose Life, ch. i: ‘sanctissime antistes et presbiter Cuthberte’).
49 Two lives of St Cuthbert, 70–1 (Anonymous life, i.6), 168–71 (Bede, Prose Life, ch. v). For how Bede alters and embellishes his original source here see Page, ‘Anglo–Saxon paganism’, 108–9.
50 ‘Casuque contigit, ut cum illo perveniens equo desilisset, ingressurusque ad orandum aecclesiam, ipsum pariter equum et hastam quam tenuerat manu ministro dedisset, necdum enim habitum deposuerat secularem’: Two lives of St Cuthbert, 172–3 (Bede, Prose Life, ch. vi).
51 ‘Nam et multi fidem quam habebant, iniquis profanabant operibus, et aliqui etiam tempore mortalitatis neglecto fidei quo imbuti erant sacramento, ad erratica idolatriae medicamina concurrebant, quasi missam a Deo conditore plagam per incantationes vel alligaturas, vel alia quaelibet demoniacae artis archana cohibere valerent. Ad utrorumque ergo corrigendum errorem crebro ipse de monasterio egressus aliquotiens equo sedens, sed sepius pedes incedens, circumpositas veniebat ad villas, et viam veritatis praedicabat errantibus.’ (‘For many of them profaned the faith they held by wicked deeds, and some of them also at the time of the plague, forgetting the sacred mystery of the faith into which they had been initiated, took to the delusive cures of idolatry, as though by incantations or amulets or any other mysteries of devilish art, they could ward off a blow sent by God the creator. So he frequently went forth from the monastery to correct the errors of both kinds of sinners, sometimes riding on a horse but more often going on foot, and came to the neighbouring villages and preached the way of truth to these wanderers’): Two lives of St Cuthbert, 184–7 (Bede, Prose Life, ch. ix). See also Thacker, ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, 139.
52 Bede was worried that bishops avoided travelling to preach in remote hilly areas: see his Letter to Ecgberht in Baedae opera historica, i. 410; for translation see Bede, The ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins, Oxford 1994, 347.
53 Baedae opera historica, i. 412–13; for translation see Bede, , The ecclesiastical history of the English people, 349–50Google Scholar.
54 Bede, Homeliarum evangelii libri II, 189 (Homelia ii. i, lines 204–7); Bede, Opera didascalia, i, CCSL cxxiiiA, Turnhout 1975, 168 (De schematibus et tropis, ii. 2, lines 262–83); Bede, De tabernaculo; De templo; In Ezram et Neemiam, 238, 241 (In Ezram et Neemiam, prologue, line 15 and i, lines 8–21); for a translation of the latter see Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah (trans. DeGregorio), 2, 6. See also Berschin, , ‘Opus deliberatum’, 99–101, and nn. 55–7 belowGoogle Scholar.
55 Bede, De tabernaculo; De templo; In Ezram et Neemiam, 300 (In Ezram et Neemiam, ii, lines 507–25), 166 (De templo, i, lines 760–9); for the dating see Scott DeGregorio, ‘“Nostrorum socordiam temporum”’, 115–16, and Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah (trans DeGregorio), p. xli. For the close connection with HE, the Letter to Ecgberht (and also the Prose Life of Cuthbert) see DeGregorio, , ‘“Nostrorum socordiam temporum”, and Henry Mayr–Harting, The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St Benedict and social class (Jarrow Lecture 1976), 12–14Google Scholar.
56 ‘Ostium namque lateris medii in parte erat domus dextrae quia defuncto in cruce domino unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit [John xix.34]. Et bene in parte domus dextrae quia dextrum eius latus a milite apertum sancta credit ecclesia. Ubi et apto verbo usus evangelista ut non diceret, percussit latus eius aut vulneravit, sed aperuit videlicet quasi ostium lateris medii per quod nobis iter ad caelestia panderetur. Deinceps subiunxit, et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua, aqua scilicet qua abluimur in baptismo et sanguis quo consecramur in calice sancto’: Bede, De templo, 166. The translation is from Bede, On the temple, trans. Seán Connolly with introduction by Jennifer O'Reilly, Liverpool 1995, 29–30.
57 Bede based his simile in De templo on Augustine's comparison of the wound in Christ's side with the door in Noah's Ark in De civitate dei xv. 20: Thacker, Bede and Augustine, 23.
58 HE ii.14, 16. Even though by the time he was writing Lindsey had long been under Mercian rule, Bede regarded it as a Northumbrian province; his own forebears may have come from Lindsey, since the names ‘Beda’ and ‘Bisceop’ occur in an early Lindsey king-list: see Alan Thacker, ‘Bede and the ordering of understanding’, in Scott DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and tradition in the writings of the Venerable Bede, Morgantown 2006, 37–63 at p. 40; for the king-list see Dumville, David N., ‘The Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal lists’, Anglo-Saxon England v (1976), 23–50 at p. 37Google Scholar; on early Lindsey see Sarah Foot, ‘The kingdom of Lindsey’, in Alan Vince (ed.), Pre-Viking Lindsey, Lincoln 1993, 128–40, and Green, Thomas, ‘The British kingdom of Lindsey’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies lvi (2008), 1–43Google Scholar.
59 ‘Home of Godmund and his people’: Smith, A. H., The place-names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, Cambridge 1937, 230–1 at p. 231Google Scholar. Page interprets Godmund as ‘God-protection’ or ‘God-guardian’: ‘Anglo–Saxon paganism’, 119.
60 See Prosopography of Anglo–Saxon England (http://www.pase.ac.uk). A mid eleventh-century Guðmundus (presumably influenced by Old Scandinavian Guðmundr) occurs as the brother of Abbot Wulfric of Ely in Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (Camden 3rd ser. xcii, 1962), 167.
61 Watts, Victor, ‘The place-name Hexham: a mainly philological approach’, Nomina xvii (1994), 119–36Google Scholar at pp. 131–6, and personal communication with David Parsons. On the topography of these sites see Blair, John, The Church in Anglo–Saxon society, Oxford 2005, 191–5Google Scholar.
62 See, however, Foley, W. T. and Higham, N. J., ‘Bede on the Britons’, EME xvii (2009), 154–85Google Scholar.
63 Baedae opera historica, ii. 392–4; Marsden, Richard, The text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 1995, 206–9Google Scholar.
64 Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 116.
65 Ibid. 286.
66 Ibid. 16.
67 Kirby, D. P., Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum: its contemporary setting (Jarrow Lecture 1992), 1Google Scholar; Higham, (Re-)Reading Bede, 104.
68 Bede, Homeliae evangelii, 7–13, 52–67, 95–127, 161–9, 178–99, 207–19, 253–71, 301–17, 342–8, 358–67 (Hom. i. 2, 8, 9, 14–17, 23, 25; ii. 1–2, 4–5, 11–13, 17–18, 22, 24).
69 Cuthbert, Epistola de obitu Bedae, in Bede's Ecclesiastical history, 579–87 at p. 582.
