\ 156. THE VENERABLE BEDE. 673
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), anc] 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 canon ized, 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/'1
Bede himself, perhaps in imitation of Gregory of Tours,2 gives a list of his works at the conclusion of his History? There are few data to tell when any one of them was composed.
1 Beda in Smith and Wace, Diet. Chr. Biog. I. 301, 302.
1 See p. 661. 8 Hist. V. 24 (Bohn's ed., pp. 297-299).
674 FOURTH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
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.1
I. Educational treatises, (a) On orthography2 (about 700). The words are divided alphabetically, (b) On prosody3 (702). (c) On the Biblical figures and tropes.4" (d) On the nature of things5 (702), a treatise upon natural philosophy, (e) On the times6 (702). (/) On the order of times7 (702). (g) On the computation of time* (726). (h) On the celebration of Easter.9 (i) On thunder.10
II. Expository works. These are compilations from the Fathers, which originally were carefully assigned by marginal notes to their proper source, but the notes have been obliterated in the course of frequent copying. He wrote either on the whole or a part of the Pentateuch, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Tobit, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse.11 His com ments are of course made upon the Latin Bible, but his scho larship comes out in the frequent correction and emendation of the Latin text by reference to the original. The most frequent subject of remark is the want of an article in the Latin, which gave rise to frequent ambiguity.12 Throughout he shows him self a careful textual student.13
I Stubb's art., p. 301. 5 De orthographia in Migne, XC. col. 123-150.
3 De arte metrica. Ibid., col. 149-176.
4 De schematis et tropis sacrce scriptures. Ibid., col. 175-186.
6 De natura rerum. Ibid., col. 187-278. 6 De temporibus. Ibid., col. 277-292.
7 De temporum ratione. Ibid., col. 293-578.
8 De ratione -computi. Ibid., col, 579-600.
9 De Paschte celebratione. Ibid,., col. 599-606.
10 De tonitruis. Ibid., col. 609-614.
II Bede's expository works fill Tom. XCL, XC1L, XCIII. in Migne's series. 13 G. F. Browne, The Venerable Sede, pp. 129-132. A translation of one of
Bede's homilies is given on pp. 148-159.
13 The Uncial E (2), the Codex Laudianus, which dates from the end of the