New Discoveries of Early Medieval Author Bede’s Handwriting

This is a geek-post for Medievalist nerds like me! In 735, one of the most important writers of the Early Middle Ages died in the northern hinterlands of England at a monastery called Jarrow. He had spent most of his life as a monk, coming from the aristocracy of the area and sent by his parents to the nearby monastery of Monkwearmouth when he was only seven.

Bede’s most important work was _The Ecclesiastical History of the English People_, which was a monumental narrative of his island’s history constructed entirely through the lens of Christianity. It was a learned, visionary, and thorough book that was also extremely wrong and misleading in key aspects (particularly about the fall of Roman Britain), and it absolutely became the gold standard of history writing and the authoritative version of what happened in the English-speaking parts of Britain for hundreds of years.

But Bede wrote other material. For instance, he popularized the timekeeping of B.C. and A.D. which are still used today in many places. Also, in recent news, he probably copied out the text depicted here.

Medieval manuscript specialist Michelle Brown is arguing in her upcoming book (_Bede and the Theory of Everything _) that the Codex Amiatinus (which I worked on in grad school!) and sections of the Gospel of St John added to the famed Lindisfarne Gospels (which I also worked on in grad school) were written by Bede himself. Looking at the use of Greek and Hebrew and the marginal notations, Dr. Brown argues that the most likely candidate for their authorship was Bede himself.

On the one hand, this is obscure stuff. On the other, it’s news that brings this important historical character closer to our understanding, a rare and unexpected bridge between the past and present.