List of works by Bede

Commentary on Acts

• Description: Completed shortly after 709.[3]
• Latin titles: One of the two books referred to in Bede's list as In actus apostolorum libros II[3]
• Editions:
  • ed. Laistner

Retractation

• Description: Probably completed between 725 and 731.[3]
• Latin titles: One of the two books referred to in Bede's list as In actus apostolorum libros II[3]
• Editions:
  • ed. Laistner

Commentary on the Apocalypse

• Description: Completed between 702 and 709.[4]
• Latin titles: Explanatio Apocalypsis (also Expositio Apocalypseos).[5] Described in Bede's list as In apocalypsin sancti Iohannis libros III[4]
• Editions:
  • ed. Roger Gryson. Bedae presbyteri Expositio Apocalypseos. CCSL 121A. Bedae Opera 2:5. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001.

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles

• Description: One of these seven commentaries (on John I) is known to have been completed at the same time as the Commentary on Acts, which was completed shortly after 709. It is possible that the commentaries were not all completed at the same time.[6]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In epistolas VII catholicas libros singulos[6]
• Editions:

Collectaneum on the Pauline Epistles

• Description:
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In apostolum quaecumque in opusculis sancti Augustini exposita inveni, cuncta per ordinem transscribere curavi[7]
• Editions: In Migne's Patrology, a work by Florus on the Pauline Epistles was printed as by Bede; the error was subsequently recognized but no edition of this work of Bede's has yet been printed.[7]

Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah

• Description: Composed between 725 and 731.[8]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In Ezram et Neemiam libros II[8]
• Editions:

Commentary on Genesis

This exists in two forms; an early version in two books, and a later, revised version in four books.[9] The work comments on the first twenty chapters of Genesis and the first ten verses of the twenty-first chapter.[10]

Commentary on the Prayer of Habakkuk

It is not known when Bede composed this commentary.[11] Bede dedicated the work to "his dearly beloved sister and virgin of Christ", but gives no further clues to the dedicatee's identity. Bede's commentary draws on the work of Jerome and on Augustine's City of God.[12]

Commentary on Luke

• Description: Composed between 709 and 716.[13]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In evangelium Lucae libros VI[13]
• Editions:

Commentary on Mark

• Description: Composed after 716.[14]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In evangelium Marci libros IIII[14]
• Editions:

Commentary on Proverbs

• Description: The date of composition of this work cannot be fixed, though it is likely to have been composed at about the same time as the Commentary on the Song of Songs.[15]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In proverbia salomonis libros III. Also appears in some manuscripts as In parabolas Salomonis, or Super parabolas Salomonis.[15]
• Editions:

Quaestiones XXX

• Description: The date of composition of this work cannot be fixed; Laistner suggests that it is similar in style to Bede's later biblical commentaries and may have been composed in about 725. The work consists of answers to thirty questions posed by Nothhelm to Bede on passages from I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings.[16]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In regum librum quaestiones XXX. Also appears in some manuscripts as In parabolas Salomonis, or Super parabolas Salomonis.[16]
• Editions:

Commentary on Samuel

• Description: The first three books were written by June 716, when Abbot Ceolfrith departed for Rome; the fourth book was begun after Ceolfrith's successor, Hwaetberht, had been appointed.[17]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In primam partem Samuhelis, id est usque ad mortem Saulis libros IIII.[17]
• Editions:

Commentary on the Song of Songs

• Description: This work, one of Bede's longest, consists of an introduction on Divine Grace; five books of commentary on the Song of Songs; and a final section of extracts from the works of Gregory the Great. It is not known when any of these parts were composed.[18]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as In cantica canticorum librum VII.[18]
• Editions:

De tabernaculo

• Description: The date of composition is uncertain but is likely to have been around 721, or perhaps shortly thereafter.[19]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as De tabernaculo et vasis eius ac vestibus sacerdotum, libros III.[19]
• Editions:

De templo Salomonis

Composed not long before 731.[20] This work discusses the passage in 1 Kings 3:1 to 7:51 in which Solomon builds a temple. Bede was here extending a long tradition of commentary on the temple in patristic literature.[21]

Commentary on Tobit

Laistner suggests that this may have been written at about the same time as De templo Salmonis, since in both Bede stresses allegorical interpretation; however, he comments that there is no textual evidence to support this.[22] There is no other indication of the date of composition. As with the commentary on Habakkuk, Bede draws on the work of Jerome and on Augustine's City of God.[12]

De Locis Sanctis

• Description: Probably composed before 709; the dates of 702–703 have been suggested and seem likely to be correct.[23]
• Latin titles: Not mentioned by Bede in his list of his works.[23]
• Editions:

Life of St. Anastasius

There are no surviving manuscripts of this work, though one did survive as late as the 15th century.[24]

Life of St. Felix

An adaptation into prose of four poems on St Felix by Paulinus of Nola.[24]

Life of St. Cuthbert (verse)

Bede wrote two lives of St Cuthbert; this one is in verse and was probably composed between 705 and 716.[25] The first printed edition was by Canisius, in his Antiquae Lectiones, which appeared between 1601 and 1604.[26][27] Laistner lists twenty manuscripts, including one fragment; a 20th-century edition that includes a discussion of nineteen of the manuscripts is Werner Jaager, Bedas metrische Vita Sancti Cuthberti (1935).[25]

Life of St. Cuthbert (prose)

Bede wrote two lives of St Cuthbert; this one is in prose and was composed in about 721.[25] It is in part based on an earlier life of St Cuthbert, anonymous but probably written by a monk of Lindisfarne.[28]

Martyrology

• Description: Bede probably wrote this between 725 and 731.[29]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as Martyrologium de nataliciis sanctorum martyrum diebus; in quo omnes, quos invenire potui, non-solum qua die, verum etiam quo genere certaminis, vel sub quo iudice mundum vicerint, diligenter adnotare studui.[29]
• Editions:

Ecclesiastical History of the English People

• Description: A history of the founding and growth of the English church, from the mission of Augustine of Canterbury to Bede's day. Includes a short introductory section on the history of Britain prior to Augustine's mission.
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as Historiam ecclesiasticam nostrae insulae ac gentis in libris V.[30] Generally known as Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.
• Editions:
  • Bede (1969). Colgrave, Bertram and R.A.B. Mynors (ed.). Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Bede (1994). McClure, Judith and Roger Collins (ed.). The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283866-0.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Old English version)

• Description: An Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as Historiam ecclesiasticam nostrae insulae ac gentis in libris V.[31]
• Editions:

History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

• Description: This was definitely composed after 716, and was probably completed between 725 and 731.[32]
• Latin titles: Described in Bede's list as Historiam abbatum monasterii huius, in quo supernae pietati deservire gaudeo, Benedicti, Ceolfridi, et Huaetbercti, in libellis duobus.[32]
• Editions:

Homilies

Bede's list of his works refers to two books of homilies, and these are preserved. In addition, innumerable homilies exist that have been attributed to him; in most cases the attribution is spurious but there may be additional homilies of Bede beyond those in the main two books that survive.[33] It is unclear whether the homilies were ever actually preached, or were instead intended for devotional reading. They are organized around particular dates in the church calendar, with forty of them dealing with either Christmas or Easter. The remaining ten are concerned with the feast days of saints. The homilies are thought to be among Bede's later works, dating perhaps to the late 720s. Thirty-four of them were included in a widely disseminated anthology of readings put together in Charlemagne's reign by Paul the Deacon. It is possible that Bede composed these homilies to complement the work of Gregory the Great, who had assembled his own collection of homilies: the two sets of homilies only have one reading in common, and that reading is one which Gregory had indicated needed further attention.[34]

Bede lists five letters in the list he gives of his works in the Historia Ecclesiastica, as follows: "Item librum epistolarum ad diversos: quarum de sex aetatibus saeculi una est; de mansionibus filiorum Israhel una; una de eo quod ait Isaias; 'et claudentur ibi in carcerem et post dies multos visitabantur'; de ratione bisexti una; de aequnioctio iuxta Anatolium una". Two additional letters are known: the letter to Albinus he wrote to accompany a copy of the Historia Ecclesiastica, and the Epistle to Egbert.[35] The first five letters below are the ones Bede mentioned; they are given in the same order that Bede describes them.

Letter to Plegwin

One of Bede's works on chronology, De temporibus, led to him being accused of heresy in front of Wilfred, the bishop of York; Bede was not present but heard of the charge from a monk named Plegwin. This letter is Bede's response to Plegwin; he justifies his work and asks Plegwin to deliver the letter to a monk named David so that it could be read to Wilfred. The letter was first published in Dublin in 1664 by Sir James Ware.[36] Five manuscripts survive.[37]

Letter to Acca: "de eo quod ait Isaias"

This letter was first published in 1843 by J. A. Giles, in his edition of the complete works of Bede. Giles used the only known manuscript, Paris B.N. 2840.[35][38]

Letter to Acca: "de mansionibus filiorum Israhel"

As with the previous letter to Acca, the first publication was in J.A. Giles' 1843 edition of Bede's works. There are two manuscripts of this letter; it appears in Paris B.N. 2840, and also in a manuscript now in Zurich.[35][38]

Letter to Helmwald

Bede's letter to Helwmald was published in 1980 in the CCSL series, edited by C.W. Jones. An English translation by Faith Wallis appeared in 1999.[39]

Letter to Wicthede

Bede's letter to Wicthede was first printed in Hervagius's 1563 folio editions of Bede's works, but the manuscript Hervagius used included a reference to the year 776. It was argued on this basis that the letter was not by Bede, but subsequently a comparison with other manuscripts determined that the passage was a spurious interpolation, and the letter is now accepted as genuine.[40] Many manuscripts are now known; Laistner lists over thirty.[41]

Letter to Albinus

Bede wrote this short letter to Albinus, the abbot of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul in Canterbury, to thank him for providing documents to Bede to assist him in writing the Ecclesiastical History. With the letter Bede sent a copy of his De templo Salomonis, and also a copy of the History; the date of the letter is therefore after 731, when the History was completed. The letter was sent to Albinus in the hands of Nothhelm, a London priest who subsequently became Archbishop of Canterbury.[42][43] The text was first published by Jean Mabillon in his Vetera Analecta, which began publication in 1675.[42][44] Mabillon used a manuscript from the monastery of St Vincent in Metz which has since been lost.[35] The text survives in two twelfth-century manuscripts from Austria: London, British Library, Add. 18329 (from St. Georgenberg-Fiecht), and Göttweig, Stiftsbibliothek, 37 (rot).[45]

Letter to Egbert

This letter is not included in Bede's list of his own writings.[35] Bede completed the letter on 5 November 734, not long before his death on 26 May 735; in it he explains that he is unable to visit Egbert, as he had the previous year, and so is writing to him instead.[46] The letter contains Bede's complaints about what he saw as the errors of the ecclesiastics of his day, including monasteries that were religious in name only, ignorant and careless clergy, and a lack of monastic discipline.[47] Egbert was Bishop of York at the time Bede wrote to him; he was raised to the archbishopric later that year, and Bede was probably aware of his impending elevation. The letter was first published in Dublin in 1664 by Sir James Ware, using Harley 4688, a manuscript now in the British Museum.[48]

In Bede's list of his works, he describes a book of hymns: "Librum hymnorum diverso metro sive rhythmo" and a book of poems: "Librum epigrammatum heroico metro sive elegiaco". Although manuscripts by these names survived to the 15th century, none are extant today. However, some of Bede's verse was transmitted through other manuscripts.[49] In addition, Bede included poems in several of his prose works, and these have occasionally been copied separately and thus transmitted independently of their parent work.

Hymns

Only one hymn is definitely by Bede; his Hymn on Queen Etheldryd, which is part of his Historia Ecclesiastica but which appears independently in some manuscripts. An additional fifteen hymns are thought to be of Bede's composition. Thirteen of these now survive only in a 16th-century printed edition; two further hymns, on psalms XLI and CXXII, have survived in manuscript form.[49]

De die iudicii

The poem De die iudicii is assigned to Bede by most scholars.[50]

Liber epigrammatum

Bede refers to a book of epigrams; the work is not entirely lost but has survived only in fragments.[51] In the early 16th century, the antiquary John Leland transcribed a selection of epigrams from a now-lost manuscript; his selection includes several epigrams attributed to Bede which are likely to have come from the book Bede refers to. Leland's source was originally owned by Milred, bishop of Worcester from 745 to 775. Historian Michael Lapidge suggests that Milred's collection of epigrams was assembled early in Milred's tenure as bishop, perhaps in about 750.[52]

Bede's Death Song

Cuthbert's letter on Bede's death, the Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, is understood to indicate that Bede also composed a five line vernacular poem known to modern scholars as Bede's Death Song

Other poems

The only other surviving poem of Bede's that is not part of one of Bede's prose works is a prayer in thirteen elegiac couplets which survives in a tenth-century manuscript in garbled form; it was first printed correctly in 1912.[53]

Bede describes two of his school treatises in his list of works as "Item librum de metrica arte et huic adiectum alium de schematibus sive tropis libellum, hoc est de figuris modisque locutionum, quibus scriptura sancta contexta est".[54] The first is "a book on the art of poetry", and the second is a "little book of tropes and figures; that is, of the figures and manners of speaking in which the Holy Scriptures are written".[55] The majority of extant manuscripts of these treatises contain both of them.[54]

De arte metrica

• Description: This first part is a treatise on Latin metre and prosody, consisting of verse examples with commentary.[56] Having stressed the distinction between letters (litterae, which he leaves for discussion in the second part De schematibus et tropis) and syllables (syllabae), Bede explains the rules of syllabic quantity and the way these apply to metrical patterns.[57] Bede's treatise can be compared with De metris and De pedum regulis by Aldhelm, whose educational approach is more theoretical and mathematical than Bede's and less focused on actual practice. In the event, it was Bede's treatise rather than those of Aldhelm which became the popular textbook until the Renaissance period.[58]
• Latin titles: De Arte Metrica; also known, more rarely, as De Metrica Ratione.[59]
• Editions:
  • ed. C.W. Jones. Bedae opera didascalica. CCSL 123A. 3 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1975. 59–141.

De schematibus et tropis

• Description: This second part is a shorter treatise, including an alphabetic overview of letters (litterae) and their importance to scansion.[60]
• Latin titles:
• Editions: Kendall (ed.), CCSL 123A (1975): 81–171; Kendall (ed. and tr.), Libri II De arte metrica et De schematibus et tropis: The Art of Poetry and Rhetoric (1991). Recently, the fragment of a pre-Conquest English copy has been noted in the 11th-century manuscript Worcester Cathedral MS Q.5, which was not used by Kendall in his edition of the work.[61]

De orthographia

• Description:
• Latin titles:
• Editions:

Mappa Mundi (world map) from De natura rerum, in a manuscript now held by the Bodleian Library

De natura rerum

Bede completed De natura rerum shortly after De temporibus, which was written in 703.[62] The work is modelled on the De natura rerum of Isidore of Seville.[63]

De temporibus

This work was completed in 703. It contains a short chronicle which was sometimes copied separately, known as the Chronica minora. There are also manuscripts of De temporibus which omit the chronicle.[64] It is a treatise covering the basics of the computus, the medieval study of calculating the correct dates for the Christian calendar.[63] Bede used much material from Isidore of Seville's Etymologies for this work.[65]

De temporum ratione

This work was completed in 725. It contains a chronicle which was often copied separately, known as the Chronica maiora. There are also manuscripts of De temporum ratione which omit the chronicle.[64] The work was known to medieval readers as De temporibus, but since that was also the title of an earlier work by Bede it was also referred to as De temporibus liiber secundus.[66] Like De temporibus it deals with computus, but at much greater length. Bede's treatment of the topic was widely and rapidly disseminated during the Middle Ages; over one hundred manuscripts have survived to the present day, almost half of which were copied within a century of the work's composition.[67] This may be because Charlemagne instituted educational reforms that included making computus part of the curriculum.[68]

De octo quaestionibus[69]

According to Eric Knibbs, the treatise entitled the De octo quaestionibus is a 12th-century creation that cannot be ascribed to Bede, though the eight individual texts gathered under this title are much older. A subset of four (called, in some manuscripts, the Solutiones) are almost certainly Bede's; the authorship of the other four is uncertain.[70]

Patrologia Latina vol. 94 includes a number of homiliae subdititiae "spurious homilies" attributed to Bede.

The so-called Paenitentiale Bedae, a disciplinary work composed between c. 700 and 800, may have been authored by Bede. The idea that Bede wrote a penitential has been accepted as uncontroversial by both medieval and modern scholars, including Hermann Wasserschleben, Bruno Albers and J.T. McNeill.[71] Others, however, including Charles Plummer and M.L.W. Laistner, have challenged the attribution of this work to Bede on the grounds that Bede (they say) was too high-minded and too talented a Latinist to have composed a work of such stylistic simplicity treating such vulgar subjects as drinking, physical violence and sexual deviance.[72] A.J. Frantzen has adopted an agnostic attitude, acknowledging several arguments for and against Bedan authorship that taken together seem to leave the matter presently unanswerable.[73] The most recent and detailed study of the text was carried out by Reinhold Haggenmüller, who pronounced definitively against Bedan authorship; however, Haggenmüller's argument against Bedan authorship is hardly persuasive (it amounts merely to noticing that the oldest manuscript dates to about 60 years after Bede's death).[74] In fact no scholar has yet been able to adduce concrete evidence that either confirms or denies Bedan authorship of the Paenitentiale Bedae. McNeill and Gamer's summary of the problem is still perhaps the most fair and concise:[75]

The fact that no penitential is included by Bede among the works he lists at the end of his Ecclesiastical History ... as of the years 702–31 can hardly be admitted as a conclusive argument against his having written one, in view of the omission from this list of a number of his other known works. The strongest objection to his authorship of this book is the lack of distinction and originality in the work itself. But the author may have intended a revision, which he did not live to make. Probably too, we should not expect to find the marks of genius in a penitential. The nature of these handbooks excludes sublimity.