>Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 11:47:08
>To: Monastery Library <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Bill East <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: 'learned sanctity'
>
>
>>Did no on in late medieval times bother about Bede's tomb? Has any
>>one looked at this?
>>
>What interests me is, how certain are we that they are Bede's bones? The
history of Cuthbert's body is well known and there is no doubt that his tomb
contained his own bones. Bede's bones - if such there were - were
half-inched from Jarrow by Alfred Westou, hundreds of years after Bede's
death, and we have no evidence as to what happened to them in the interim.
>
>Speaking more largely, Bede nowhere says that he ever went to Jarrow. He
entered the monastery at Wearmouth at the age of seven, under the holy abbot
Benedict Biscop, and subequently served under Ceolfrith, the first Abbot of
Jarrow. It has been assumed that Bede went on the transfer list when Jarrow
was set up, but Bede does not say so; Ceolfrith became abbot of both
monasteries on the death of Benedict. Whenever Bede talks in detail about
the architecture of a monastery - as when he describes the icons B.B.
brought from Rome - it is always with reference to Wearmouth, not Jarrow.
>
>There is the story of Ceolfrith and the one remaining boy at Jarrow singing
the office 'ut in tanto discrimine' in time of plague. It has been assumed
that the boy was Bede; but was it? Bede does not say so.
>
>Assume, for the moment, that Bede lived and died in Wearmouth, and was
buried there, 'more monastico' in an unmarked grave. Hundreds of years
later, Alfred Westou comes to Jarrow and the locals spin him a yarn about
some bones being those of the Venemous Bead, author of the rosary. Actually
they belong to Baldric the swineherd . . .
>
>Oriens.
>
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