A Quick Study
After the monastery of St Paul in Jarrow was devasted by an epidemic, the Abbot had only a boy in his early teens to rely on.
686
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
After the monastery of St Paul in Jarrow was devasted by an epidemic, the Abbot had only a boy in his early teens to rely on.
686
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
At the age of seven, St Bede was sent to the recently-opened monastery of St Paul at Jarrow to complete his education under Abbot Ceolfrid (a great man who sadly died in 716 on a journey to Rome to present a magnificent copy of the Bible to the Pope). The events in this touching reminiscence took place during an outbreak of the plague in 686, when Bede was about thirteen.
IN the monastery over which Ceolfrid presided, all who could read or preach or recite the antiphons and responses* were swept away [by the plague],* except the abbot himself and one little lad nourished and taught by him, who is now a priest of the same monastery, and both by word of mouth and by writing commends to all who wish to know them the abbot’s worthy deeds.*
And the abbot, sad at heart because of this visitation,* ordained that, contrary to their former rite, they should, except at vespers and matins, recite their psalms without antiphons. And when this had been done with many tears and lamentations on his part for the space of a week, he could not bear it any longer, but deemed that the psalms, with their antiphons, should be restored according to the order of the regular course; and all assisting, by means of himself and the aforesaid boy he carried out with no little labour that which he had decreed, until he could either himself train or procure from elsewhere men able to take part in the divine service.
* Antiphons and Responses are short texts that vary with the day of the year, giving a fresh and seasonal dimension to whichever hymn or psalm they accompany. They are kept in their own separate books, and finding the right words and singing them to the right music requires specialist knowledge and skill. The monastery in Jarrow was fortunate in that at the foundation of the sister-house in Monkwearmouth a few miles to the south, St Benedict Biscop had been able to secure the services of monk John, probably originally from the Eastern churches and lately arch-chanter at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, a musician of long experience and wide learning.
* ‘Yellow plague’ spread rapidly over the British Isles from 664, sparing only some parts of what is now Scotland (a mercy which St Adomnán attributed to the intercession of St Columba, Abbot of Iona from 563-597). In 541 a pandemic of plague struck Constantinople and the Mediterranean during the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), and spread from there to break out sporadically across Europe over the next two hundred years (541-767).
* A heavy hint as to the boy’s identity. The passage occurs in Bede’s Lives of the First Five Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in which he lovingly chronicled the contributions to the evengelisation of Northumbria made by the Abbots of the twin monasteries of St Peter at Monkwearmouth and St Paul at Jarrow: Benedict, Ceolfrid, Eosterwine, Sigfrid, and Huetbert.
* The word ‘visitation’ is often used in the Scriptures to mean a punishment, especially by a disease (as here) or a hostile invasion, for a people that has become wicked and in the words of Hosea 9:7 ‘gone a whoring from thy God’. But see also Wisdom 1:12-16, where the author reminds us that ‘God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living ... Ungodly men with their works and words called it to them: for when they thought to have it their friend, they consumed to nought [i.e. they wasted away], and made a covenant with it, because they are worthy to take part with it’. Sadly, the ungodly unleash forces that also take away the innocent.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.