The Venerable Bede on Prayer and Contemplation

As a monk at the famous Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (673–735) produced a body of exegetical work that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Something of that spirit seems to have reawakened in recent years, as Bede's commentaries are increasingly being studied and made available to wider audiences in English translation. One distinctive feature of this development is a growing awareness that Bede's reputation as an exegete is more multifaceted than has been previously realized, that it goes beyond what Beryl Smalley called “his faithful presentation of the tradition in its many aspects. Whereas earlier interpreters were content to regard Bede as a mere compiler reputed for his good sense and able Latinity, scholars are now paying homage to him as a penetrating and perceptive biblical commentator who did more than reproduce the thought of the fathers who preceded him. As I intend to show in what follows, Bede's treatment of prayer and contemplation in his exegesis attests well to this quality of his thought. The topic to date has received only minimal commentary, mainly on what Bede actually taught about prayer. My approach will be different. I begin with a discussion not of Bede's exegetical method but of his occupations and aims as a spiritual writer. Neither Bede's spirituality nor his role as spiritual writer have received the attention they deserve, and it is hoped that the reflections offered here will help rekindle interest in these neglected subjects. I then consider four prayer-related themes in his exegesis that bring his aims as a spiritual writer into view. Patristic tradition had commented widely on prayer, and Bede, we will see, did not set out to summarize this tradition in its entirety but rather to highlight and distill certain themes within it, those that best suited the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.