Bede and the Future ed. by Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bede and the Future ed. by Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis Anna Wallace Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis, eds, Bede and the Future (Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland), Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 286; 1 b/w illustration; R.R.P. £70.00; ISBN 9781409451822. The Venerable Bede is best known to many for his Historia ecclesiastica, and histories, by their nature, are about past time. However, as the editors note in their introduction to Bede and the Future, historia can also mean ‘description’, ‘and thus histories could be of present conditions’ (p. 2). To consider Bede as a historian only is to do a disservice to his wide-ranging mind and the depth of his works. Through his thinking and writing Bede transcended his time. Faith Wallis and Peter Darby are fitting editors for this volume. Wallis [End Page 167] has published translations of several of Bede’s works, including those most explicitly concerned with time: De temporum ratione (published as On the Reckoning of Time) and De temporibus (with Calvin Kendall, published as On the Nature of Things and on Times), while Darby’s 2012 monograph is titled Bede and the End of Time. The other contributors are no less well known in the field of Bede studies. The title of the collection expands on that of Darby’s monograph, taking Bede’s vision of the future as inclusive of but moving beyond the end of time. ‘Bede looked out on many futures’, the editors write (p. 3), and his ideas developed over time. The volume thus takes a roughly chronological sequence according to the order in which Bede penned his works, inasmuch as this can be known. This method of ordering means that thematically similar essays are not always grouped, but it demonstrates the ways in which Bede returned to certain topics throughout his life. The first essay, by Wallis, asks why Bede wrote his commentary on the Book of Revelation, one of his earlier works. As she notes, ‘the fact that he was selective tends to get lost’ (p. 23). Bede did not write commentaries on every book of the Bible, nor on every topic of science or history. The question is not only why did Bede choose Revelation, but why did he make such an ambitious choice at the beginning of his career? Wallis concludes that Bede’s choice was intended ‘to counter mistaken views about knowledge of the future’ as well as to state his own orthodoxy (p. 44). Alan Thacker continues the theme of Bede’s anxiety about accusations of heresy and unorthodoxy, which followed him throughout his life in one form or another. Christopher Grocock discusses Bede’s anxieties regarding more domestic matters: the possibility of changes to the Wearmouth–Jarrow monastery amid Northumbrian political upheaval. Grocock’s main source text is Bede’s Historia abbatum, but when Paul C. Hilliard visits a similar theme, Bede’s ideas about the future of Northumbria, it is from the later perspective of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. Calvin B. Kendall writes on ‘Bede and Islam’, noting that the term Bede actually used was ‘Saracens’. Darby’s contribution addresses the ‘history of the future’ presented by Bede in De temporum ratione, and in particular the ways in which Bede’s eschatology differs from that of Augustine and Jerome. Bede’s use of ad dating in the Historia ecclesiastica is, Máirín MacCarron argues, a way of confirming the Christian future. James T. Palmer also examines De temporum ratione and its vision of the future, but in the context of computistical arguments and controversies, both in England and further afield, arguing that ‘Bede was addressing a disunited intellectual landscape in general’ (p. 146). Scott Gregorio’s essay on Bede’s ideas for monastic reform in his final works closes the volume, rounding out Bede’s many futures. [End Page 168] Anna Wallace Western Sydney University Copyright © 2017 Anna Wallace