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

Abstract

PETER DARBY and FAITH WALLIS, eds., Bede and the Future. Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xv, 269. isbn: 978-1-4094-5182-2. $124.95.In their introduction to Bede and the Future, editors Peter Darby and Faith Wallis rightly point out that the Venerable Bede's place at the beginning of canonical literature written in England and the importance of his most famous work-the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum-cause modern readers to imagine him as a backward-looking author. The authors remind us, however, that Bede was motivated not only by 'antiquarian curiosity' (2), but also by the belief that biblical and post-biblical history offered important clues about future events and useful advice for improving one's chance of salvation at the Day of Judgment. The nine essays constituting Bede and the Future, arranged according to the chronology of the texts they interrogate, are intended to demonstrate and explore Bede's career-long interest in the coming days.In the first chapter, Faith Wallis explains why Bede wrote an explication of Revelation and, using clues from the prefatory letter to his commentary on Acts, argues that he tackled this potentially dangerous project early in his career, and did so partially in response to an accusation of heresy leveled against his first work on time, De temporibus. Bede was accused of holding the heretical view that the Incarnation occurred before the sixth age of the world. Bede successfully defended himself in a letter to a colleague, but Wallis argues that the charge, paired with his enmity toward contemporary millennialist theories, also prompted him to compose a strictly orthodox exegesis on Revelation. Moreover, in the following chapter Alan Thacker outlines Bede's reaction to two contemporary heresies, Monothelitism and Pelagianism, and argues that his commentaries on Samuel as well as on Ezra and Nehemiah indicate that he thought it was important for Christian teachers (doctores) to identify error and reconcile heretics.Turning to political realities in chapter three, Christopher Grocock gives a close reading of Benedict Bishop's dying words from the Historia abbatum and argues that Benedict's admonition to keep the rule, preserve the library, and maintain the monastic family reflects Bede's worries about the future unity and survival of his own community, Wearmouth-Jarrow. Calvin B. Kendall looks to potential cultural antagonism beyond Northumbria in the following chapter on Bede and Islam. Though not quite the anti-Islamic polemicist Edward Said suggested he was, Kendall argues that Bede was the first Christian writer to imagine 'Saracens' as important, biblically-prophesized enemies of Christianity.The next two chapters discuss Bede as a chronologer. Peter Darby addresses the eschatological sections of De temporum ratione, Bede's great treatise on the reckoning of time. Though he held the orthodox opinion advanced by Jerome and Augustine that the precise date for the end of the world could not be known, Bede's fondness for calculation and the work that he did challenging the practice of determining the age of the world with information in the Septuagint led him to believe that the end of time would unfold in a predictable sequence. …