Voices and influences
Bede
He wrote England's first history from inside a Northumbrian monastery, and taught the world to count years from the birth of Christ.
Summary
This site quotes Bede 510 times across 28 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 735.
- Quoted here most in Mark: 118 of 510.
Bede
- Lived
- died 735
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 510 quotations
Own words
Quoted at 50 words or fewer, because Bede's works are in copyright.
Clothed in flesh, [Christ] descended into the water as "an angel of great counsel," that is, as a herald of the Father's will to Jewish people. By his deeds and his teaching he moved sinners, so that he would be killed—he who, by his bodily …
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
The windows of the temple are the holy teachers and all the spiritual people in the church to whom when in divine ecstasy it is granted more specially than to the others to see the hidden mysteries of heaven. And when they reveal publicly to …
1 Kings 6:4 He also had narrow windows framed high in the temple. BSB
King Cyrus also brought forth the vessels of the temple of the Lord, etc. Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels of the Lord from Jerusalem, as any unclean spirit, snatching certain of the faithful from the Church, deprives them of the joy of internal peace. Moreover, he …
Ezra 1:7 King Cyrus also brought out the articles belonging to the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the temple of his gods. BSB
After these things were completed, etc. The guilt of this transgression is also clearly described and reproved by prophetic authority in the prophet Malachi; because evidently those who returned from Babylonian captivity, both princes and priests and Levites, as well as the rest of the …
Ezra 9:1 After these things had been accomplished, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding peoples whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. BSB
"And poverty will come upon you like a traveler," etc. For poverty and misery are the ultimate punishment, in which the damned deserve nothing of wealth: they will come like a traveler, because unforeseen and sudden; like an armed man, because they cannot be conquered …
Proverbs 6:11 and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Bede 510 times across 28 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Bede was born about 673 on land belonging to the twin monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in Northumbria. He was handed over to the monks at the age of seven. He never really left. In the last paragraph of his great history he wrote that he had spent his whole life in that monastery, giving his attention to studying the Scriptures, and that amid the observance of the Rule and the daily task of singing in church, it had always been his delight to learn, to teach, or to write. He was ordained deacon at nineteen and priest at thirty. He travelled almost nowhere — a trip to Lindisfarne, a trip to York. The great sweep of his work was done from a library and a scriptorium at the northern edge of the known world. That library was the point. Benedict Biscop, who founded the monastery, had made five journeys to Rome and hauled back books. Bede therefore had access to a collection unlike anything else in northern Europe, and he used every volume of it. He wrote around sixty works. Most of them are biblical commentaries — Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Mark, Luke, Acts, the catholic epistles, Revelation — plus homilies, saints' lives, works on grammar, metre, orthography, and the natural world. Two of them changed things permanently. The first is The Reckoning of Time, a technical book about the calendar, the tides, the moon, and the dating of Easter. In it he laid out the anno Domini system — counting years forward from the incarnation — and used it consistently. The idea came from Dionysius Exiguus two centuries earlier, but it was Bede who put it to work in a book everyone read, and that is why the year has the number it has. The second is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished in 731. It is the reason we know anything about Anglo-Saxon England: Augustine's landing in Kent, Edwin's conversion and the sparrow flying through the lighted hall, the Synod of Whitby, Caedmon the cowherd who was given a song in the night, Cuthbert on his island. Bede named his sources, distinguished what he had verified from what he had only heard, and wrote a preface asking readers to correct him. That is a historian's conscience, four hundred years before anyone else in Europe was showing one. He died on 25 May 735, dictating the last sentence of a translation of John's Gospel into English. His pupil Cuthbert wrote the account: the boy taking dictation said the sentence was finished, and Bede said, It is well, you have spoken truth — it is finished. Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People and The Reckoning of Time; Cuthbert, Letter on the Death of Bede; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. IV; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).
510 quotations across 28 books
Where this voice is quoted
because you neglected all my counsel, and wanted none of my correction,
“And neglected my reproofs. Saying, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you have taken the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering (Matthew XXIII). And generally, Whoever does not believe is already judged (John III).”
in turn I will mock your calamity; I will sneer when terror strikes you,
“When your fear comes as calamity. Saying to one another, If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation (John XI).”
when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you.
“When sudden calamity comes upon you, etc. He speaks of the sudden siege of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the whole province that was made by the Romans, which the Lord himself predicted in the Gospel, seeing the city and weeping over it (Luke XIX).”
For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.
“And from his mouth comes wisdom and understanding. In this verse, that ineffable and coeternal wisdom born of God the Father may be understood, of which it is elsewhere said: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn (Eccli. XXIV).”
from those who leave the straight paths to walk in the ways of darkness,
“Who leave the straight path, etc. Beautifully he has opposed dark ways to the straight path, because indeed the journey of right action is performed in light and leads to the joys of the supreme light.”
None who go to her return or negotiate the paths of life.
“All who go to her do not return, etc. To her, to death he says, not to the woman. For it is possible for him who is mixed with an adulteress, with the help of the Lord, to return and earn life again by repenting…”
They will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck.
“And grace to your throat. How sweet are your words to my throat, says the psalm (Psalm 118)! The senses of the soul, therefore, have their throat, by which they judge the words they hear, by which they scrutinize the deeds of each person they…”
The curse of the LORD is on the house of the wicked, but He blesses the home of the righteous.
“"The tents of the righteous will be blessed." As the apostle says to the faithful, speaking of God: "Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1).”
But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they do not know what makes them stumble.
“The way of the wicked is dark, etc. John the Apostle also says concerning these: Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no offense in him (1 John 2); but whoever hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness…”
She does not consider the path of life; she does not know that her ways are unstable.
“Her ways are unstable, etc. The ways of heretical deception are unstable, because some deny Christ to be God, others to be man; some deny he took flesh, others a soul; some that he was born of a virgin; some that the Holy Spirit, others…”
I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”
“I was almost in all evil, etc. The Church and the Synagogue are Greek names, and they signify the same thing in Latin, that is, an assembly of many together.”
Why should your springs flow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
“"Let your fountains be dispersed abroad," etc. Give your son and daughter in marriage to others, and do this openly with many witnesses.”
For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD examines all his paths.
“The Lord looks upon the ways of man, etc. Let adulterers not think they are covered by the darkness of night against the wall, nor heretics that their schemes can be hidden, because the darkness will not be obscured from the Lord, and night will…”
Without a commander, without an overseer or ruler,
“Which, having no guide, etc. If such a small animal, lacking a leader and devoid of reason, foresees things for itself by nature as its guide for the future, much more so should you, created in the image of God, called to see His glory…”
How long will you lie there, O slacker? When will you get up from your sleep?
“How long, sluggard, will you sleep? etc. How long will you sleep in vices when you can rise to do well, you who, weighed down by noxious sloth, always say, "Let me still lie a little, and thus afterward I will rise by repenting"?”
and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.
“"And poverty will come upon you like a traveler," etc. For poverty and misery are the ultimate punishment, in which the damned deserve nothing of wealth: they will come like a traveler, because unforeseen and sudden; like an armed man, because they cannot be conquered…”
There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to Him:
“There are six things that the Lord hates, etc. He more fully indicates how detestable he is to God by sowing discord.”
haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
“Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, etc. He enumerates six capital crimes, which yet, in comparison to the one who sows discord, he somewhat diminishes as lesser, because indeed the greater crime is that which disrupts the unity and fraternity connected by the grace of the…”
My son, keep your father’s commandment, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
“Preserve, my son, the precepts of your father, etc. Now under the guise of the adulterous woman, he forbids listening to heresy.”
Men do not despise the thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger.
“The fault is not great when someone has been found stealing, etc. Theft is not considered a great fault by its own estimation, but by comparison with a greater sin, that is, adultery; as it is said to Jerusalem who sinned more grievously, Sodomy is…”
For jealousy enrages a husband, and he will show no mercy in the day of vengeance.
“For jealousy and the fury of a husband will not spare in the day of vengeance, etc. And this is to be understood of the Lord, because He who now spares reprobates will not spare on the day of death; nor will He acquiesce to…”
before He made the land or fields, or any of the dust of the earth.
“"Before he made anything from the beginning," etc. Similar to this in the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him" (John 1).”
He who corrects a mocker brings shame on himself; he who rebukes a wicked man taints himself.
“Do not rebuke a scoffer, etc. It is not to be feared that a scoffer, when rebuked, will insult you; but rather this should be foreseen, that, drawn to hatred, he may become worse: and therefore, you must sometimes cease from his correction for the…”
Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment.
“In the lips of the wise is found wisdom, etc. The rod on the back is vengeance on the posterior, that is, in the following life; well expressed by that famous plague by which the Philistines were struck on their buttocks (1 Sam. V).”
The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of the fool invites destruction.
“The wise hide knowledge. Knowing indeed, that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak (Eccl. III). Hence the prophet says, "While the sinner stood against me, I was mute and humbled and silent from good things" (Psal. XXXVIII).”