Best known in the Middle Ages as a scriptural exegete, Bede here provides a running gloss on the Letters of James, Peter, John, and Jude. Why he chose these `lesser letters' for his first attempt at written exegesis no one knows; perhaps he did so because so few other scriptural commentators had glossed them. They are unique in that he inclined more to the literal interpretation of the text than he did in his more allegorical later commentaries. Preachers will find them useful; readers will find them illuminating.
In about 679, Bede, a boy of seven, was presented by his family as an oblate to the monastery of Wearmouth, Northumbria. He spent the rest of his life as a monk, first at Wearmouth, and later at Jarrow, five miles away. Using the monastic library he became ‘the most learned man in Western Europe’, and one of the most influential on future generations. He read, and wrote, in a wide variety of fields–natural science, mathematics, and astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, geography, history, hagiography, theology, and above all interpretations of Holy Scripture.
Bede combined his great learning with sanctity and a personal charm which still shines through his writings. ‘I have spent all my life in this monastery’, he wrote, ‘applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures; and amid the observances of the discipline of the Rule - [of St benedict] and the daily task of chanting in the church, it has always been my delight to learn or to teach or to write’. (A History of the English Church and People).
His command of the Fathers of the Church and profane knowledge belie the name commonly given his age; despite invasions, privations, and limitations, Bede demonstrates that one corner of the European north was far from dark.
