SOURCE: Bertram Colgrave, "Bede's Miracle Stories," in Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings, edited by A. Hamilton Thompson, 1935. Reprint by Russell & Russell, 1966, pp. 201-29.

In the following excerpt, Colgrave summarizes many of Bede's miracle stories, contending that Bede did not write of miracles as a strict historian, but to satisfy the demand of popular taste, to venerate saints, to inspire, and to tell a vivid story.

It probably comes as a shock to the reader unacquainted with medieval literature who approaches Bede's Ecclesiastical History for the first time, to find that a miracle occurs on almost every page. What reliance can be placed on the historian who tells us in his very first chapter that 'scrapings of leaves of books that had been brought out of Ireland being put into water have cured persons bitten by serpents',¹ who goes on to deal with the life of Alban and...