“Then, strengthening himself with the heavenly viaticum,* he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked how near the time was when the brothers were to be awakened to sing the nocturnal praises of our Lord.

The Eucharist given to the dying.

“They answered, ‘It is not far off.’

“Then he said, ‘Well, let us wait that hour.’  And signing himself with the sign of the cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber ended his life so in silence.”

Thus his life, which had been begun in silence, ended also in silence, with just a few singing years between.

“Thus it came to pass, that as he had served God with a simple and pure mind, and undisturbed devotion, so he now departed to His presence, leaving the world by a quiet death.  And that tongue which had composed so many holy words in praise of the Creator, uttered its last words while he was in the act of signing himself with a cross, and recommending himself into His hands."*

Bede, Ecclesiastical History

At Whitby still the ruins of a monastery stand.  It is not the monastery over which the Abbess Hilda ruled or in which Caedmon sang, for in the ninth century that was plundered and destroyed by the fierce hordes of Danes who swept our shores.  But in the twelfth century the house was rebuilt, and parts of that building are still to be seen.

Chapter XIV THE FATHER OF ENGLISH HISTORY

WHILE Caedmon was still singing at Whitby, in another Northumbrian village named Jarrow a boy was born.  This boy we know as Bede, and when he was seven years old his friends gave him into the keeping of the Abbot of Wearmouth.  Under this Abbot there were two monasteries, the one at Jarrow and the other at Wearmouth, a few miles distant.  And in these two monasteries Bede spent all the rest of his life.

When Bede was eight years old Caedmon died.  And although the little boy had never met the great, but humble poet, he must have heard of him, and it is from Bede’s history that we learn all that we know of Caedmon.

There is almost as little to tell of Bede’s life as of Caedmon’s.  He passed it peacefully, reading, writing, and teaching within the walls of his beloved monastery.  But without the walls wars often raged, for England was at this time still divided into several kingdoms, whose kings often fought against each other.

Bede loved to learn even when he was a boy.  We know this, for long afterward another learned man told his pupils to take Bede for an example, and not spend their time “digging out foxes and coursing hares."* And when he became a man he was one of the most learned of his time, and wrote books on nearly every subject that was then thought worth writing about.

C.  Plummer.