Then, as he slept, an angel bent down, and taking the pen from the monk’s tired fingers, wrote the words, “the Venerable,” so that the line ran, “In this grave lie the bones of the Venerable Bede.”  And thus, for all time, our first great historian is known as The Venerable Bede.

BOOK TO READ

The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, by Bede, translated by Dr. Giles.

Chapter XV HOW ALFRED THE GREAT FOUGHT WITH HIS PEN

WHILE Caedmon sang his English lays and Bede wrote his Latin books, Northumbria had grown into a center, not only of English learning, but of learning for western Europe.  The abbots of Jarrow and Wearmouth made journeys to Rome and brought back with them precious MSS. for the monastery libraries.  Scholars from all parts of Europe came to visit the Northumbrian monasteries, or sent thither for teachers.

But before many years had passed all that was changed.  Times of war and trouble were not yet over for England.  Once again heathen hordes fell upon our shores.  The Danes, fierce and lawless, carrying sword and firebrand wherever they passed, leaving death and ruin in their track, surged over the land.  The monasteries were ruined, the scholars were scattered.  A life of peaceful study was no longer possible, the learning of two hundred years was swept away, the lamp of knowledge lit by the monks grew dim and flickered out.

But when sixty years or more had passed, a king arose who crushed the Danish power, and who once more lit that lamp.  This king was Alfred the Great.

History tells us how he fought the Danes, how he despaired, and how he took heart again, and how he at last conquered his enemies and brought peace to his people.

Alfred was great in war.  He was no less great in peace.  As he fought the Danes with the sword, so he fought ignorance with his pen.  He loved books, and he longed to bring back to England something of the learning which had been lost.  Nor did he want to keep learning for a few only.  He wanted all his people to get the good of it.  And so, as most good books were written in Latin, which only a few could read, he began to translate some of them into English.

In the beginning of one of them Alfred says, “There are only a few on this side of the Humber who can understand the Divine Service, or even explain a Latin epistle in English, and I believe not many on the other side of the Humber either.  But they are so few that indeed I cannot remember one south of the Thames when I began to reign.”

By “this side of the Humber” Alfred means the south side, for now the center of learning was no longer Northumbria, but Wessex.

Alfred translated many books.  He translated books of geography, history and religion, and it is from Alfred that our English prose dates, just as English poetry dates from Caedmon.  For you must remember that although we call Bede the Father of English History, he wrote in Latin for the most part, and what he wrote in English has been lost.