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and in consequence he was unanimously chosen. Disposition, not less than education, had fitted Bede for that way of life to which it had pleased God to call him. At the age of nineteen, in obedience to Ceolfrid's orders, he was ordained Deacon by John,* Bishop of Hagulstad, the name whereby Hexham was then known. It was not till his thirtieth year that he received Priest's orders from the same prelate. Thus much he has related of himself, and the even tenour of his unvarying life afforded no other events to be recorded; for that Pope Sergius,

* Afterwards St. Jolin of Beverley, famous for the annual miracle which used to be exhibited upon a Bull in his churchyard. In Folcard's life of this Saint (Acta SS. May 7th) he is said to have been Bede's preceptor. The passage contains a notable example of the contempt in which the Normans held the nations of this island, for he says of Bede that, à tanto pædagogo afluenter imbutus... inditam Britannica gentis hebitudinem purgavit, (p. 169.) There is reason for suspecting that this statement was made for the sake of giving John the credit of such a pupil, with little or no foundation in fact. For he appears to have itinerated as a preacher, (Capgrave quoted by Cressy, p. 464) before he was appointed to his see; he is no where mentioned as ever having resided at Jarrow, and Bede is known never to have resided any where else; ... and what may be considered as decisive, Bede, who inserts an account of him in his Ecclesiastical History, and relates several of his miracles, never speaks of him as his tutor, though he says that he was ordained by him.

wishing to have the benefit of his counsel upon certain ecclesiastical affairs, invited *him to Rome, is doubtful; and it is certain that he did not go. "From seven years old," he says, "when I was given to the most reverend Abbot Benedict to be brought up, and afterwards to Ceolfrid, passing all my life in this monastery, I bestowed all my labour in meditating upon the scriptures, and the observance of regular discipline, and the daily business of singing in the church. And I found it delightful always either to teach, or to learn, or to write. From the

time of my receiving the order of priesthood to the fifty-ninth year of my age, I have employed myself in noting briefly these things from the works of the venerable Fathers for the use of myself and my pupils, and in adding something to their interpretations."

This modest account would have rendered little justice to his labours, if he had not annexed to it a list of the treatises which he had then composed. His historical and biographical works are in this catalogue: his commentaries on the Bible, his homilies, his hymns and epigrams, and his treatises on the nature of things, on the divisions of time, orthography, the art

* Acta SS. Maii, t. vi. p. 720.

of metre, and the tropes and figures used in Scripture. His other works therefore must have been composed afterwards. They are upon grammar; upon numeration and arithmetic,.. and here he gives the Abacus or multiplication tables of Pythagoras, and a collection of arithmetical questions such as are now found in those elementary books which propose problems of this kind in an entertaining form. There is a series of calculating tables, a treatise upon weights and measures, and another upon the lunar motions. There is an Ephemeris most laboriously calculated: an ignorant eye* may perceive how much head-work its diagrams and tables must have cost; but it would require no common proficiency in science to ascertain their accuracy, and estimate from them the degree of knowledge in those branches to which Bede had attained. There are computations for the Kalendar, and tables in which Easter is calculated from the commencement of the Christian era to the year 1595. He wrote also

There could not, indeed, be a fitter book for a fortuneteller to set up with than the first volume of Bede. A simple fellow seeing a rogue turn over its pages gravely as if he were consulting them, might very well suppose, that the person who understood that could understand any thing.

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upon indigitation, both as an art of computing

*

by the fingers, and of conversing by them:

The former art must have arisen as soon as men had any occasion to make use of numbers. That it was in use among the Persians we learn from Plutarch; and one reason why Janus was supposed to represent the Sun, was, that his image was formed as making with his fingers the number of the days in the year. But the mention of the latter by Bede, shows that Calmet was misled by his authorities when he said that it arose in the Cluniac and Cistercian convents, where it was invented as a device for conversing, without breaking silence. The passage in Calmet's Commentary, however, contains some curicus information, respecting the fooleries and practices of monkery, and therefore I give it at length :

"Pour marquer le respect qu'on avoit pour le silence, on inventà dans l'Ordre de Cluny, dans celui de Citeaux,† et dans d'autres monastères, des signes de la main et des doigts, pour se faire entendre sans parler; pratique qui s'est renouvellée de nos jours dans quelques Abbayes réformées de Citeaux comme à Orval, à la Trappe, et à Beaupré. Nous avons d'anciens Recueils de ces signes imprimez en divers endroits, et l'on a prétendu que par ce moyen on évitoit les grands inconvéniens, qui naissent du violement du silence, et de l'usage de la parole, étant impossible, quelque versé qu'on soit dans l'usage de ces signes arbitraires, de lier une conversation suivie, et de s'entretenir, par exemple, de nouvelles, avec leurs, circonstances, qui font le sujet ordinaire de nos discours.

"Le Concile de Château-Gonthier can. 24. exhorte les Religieux à garder le silence, et il recommande aux Abbez de leur faire apprendre l'usage des signes: Abbates provideant quod monachi

+ Vide Bernardi Cluniac. Ordo Cluniac. 1. i. c. 17. et Sancti Vuillelmi Constitutiones Hirsang. c. 6. 7. 8. &c. apud R. P. Marquard. Relig. Bened. Sancti Blasii in Sylvâ Nigrâ.

upon chronology, dialling, the astrolabe, the poles, and the circles of the sphere, music

sibi subditi sciant signa facere. Abaëlard* recommande aussi les signes, et veut que l'on s'en serve au lieu des paroles, dans les lieux principalement consacrez au silence, comme sont l'Oratoire, le Dortoir, le Cloitre, le Réfectoire. La Règle des Templiers leur permet de demander à voix basse dans le Réfectoire, ce qui leur est nécessaire, parce que parmi eux l'usage des signes n'étoit pas établi. Tout cela prouve le cas que l'on faisoit dans les Cloitres de cette pratique.

“Il est vrai que par le moyen de ces signes, on peut se parler de loin et tromper la vigilance des Supérieurs, qui croyent que l'on demeure dans un profond silence, pendant que réellement on se parle par signes, et qu'on se communique ses pensées, ses passions, et ses mouvemens, et cela bien souvent avec plus de facilité et de danger qu'on ne feroit par paroles, qui ne peuvent si aisément se faire entendre de loin, ni se dérober si facilement à l'attention des Supérieurs et des autres Religieux, dont la crainte et le respect contiennent ceux qui voudroient s'émanciper à parler en des tems et dans des lieux où il n'est pas permis de le faire; au lieu que deux personnes de cent pas se peuvent parler par signes sans être apperçues.

"Le Vénérable Guigue dans les Statuts qu'il a dressez pour les Chartreux ne paroît pas fort prévenu en faveur de ces signes; c'est bien assez, dit il, d'employer la langue à se faire entendre, sans faire servir d'autres membres: sufficere putantes linguam solam, non etiam cæteros artus implicare loquendo."-Calmet, Commentaire sur la Règle de S. Benoist, t. i. p. 224.

It is quite certain that Bede never dreamt of introducing finger-speech as a monastic practice. His words are," potest autem et de ipso quem prænotari computo, quædam manualis lo* Abaëlard, Ep. 8. p. 130, 135. Guig. Stat. c. 3. 1.

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