The Miracle Traditions of the Venerable Bede

C. Grant Loomis
Speculum, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 404-418

The cult of the miraculous was well established in the Christian writing of Europe by the end of the sixth century, although the flourishing period for legends, the full-length biographies of saints and other holy men, had to wait several centuries. The attachment of miracles to the progenitors of Christianity was a rather slow process, despite the records of benevolent magic in the Gospels and in the Old Testament. In the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius, which reached its final form about 325, seven miracles are ascribed to early Christians; but an equal number of deeds of magic by pagans and heretics is also recorded. Ruinart’s collection, Acta Martyrum Sincera, is not colored by superhuman deeds other than the amazing endurance shown under horrible tortures. The miracles in the Vitae Patrum written by Jerome and others, and introducing into the West the lives of the saints of the Egyptian desert and the near East, indicated the future trend of a continuous and eventually formulized accretion of the marvelous. The Vita S. Martini of Sulpicius Severus advanced the use of miracle motive in Western Europe in the fifth century. In the following century, Gregory of Tours, in his Liber de Miraculis, his De Gloria Martyrum, and the Historia Francorum, established the wonder cult. The four books of Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great lent an authoritative stamp to the recognition of white magic. The lore of wonder lived among the people. The belief in a cult of heroes and supernatural men, coupled with a multitude of old religious formulas and superstitions, had a continuous tradition. Theoretical theology was forced to recognize the impossibility of stamping out the belief in magic. A wise substitution of Christian magical elements was made wherever possible. Old beliefs were reinterpreted, and the cult of wonder served to capture the popular imagination. Christian dogma could not reach the mass of men, but marvelous incidents were convincing manifestations in a thousand localities at once.
The Venerable Bede had a solid tradition behind him when he wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica. Eusebius and Gregory of Tours had written histories of Christianity in their areas. Gregory emphasized the miraculous whenever the indications were present. But Bede chose a greater authority for the type of miracle which he introduced into his history. Celtic Christanity in Great Britain had its own miracle lore, but traditions from that source were ignored by Bede in his revelations of the operations of benevolent magic in English Christianity. The papal authority of Gregory the Great could not be questioned, and the miracle types in the Dialogues lay ready at hand.
The miracles in the Historia Ecclesiastica show a cautious selectivity. The range of types is not extensive. Fifty-two miracles fall into seventeen categories. This division may be contrasted with the one-hundred nineteen miracles in Gregory’s Dialogues, which display forty-five varieties of the miraculous. Bede’s life of St. Cuthbert, with its thirty-eight miracles, adds only five types to the miracle which appear in the Historia. Bede, as a recorder of white magic, is not reflective of general originality. The folklore traditions of his native scene can be seen in only a few instances.

C. Grant Loomis – The Miracle Traditionis of the Venerable Bede by Venerabilis Bedae Studiosus on Scribd

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