INNOVATION AND TRADITION IN THE WRITINGS OF THE VENERABLE BEDE

Back Cover

Innovation and Tradition in the Writings ofthe Venerable Bedeprovides a well-balanced and concise overview of interpretative issues that have moved to the fore in Bedan studies since Gerald Bonner's Farnulus Christi (1976): How did Bede understand his own activity? What continuities or changes ofperspective mark the course of his career? Why and how did his writings so quickly attain the status reserved for texts of the exalted "Church Fathers"? DeGregorio's collection demonstrates the vitality ofcurrent scholarship on these questions and testifies to a remarkable unity-in-diversity ofcritical perspectives on Bede the exegete, "scientist," social reformer and pedagogue as well as historian. The Bede who emerges from these essays was a leading light not only of early England but of medieval European culture at large. -Christopher A. Jones, Ohio State University CONTENTS: "Introduction: The New Bede" Scott DeGregorio • "Who Did Bede Think He Was?" Roger Ray • "Bede and the Ordering of Understanding " Alan Thacker • "Si Naturarn Qureras: Reframing Bede's 'Science"' Faith Wallis • "The Responsibility of Auctoritas: Method and Meaning in Bede's Commentary on Genesis" Calvin B. Kendall • "Bede's Neglected Commentary on Samuel" George Hardin Brown • "Footsteps of His Own: Bede's Commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah" Scott DeGregorio • "Christ as Incarnate Wisdom in Bede's Commentary on the Song of Songs" Arthur G. Holder • "Bede's Originality in His Use of the Book of Wisdom in His Homilies on the Gospels," Lawrence T Martin • "Bede's History in a Harsher Climate ," Walter Goffart • "Carolingian Perspectives on the Authority ofBede," joyce Hill 978-l-935978-29-9 ISBN: 978-1-935978-29-9 J~lmlllt~ rr ...