The Title ‘Lord Protector’ and the Vulgate Bible

Bede entered Wearmouth–Jarrow at the age of seven and thereafter, he tells us at the conclusion of his Historia ecclesiastica, spent all his life ‘applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures’. He goes on, ‘From the time I became a priest until the fifty-ninth year of my life I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.’ Bede's modest remarks preface an impressive list of his own works, which includes commentaries on Genesis, I Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, the Prophets, Mark, Luke, Acts and Revelation, and many other exegetical, didactic and historical volumes. Installed at Jarrow from about 679 until his death in 735, he contributed more than anyone to the intellectual distinction of early-eighth-century Northumbria. At the same time, the twin house of Wearmouth–Jarrow was winning lasting renown for the products of its scriptorium (or scriptoria). Not least among these were the three great Vulgate bible pandects which Abbot Ceolfrith caused to be made, an achievement celebrated by the chroniclers of the house, who included Bede himself. One of these pandects, which we know today as the Codex Amiatinus, was dispatched to St Peter's in Rome in 716, then spent more than 900 years at Monte Amiata in the Appenines, and is now in Florence (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1). The other two were for use in the Wearmouth and Jarrow churches. One of these has been lost without trace, but the second survived in the cathedral priory of Worcester until the sixteenth century, when an entrepreneurial Nottinghamshire family made use of some of its torn-out leaves as document wrappers. Twelve of these, with some fragments of a thirteenth, are now in the British Library under three different shelfmarks (Loan 81, Add. 37777 and Add. 45025).

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The Biblical Characters of Chaucer's Monk

PMLA ◽

10.2307/459540 ◽

1951 ◽

Vol 66 (5) ◽

pp. 827-843

Author(s):

Dudley R. Johnson

Keyword(s):

French Version ◽

The Bible ◽

Biblical Narratives ◽

Vulgate Bible

Of the seventeen tragedies which Chaucer's Monk bewails, seven (or eight, if Lucifer merits inclusion in the category) have as protagonists characters drawn from the Bible. It has generally been assumed that for the greater part of the Biblical information in The Monk's Tale Chaucer used the Vulgate, while he gleaned a few details from Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium, which served as model for the collection of tragedies. There are, however, in Chaucer's work various divergencies from, or augmentations of, the Biblical narratives which can be explained neither by the Vulgate nor by the Boccaccean collection. In an article entitled “Vincent of Beauvais and Chaucer's Monks Tale,” Miss Pauline Aiken has presented her theory that the influence of Vincent's Speculum Eistoriale may be detected in eight of the Monk's tragedies, but that “among the sources of this tale the first place is to be assigned to the Vulgate Bible.” I should like to propose another source for the Biblical portions of The Monk's Tale: a French version of the Scriptures, the Bible Eistoriale of Guyart Desmoulins.

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