128 Nguyen Phuong Thanh, Truong Van Tuan HOW BEDE THE VENERABLE INFLUENCED THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Nguyen Phuong Thanh1, Truong Van Tuan2 1College of Commerce; phuongthanh210@gmail com[.]
128 Nguyen Phuong Thanh, Truong Van Tuan HOW BEDE THE VENERABLE INFLUENCED THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Nguyen Phuong Thanh1, Truong Van Tuan2 College of Commerce; phuongthanh210@gmail.com Vietnam Korea Friendship Information Technology College; trglamtuan2110 @gmail.com Abstract - The history of the development of a language is as interesting as the development of its nation because both can experience difficult periods During these times, there were certain great scholars who were credited with their devotion to the development of that language Exploring these details allows learners of the language to have deeper knowledge for and interest in further study With that aim, this paper will investigate how Bede the Venerable, one of the earliest and greatest scholars in the history of the English language, helped to enhance the growth and spread of English The study results show that Bede the Venerable had great contributions to the development of English, which can be seen through his life story, his works, his scholarship and commitment to learning and teaching, as well as his student generations Key words - Bede; Bede the Venerable; English; the development of English; English history Introduction Most nations have their own unique stories of their homeland and language origins This is applicable to England and its language The history of the English language has undergone three stages: Early English, Middle English and Modern English Each stage of developing English is usually known with certain famous writers and scholars who were credited with great contributions to the development of English Bede the Venerable was one of the scholars who contributed considerably to the development of English in the early stage of English He was the first great English scholar and the first historian to attempt to record the history of England and the English language His life and his “History” have gone together with the history of England and English since the eighth century and have been well known all over the world over a long period of time However, one may wonder how Bede the Venerable could contribute to the development of English while most of his writings were in Latin This paper aims to look into interesting details that he directly and indirectly contributed to the development of English via his life, his writings, his scholarship, and his students Bede’s life Before going into deeper to see how Bede’s life and works influenced England and its language, let us see certain important features about his life Information about him is not much Brief curriculum vitae of his can be found in the fifth volume of his famous work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People Certain biographical information about him “must be extracted from such sources as Cuthburt’s letter about Bede’s death, from occasional mentions of Bede and his legacy by disciples and admirers, … and from inferences and oblique references in his own and other author’s writings” (Brown, 1987, p.14) It is interesting to know that the spelling of Bede’s name, an Anglo-Saxon name, was also varied by the time and the changes of English “In the early manuscripts of the History and in other contemporary sources his name appears as Bæda, … in the Middle Ages he was Beda, but to English speaking people he is known as Bede” (Brown, 1987, p.15) Regarding life of Bede, he “was probably born in the year of the council of Herford (A.D 673) on lands that were shortly afterwards granted by King Egfrid of Northumbria to S Benedict Biscop’s new monastery of Saint Peter at Wearmouth” (Sherly-Price, 1968, p.15) At the age of seven, he was taken to monastery of Wearmouth and was entrusted to Abbot Benedict and later to Abbot Ceolfrid for learning He became a deacon at the age of nineteen, then as a priest at the age of thirty He spent all his life in the monastery learning, writing, and teaching except for a few brief visits to York and Lindisfarne He said of himself, "I have devoted myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures And while I have observed the regular discipline and sung in the choir offices daily in church, my chief delight has been always in study, teaching, and writing" (Sherly-Price, 1968, p.336) Although he rarely travelled outside this area, he became extremely knowledgeable, and may be the most learned person of his age According to Sellar (1907), Bede knew several languages, such as Latin, Greek, and probably some Hebrew well as he had a good knowledge of classical scholars and early church fathers Bede spent all his life devoting to his passions and worked enthusiastically until the very day of his death He was highly respected by other people in the church He passed away on May 25, 735, after the First Vespers of the Feast of the Ascension (SherleyPrice, 1968) How Bede influenced the development of the English language 3.1 The Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede wrote a large number of books on various fields, such as grammar, orthography, metrics, figures of speech, chronology, theology, and history However, he has been more likely recognized as a great historian with his great masterpiece The Ecclesiastical History of the English People written in 731 “What we know today about his nation, its people and politics, its material conditions and social life, its struggles and wars, as well as its church and culture, derives almost entirely from Bede” (Brown, 1987, p.2) This five volume collection, written in Latin, records events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar in 55-54 BC to the arrival of the first missionary from Rome, Saint THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6(91).2015 Augustine in 597, and then the flourishing of Christianity and of the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture in England Moreover, it retells the religious and political history of the Anglo-Saxons from the fifth century to 731 AD “The centuries on which Bede concentrates are a crucial and formative period in our island history, during which the future shape and pattern of the English Church and nation were beginning to emerge” (Sherley- Price, 1968, p.21) Bede was also given credit for giving the people at his time the concept of an "English People" at a time when England was divided into many individual kingdoms Actually, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People is one of the most important texts of the Anglo-Saxon history and would later remain a crucial primary source of reference for English history from 597 to 731 Brown (1987) said that when Bede the Venerable completed the History in 731 and appended to it a bibliography of his voluminous writings, he might be aware that a large legacy was being given to his community and his nation, but he might not have known how much later admiring generations would treat, use, copy, imitate, and plunder that legacy In fact, English people have been appreciating that unique legacy and regarding it as the most valuable sources for them to trace their origins of nation and language Owing to his masterpiece, people can know how English was influenced People can know that before the Viking invasion there were no English speaking people on the island of Britain, but the Celtic language speakers People can know the original moment of Old English is 449, when Germanic tribes settled in Britain and the foundations of an English nation took place: England, the land of the Angles People can be informed that Old English was a language that was the mix of the languages of the invading Germanic tribes, changing by the time in various degrees, with the languages of the Britons, Celtic and Latin spoken, with four discernible Old English dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish under the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy Latin words began to emerge from the monasteries and entered the everyday speech of the people after the introduction of Christianity Under these circumstances, English developed Moreover, thanks to his History, we can know which sources English comes from so that we can have a clear picture of the path that English developed In fact, to keep track of and to tell about the changes of a language in word meanings and pronunciations, people need to possess complete knowledge not only of related languages but also of relevant civilizations and their history If people just look at the internal changes of the English itself, people not have enough evidence to say where a borrowed word is from However, thanks to the combination of research on the internal changes of the language and the external evidence, scholars can tell the origin and how the language has been developed Bede helped clarify the origin and development of the language of the English people through his History He had done a good job of providing the external evidence for scholars to study more about the English language In addition, Bede’s History deserves such a great value 129 that it has attracted the attentions of numerous people and served as an impetus to promote the development of English “Its historical value is evidenced by the fact that nearly 200 hand written copies were produced in the Middle Ages St Bede's text has since been translated into several different languages” (Sellar, 1907, p.3) and into English Brown (1987) estimated that from the Middle Age to his time, there had been over 150 manuscripts of the "Ecclesiastical History" in England and on the Continent Of these manuscripts, four date from the eighth century According to Sellar (1907), two of the four manuscripts date from the eighth century, when Bede died The first translation of the history book is the Anglo-Saxon version, executed either by King Alfred himself or under his immediate supervision The work was first translated in modern English by Thomas Stapleton’s (1565) and was published at Antwerp Later, our history, as time goes by, has witnessed a great number of other translations by scholars of every age, including John Stevens (1723), Hurst (1814), Giles (1840), Sellar (1907) with certain alterations Until now, the work still has a great value to people to learn about England and English With its great value, the strong influence of Bede’s History can be seen most clearly in the ninth century when the country was under King Alfred’s reign From the fact which Sellar (1907) provided above, we can see that the first scholar to translate Bede’s “History” was King Alfred, who thought that knowing the history of the England was important and who “wanted the English to understand in their own tongue how Christ's Church had grown in Britain since very early times, and how England had become a Christian Nation” (Lee, 2000, p.5) In order to achieve his utilization of English, Alfred learnt Latin and started to translate Bede’s History one of the most important books of his age into English As a result, “Bede’s work ranked, in Alfred’s day, as a standard history of the early English church; it was a recognized classic” (Ward & Trent, et al., 2000) More and more people learn English to deal with the translated English version The desire to learn about their history forced people to learn English to read it under the encouragement of the king Alfred This way Bede directly influenced the development of English by his Latin masterpiece Later we can see a huge number of scholars translate the Bede’s history in to English with different versions And each time of translating a version is a time that English is used in a different version That way, as we can see, English has developed 3.2 The Caedmon’s Hymn In his History, Bede told a story about a brother of the monastery Whitby named Caedmon, who was found to receive the gift of poetry from God According to Bede, this brother did not know how to sing At parties, where guests were invited to sing to entertain the company, he did not know how to behave Therefore, he often left when it was about to be his turn to sing However, things changed after one night In one night on such an occasion, Caedmon left the party and went out to the cattle shed where he hid his duty to look after the animals In his dream, he met a man who insisted in asking him to sing a song about “the 130 Creation of all things”, and Caedmon immediately began to sing verses praising God and the Creator which he had never before After that, he became so talented in composing religious and devotional songs that he could quickly turn any passage of Scripture, when explained to him by interpreter, into charming and touching poetry in his own English tongue (Sherley-Price, 1968) According to Crowne (1908), the song that Caedmon sang that night in his dream was written in Latin by Bede Later King Alfred translated the work of Bede in a WestSaxon poetic version Then, one manuscript of Bede appended a Northumbrian poetic version, perhaps the very words of Caedmon This earliest English poem attracted attention of other English people at its time and later As Bede said, several English writers of sacred verse had imitated Caedmon, but no one could compare to him “The literary value of parts of the Caedmonian poems is undoubtedly of a high order” and Caedmon’s poem helped “mark a worthy beginning of the long and noble line of English sacred poetry” (Crowne, 1908) The poem has been used, by numerous scholars of all ages, as a part of the internal evidence to study Old English 3.3 Bede’s scholarship and the movement of learning in English Not only the work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People had a strong impact on English people and their language, but Bede himself and his other works also did that amazing job, contributing to the use of English in later ages In fact, his scholarship was one of the factors that promoted the development of English later Being a talent who mastered almost all knowledge of the time, Bede was a great model person for other people in his time and the later time to strive for Bede was gifted in many fields, which can be seen through his works in grammar, orthography, metrics, figures of speech, natural science, chronology, theology, and history For example, he was the first person to create, or at least to record, on the basis of the Metonic nineteen year lunar cycle, a perpetual (532-year) cycle of Easters and to tabulate it, the first historian to use the Christian era, and the first to state the tidal principle of “establishment of port,” which has been described as the only original formulation of nature to be made in the West for some eight centuries (the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2008, p.565) Moreover, it is interesting to know that when writing, Bede consulted other sources, discussed their relative reliability, and cited them as reference sources like a modern scholar In fact, “in numberless ways, but especially in his moderation, gentleness, and breadth of view, Bede stands out from his contemporaries In point of scholarship he was undoubtedly the most learned man of his time” (Thurston, 1999) As a result, Bede’s scholarship did create a movement of studying of English people As a teacher, Bede began to write books for his students in the monastery, but later his reputation spread throughout all over the ecclesiastical network that people sought his writings in other English learning centers, such as Hexham, York, London, Canterbury, and then many places on the Continent By the ninth century, with high admiration from other people, Nguyen Phuong Thanh, Truong Van Tuan Bede was given the title the Father of the Church In Ireland, he was admirably called “Bede the greatest, the sage, a man of God’s grace in wisdom and holiness” (Brown, 1987) Bede, who himself always found it a pleasure to learn, to teach or to write, as well as his knowledge and scholarship attracted and inspired English people to learn It is said that the development and popularity of a language to other people have a strong relationship with economic, cultural, and educational strength of the place where the language is spoken This is true with English, and Bede was credited with his contribution to at least the educational strength of his place that time (and even now) Not merely was he well known in his time of living, Bede’s scholarship also spread its influence on the learning movement in the next century By the end of the ninth century, King Alfred realized that “greatness in a nation is no merely physical thing” (Baugh, 1978, p.69) He was really concerned about the falling standards of literacy and learning (Graddol et al, 1996) The King discovered that the learning which in the eighth century, the century of Bede and Alcuin, had deserved the highest position of England in Europe now had been greatly decomposed The fact that Bede and his pupils had been outstanding in their age as well as the high position that the country had thanks to their scholarship was the model and the impetus that King Alfred thought his people should follow Scholar books were then encouraged to translate into English And people were encouraged to study to have good knowledge like the people of their last century As a result, more and more people learn in English to master the valuable knowledge “Bede's influence both upon English and foreign scholarship was very great, and it would probably have been greater still but for the devastation inflicted upon the Northern monasteries by the inroads of the Danes less than a century after his death” (Thurston, 1999) 3.4 Bede’s death Bede’s death is worth telling as his life Respectfully, Bede led a venerable great life and passed away with an admirable death He “died as he lived, teaching and praying” (Brown, 1987, p.23) Despite the fact that his health was fading, he was cheerful and kept dictating saying: “Learn quickly I not know how long I continue, for my Lord may call me in a short while” (Sherly-Price, 1968, p.19) His last hours on the earth that were described in Brown (1987) were really touching and impressive From his bed, he continued to give lessons to translate Gospel of John into English and to make some corrections in Isidore’s On the Wonders of Nature book for his students Bede did it with responsibility and enthusiasm, thinking that he should not have his “children” learning a lie and losing labor on this after his passing On the very day of his last, he was dictating a chapter of a book And in the evening when he was about to pass away, he successfully finished the last sentence at the last second of his life, right before he closed his eyes forever From the story, we can see that Bede at his last breath still made his best contributions to his next generations, translating a valuable material into English for his English people and THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6(91).2015 leaving precious gifts for his ‘children’ A great person had a great farewell 3.5 Bede’s Next Generations of Pupils and Disciples Last but not least, it would be incomplete if his pupils’ generations have not yet mentioned to approve how Bede made contributions to the English language In fact, his pupils, who were highly influenced by his thought and his knowledge, later contributed to the education in England For example, “[o]ne of his pupils was Archbishop Egbert, the founder of the school of York, which gave a fresh impulse to learning … in England” (Sellar, 1907, p.12) In turn, his disciple named Alcuin, “who thought of Bede as his magister” (Sellar, 1907, p.17) brought Bede’s scholarship to the court and school of Charlemagne In the eighth century, Alcuin together with an apostle to the Germans named Boniface Winfrid, other insular missionaries, and wandering scholars cooperated with Carolingian rulers to develop Continental schools based on English Scholasticism Bede’s writings were the staple texts in these schools According to Sellar (1907), another pupil of Bede whose name was Cuthbert became abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow after Hwætberht “Living in the very corner of the world, after death he lived renowned in every other corner through his books In them he discriminatingly described at length the locations, resources, qualities of the different lands and provinces” (the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2008, p.565) Conclusion Bede was one of the earliest and greatest scholars making outstanding contributions to the development of English These contributions can be seen through his life, his works, his scholarship and commitment to learning and teaching, and his following up generations Through these factors, Bede both directly and indirectly influenced and gave a strong impetus to the development of the English language itself and the people of its nation The English nation and English people can be proud to have a ‘father’ like Bede, who almost gave a birth to the nation Without 131 Bede and his works, there would have been a great lost to the nation and people People would not have had a great treasure of human knowledge “[o]ur knowledge of the vital and stirring centuries that he describes would be scanty” and “a treasure of tales loved by every English child would have been lost forever” (Sherley-Price, 1968, p.24) And English may have developed in another way that is not like the way we can see today And human beings would lose a legacy that has the greatest value In fact, Bede also helped to provide both external and internal evidence for his descendants to seek for their origin in the right track That is why he has been awarded the titles of father of English scholarship, of English history, of English literature of the middle age REFERENCES [1] Baugh, C A., & Cable, T., (1978) A history of the English language London: Routledge [2] Brown, H G., (1987) Bede the Venerable Boston: Twayne Publishers [3] Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) (Vol 1, pp 564-566) Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.hpu.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CC X2830900335&v=2.1&u=hono53192&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w [4] Crowne, J.V (1908) St Caedmon In The Catholic Encyclopedia New York: Robert Appleton Company Retrieved November 24, 2011 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03131c.htm [5] Graddol et al, (1996) English: History, Diversity, and Change London: Routledge [6] Lee, N F., (2000) King Alfred the Great and our Common Law The Works of Rev Prof Dr F.N Lee Retrieved from http://www.drfnlee.org/docs6/alfred/alfred.pdf [7] Sellar, M A., (1907) Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England London: George Bell and Sons [8] Sherley-Price, L., (1968) A history of the English church and people London: Pengiun Books [9] Thurston, H., (1999) St Bede the Venerable Hymns and Carlos of Christmas Retrieved from http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/ Hymns_and_Carols/Biographies/st_bede.htm [10] Ward & Trent, et al (2000) The Cambridge History of English and American Literature New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000 (www.bartleby.com/cambridge/) (The Board of Editors received the paper on 03/28/2015, its review was completed on 04/21/2015) ... century, Alcuin together with an apostle to the Germans named Boniface Winfrid, other insular missionaries, and wandering scholars cooperated with Carolingian rulers to develop Continental schools...THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6( 91) .2 015 Augustine in 597, and then the flourishing of Christianity and of the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture in England Moreover,... breath still made his best contributions to his next generations, translating a valuable material into English for his English people and THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,