The Date of Bede's In Ezram and His Image of Ezra in

the Codex Amiatinus

By Paul Meyvaert

St. Augustine, in a passage of his De Genesi ad litteram cited by the Venerable Bede, had paused to wonder if tilling the ground, farming, was really a chastise ment imposed by God on mankind because of Adam's transgression, since he had known men so enamored of farming ("tanta uoluptate animi agricolari") that the real chastisement would have been to deprive them from doing it.' While Bede admits to no uoluptas agricolandi, encountering this saying of Augustine may have prompted him to recognize his own ingrained passion, a uoluptas scribendi: writ ing, I think, must have been in his genes!2 On finishing the third book of his commentary on Samuel, he planned to take a short respite "per quietem meditandi uel scribendi uoluptate," and so gather strength to start on book 4-merely changing the topic he was writing about, therefore, brought him relaxation.' His peace of mind was shattered, however, rendering him incapable for a while of writing on any subject, when on 2 June 716, his abbot suddenly ("subitus") an nounced that he was leaving Northumbria to spend his final days in Rome.4 The

I sincerely thank my friends Robert Markus and John Contreni for their helpful comments on a

much earlier version of the present article. Other friends, George Brown, Yitzhak Hen, are likewise

thanked for helpful remarks on a more recent version.

1 Bede, In Genesim, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 118A (Turnhout, 1967), p. 51, lines 1601-2.

2 In the autobiography that ends his Ecclesiastical History he wrote that it had always been his

delight to learn, or teach, or write: "semper aut discere aut docere aut scribere dulce habui" (Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5.24, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford, 1969],

p. 566). 3 See Bede's introduction to book 4 of In Samuhelem (ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119 [Turnhout, 1962],

p. 212, lines 1-22): "Tertio in beatum Samuhelem completo uolumine putabam me aliquamdiu re

parata per quietem meditandi uel scribendi uoluptate sic demum ad inchoationem quarti manum esse

missurum. Verum haec eadem mihi quies, si tarnen quies dicenda est inopinata mentis anxietas, pro lixior multo quam decreueram noua circumstantium rerum mutatione prouenit maxime discessu ab

batis mei reuerendissimi qui post longam monasterialis curae obseruantiam subitus Romam adire atque . . . [ibi] extremum senex halitum reddere disponendo non parua commissorum sibi ?nimos et eo

maiore quo improuisa conturbatione stupefecit. . . . Redeunte temporum statu tranquilliore redit et

mihi otium pariter ac delectatio mirabilia scripturae sacrae tota animae sollertis intentione scrutandi."

Ceolfrith's unexpected decision ("subitus") has implications for how we view his dedication page in

the Codex Amiatinus: see below, pp. 1126-27. 4 A good life of Bede still remains a desideratum. The best way to get a sense of the events of this

particular period is to reread the two primary sources, both available in translation: the anonymous

Life of Ceolfrith, in Clinton Albertson, Anglo-Saxon Saints and Heroes (New York, 1967), chaps. 19

40, pp. 257-71 (Latin in Charles Plummer, ed., Venerabilis Baedae opera hist?rica, 2 vols, in 1 [Ox

ford, 1896], 1:394-404); and Bede's Lives of the Abbots, in The Age of Bede, ed. D. H. Farmer

(Harmondsworth, Eng., 1983), chaps. 16-23, pp. 202-8 (Latin in Plummer, 1:380-87). On the pos

sibly complicated relationship between the two sources just mentioned see Ian Wood, The Most Holy Abbot Ceolfrid (Jarrow, Eng., 1995).

Speculum 80 (2005) 1087

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1088 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus

community's pleas begging Ceolfrith not to leave them were of no avail, and two days later he departed with a comitatus numbering close to eighty, and carrying numerous gifts, among which was a magnificent pandect or Bible-known to biblical scholars, art historians, and others as the Codex Amiatinus5-which he intended to present to St. Peter's in Rome. It was not the departure of the pandect with whose production, as we shall see, he had been involved but of his beloved abbot that brought on Bede's emotional crisis. But then still in his early forties, full of energy, it seems that Bede's crisis had ended well before news of Ceolfrith's death at Langres on 25 September reached Jarrow.6 Starting book 4, he was clearly overjoyed to find himself once again able to write: "The return of more peaceful times has also restored some tranquillity to me, as well as the delight (delectatio) of scrutinizing the wonders of Holy Scripture with all the powers of my questing mind."7 When we consider how historically impoverished we would be without his many works, we can be grateful that Bede constantly indulged his urge to write, his uoluptas scribendi.

Coming from an age, however, when works seldom carried their "publication" date, showing us in what year they were written or allowed to go into circulation,8 the bulk of Bede's production presents us with an initial challenge.9 Sometimes real detective work is needed before we can situate a work in its proper chrono logical slot, and lacking this slot we may fail to develop a full and accurate his torical perspective. A team effort by Bedan scholars might be a desirable first step to help establish a good chronology of Bede's works, but here I am concerned only with dating one particular work, his commentary on the Book of Ezra (In Ezram). Since this commentary betrays a real concern for the spiritual well-being of the church in Northumbria, fixing the correct date will help to establish at what periods of his life Bede entertained this concern, but dating the work proves to be of special importance for understanding one particular page of the gift pandect Ceolfrith took with him to Rome. This page contains an image well known to art historians; it is presented in most survey courses on early-medieval art and can be found reproduced in numerous publications,10 and likewise on some Internet

5 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1. For a full and meticulous description of

this famous manuscript see the recent Bibbie miniate della Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze, ed. Laura Alidori et al., Biblioteche e Archivi 12 (Florence, 2003), pp. 3-58. (The description of the

manuscript, by Lucia Castaldi and Simone Nencioni, with comments on the illuminations by Melania

Ceccanti, was completed, however, before the work on the initial quire, mentioned below at n. 55, was undertaken.)

6 There is no hint that Ceolfrith had already died in the passage quoted above in n. 3. 7 For the Latin, see above, n. 3. 8 See Paul Meyvaert, "Medieval Notions of Publication," Journal of Medieval Latin 12 (2002),

78-89. 9 In his autobiography (Historia ecclesiastica 5.24) Bede lists over thirty works, constituting some

seventy "books." 10 See especially the CD-ROM of the Codex Amiatinus, published by SISMEL in 2000, fol. 4r (Vr);

also these publications giving the image in color, with the verses over it: Kurt Weitzmann, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination (New York, 1977), plate 48; John Williams, ed., Imaging the

Early Medieval Bible (University Park, Pa., 1999), color plate X; and Enciclopedia dell'arte m?di?vale, 1 (Rome, 1991), p. 506.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1089 sites.1" It portrays a seated figure, identified in the literature as Ezra, who is shown writing in a book (Fig. 1).

It was a stimulating article by Scott DeGregorio in a recent issue of Speculum that prompted me to take a much closer look at the date we must assign to Bede's In Ezram. To begin with he has obliged me to review, revise, and correct some earlier statements I made about this commentary. I quote the passage where he takes me to task on several matters:

First, the date of the work. Until recently this was a nonissue, since in book 3 there is mention of another Bedan work, the De temporum ratione, completed in 725. Reason ably enough, M. L. W. Laistner and D. Hurst both accordingly proposed a terminus a quo of 725. However, Paul Meyvaert has recently questioned this dating, arguing that book 3, which not only cites the De temporum ratione but also deals strictly with Ne hemiah, is a later addition that alone postdates 725, with the work on Ezra in books 1 and 2 commencing much earlier, perhaps as early as 715. In support of these contentions

Meyvaert advances the following arguments: that Bede, in the preface to his Genesis commentary, indicates his desire to comment on Ezra, and in terms suggesting he did not as yet have the Nehemiah material in mind; that In Ezram includes no reference to De tabernaculo at the point where Bede specifically alludes to the tabernacle in book 2; and that Bede nowhere refers to Ezra as pontifex, except, Meyvaert argues, for a single use of the word "pontificali" in book 2, which he takes as evidence of an earlier redaction prior to the post-725 version that includes book 3 on Nehemiah. But such arguments may be doubted. Bede, as we have seen, does refer to Ezra as pontifex in the commentary, so the argument about successive revisions based on the supposed absence of the term is manifestly mistaken.12

Many decades of research have taught me that progress in solving problems often follows from valid criticisms that push one to return and do one's initial home work a bit more thoroughly. DeGregorio is right in saying that until recently the date of In Ezram was a nonissue because of Bede's phrase in book 3 ("De qua tota prophetae sententia plenissime prout potui disserere in temporum libro cura ui"), a phrase everyone accepted as grounds for placing the commentary between 725 (the date of De temporum ratione [DTR]) and 731 (the date of the Historia ecclesiastica, which lists the commentary among Bede's works).'3 I shared this common opinion, as can be seen from my article of 1995 on Bede's capitula lectionum where I wrote, "We know that Bede's commentary on Esdras was a

11 For example, in Google Images: http://www.florin.ms/cassiod.jpg. 12 Scott DeGregorio, "Bede's In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church,"

Speculum 79 (2004), 1-25, at p. 21. See likewise his comments in "

'Nostrorum socordiamtemporum': The Reforming Impulse of Bede's Later Exegesis," Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 115.

13 Plummer, Baedae opera hist?rica, l:cl: "This must be after 725 as it refers to the De Temporum

Ratione. ... It was already projected when Bede was writing the In Genesim"; M. L. W Laistner, A

Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1943), p. 39; Peter Hunter Blair, The World of Bede

(London, 1970), p. 199; Jones, CCSL 118A, p. viii; D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout, 1969), p. v;

George Hardin Brown, Bede the Venerable, Twayne's English Author Series 443 (Boston, 1987), p. 55; Richard Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in

Anglo-Saxon England 15 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), p. 121, n. 63 (citing Hurst).

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

%.DIC M ? . ;S HOS1Ilt %i.%L"I LNtVNI5

ISMAs DLN >t?mI Hoc mr-\&.\wt *orvs

'*

Fig. 1. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1, fol. 2r, formerly numbered 4r and Vr. (Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le AttivitA Culturali. t vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.)

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1091 late work, dating from between 725 and 731."14 It was my desire to reconcile this

with what I believed was sound evidence of an attempt to comment on Ezra at an earlier date-evidence resting on what Bede says to Acca in the preface of his commentary on Genesis-that had led me, a bit hastily, to theorize that books 1 and 2 of the Ezra commentary represented the earlier version, while book 3, on Nehemiah, was part of a revised version.15 DeGregorio had shown that, contrary to what I had stated, Bede continues to call Ezra pontifex throughout my supposed "revised version"-evidence again, I fear, of sloppy homework! Likewise had I paid closer attention to the list of capitula Bede placed at the head of his com mentary, I would have seen that it offered no ground for assuming Bede had commented on an earlier version of Ezra that omitted the section on Nehemiah. In other words, Bede's commentary on Ezra is all of a piece and should be accepted integrally as it stands, with no attempt to split it into chronologically different layers. But where does it fit chronologically within the Bedan corpus? We must begin by returning to that pivotal statement in book 3: "Concerning

this whole prophetic statement I have discoursed as fully as I was able in the book on time."516 It follows immediately on the short discussion of Daniel's "seventy prophetic weeks." By telling us we will find a much fuller treatment ("plenissime ") of this same topic in DTR, Bede is inviting us to compare what he says in both works-something, I discovered, no one had yet attempted. So let us see first how Bede handles the "seventy prophetic weeks" in the short section of his Ezra com mentary:

Incipiunt ergo hae hebdomades a uicesimo anno Artarxersis quando aedificandi Hieru salem licentiam dedit, quo tempore ut Iulius Africanus scribit regni Persarum centum et quindecim anni fuerant euoluti et totidem anni usque ad Alexandrum magnum quando Darium occidit imperfecti remanserant, captiuitatis autem Hierusalem centesimus octo gesimus et quintus erat annus, et perueniunt usque ad tempora dominicae passionis per quam hostiis et sacrificiis legalibus finis impositus est. Habent uero singulae hebdomades per septenos annos quadringentos et nonaginta secundum lunae cursum uidelicet ita dumtaxat ut anni singuli nouo et insolito more non amplius quam duodecim menses lunares habeant. Vnde consulte angelus septuaginta hebdomades non adnumeratas sed abbreuiatas super populum eius dicit qui sunt anni solares quadringenti septuaginta quinque.17

[These "weeks" therefore begin at the twentieth year of Artaxerses, when he gave per mission for Jerusalem to be (re)built-at which time, according to Julius Africanus, one hundred fifteen years of Persian rule had already elapsed, with an equal number still remaining until the time when Alexander the Great killed Darius. This was the one

14 Paul Meyvaert, "Bede's Capitula lectionum for the Old and New Testaments," Revue b?n?dictine

105 (1995), 348-80, at p. 364. See likewise Paul Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus, and the Codex

Amiatinus," Speculum 71 (1996), 827-83, at p. 881: "Although Bede's commentary on Ezra was

written several years after the image was painted ..." 15 Paul Meyvaert,

" 'In the Footsteps of the Fathers': The Date of Bede's Thirty Questions on the

Book of Kings to Nothelm," in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor ofR. A. Markus, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor, Mich.,

1999), pp. 280-86. 16 CCSL 119A, pp. 342-43, lines 155-56. 17 CCSL 119A, p. 342, lines 141-55.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1092 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus hundred and eighty-fifth year after the capture of Jerusalem, and they (the "weeks") reach up to the time of the Lord's Passion, which put an end to the victims and sacrifices of the (Old) Law. The individual weeks multiplied by seven amount to four hundred and ninety according to the moon's path, each year being made up of twelve lunar months. So it was advisedly that the angel referred to seventy not as "numbered" but as "abbreviated" covering his people, which is the equivalent of four hundred and seventy-five solar years].

In the preface of In Ezram Bede told Acca that Jerome's commentaries on the Prophets had been a help to him since in them it was shown how the events of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah could be interpreted in terms of Christ and the Church.18 Although in the above passage he refers only to Julius Africanus, the work he actually had in hand while writing was Jerome's commentary on Daniel, which has a long quotation from Africanus from which Bede made verbal bor rowings (shown in italics above). When we turn to Bede's treatment of the "seventy prophetic weeks" in DTR,

we find ourselves immediately on a very different and far more advanced level of scholarship. The Greek word hebdomada (week) means seven, Bede tells us, and after searching through Holy Scripture for uses of "seven" in connection with time, he concluded there were, all told, eight kinds of "weeks." He dealt with the first six in chapter 8 of DTR-which begins with the seven days of creation and ends with the fiftieth year (7 x 7 + 1) of Jubilee-and with the eighth week, the one that never returns since it ends in eternity, in chapter 10. The long chapter 9 (113 lines in CCSL) is taken up entirely with the seventh kind of week ("septima species hebdomadis"), namely, "the seventy prophetic weeks" from the Book of Daniel. When Gabriel appeared to the prophet, he foretold that from the "present" moment until Christ the Prince ("usque ad Christum ducem") seventy weeks would elapse (Dan. 9.24-25). We need not concern ourselves with all the details of Bede's long exposition-of which we find no echo at all in the commentary on Ezra-but simply with how he handles what lies between the point of departure, the twentieth year of King Artaxerses, and the point of arrival, the year of Christ's Passion. He makes it clear that Eusebius, not Julius Africanus, is the authority he is following: Christ died in the seventeenth or eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,19 and the intervening period, between the utterance of the prophecy and its fulfill ment, comprised 116 years of Persian rule, 300 years of Macedonian dominion, and 59 years of Roman rule. Julius Africanus is brought in only at the end and in a way that shows Bede is distancing himself from him and siding with Eusebius:

Calculate therefore seventy "weeks" from this time until Christ the Prince, that is, 490 years of twelve lunar months, which make 475 solar years. Now the Persians ruled 116

18 CCSL 119A, p. 237, lines 17-21: "In quo nimirum opere m?ximo nobis adiumento fuit praefatus ecclesiae magister Hieronimus in explanatione prophetarum qui eadem quae Ezras et Neemias facta scribunt ipsi sub figura Christi et ecclesiae fienda praedixerant." This remains largely unexplored territory, that is, working through Jerome's commentaries on the prophets and finding the places that

suggest links to Bede's commentary. Very few are noted by David Hurst in his edition: see pp. 413 and 415.

19 DTR 66 (ed. Theodor Mommsen, repr. in CCSL 123B [Turnhout, 1977], p. 496, lines 1007-8): "Anno XVIII imperii Tyberii, dominus sua passione mundum redemit."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1093 years from the aforementioned twentieth year of King Artaxerses until the death of Darius. After that the Macedonians ruled 300 years until the downfall of Cleopatra. Then the Romans held the monarchy 59 years until the seventeenth year of Tiberius Caesar.... It should be noted that Uulius] Africanus thinks that the sequence of weeks, which we, following Eusebius' chronicle, have brought down to the seventeenth or eigh teenth year of Tiberius Caesar-the year in which we believe the Lord suffered-is complete in the fifteenth year of that emperor. Beginning where we do, he [Africanus] thinks that by the 15th year of the said emperor-the year in which he thinks that Christ suffered-there had been 115 years of Persian rule, 300 of Macedonian rule, and 60 of Roman. The careful reader should choose [the version] he thinks preferable.20

This last sentence echoes a comment of Jerome's in the commentary on Daniel but betrays a greater willingness to show whom Bede thinks got the figures right.21 Compared with chapter 9 of DTR, the brief treatment (13 lines) in the Ezra com mentary, with Africanus cited as sole authority, gives every appearance of some thing that is still much in embryonic form. Nothing suggests DTR is now a work of the past, quite the contrary. Other points are also worth noting: In Ezram borrowing from Jerome-cites the Vetus Latina form of Dan. 9.25 ("Ab exitu sermonis ut respondeatur et aedificetur Hierusalem" ),22 while in DTR 9, as is his custom in later works, Bede cites the Vulgate version ("Scito ergo . .. et animad uerte: ab exitu sermonis ut iterum aedificetur Hierusalem"). Faced with this solid evidence we must give the pivotal phrase cited above a different interpretation. Several years after completing In Ezram Bede composed his DTR, at which point he added a marginal note in his commentary on Ezra directing the reader to the fuller treatment in chapter 9 of the work on time. With further copies of In Ezram this marginal note became absorbed into the main text. DTR, therefore, is not the

20 I quote here from the translation of Faith Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, Translated Texts

for Historians 29 (Liverpool, 1999), pp. 37-39. See CCSL 123B, pp. 306-7, lines 37-45, and pp. 309

10, lines 105-13: "Ab hoc tempore usque ad Christum ducem hebd?madas -lxx* computa, hoc est

annos duodenorum mensium lunarium quadringentos nonaginta, qui sunt anni solares quadringenti lxxv. Siquidem Persae a praefato uicesimo anno regis Artarxerxis usque ad mortem Darii regnauerunt

annis -cxvi-. Exhinc Macedones usque ad interitum Cleopatrae annis trecentis. Inde Romani usque ad

septimum decimum Tiberii caesaris annum monarchiam tenuerunt annis -lviiii-. . . . Sciendum sane

quod Africanus hebdomadarum cursum, quern nos in septimum decimum uel octauum decimum Ti

berii caesaris annum quo dominum passum credimus iuxta Chronica Eusebii perduximus, ab eodem

quo nos incipiens exordio quinto d?cimo eiusdem imperatoris anno quo eum passum credit putat esse

completum, ponens annos regni Persarum -cxv, Macedonum -ccc-, Romanorum -lx-. Sed diligens lector quod magis sequendum putauerit eligat."

21 Ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 75A (Turnhout, 1964), p. 865, lines 138-43: "Scio de hac quaestione ab

eruditissimis uiris uarie disputatum et unumquemque pro captu ingenii sui dixisse quod senserat; quia

igitur periculosum est de magistrorum ecclesiae iudicare sententiis et alterum praeferri alteri, dicam

quid unusquisque senserit, lectoris arbitrio derelinquens cuius expositionem sequi debeat." To Bede

this may have seemed like a challenge, since on matters of chronology he was quite willing to make

up his own mind and decide who was right. The world chronicle that forms part of chapter 66 of

DTR was almost certainly originally a separate entity compiled over many years and later integrated into the work on time. A detailed analysis would help to demonstrate this point. The entry for the

year 3529 (see CCSL 123B, p. 486, n. 170), with its reference to Africanus and the 115 years of Persian

rule, borrowed from Jerome's chronicle and his commentary on Daniel, almost certainly predates the

composition of chapter 9 of DTR. 22 As can be verified by consulting the Brepols Vetus Latina Database for Dan. 9.25.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1094 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus

terminus a quo but rather the terminus ante quem for dating the commentary on Ezra, and the problem of the actual date of this commentary remains wide open.

There is another work that pushes us toward an earlier date. As noted above, Bede told Acca that he had spent some time reading Jerome's commentaries on the Prophets. When studying his capitula lectionum, the "chapter headings" he prepared for so many biblical books, I drew attention to an item found in the M text, but not the C text, of the Historia ecclesiastica: "In Isaiam, Danihelem, XII prophetas et partem Hieremiae distinctiones capitulorum ex tractatu beati Hi eronimi excerptas" (Drawing on Jerome's treatises I prepared chapter headings for Isaias, Daniel, the Twelve Prophets, and parts of Jeremiah).23 This suggests that these particular capitula-which I thought represented an early work that Bede did not consider deserved mention in the final version of the Historia eccle siastica-can probably be assigned to the time when Bede was reading Jerome on the Prophets in connection with his commentary on Ezra. As I pointed out in my article, these chapter headings based on Jerome have, nevertheless, survived in Douai MS 5 and in the famous Valenciennes Bible.24

It is worth remembering that the date 725 assigned to DTR reflects statements made in three quite late chapters (49, 52, and 54) of the treatise, where Bede gives the "present year" as 725.25 It seems very likely that he had already been working on this treatise for some time, possibly a year or more, before reaching those chapters. If we want, however, to further narrow the dates for the Ezra commen tary, we must turn elsewhere. The key text is the dedicatory letter to Acca of Bede's commentary on Genesis. Toward the end of this letter he makes the following statement, whose main components should be noticed:

[1] Perduxique opus usque dum eiectus Adam de paradiso uoluptatis exilium uitae tem poralis intrauit [Gen. 3.24]. [2] Aliqua etiam de sequentibus sacrae historiae, si Deus uoluerit auxilio uestrae intercessionis comitante, scripturus, [3] dum primo librum sancti Esrae prophetae ac sacerdotis, in quo Christi et ecclesiae sacramenta sub figura, solutae longae captiuitatis, restaurati templi, reaedificatae ciuitatis, reductorum in Hierosoli

mam uasorum quae abducta, rescriptae legis Dei quae incensa fuerat, castigati ab uxo ribus alienigenis populi, et uno corde atque anima in Dei seruitium conuersi, ut propheta simul et historicus conscripsit, parum perscrutatus fuero, et aliqua ex his quae comme

moraui sacramentis apertiora studiosis, Deo fauente, reddidero.26

[(1) I have brought this work to the point where Adam is banished from the paradise of delights and enters into the exile of temporal life (Gen. 3.24), and (2) I intend, with God's help and your encouragement, to take up again (scripturus) the thread of this sacred history (of Genesis). (3) But I would first (dum primo) like to discourse somewhat

23 Meyvaert, "Bede's Capitula lectionum," p. 348. On pp. 364-65 I referred to the sixty-seven

capitula for Ezra found in the Bible of Grenoble, stating that I would be loath to deny their Bedan

authorship, although at the time I could establish no clear links with Bede. A reexamination of these

particular capitula leaves me more seriously in doubt that they are connected with Bede. 24 See Meyvaert, "Bede's Capitula lectionum," pp. 361-62. 25 CCSL 123B, p. 435, line 4: "in praesenti uerbi gratia -dccxxv"; p. 441, lines 3-4: "utputa in

praesenti octaua indictione dccxxv"; p. 443, line 6: "sume annos domini -dccxxv." 26 CCSL 118A, p. 2, lines 33-45. H. Gehle, Disputatio historico-theologica de Bedae Venerabais,

presbiteri Anglo-Saxonis, vita et scriptis (Leiden, 1838), p. 103, considered Bede's extended comment

to Acca an indication that when he wrote the Genesis preface he had already begun to work on Ezra.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1095 on the book of the holy prophet and priest Ezra-a book he wrote both as prophet and as historian-in which the sacraments of Christ and the Church are treated under the figures of the ending of a long captivity, the restoration of the Temple, the rebuilding of the City, the bringing to Jerusalem of the sacred vessels that had been carried off, the rewriting of God's law that had been burned, the chastisement of the people for taking foreign wives, and their conversion, with a single heart and soul to God's service. My desire is to explain the sacraments I have just briefly mentioned in a fuller way for the benefit of studious readers.]

Bede shows, therefore, that at a quite early stage of his career he had familiarized himself considerably with the contents of Ezra. It should be noted that in the above passage he says two things: he is interrupting work on Genesis at chapter 3.24 in order first ("dum primo") to take up Ezra; but once Ezra is finished, he may return and continue with the Genesis story ("aliqua de sequentibus . .. scripturus"). Since he did continue with Genesis, down to verse 10 of chapter 21, it seems that Bede himself is showing us where the Ezra commentary must be lodged, namely, in the interval between the two stages of the work on Genesis. Stage 1, ending with the expulsion of Adam from Paradise, consisted of two "booklets" ("duobus in libellis distinxi") together with his preface to Acca.27 In stage 2 Bede combined these libelli into a single book, which became book 1 of the four-book Genesis com

mentary we have today. But although Bede added more material during stage 2, he did not bother to rewrite his initial preface to Acca. A discrepancy, therefore, remains between what this preface tells us and the full contents of the four-book commentary, which, as Bede himself states in his autobiographical list, reached "ad natiuitatem Isaac et eiectionem Ismahelis" (Gen. 21.10).28 Can we assign dates to stages 1 and 2 of the Genesis commentary? Since Acca

became bishop in 709, stage 1 of Genesis postdates that year-its contents, how ever, suggest a very early work, so let us say around 709-1 1.29 Embedded in stage 2 is an interesting piece of chronological information30 that Charles Plummer noted in his edition of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica:

In the course of the work [commenting on Gen. 8.15-18] Bede says: "Si enim hodierna die, uerbi gratia, per calendas Apriles esset luna septima decima." . .. In his chronolog ical works Bede takes his examples from the actual year in which he is writing.... It is therefore probable that he is doing the same here; if so, this criterion would fix it to the

27 Charles Jones, in the introduction to his edition (CCSL 118A, pp. vii-viii), distinguished the two libelli as la and lb and conjectured that la might antedate Acca's appointment as bishop in 709 since "the statements in la conform with Bede's didactic interests as seen in De Temporibus, De Natura Rerum, and the Ep?stola ad Pleguinam, all composed before the year 708." lb gives the impression of

something hastily cobbled together on the basis of Augustine's De Genesi ad litteram. Perhaps Bede was anxious to send something to Acca soon after he had become bishop. This would provide a quite early date for Bede's stage 1 on Genesis; whatever date we give, stage 1 provides us with a terminus a quo for Bede's tackling Ezra.

28 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5.24, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 566.

29 See the comments above in n. 27. 30 See CCSL 118A, pp. 126-27, lines 1929-33: "Si enim hodierna die, uerbi gratia, per kalendas

Aprilis esset luna s?ptima decima, sequente anno pridie kalendarum earundem uicesima s?ptima esset luna uentura, discursis ex ordine diebus trecentis sexaginta quinqu?, quibus annus solis expletur."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1096 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus year 720.... The calculation of the year from the criteria was made for me by my friend Mr. T. A. Archer, the historian of the Crusades.3"

Not being an expert on computus, I wanted to feel sure that Archer's reasoning was sound, and so appealed to my friend Faith Wallis-whose excellent English translation of DTR never leaves my side-to comment on Bede's statement. I quote the reply she kindly sent me:

Bede's text states that "If for example today on (n.b. not before but on) the kalends of April, the moon is 17 days old, next year on the day before the kalends, it will be 27 days old." The lunar year is 354 days long; therefore the age of the moon next year on the same date will be 11 days more than its age this year on that date: in this case 1 April in year 1 is luna 17, so 1 April in year 2 should be luna 28. In 720, Easter fell on 31 March, luna 16; therefore 1 April was luna 17. The following year was year 19 of the cycle; the embolismic month was inserted on 5 March, and therefore the age of the

Moon on 31 March was indeed 27, and 1 April was luna 28, i.e. 17 + 1. Easter in 721 fell on 20 April, luna 17, which fits. As far as I can tell, these criteria will not be found in any other year within Bede's lifetime. Now whether this means that Bede was indeed

writing In Genesim in 720 is another matter. However, notice that 31 March in 720 is Holy Saturday, and Bede makes much of the Paschal symbolism of Noah's Ark.

In other words, one cannot lightly dismiss 720 as the year when Bede was involved with stage 2, commenting on chapter 8 of Genesis.32 His action-returning once again to Genesis-therefore implies that the Ezra commentary must be situated somewhere between c. 711 and 720. Accepting 725 as the necessary terminus a quo for the Ezra commentary, DeGregorio regards Bede's statements to Acca as expressing no more than "an apparent declaration of intention," which the "late" date of the Ezra commentary shows did not get fulfilled at that time.33 Since we now know that the pivotal statement in book 3 cannot be used as proof of the lateness of the commentary, we must allow Bede's own words and actions to retain their full force. When he sent his two libelli to Acca, thus interrupting his work on Genesis, his immediate and urgent task was to tackle Ezra. By later resuming work on Genesis, Bede demonstrates this task had been accomplished: the com mentary on Ezra was in existence.

The dates for In Ezram can be narrowed yet further. The commentary on 1 Samuel is securely lodged in 715-17, because we know that book 3 (ending with chapter 22 of 1 Sam.) had recently been finished when on Tuesday, 2 June 716, Ceolfrith suddenly announced, to the great distress of his communities, that he intended to leave Northumbria that very day to journey to Rome and end his days there.34 The period 711 to 715 thus suggests itself as the most likely time for the

31 Plummer, Baedae opera hist?rica, l:cxlix.

32 Since Jones in the introduction to his edition of Bede's In Genesim (CCSL 118A, pp. vii-x) commits himself firmly to a post-725 date for In Ezram, and to positioning stage 2 of In Genesim

after this commentary, he is obliged to deny that the date 720 (found in stage 2 of In Genesim) has

any relevance for dating the work. I find that the basic misdating of In Ezram has only brought confusion into the attempts to put Bede's works in chronological sequence.

33 DeGregorio, "Bede's In Ezram," p. 21: Bede "could, for instance, have become preoccupied with

other things." 34 See the passage from Bede cited above in n. 3.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1097

composition of the commentary on Ezra-predating both De tabernaculo (c. 721 25?) and De templo (729-31) by several years.35

I had sometimes wondered, when reading his preface to Acca, what was hap pening at this particular juncture of Bede's life, urging him to rather suddenly abandon Genesis in favor of Ezra. Rereading some sections of Richard Marsden's excellent study of the text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, I found he was opening up an interesting possibility by suggesting that the years imme diately preceding Ceolfrith's departure corresponded to the time when the Codex Amiatinus was being prepared as a gift destined for St. Peter's in Rome.36 I decided to undertake a careful rereading of the Ezra commentary, basically to see how Bede carried out the program, outlined in his Genesis preface to Acca, of inter preting Ezra in terms of "Christ and the sacraments of the Church." One can follow his procedure as verse after verse is analyzed in the allegorical mode. In book 2, however, on reaching verse 6 of chapter 7, where Ezra is referred to as "scriba ... velox in lege Moysi," Bede proceeds to give a straightforward his torical explanation of the meaning of this phrase, relying not on the biblical text but on traditions about Ezra current in England during his day ("communis maiorum fama"):

Scriba autem uelox in lege Moysi appellatur Ezras eo quod legem quae erat consumpta reficeret non solum legem sed etiam ut communis maiorum fama est omnem sacrae scripturae seriem quae pariter igni consumpta est prout sibi uidebatur legentibus sufficere rescripsit.... [Bede goes on to mention many scriptural books considered lost which, ut communis maiorum fama est, Ezra was also reputed to have rewritten.] Ferunt quoque Hebraei neque apud eos de hac re ulla dubitatio est quod idem Ezras leuiores litteras excogitauerit sub nominibus earum quas eatenus habuerant quibus uelocissime tantam librorum copiam quae erat consumpta reficeret. Vnde non solum scriba uerum etiam scriba uelox cognominatur.37

This is vintage Bede, fascinated by what human skills can achieve, like devising a form of shorthand to allow more text to be written in a shorter time. It would be surprising if among the numerous manuscripts Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith brought back from Italy a few did not exhibit Tironian notations, which Bede, although probably unable to read what they said, would have guessed to be some form of shorthand script. I know of no other writer except Bede who, encountering the word "tornatilis" in the Canticle of Canticles, would stop to expatiate for a few lines on the marvels and manual skill involved in lathework ("tornatura"),

35 For comments on the dates of these works see Laistner, Bede Manuscripts (above, n. 13), pp. 70 and 75.

36 Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament (above, n. 13), esp. pp. 98-106, "The Dating and

Purpose of the Pandects." 37 CCSL 119A, p. 307, line 791-p. 308, line 818: "Ezra is called rapid scribe in the law of Moses

because he rewrote the Law that had been burned, and not only the Law, but, as the common report of our elders has it, [he rewrote] the whole part of Scripture that had likewise been burned, to the extent he considered would be beneficial to readers_The Hebrews also maintain, and have no

doubt about this matter, that Ezra, using the names they had previously had, invented a more expe ditious system of graphemes, that enabled him most rapidly to rewrite the great store of books that had been burned. Hence he is called not only scribe but rapid scribe."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1098 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus

an art he had seen performed with his own eyes.38 The churches at Monkwear mouth and Jarrow still have baluster shafts-those at Monkwearmouth exhibit no fewer than sixteen different types of design-that were turned out on a lathe during Bede's lifetime.39

Immediately before the above passage about Ezra's skills as a "fast" writer Bede has a summary that recalls the one in his Genesis preface to Acca40 and that deserves to be quoted here:

Huc usque reditus de Babylone in Hierusalem populi qui captiuatus fuerat reductio uasorum quae abducta restauratio ac dedicatio templi quod incensum celebratio sollem nitatum et decantatio canticorum domini quae in terra aliena non poterant sub ducibus Zorobabel et losue describitur. Quae cuncta unam eandemque cognitionem humanae in Christo saluationis continent cum uel hi qui cum peccato primae praeuaricationis in mundum uenerant sacramentis fidei purificati saluantur uel hi qui peccando fidem ac ceptam corruperant paenitendo resipiscunt et utrique per unum eundemque saluatorem uerum regem ac sacerdotem quasi pascha felicissimum celebrantes de hoc mundo ad patrem de morte transeunt ad uitam. Verum quia templo incenso atque urbe Hierosolima subuersa scripturae quoque sanctae quae ibidem seruabantur simul fuerant hostili clade perustae et has miserante domino atque ad suum populum reuerso reparari oportebat ut quia aedificia eruta restaurauerant haberent unde ipsi ammoniti restaurari intus in fide et dilectione sui creatoris discerent.41

The italicized phrases in the above two passages, so close to each other, could not fail to bring before my eyes the famous image of Ezra in the Codex Amiatinus, together with the couplet that stands immediately above this image (see Fig. 1):

Codicibus sacris hostili clade perustis Esdra Deo fervens hoc reparauit opus.42

38 See Paul Meyvaert, "Bede the Scholar," in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner (London, 1976), p. 47 and p. 64, n. 30.

39 See Rosemary Cramp, The British Academy Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture in England, 111 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 23-27, and 1/2 (Oxford, 1984), plates 103-6 (nos. 551-75), plates 112-14

(nos. 612-15), and plates 119-21 (nos. 627-60). 40 See the text and translation above, pp. 1094-95. 41 CCSL 119A, p. 306, line 760-p. 307, line 778: "So far it has been about what occurred under

the princes Zorobabel and Joshua: the return of a captive people from Babylon to Jerusalem, the return

of the vases that had been carried off, the restoration and dedication of the Temple that had been

burned, the celebration of solemnities and the chanting of the Lord's canticles, a thing forbidden in

the foreign land. All these happenings refer to the human salvation that is found in Christ, when those

born into the world with the stain of original sin are saved through being purified by the sacraments

of faith, or those whose faith has become damaged through sinning become restored through penance, and both through one and the same Savior, true king and priest, as it were celebrating the happiest of

Easters, pass from this world to the Father and from death to life. Because through the burning of the

Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem the Holy Scriptures that were kept there had been destroyed

by the hostile forces, they, through the Lord's mercy, needed to be restored to his people who after

returning and restoring the ruined buildings would possess that [Scripture] through which they could be restored inwardly in the faith and love of their creator."

42 "The sacred books having been consumed by fire through enemy aggression, Ezra, zealous for

God, restored this work" (trans. Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament, p. 120, n. 58). See also

Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," p. 877. In addition to the verbal links pointed out above, the phrase "Esdra Deo feruens" has a Bedan ring. Bede had a great fondness for ferueo in all its forms. The

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1099 When preparing my Speculum article of 1996, a time when I still accepted Bede's In Ezram as a late work, written long after Ceolfrith had departed with the pan dect for Rome, I had suggested that Bede probably authored the couplet, which seemed to reflect his own vocabulary, and, likewise, I had wondered whether his powerful eulogy of Ezra as figure of Christ in the commentary had played a part in helping to shape the Amiatinus image.43 But having now a solid basis for re dating In Ezram to the crucial period when Amiatinus was being prepared, I realize that far more needs to be said. In the first place we should note that the close verbal parallelism that exists between the verses and the commentary im mediately raises an interesting question: can we determine which came first, the verses above the image or the passage in the commentary? I like submitting this type of problem to my friend Paul Dutton and received from him the following answer:

After looking at the materials you sent me I would be tempted to think that the Codex Amiatinus verses follow from the In Ezram and not the reverse. The reason is the simple one of poetic economy: what he explains at length in the In Ezram, where the destruction referred to includes both buildings and scripture, is reduced to the immediate and specific need of commenting on the illumination in the Amiatinus. The Amiatinus verse, more over, is itself the more radical departure since while the Vulgate emphasizes the resto ration of the buildings in Ezra 9:9, the repair of the books seems merely implicit in Ezra's status as scribe. Can Bede get to the compactness of the Amiatinus verses without going through the In Ezram explication first? I rather doubt it. As readers it is difficult for us to do so: hence I think In Ezram first, Amiatinus verse-label second as a product of the thinking that first went into the In Ezram.44

I find this reasoning persuasive and see that it adds yet another element for dating In Ezram, namely, before 716, when Amiatinus, with the Ezra couplet, left North umbria for Rome. Redating In Ezram to the years when the pandect was being prepared as a gift suddenly begins to make much sense, and it has radically altered my perception of Bede's involvement with this project and likewise prompted some new ideas about the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus.45

Let me first summarize the situation as we know it from the sources. Ceolfrith, who accompanied Benedict Biscop on the latter's last journey to Rome in 679/80,

CLCLT gives eighty-four instances throughout his works, with six occurring in the commentary on

Ezra, including "doctores sancti immo omnes qui zelo dei feruent" (CCSL 119A, p. 344, lines 201

2). On the forms Esdra/Ezra?both of which occur as headings in Amiatinus?see Marsden, The Text

of the Old Testament, p. 120, n. 59. 43 Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," p. 881.

44 Paul Edward Dutton, professor of history and humanities at Simon Fraser University, in an e-mail to me of 11 April 2004.

45 My present approach to the first quire of Amiatinus, based on redating Bede's In Ezram and

reevaluating the connection with the Codex Grandior, differs in some fundamental ways from the

positions I took in my Speculum article of 1996. This makes it difficult for me to pass comments on

articles that have recently appeared, like that of Celia Chazelle, "Ceolfrid's Gift to St Peter: The First

Quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the Evidence of Its Roman Destination," Early Medieval Europe 12 (2003), 129-57, which frequently refers, either in agreement or disagreement, to what I wrote in 1996. For this reason I prefer not to overload my notes with long explanatory comments. I will simply let my present new approach stand as it is and see what comments it provokes in future discussions.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1100 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus there acquired a large single-volume complete Latin Bible, called a pandect, with the pre-Jerome antiqua translatio. Pandects of the Bible were rare at this period, and one can doubt that Ceolfrith had ever seen one before. It gave him the idea, on becoming abbot of the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow in 688/89, of having pandects made, one for each monastery, that gathered together between their two covers all the biblical texts recognized to be Jerome's translations from the Hebrew (the Hebraica ueritas), our Vulgate text. These Vulgate pandects did not serve a liturgical purpose but were located in the church "so that it would be easy for anyone who wished to read any chapter of either testament to easily find what he wanted."46

The large pandect with the antiqua translatio Ceolfrith had acquired was in fact Cassiodorus's Codex Grandior, although no one at Wearmouth-Jarrow could become aware of this without possessing a copy of the Institutions. I labored this point in my 1996 Speculum article but feel the need to reiterate it here, since it is fundamental to my argument about Bede's involvement with the Codex Amia tinus. Studying Bede over the decades I have remained constantly on the alert for any hint that Bede knew the Institutions, but none has ever turned up. I have even spent hours with Cassiodorus's treatise in hand, specifically hunting for traces of this or that in the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts CD-ROM of Bede, and each time have had to conclude with Carlotta Dionisotti that "it was a mean trick of fate to deprive Bede of Cassiodorus' Institutions, in which he would have found so many of his interests warmly and sympathetically treated."48 Had Bede possessed the Institutions, he would have blazoned much of the information they contained in so many places throughout his works. At a given point in his career before De tabernaculo (c. 721-25?) and De templo (729-31) but after Thirty

46 See the passage from the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith quoted in Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," p. 836, n. 47. Ceolfrith seems also to have been inspired by what he read in the Verba seniorum. Pandects were not unknown to early Egyptian monasticism: see Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," p. 836, n. 47. The Codex Grandior served as the model for Ceolfrith's new pandects probably as

regards size (see below at n. 92) and possibly also as regards script. It is tantalizing not to have a

specimen of the script that Cassiodorus (in c. 14) can refer to as "in c?dice grandiore littera clariore

conscripta." With no other full Bible available, it seems likewise that, as regards the books of the Old

Testament, Ceolfrith decided to keep the general order of the Grandior. To see this one needs only to

compare the order of Amiatinus with that of the antiqua translatio division in c. 14. There are slight variations among the sapiential books and the minor prophets, but the general order from Genesis to

Maccabees remains the same. 47 See Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 827-31. 48 Carlotta Dionisotti, "On Bede, Grammar, and Greek," Revue b?n?dictine 92 (1982), 129. Michael

M. Gorman in his recent article "The Codex Amiatinus: A Guide to the Legends and the Bibliography," Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 44 (2003), 869-71, reprints parallel passages from Pierre Courcelle's Les lettres grecques en occident de Macrobe ? Cassiodore (Paris, 1948) with the comment that "Courcelle's

argument seems to have been overlooked in recent decades." A careful reading of my 1996 Speculum article would have brought him to p. 828 where I wrote, "Pierre Courcelle believed he could detect

parallels between Cassiodorus's comments on Genesis in the Institutiones and Bede's preface to his own commentary on Genesis, but a close comparison of these texts fails to reveal any verbal depen dency?we are dealing with a simple case of overlap: Cassiodorus lists the patristic works on Genesis at his disposal, and Bede does the same. Bede's commentary on Genesis, moreover, shows that he knew

and used the works he lists in his preface, so there is no need to assume that Casssiodorus's list, rather

than the works themselves, served as Bede's source."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1101

Questions on the Book of Kings (c. 715)-Bede came to believe that his monastery owned a codex that had formerly belonged to Cassiodorus; this occurred when he became better acquainted with Cassiodorus's comments on Psalms 86 and 97, where he found the author asserting that he had caused images of the Tabernacle and Temple to be painted and placed in his "greater pandect" ("pandectae nostrae grandioris"), a description that certainly matched the large pandect Ceolfrith had brought from Rome. Without the Institutions, however, Bede lacked the evidence needed to show that this pandect had not only been owned by, but also produced for, Cassiodorus, who likewise placed the three divisions of Scripture, according to Jerome, Augustine, and the antiqua translatio, in this codex.49

Since Ceolfrith's main purpose in ordering new pandects for his two churches was to make the whole of Jerome's Vulgate text available to his communities, one can see no reason why he would have ordered the folios with the above items that stood in the Grandior-images of the Tabernacle, Temple, and the three divisions of Scripture-to be copied into his new pandects.50 Those wishing to consult these images knew where the old pandect was kept, and, as we know from his Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings to Nothelm, and from a passage in the commen tary on Ezra, Bede spent time studying the "pictura ab antiquis formata" (the image made long ago) of the Temple-an obvious allusion to the Grandior but dating from the period before he was aware of its connection with Cassiodorus.51 When the order was given to prepare a third Vulgate pandect, the situation changed. From the high quality of the script in Amiatinus-compared with that of the leaves that survive from the earlier pandects-it has been possible to suggest that from the outset Ceolfrith had in mind a rather splendid volume that he would eventually use as a gift.52 I think it is possible to suggest that one of the sister pandects may have served as the exemplar for Amiatinus, and that, as he went along, the scribe tried to improve on the division of the phrases per cola and commata.53 The writing, from the first word of Jerome's preface on fol. 9r to the last word of the Apocalypse on fol. 1029v, even though done, as David Wright argues, in nine separate sections by seven scribes, must have taken a considerable time.S4 But once Ceolfrith's true intention of using this pandect as a presentation

49 Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 832-35.

50 In "Bede, Cassiodorus" (see p. 875) I assumed, erroneously I now think, that all the images from the Codex Grandior had been transferred to the new pandects. See also Marsden, The Text of the Old

Testament, p. 102, n. 124, and p. 105. 51

Bede, In Ezram 2 (CCSL 119A, p. 333, lines 1804-11), describes the several buildings that sur

rounded the Temple on all four sides, stating that their inner walls consisted of columns whereas their outer walls were solid ("interiores parietes iuxta terram in columnis factos exteriores solidos"). This he knew not from Scripture but from having studied Cassiodorus's image of the Temple in the Codex Grandior. When he later gave this same information in his De templo, he specifically showed that he owed it to Cassiodorus's image: see the section on the Temple image in Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 853-60, esp. at p. 855, with notes.

52 See especially the comments of Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament, pp. 100-103. 531 introduce this here only as a suggestion. I have made some soundings, but it would require a

full list, presenting comparisons in double columns, to provide the basis for sound conclusions. 54 David H. Wright, "Some Notes on English Uncial," Traditio 17 (1961), 443: "The relationship

of texts to gatherings of vellum makes it clear that the volume was written in nine separate sections,

presumably to allow several scribes to work simultaneously.... Various scribal idiosyncrasies, espe

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1102 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus gift was known, the question of how to further enhance its appearance would naturally have arisen. Amiatinus shows there was a decision to borrow elements from the Codex Grandior for constructing an initial impressive first quire. Only recently, however, has it emerged more clearly that some debate must have oc curred about the arrangement of the leaves within this quire, resulting in last minute changes, due very probably to Bede's intervention.

To get a perspective on what occurred we must turn to an important recent article by Sabina Magrini, of the Laurenziana.5 When Amiatinus was unbound in 1999 to facilitate the production of the CD-ROM containing images of all the pages, the leaves of the first quire were taken to Rome to be studied by the expert technicians at the Istituto Centrale per la Patologia del Libro (I.C.P.L.). As Magrini reports, through a very careful study of all the offsets, that is, traces that one page had left on its neighbor, it was possible to determine the order in which the leaves of the first quire must have remained for many centuries-and this is the order that was adopted in the present rebinding, which I label as stage 2 in Fig. 2.56 I strongly believe in the value of this kind of solid scientific evidence and accept stage 2 as the order the leaves were in when Amiatinus was taken from North umbria for Rome in June of 716. The present fol. 8v, with its five circles enclosing texts about the Pentateuch, is where one would expect it to be, namely, right at the opening of the Pentateuch. I will return later with some comments about stage 2, but here I would like to concentrate on the initial planning for this first quire, namely, stage 1 (Fig. 3).

The codex was to open with a quire consisting of three double folia (folios 1 and 6, 2 and 5, and 3 and 4 being conjugates), all containing material borrowed, in one way or another, from the Codex Grandior (Fig. 4). The first folio was left blank for an eventual dedication text, and its conjugate recto (fol. 6) assigned the division of Scripture according to Augustine. The image of Ezra was planned for the recto of fol. 2, with the division of Scripture according to Jerome to appear on the recto of its conjugate (fol. 5). The central bifolium would have fol. 3 painted purple on both sides, with the preface from the Codex Grandior on its recto and the contents of Amiatinus on its verso, while its conjugate, fol. 4, would contain the antiqua translatio division of Scripture on its recto.57

daily in the hierarchy of scripts, have led me to the conclusion that two of the men each wrote two

sections, leaving us with seven scribes, no one of whom, so far as I can tell, appears active" in the other leaves that survive from the sister pandects.

55 Sabina Magrini, "

'Per difetto del legatore . . .': Storia delle rilegature della Bibbia Amiatina in

Laurenziana," Quinio 3 (2001), 137-67. The article that follows on pp. 169-79, "Non-destructive

Analysis of the Bibbia Amiatina by XRF, PIXE-a and Raman," states the conclusion reached by the technicians: "it has been possible to hypothesize an order for the sheets, even if it is impossible to

establish whether or not this sequence truly represents the original one, or simply that which the sheets have assumed for most of the document's lifetime" (p. 169).

56 This corresponds to Magrini, p. 165 (schema 3). The I.C.P.L. experts consider this as "la sequenza nella quale le carte hanno trascorso la maggior parte del tempo," although as Magrini notes, "anche se non necessariamente quella originaria" (p. 160).

57 The I.C.P.L. technicians found no physical evidence against the supposition that fols. 3 (purple) and 4 had once been conjugate leaves: see Magrini, "Storia delle rilegature," p. 162, n. 116, "Nulla osta tuttavia, da un punto di vista strutturale, alla loro appartenenza al medesimo bifolio." Magrini, moreover (p. 162 and n. 114), rightly notes that one would normally expect a "noble" purple page to act as the opening page of a work.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1103 This first quire was to be followed by a single bifolium whose inner surfaces

would contain the image of the Tabernacle (stage 1 ).58 One element of the Codex Grandior, namely, the image of the Temple, was not included in the planning. In my Speculum article of 1996, dealing with this image about which Bede has left us a quite detailed description, I suggested some reasons why it might have been excluded from the Codex Amiatinus.59 Everything present in the Tabernacle image was vouched for by Holy Scripture and could therefore be considered replete with allegorical and spiritual meaning. Cassiodorus's image of the Temple, however, drew less on the biblical text and the objects mentioned there (lavers, altars, tables, etc.) than on information coming from outside sources about the structure of three buildings that surrounded the Temple on all sides. The spiritual content of this image, therefore, did not emerge sufficiently to deserve inclusion in the gift pan dect.60

The order of the divisions of Scripture, as first planned for Amiatinus, followed that of the Codex Grandior. In his Institutions Cassiodorus placed Jerome first (c. 12), followed by Augustine (c. 13) and the antiqua translatio division (c. 14). In this last chapter, however, he makes it clear that the Codex Grandior, in which he had placed the divisions, predated the Institutions.1 Since the Grandior con tained the antiqua translatio version of Scripture, it would be natural to suppose that the division of Scripture corresponding to this version occupied first place in this codex. When preparing my article of 1996, I failed to note there was good

58 A passage from Karen Corsano, "The First Quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones

of Cassiodorus," Scriptorium 41 (1987), 3-34, at p. 11, deserves to be quoted here: "Cecil Roth, in a study of possible Jewish antecedents of Christian Art finds that 'in the illuminated Jewish Bibles ...

it was as it seems conventional to include a double page .. . showing the vessels of the sanctuary. . . .

It would have been natural to have such pictures inserted in the Book of Exodus.... [IJnstead they were invariably or almost invariably placed before the entire biblical text.' If Roth's arguments are

correct, the Amiatinus and the Grandior both belonged to a tradition reaching back to Hebrew sources

and this bifolium may be seen as a relatively typical frontispiece." I would only change the emphasis

by asserting that it was Cassiodorus, with his Grandior, who was aware of the tradition, while Amia tinus did nothing more than imitate what was found in the Grandior. Magrini, "Storia delle rilegature," p. 162, likewise concluded from the available evidence that "questo bifolio non facesse neanche parte del primo fascicolo e fosse collocato in posizione a s? stante, forse appena prima dell'inizio dell'Antico Testamento."

59 Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 853-60. See also Wood, The Most Holy Abbot Ceolfrid

(above, n. 4), p. 30, n. 160; his reference to the image of the Tabernacle supposedly found in Cassio dorus's commentary on the Psalms is, I fear, the result of relying on the inadequate punctuation in CCSL 119A, p. 81, lines 1565-67, which should read "quo modo in pictura Cassiodori Senatoris

(cuius ipse in expositione psalmorum meminit) expressum uidimus ..." (parentheses added). 60 For comments on the interesting fact that the image of the Tabernacle does not show evidence of

having shared in the original sewing together of the leaves, see Magrini, "Storia delle rilegature," pp. 159-60. Could this indicate a last-minute insertion or, perhaps, show the image was removable so that it could accompany a reading of Exodus?

61 Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937), p. 40: "Tertia vero divisio est inter alias in c?dice grandiore littera clariore conscripto." James W. Halporn, in his recent trans

lation, Cassiodorus: Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul, with an introduction

by Mark Vessey, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool, 2003), p. 137, correctly translates this

passage as "This third division stands among the others in the larger volume written in a clearer script." That is, "inter alias" cannot be taken to indicate a specific location in relation to the other divisions; it simply means "stands along with the others."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Fig. 2. Stage 2: The Order of the Opening Folios of the Codex Amiatinus in 716 (and Today).

recto blank verso Ceolfrith's dedication

J recto Ezra pontifex verso blank

recto Jerome division (roundel with Lamb) verso blank

recto Augustine division (roundel with Dove) verso blank

I recto Cassiodorus's prologus (purple) verso Amiatinus contents (purple)

{ recto blank verso Tabernacle (left side)

recto Tabernacle (right side) verso blank

I recto Antiqua translatio division (roundel with Father) verso Pentateuch circles (text from Jerome's Letter 53)

Fig. 3. Stage 1: The Order of the Opening Folios of the Codex Amiatinus during the Planning Stage.

recto blank verso blank

recto Ezra pontifex verso blank

g recto Cassiodorus's prologus (purple) verso Amiatinus contents (purple)

recto Antiqua translatio division (roundel with Father) verso blank

recto Jerome division (roundel with Lamb) verso blank

recto Augustine division (roundel with Dove) verso blank

I recto blank verso Tabernacle (left side)

recto Tabernacle (right side) verso blank

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1105

Fig. 4. The Order of the Opening Folios of the Codex Grandior.

recto blank verso blank

recto Cassiodorus (with celestial cupboard of Holy Scripture) verso blank

I recto Cassiodorus's prologus (purple) verso blank

recto Antiqua translatio division (cf. Fig. 5) verso blank

recto Jerome division (cf. Fig. 6) verso blank

recto Augustine division (cf. Fig. 7) verso blank

Irecto blank Iverso Tabernacle (left side)

Lrecto Tabernacle (right side) Iverso blank

I recto blank verso Temple with courtyards (left side)

recto Temple with courtyards (right side) verso blank

evidence to support such a view, namely, in plates 2-4 of Karen Corsano's Scrip torium article of 1987. These showed how the divisions were presented in the Bamberg manuscript of the Institutions.62 The importance of this manuscript emerges in its subscriptio on fol. 67v: "Codex archetypus ad cuius exemplaria sunt reliqui corrigenda," showing we are in direct line with the original.63 The Staatsbibliothek of Bamberg has kindly provided me with excellent digital color photographs-reproduced here in black and white-of the divisions on fols. 15v (Fig. 5, antiqua translatio), 14v (Fig. 6, Jerome), and 15r (Fig. 7, Augustine). Looking at this sequence, I clearly get the impression that Cassiodorus simply asked his scribe to copy the divisions of Scripture-not the captions placed below the divisions-from the Codex Grandior onto the pages of his Institutions, and this explains why the antiqua translatio division (Fig. 5) is by far the most im

62 See above, n. 58. Numerous points of this stimulating article were discussed in my Speculum article of 1996.

63 Institutiones, ed. Mynors, p. x. For a reproduction of this page see Magistra barbaritas: Barbari

in Italia (Milan, 1984), illus. 545; also Fabio Troncarelli, Vivarium: I libri, il destino, Instrumenta Patristica 33 (Turnhout, 1998), plate 3.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1106 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus pressive of the three.64 It is dominated by a large cross filled with interlace design and surrounded by the letters CR / VX. In what would have been the last division, that of Augustine, the New Testament is likewise enclosed within a cross (Fig. 7). It is as if Cassiodorus wanted the layout to stress that the Christian message of salvation, through the cross, dominates the whole of Scripture, no matter what divisions are made. The visual evidence of the Bamberg manuscript is essential and underlines Michael Gorman's recent plea that Roger Mynors's edition of the Institutions (Oxford, 1937) should be supplemented with plates showing how Cassiodorus's diagrams are presented in the manuscripts.65 If the points made above are correct, they provide a new basis for analyzing the artistic presentation of the three diagrams in Amiatinus. The crosses of the Grandior are sufficient to explain the use of cross designs in Amiatinus-the two large crosses in Amiatinus (antiqua translatio) resemble the one in the Bamberg manuscript, fol. 15r (Au gustine)-while the four lozenges in Amiatinus (Jerome) may have been inspired by the two on fol. 15v of the Bamberg manuscript. Having designed "containers," the Northumbrian scribes simply transferred the texts into these from the Codex Grandior.

Contrary to what I thought when writing my article of 1996, I am now con vinced that the Trinitarian imagery present in the medallions above the divisions in Amiatinus was not borrowed from the Grandior but must be considered an original creation of Wearmouth-Jarrow. The texts presented in Amiatinus, in ta bulae ansatae, above and under the divisions were almost certainly taken over from the Codex Grandior. But the insertion of medallions in the center of the upper tabulae (Father in the antiqua translatio division, Lamb in the Jerome di vision, and Dove in the Augustine division) is, as Lawrence Nees has pointed out, not something Cassiodorus can be considered guilty of.66 These three medallions, however, representing the Trinity remain important for helping to show that in the initial planning stage the divisions were chosen according to the order they occupied in the Codex Grandior. One further comment, however, needs to be added here. If the Trinitarian medallions are a Wearmouth-Jarrow invention, then the couplet just above the Dove, invoking the Holy Spirit, has no connection with

64 The use of interlace in the cross and the profusion of interlace in the drawing of Vivarium on fol. 29v (see Magistra barbaritas, illus. 547) lend strong support to Karl Nordenfalk's argument that the

single leaf (fol. A) with interlace designs in Paris, Biblioth?que nationale de France, lat. 12190, may well have belonged to the volume of samples for designs to be placed on bindings that Cassiodorus mentions in chapter 14 of the Institutions. Nordenfalk demonstrated that the interlace on this page is

of Middle Eastern, and not of insular, origin: see "Corbie and Cassiodorus: A Pattern Page Bearing on the Early History of Bookbinding," Pantheon 32 (1974), 225-31.

65 Michael Gorman, "The Diagrams in the Oldest Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Institutiones," Revue b?n?dictine 110 (2000), 27-41.

66 That Cassiodorus composed the texts is shown by the personal responsibility he claims, in the text underneath the antiqua translatio division, for the translation of Epiphanius ("quern latino fecimus sermone transferri"). In "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 839-44,1 suggested what alterations Cassiodorus's texts may have undergone at Wearmouth-Jarrow, like the change from Hilary of Poitiers to Pope

Hilarus, etc. For Lawrence Nees's comments, see his "Problems of Form and Function in Early Me dieval Illustrated Bibles from Northwest Europe," in Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, ed. Williams

(above, n. 10), pp. 121-77, at p. 165.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1107 the Codex GrandiorA67 The Holy Spirit-Dove medallion, however, showing wings outstretched and beak pointing downward probably explains the peculiar "pointed ovals" used to frame Cassiodorus's text on this page, which have no counterparts among the drawings of the Bamberg manuscript. I think they were inspired by a Pentecost image known to Wearmouth-Jarrow. In the tenth-century mosaic of the sanctuary dome at Hosios Lukas the "tongues of flame" descending on the apos tles in the Pentecost scene rather resemble the ovals of the Amiatinus page (Fig. 8).68 Since this was traditional imagery, we can suspect that some Pentecost image betrays its influence here.

If in the early stage of preparation, the sequence of the divisions of Scripture in the first quire of Amiatinus closely mirrored that of the Codex Grandior, there was something in this sequence that bothered Bede.69 In the chronicle that forms chapter 66 of DTR, Bede described the gift Ceolfrith took to Rome as "pandectem a beato Hieronimo in Latinum ex Hebreo uel Graeco fonte translatum" (the full Bible translated by the Blessed Jerome from the Hebrew and Greek sources).70 Bede must have argued, and probably rather strongly, that since their gift pandect contained not the antiqua translatio but Jerome's version of the Bible, the order they had originally chosen for the opening leaves failed to respect Jerome's pri ority. The result of the debate was the removal of what had been the central bifolium, the purple leaf with Cassiodorus's prologue71 and the antiqua translatio division of the Bible. It was cut in two and each leaf assigned a new position. One senses that placing the "noble" purple page after the Augustine division represents both a demotion and an anomaly. Once the circles with the quotations from Je rome had been inscribed on the back of the half leaf with the antiqua translatio division, the leaf was assigned its new, and again anomalous, position as opening page of the Pentateuch. So the final arrangement caused Jerome's division of Scrip ture to acquire first place, following immediately on the image of Ezra. One can suspect that these alterations occurred at a late stage, probably just before the volume was due to be bound; and since the date for the departure from North umbria had already been set, both the time and perhaps also the energy were lacking to begin the first quire all over again from scratch, using new sets of blank bifolia. We must now turn our attention to the image of Ezra of the Codex Amiatinus

(Fig. 1). Looking at this page, art historians like Rupert Bruce-Mitford, David

67 The couplet reads, "Eloquium Domini quaecunque uolumina pandunt / Spiritus hoc Sancto fudit

ab ore Deus." 68 See Ernst Diez and Otto Demus, Byzantine Mosaics in Greece, Hosios Lucas and Daphni (Cam

bridge, Mass., 1931), plate 5 and fig. 7; and Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 3 (Freiburg, 1971),

p. 418 (under Pfingsten): "Die Feuerflammen gehen vielfach vom Schnabel der Geist-Taube aus." The

mosaics in St. Mark's at Venice have a similar Pentecost scene. 69 That the general sequence of Old Testament biblical books follows the order they had in the

Codex Grandior remains proof that the Codex Grandior was considered the model to be followed. 70 CCSL 123B, p. 534, lines 2047-50. 71 The prologue came from the Codex Grandior. See especially Bonifatius Fischer, "Codex Amiatinus

und Cassiodor," Biblische Zeitschrift, n.s., 6 (1962), 68: "Nach Stil und Inhalt ist der Prolog sicher von Cassiodor und aus dem Codex Grandior"; also Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament, p. 119; and Meyvaert, "Bede, Cassiodorus," pp. 866-68.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

w t E&Zz?>D @el?08^G

t&e kg.I ar3.aeb" 4perra

[ii K k~~~~~~~~~~~~~Pxnnif

b~~~~~L. tspqtlqt wfo n wntO

Fig. 5. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Patr. 61, fol. 15v.

The antiqua translatio division. (Figs. 5-7 reproduced by permission.)

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Tbsrwasri.urbAffrwedawl

:I, , .d>.sew*O4n7ar'~h uwuwa.w ...,.vS*~ '_l '. ' '.p: I~~~~~~~~T . t

f'2'_ anca_

Caw ; SajwiWccfe$ wmwCLn4tm wf*m4u

* bu.n.4sn%LuAw6.wu.CSJarv,

.Acor4bMMfCf| Sq^ t~2 ztynEz.ij

Fig. 6. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Patr. 61, fol. 14v. The Jerome division.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

.h..-bt7,. ECceut%L,a;,*flL^...

:4 c rwfrrA flin p

Fig. 7. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Patr. 61, fol. 15r. The Augustine division.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Labw 4 us Law'4 MW l& At$T #4 t cidy

tap, a Sd W> 1||".as,,jX- U.mm nb 4I%fl a14.aL*A

" w 1 a,^ *e"~~~~~~~~pk tot ~V %4Ln

X~~~~~~~~~~~M pr IW' 10" 94ho"| 14 l Y %e% wwa

Fig. 8. (Top) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1, fol. VIlIr (detail). The Augustine division. (Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Culturali. E vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.)

(Bottom) Part of the Pentecost mosaic at Hosios Lukas. (After Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, fig. 7.)

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1112 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus Wright, and others have strongly suspected it was not an original Northumbrian artistic creation but the copy of a late-antique Mediterranean image done at Vi varium and belonging to the Codex Grandior.72 I want to argue that this view is basically correct and that the original image represented Cassiodorus seated, clad with a pallium, in Mediterranean style, over a tunic, with a large book open on his knees, and holding a pen in his hand.73 The bookcase, with doors open, dis played five shelves on which rested nine volumes, the inscriptions on their spines indicating that together they constituted all the books of the Old and New Tes taments. A table with an inkpot stood close by, and strewn along the ground were instruments suggesting a place equipped for producing books. Because no inscrip tion identified the seated figure, Bede (and no doubt also his community) became intrigued by this image. Had he possessed a copy of the Institutions, on noticing the many allusions to the nine volumes with the books of Scripture, he would soon have concluded that the seated figure must represent Cassiodorus himself, possibly with the large Bible codex he mentions on his knees. But lacking this work he went looking for a biblical context that could give meaning to such an image placed near the opening of the Old Testament. Remembering stories he had heard from others ("communis maiorum fama est"), about Ezra having rewritten many books of the Old Testament and in doing so adding some phrases of his own to the text, he concluded the figure must represent Ezra.74 Since the New Testament books, however, were also visible in the bookcase, it must be Ezra connected in some way with the New Testament, thus suggesting he must be viewed as symbolizing Christ. The theme Bede developed in his In Ezram thus became planted in Bede's mind. The decision to include an image of Ezra in the first quire of Amiatinus therefore provides us with a satisfactory explanation of why rather suddenly Bede wanted to shelve Genesis and concentrate on Ezra. Concentrating on Ezra involved making a careful copy of the image from the Codex Grandior, but modifying it sufficiently to ensure the result complied with his own concept of Ezra, and then writing the commentary to help underline the deep spiritual significance of this image. While holding Bede was responsible for

72 David H. Wright, "The Italian Stimulus on English Art around 700," in Stil und ?berlieferung in

der Kunst des Abendlandes (Akten des 21. Internationalen Kongresses f?r Kunstgeschichte in Bonn

1964), 1 (Berlin, 1967), p. 85: "In the case of the illustration of Ezra ... we know from the peculiarities of the iconography and some references in Bede that the model was a page of the Codex Grandior of

Cassiodorus, which had been painted in Vivarium in southern Italy in the third quarter of the sixth

century. We can recognize aspects of the late antique style, particularly in the color gradations on the

ground and in the treatment of the furnishings, but it is clear this painter has no confidence in handling the human figure." Wright gives a reference to R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford in Codex Lindisfarnensis, ed.

Thomas D. Kendrick et al., 2 (?lten, 1960), pp. 143-49 and 285-86. See also R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, "The Art of the Codex Amiatinus," Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 32

(1969), 1-25, at pp. 8-13. 73 See below at n. 113. 74 CCSL 119A, p. 307, lines 796-804: "In quo opere ferunt quia [Ezra] non nulla uerba quae

oportuna arbitraretur adiecerit e quibus est illud" etc. This shows there was a quite lively interest in

Bede's day in Ezra's possible involvement with the Old Testament text: the seeking out of phrases that

could be considered anachronistic in their context, while it bears witness to some sophistication in the

biblical scholarship of the period, also helps to explain what caused Bede to lean in the direction of

Ezra.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1113 the commentary, I am also prepared to assert that he had a hand in fashioning the Amiatinus image.

It would be useful, however, if at this point we became more fully conscious of the real situation, namely, that the numerous references encountered in so many publications to the "Ezra" image of the Codex Amiatinus have meaning only because of the couplet Bede placed above this image-and, I will argue later, placed there not long before the codex left Northumbria for Rome.7s Take those identifying verses away and "Ezra," as such, vanishes. That is why reproductions of the image that fail to display the verses above it do not make sense. No one in the seventh or eighth century encountering a seated figure, with a halo, wearing a twelve-stone breastplate, with head gear and garments suggesting an Old Tes tament high priest, writing Tironian notes in a book, placed in proximity to a bookcase containing all the books of the Old and New Testaments, could possibly have concluded that it represented Ezra; the "Ezra" we see in the Codex Amia tinus, that is, the seated figure garbed the way he is, is totally Bede's creation, explained basically by his misinterpretation of the image in Cassiodorus's Codex Grandior, coupled with the belief he held during a limited period of his life-the years when he was composing In Ezram and making the image-that Ezra had been a Jewish high priest.

But before we deal with Bede to see what he did, we will do well to take another glance, in our mind's eye, at the image that was in the Codex Grandior. Let us begin by noting that when Cassiodorus thinks of the whole of Scripture, it is the image of a bookcase that comes to his mind: What in fact is there that one cannot find in this heavenly bookcase of the divine scrip tures (in isto caelesti armario scripturarum diuinarum)? If you search for Genesis, there is an explanation here of how the world was made. If you mention a prophet, who has said so much about the Lord's incarnation? If you long for the gospel, it clearly reveals in countless places the passion and resurrection of the Lord Christ. If you want an apostle, listen to this teacher and consoler who both proclaims the future judgment to correct us, and often prays for sinners. Not to extend the discussion longer, if you read with the greatest care, you find all that is done in heaven, on earth, in the sea, in the world below aptly recounted in their due places.76

And elsewhere:

75 See below, p. 1126. 76

Quoted from Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms, 3, trans. P. G. Walsh, Ancient Christian Writers 53 (New York, 1991), p. 466 (here and in the next quotation I have substituted "bookcase" for Walsh's translation oiarmarium as "chest"); ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 98 (Turnhout, 1958), p. 1330, lines 178-80: "Quid enim in isto caelesti armario scripturarum diuinarum inuenire non possis? Ge nesim quaeras, hie quemadmodum fuerit mundus fabricatus exponitur. Prophetam dicas, quis de in carnatione Domini tanta locutus est? Euangelium cupias, passionem et resurrectionem Christi Domini innumeris locis euidenter ostendit. Apostolum uelis, audi doctorem, audi miserentem, qui et futura iudicia propter correctiones praedicat et pro peccatoribus frequenter exorat. Et ne longius differam, quidquid in caelo, in terra, in mari, uel apud inferos agitur, si cautissime legas, omnia suis locis posita competenter agnoscis."

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

1114 Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus

So the psalm [Psalm 109] is, so to say, the sun of our faith, the mirror of the heavenly secret, the bookcase of the holy Scriptures (armarium sanctarum scripturarum), in which all that is told in the proclamation of both testaments is spoken in summary.77

On the shelves of this bookcase lie nine volumes, the "novem codices auctoritatis divinae" according to the Institutions. What counts for the "numerologically sen sitive" Cassiodorus-to use Mark Vessey's apt expression78-is less the individual order in which they are listed than their total number of nine, as clearly emerges from his comments on Psalm 144, where he noted that verses 3 and 4 of the psalm gave the nine reasons why we should praise the Lord:

I think that these nine topics from which the Lord's praises are begotten are gathered into a great mystery, so that the honor to the Trinity can be acknowledged by the number of thrice three, which they embody. This number is reflected also in the sacred books (in codicibus sacris) which God's holy Church reads and reveres: Octateuch, Kings, Proph ets, Psalter, Solomon, Holy Books (hagiographis), Gospels, Epistles of the Apostles, Acts of the Apostles together with the Apocalypse. So this number is fertile with the recollec tion of things heavenly.79

In the Institutions the Prophets come after Solomon and are followed by Hagi ographa (which has eight books), while in the bookcase the Hagiographa preceded Psalms, Solomon, and Prophets. Hagiographa was a term Bede never used in connection with the books of Scripture, and I consider the change from "AGI LIB VIII" to "HIST LIB VIII" to be one he made while copying the bookcase.80 What we need to recognize, as James Halporn and Mark Vessey bring out in the new translation of the Institutions, is that the term "novem codices" refers primarily not to physical volumes but to Cassiodorus's own way of conceiving how Holy Scripture was divided. When in the preface to his Institutions we read, "quos ego cunctos novem codices auctoritatis divinae, ut senex potui ... sedula lectione transivi," Halporn rightly translates, "I have read over carefully all nine sections containing the divine authority as best as an old man could."81 For this reason it is probably wiser to refrain from transporting particular codices, like the Gospels,

77 Cassiodorus, trans. Walsh, p. 116; CCSL 98, p. 1005, lines 9-13: "Quapropter (ut ita dixerim)

est quidam sol fidei nostrae, speculum caelestis arcani, armarium sanctarum scripturarum, ubi totum

summatim dicitur quod utriusque testamenti praedicatione narratur." In Institutions 14 Cassiodorus mentions that the Greek Bible was in the eighth bookcase?so even without knowing what books the other bookcases contained this helps to underline how important the very notion o? armarium (book

case) was to Cassiodorus. 78 In Cassiodorus, trans. Halporn (above, n. 61), p. 51. 79 CSEL 122, p. 1292, lines 136-45: "In magnum quoque sacramentum haec nouem loca, unde

laudes dominicae nascuntur arbitror apprehensa; ut Trinitatis honor tertio in se triplicato numero

possit agnosci. Iste quoque numerus continetur et in codicibus sacris, quos sancta Domini legit et

ueneratur Ecclesia; id est in Octateucho, in Regum, in prophetis, in psalterio, in Salomone, in hagio

graphis, in euangeliis, in epistolis apostolorum, in actibus apostolorum cum Apocalypsi. Sic numerus

iste caelestium rerum commemoratione fecundus est." 80 Cassiodorus (Institutions 6) lists the eight book of the Agiographa as Job, Tobit, Esther, Judith,

Maccabees (two books), and Esdras (two books), but in the Augustine division of Scripture (Institu tions 13) these are all subsumed under the twenty-two books of history. In his Genesis preface to Acca

Bede refers to Ezra as "propheta simul et historicus." 81

Cassiodorus, trans. Halporn, p. 109.

on Sat, 16 May 2015 04:20:45 UTC

Bede's In Ezram and the Codex Amiatinus 1115

from this "heavenly bookcase" to England, and then debating their precise con tents. What cannot be doubted is that the image of the "heavenly bookcase of the divine scriptures" came to hold deep spiritual significance for Cassiodorus. Allow ing himself to be represented in the proximity of such a bookcase was not meant to underline his accomplishments as a learned man, but rather to stress what had become the real spiritual center of his life, God's written message of salvation to mankind mediated through the nine divisions of Holy Scripture.82

Let us now turn to Bede, intent on makin