[In the following essay, Ward addresses Bede's miracle stories and argues that, for Bede, the emphasis was on the significance of the miracle, not the miracle itself]

There is still a question mark against that part of the material in Bede's writings that concerns miracles. This has caused them to be either ignored by historians or treated to a cautious defusing so that they become safe to handle; at best they are considered as primitive survivals of white magic¹ or as a different kind of truth.² In Mr Colgrave's introduction to his edition of the Ecclesiastical History³ he expresses the doubts felt about miracles in the query, 'How is it that one who is supposed to be our greatest medieval historian can spend so much time telling wonder-tales?'⁴

It seems to me that the answer to this question is not to be found only in seeing miracle stories in the light of anthropology and folklore, or even in terms of theological definition, but by looking also at the miracles recorded by Bede in relation to miracle material used by other medieval writers, particularly historians. Miracle stories are not the perquisite of the simple-minded and uneducated; they are there in the writings of some of the most sophisticated men of the Middle Ages: even Abailard has them.⁵ Miracle stories were told and retold in the circle that included Anselm of Canterbury, Hugh of Cluny, Hugh of Lyons; John of Salisbury was as concerned with miracles as the more credulous Herbert of Bosham; there is hardly a medieval chronicler who does not have miracles to record. Accounts of miracles were part of the material available to all writers in the Middle Ages. It is useful for theologians to see how this was understood and integrated into the Christian scheme of things; it is useful for others with different concerns to discover the sources, conscious or unconscious, of this way of understanding reality. But for the historians there are two more important questions: first, how far is a miracle story an account of events and facts? and second, what use did medieval writers make of this material when it became articulate in their writings?

It is clear, first of all, that Bede and other writers who record miracles believed they were recording facts about events. People believed they had witnessed these events, and they told Bede what they believed had happened; there is no question of deliberate fraud or falsehood. But to believe that what you write about actually happened is not in itself a guarantee that it did, and with miracle material it is peculiarly difficult to find any valid way of checking the personal affirmation. The essence of a miracle is in itself unverifiable, especially after a lapse of time; all that can be said is: here was an event that caused wonder, that was said by sincere and truthful men to be the direct intervention of God in human affairs. Certainly, something was thought to have happened; the rest is interpretation.

In considering this interpretation of the material the first thing to take into account is a world-view very different from our own. In a pre-scientific world which did not depend on the modern notion of causation, what distinguished a miracle from other events? For us, the interesting question about a miracle is 'how?': how was this effect caused, how did it work, what were the mechanics of this event? In the sixth century exegetes had asked that question, too:⁶ how did Peter walk on the water? did the water solidify or did Peter become light? It was not asked again until Robert of Melun and Robert Pullen took it up. For Bede and his contemporaries, the important question was not 'how?' but 'what?' and 'why?' It was not the mechanics of the miracle that mattered, but its significance. For Bede the world was shot through with divinity, and a miracle was not just any inexplicable event but an event that was also a sign of God's relationship with man. Bede himself records the extreme of this view when he sets down what Trumbert, 'one of those who taught me the Scriptures', had told him. Chad had said: 'The Lord moves the air, raises the wind, hurls the lightnings and thunders forth from heaven so as to arouse the inhabitants of the world to fear him.'⁷ Here the external world is seen as an extension of man, inextricably bound up with his relationship to God. It was not until the twelfth century that miracles were seen in a different context with nature as an entity in itself; and significantly it is only then that miracles can properly be described as 'wonder-tales'.

Bede certainly believed that miracles happened; it was an integral part of his understanding of reality; but what is remarkable is the way in which he controls and uses this material. He was not primarily interested in the external marvellousness of miracles. His most usual word for miracles is not miracula but signa. It was what was signified that mattered; the wonder itself was secondary. Like St Gregory the Great he saw that 'it is a greater miracle … to convert a sinner than to raise up a dead man'.⁸ In his account of the only instance of this, the supreme miracle, in the Ecclesiastical History, Bede follows just that presumption: Drythelm returned from the dead, but upon that fact Bede spends no time at all. This happened, he says, namque ad excitationem viventium de morte animae,⁹ and the other importance that it has for Bede is that it happened in Britain, in Brittania factum est. There are few if any instances in Bede's works where he tells a story simply for the sake of causing wonder: the wonder is always subservient to the main issue, which is salvation. This is a use of miracles which comes from inside; they are events made integral to his main theme, a part of his deepest convictions about the dealings of God with man. This integral use of miracles has an appearance of simplicity but, to quote Mr Mayr-Harting, 'the appearance of naïveté here is very deceptive indeed'.¹⁰ Bede understood the material he was using from the inside and was not concerned to assert or emphasize the marvellous elements in the traditions he received.

As with his other material, Bede verified very carefully just what the best traditions were about a holy man or miraculous event. With St Cuthbert, he submitted his account to the brethren at Lindisfarne, for instance, and they could find no fault in it. He had recorded the consensus of opinion about the meaning of the life and miracles of St Cuthbert as it was seen by those who still lived in that tradition. They agreed that he was right about what happened and why: the significance of Cuthbert's life was to be seen through the details of events rather than in isolated facts devoid of significance.

Bede was careful also to name the people who were witnesses to miracles, as well as giving his written sources, which he does not do when relating political or military events. This is because the miracle is for Bede part of a living tradition, and its interpretation is vital. The witnesses are 'true and religious men', those in fact who can be relied upon to judge events rightly and see what is significant about them, rather than the most accurate observers of facts. This oral tradition of good men, ex traditione maiorum, is a source no longer available for historians; it belongs to the close-knit society of another age, where what is agreed to have happened is held to be a stronger guide than the observations of individuals. The fact that this source is not available now does not invalidate Bede in his use of it.

Bede is concerned primarily with the moral truth and inner meaning of miracle stories, and secondarily with their significance within the story he is writing, whether it is the life of Cuthbert or the missionary saga of the conversion of the English people. He does not leave the miracles as marvellous anecdotes, though, incidentally, he uses the dramatic implications of the material to the full simply as a story-teller. But beyond this moral and missionary bias, Bede uses miracle material from within in yet a third way. I would like to look briefly at a few of Bede's miracle stories and show how an unprejudiced attention to the points Bede is making leads right away from an obsession with wonder-details and gives at least three dimensions to the material used.

First, there is one of Bede's most famous stories: Cædmon's gift of song.¹¹ Bede is certainly saying what a wonderful thing it is that this unlettered man learnt to sing; he is also saying what a splendid instance this is of God's goodness towards the English nation; and he is also concerned with the moral edification of Cædmon's death. But the story is far more than that; it is also a piece of literary criticism. Bede introduces the story by contrasting Caedmon's poetry with that of other writers; none of them equal him, he says, nullus eum aequiperare potuit,¹² and he asks what makes Cædmon a better poet than the rest. The answer is given in vivid and dramatic form based on the traditions at Whitby about the poet and used by Bede in a subtle and sophisticated way. First, he makes it clear that Cædmon had always been a frustrated poet, not someone who had never wanted to sing; and it was with this unresolved tension uppermost in his mind that Bede pictures Cædmon going to sleep one night. Then, in the long tradition of poets and prophets, Cædmon dreams. He does not dream of a saint or an angel, as in a miracle story, but of quidam, 'someone', who stands beside him. And what does he tell Cædmon to sing? Canta, he says, principium creaturarum,¹³ the basic subject of all poetry. Cædmon wakes with the tension of his life resolved; he adds more verses, turning the principium creaturarum theme into its Christian dimension, 'praising God in fitting style'. Next day he is examined about his experience, not by the 'reverend and holy men' who would judge a miracle, but by multis doctoribus viris, men of skill and technical ability. From then on, Cædmon was subject to the ordinary disciplines of a poet—metrical form, style, melodious verse—his gift was not simply a wonder, unconnected with abilities and skills. Significantly, too, the subjects he wrote about were history and moral instruction; the subjects proper to a Christian poet are those Bede himself wrote about. Bede is of course writing about a divine gift of language, and his main point is that God has acted towards the poor and simple; but Bede is also talking about literature and the essence of poetry. Cædmon, he says, was inspired by God and therefore in the mainstream of inspiration that runs through great poetry; he chose subjects within the Christian economy which improved his verse, and he developed a technique to express his inspiration. But Bede asserts that it is the divine gift of poetry that made Cædmon supreme; the others just did not have what it takes.

There is here no dwelling on a wonder for its own sake, and it is revealing to contrast this with other miracle stories about the gift of language. For instance, Roger of Hoveden tells how at the funeral of St Hugh of Lincoln a thief tried to ply his trade; he was rooted to the spot, 'impelled to compose rather inferior Latin verses whether he would or no'.¹⁴ Walter, a lay-brother at Clairvaux, was visited in his sleep by a saint who taught him the mass of the Holy Spirit; when he woke up, he remembered it, but had the ability neither to learn more nor to use what he had learnt.¹⁵ Or there is the story of the dumb lay-brother, William of Ford, who had his speech restored at the prayers of a saint, only to find to his disgust that he spoke low-class English rather than aristocratic French.¹⁶ These are indeed ornamental 'wonder-tales', and the contrast with Bede need not be stressed further.

Another instance of this subtle use of the miracle story is in Bede's account of the dream of Bishop Laurence.¹⁷ Laurence, faced with a crisis is the affairs of the English Church, spent the night in the church of St Peter and St Paul. He dreamed of St Peter, who chided and whipped him; next day he could show the king his wounds. A story of primitive incubation, no doubt; also a story about God's concern for the English people; but for Bede it is far more than this. It is the chief of the apostles who chides Laurence, asserting his own responsibility for the Church in Britain and the responsibility of Laurence as his representative in the line of the Apostles. Bede's theme here is authority in the Christian Church; through the story he says that authority derives from Christ through the Apostles to the bishops, that it centres on the see of St Peter, that it is a matter not of domination but of a responsibility that cannot be evaded or abandoned, and that it is exercised in service and suffering after the pattern of Christ crucified. This is a serious and indeed vital theme, presented under dramatic images; it resolved an otherwise insoluble conflict. Mellitus and Justus returned to England and the king received baptism; he was 'greatly alarmed' (extimuit multum) by the dream of Bishop Laurence—and well he might be.

A third instance of this contrast between Bede's use of miracles and that of other writers is to be found in the matter of cures. To take only one example: Roger of Hoveden describes the cure of a woman of Wye¹⁸ by that dubious person Abbot Eustace of Flay, as follows: 'She drank the water from the fountain he had blessed and at once vomited two large black toads, which at once turned into two huge black dogs and then into asses.' The keeper of the fountain sprinkled her with water, and 'at once the creatures ascended into the sky, leaving behind a bad smell'. It is perhaps unfair to take such an extreme example, which is only a wonder-tale—unless perhaps it is used in a study of delusions—but it is the wonder-tale in its extreme form. In Bede there is no such thing. Take, for instance, the story of the cure of Herebald by Bishop John of Beverley.¹⁹ It is an immensely interesting story, with its interaction of spiritual healing by the bishop and physical cure by the infirmarian. And it was Herebald himself who decided it was a miracle, not the onlookers: it was a miracle for him not because it was unusual but because it was significant. He was, he said, cured in order to make good deficiencies in his baptism; and this cure of the soul was to him and to Bede the true miracle.

It is clear that we are misled if we class Bede's accounts of miracles as 'mere wonder-tales'; it is to place an emphasis on the wonder that is not there in Bede himself. There is a use of miracle material that can be called merely decorative, external, concerned chiefly with the element of the unusual, even if for a moral purpose. In Florence of Worcester, for instance, miracles are prodigies, like the movements of the stars or an eclipse of the sun; in Ordericus Vitalis, miracle material is recorded in lumps, taken whole from the shrine of a saint or a saint's life; in William of Malmesbury, who is in some ways closer to Bede, miracles are often mere wonders. In the Gesta Regum, for instance, in one section the miracles at the death of Pope Gregory are put alongside the story of the witch of Berkely non superno miraculo sed inferno praestigio,²⁰ a story of a magical statue of Venus in Rome, a portenta of Siamese twins, and the miracle of the uncorrupt bodies of the royal English saints, in such a way that what they have in common is simply their sensational value.

Bede is not, then, concerned with facts for themselves in the miracles; and indeed as his use of the anonymous Life of Cuthbert shows, he could alter facts to suit his theme if necessary. Do we then err if we look for factual information in the miracles recorded by Bede? I think there is historical information there, and that it is as great as in the rest of his work, but it is subject to more layers of use and interpretation than the other material. It is essential, therefore, to be aware of the use Bede makes of this material, his preconceptions about it as well as the aims and purposes he has in using it, and to realize that the events reach us essentially through interpretations. Bede is using his miracle material from the inside, and he shapes it according to his purposes. If we try to see the miracles as a simple record of facts we show ourselves more credulous and naive than Bede himself; perhaps it is not only in Bede's miracle material but in all his material that we should exercise some degree of this gift of discernment.

Notes

1. Cf. Loomis, 'The Miracle Traditions of the Venerable Bede', Speculum xxi (1946), pp. 404ff.
2. Cf. C. W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early England. Ithaca, N.Y. 1947.
3. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford 1969. (All quotations here form the Ecclesiastical History are from that edition.)
4. HE [Historia Ecclesiastica] p. xxxv.
5. E.g. Abailard Sic et Non. PL [Migne, Patrologia Latina] clxxviii, 1525-6.
6. Cf. De Mirabilibus, PL xxxv, 2147ff.
7. HE iv.3 (p. 343).
8. Gregory the Great, Dialogus (PL lxxvii, 264-5).
9. HE v.l2 (p. 489).
10. H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London 1972), p. 50.
11. HE iv.24 (pp. 414-21).
12. Ibid., p. 414.
13. Ibid., p. 416.
14. Roger of Hoveden, ed. W. Stubbs. Vol. IV (Rolls Series 51d, 1871), p. 143.
15. Exordium Magnum Cisterciense, ed. B. Griesser (Rome 1961), p. 240.
16. Wulfric of Haselmere by John, Abbot of Ford, Book I, c.l4, ed. Dom Maurice Bell (Somerset Record Society, vol. XLVII, 1933), pp. 28-9.
17. HE ii.6 (pp. 154-5).
18. Roger of Hoveden, vol. IV, p. 123.
19. HE v.6, pp. 464-9.
20. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (PL clxxix, 1187-93).