One of the natural shortcomings to which historians are prone is a failure to give ignorance its due, and to acknowledge the force of the haphazard in human affairs. We know that Bede was eager for knowledge and industrious in acquiring it. With respect to Cassiodorus, however, he labored under difficulties we have been slow to perceive. Before his eyes in his monastery at Jarrow lay an imposing volume that had taken shape under Cassiodorus's direction at Vivarium in southern Italy, (...) but neither he nor his brethren, including their abbot Ceolfrith, who had bought the book in Rome, knew what it was that they possessed. For years they saw it only as a splendid old volume where all the books of the Bible had been assembled together between two covers, in a text they recognized as predating Jerome's Vulgate. Bede had been a young boy when he accompanied Ceolfrith to Jarrow from Wearmouth; he grew to maturity in the presence of this volume, Cassiodorus's Codex Grandior, and his increasing acquaintance with it is reflected in his writings. Eventually its connection with Cassiodorus was recognized, although imperfectly. Over the years Bede's respect for Cassiodorus grew and deepened, but his knowledge remained limited to the end. The extent of that limitation and the understanding achieved despite it are examined in the following pages. (shrink)

Thomas Wright, in volume I of Political Poems and Songs relating to English History, published under the name “John of Bridlington” a “prophecy” in verse together with a commentary on it. The “prophecy,” couched in very symbolic terms, is actually a fourteenth-century political satire on contemporary events by a partisan of the Black Prince, alienated at the time from the court of Edward III; the commentary furnishes an explication set forth in full scholastic style. The Vaticinium, which lacks a heading (...) of its own, begins with the line: Febribus infectus, requies fuerat mihi lectus and ends Ad mortem tendo, morti mea carmina pendo; the verses have no colophon. Discussing the problem of authorship in his introduction, Wright pointed out that the older bibliographers had ascribed the poem to John of Bridlington , the saintly prior of the Austin Canons of Bridlington in Yorkshire, and the commentary to his contemporary John Erghome, an Austin friar of York. Wright himself did not believe either of these attributions to be accurate; he thought that both vaticinium and commentary were the work of a single, anonymous author writing about the year 1375 under the pen-name “John of Bridlington.” He was furthermore of the opinion that in the course of time the vaticinium became separated from its commentary and in this independent form obtained a wide popularity and circulation, thus explaining how many of the surviving manuscripts contained the poem alone. jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); }). (shrink)