Bede, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke

EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE.

LETTER OF EXHORTATION OF BISHOP ACCA

TO BEDE THE PRIEST.

To the most reverend brother in Christ and fellow priest, Bede the presbyter, Acca [wishes] everlasting salvation in the Lord. Often indeed have I urged upon your holy fraternity, both by writing when absent and by speaking when present, that after the exposition of the Acts of the Apostles you would deign to write on the Gospel of Luke as well. This you yourself have so far preferred to put off with a modest excuse rather than to do, declaring that you were deterred from attempting this work for two reasons above all: namely, that the work is itself arduous, and that it has been forestalled by the most holy and most learned bishop Ambrose. Nor [did you dare] to undertake a task exceeding your

own strength [you dared] to take up, nay, [you said] there was no need for anyone to go back over what was agreed to have been done excellently by a supreme genius, and that it would be superfluous labour, after the most powerful sayings of so great a man, either to say the same things differently, like a compiler, or, like one less learned, to wish to add weaker things beneath them. And [you said] that you greatly feared lest you be thought to be setting up new things in reproach of the study of the ancients, and lest that old proverb be said to you:

Why should you send fish into the sea, why waters into rivers?

But pour out generous gifts on needy places.

But to this objection of yours I briefly reply that,

in the words of the comic poet: "Nothing is said that has not been said before"; and that charity bears all things, and it was never the custom of the saints to envy one another, to provoke one another, but for each to have offered, according to his strength, what he could for the adorning of the house of the Lord. For neither did the blessed Pope Gregory fear to offend the Fathers by whom so many lessons of the Gospel had been expounded, which he himself treated anew in his homilies; nor did Augustine, or any other of the Fathers, out of regard for earlier commentators, draw back his hand in fear from expounding either the psalms or the other things he was asked to, or from writing whatever seemed good to him. Indeed (as the same Augustine says), it is for this very reason necessary that many books be made by many writers, in a different style but not with a different faith, even on the same questions, so that the matter itself may reach as many as possible, some in this way and others in that. Now there are certain things in the blessed Ambrose's exposition of Luke so eloquent and at the same time so lofty (as I do not doubt your holiness also has seen) that they can be understood only by the learned, while by unlearned or fastidious readers (of whom you will find many in the present age), because of the difficulty either of following what is eloquently said or of grasping what is lofty, they are not even thought worth seeking, as being higher than themselves, nor worth searching out, as being stronger than themselves. No small judgement was shown by the most learned father Augustine, who, writing to Paulina, a handmaid of God, on the seeing of God, thought fit to use no other testimonies so much as those of the blessed Ambrose taken from this little work, and judged that they should not merely be set down plainly but also expounded, so much so that by treating anew a very few short sentences of the said commentator he produced no small volume. I have thought this worth recalling so that both your holy fraternity and the readers alike might recognize it. For I wish that, when the work I ask for has been completed by you with God's help, this letter be placed together with it at its head, [showing] that you, not for

LETTER OF REPLY OF THE VENERABLE BEDE

TO BISHOP ACCA.

To the most blessed and exceedingly longed-for lord, Bishop Acca, Bede, humble priest, [wishes] salvation in the eternal Lord.

Wonderful truly, and wonderfully true, is the saying of the eminent teacher, that charity believes all things, hopes all things (1 Cor. 13:7). For in letters sent to me you say that you ask me to write something for you, and in the midst of asking, before you have even received an answer of my consent, you compose the seal of a preface to little works still being sought, as though they were already obtained and perfectly finished. The foundation not yet laid, not even the material brought, you yourself, as though the building of so great a labour were already complete, send the keys by which its entrance is to be secured, so that I should be ashamed not to undertake quickly a work which friendly faith presumes is to be undertaken quickly and fulfilled more quickly still. Surely nothing else does this but the undoubting confidence of mutual love, which from a friend's heart (as has been said) believes all things, hopes all things, at least those that can come to pass. Hence I too, as soon as I had read the little pages of your most sweet holiness, put myself to the labour of the enjoined

any other favour than that of brotherly condescension, were asked to write on Luke, so that those who because of the tenderness of their minds cannot grasp what is sublime or hard to understand may more easily apprehend these things expounded in a simpler style. Come then, most beloved, apply yourself diligently to the said work, expound the blessed Luke in clear discourse. And since Saint Ambrose passed over certain things undiscussed, which to him, as a man of the highest learning, seemed plain and not worth inquiring into, take care to explain these too, after looking more diligently into the little works of other Fathers, in either your own words or theirs. I believe also that to your most watchful study, you who spend days and nights wakeful in meditating on the law of God, the Author of light will open in some places, which have been left aside by them, what ought to be understood. For it is just enough, and befitting the governance of the heavenly mercy and justice, that you who, having wholly set aside the affairs of the world, pursue with unwearied mind the eternal and true light of wisdom, should both here attain the fruit of a purer understanding, and in the future contemplate with a clean heart Him in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the King in His beauty. I have thought it right to inform your holiness that some are troubled why, in your exposition of the Apocalypse, when you came to the four living creatures, you said by a new interpretation that Matthew is signified in the lion and Mark in the man; whereas some, on the contrary, assign Matthew to the man, because he begins to write as it were about the Lord, and Mark to the lion, in whom is heard the voice of one roaring in the desert. And I ask you to make known more fully in this work what seems to you truer concerning these things. May the God of love and peace deign to keep your holy fraternity mindful of us, and ever to enlighten it to consider the wonders of His law.

work, in which (to pass over the countless bonds of monastic service) I was at once my own dictator, notary and copyist. And having gathered from here and there the little works of the fathers, as it were the most distinguished and most worthy craftsmen for so great a task, I set myself to examine with diligence what the blessed Ambrose, what Augustine, what, finally, Gregory, most watchful (according to his name), the apostle of our nation, what Jerome, the interpreter of sacred history, what the other fathers thought and what they said on the words of Luke; and having committed it at once to sheets, as you bade, I set it forth, either in their very syllables or at least, for brevity's sake, in my own words, as seemed best. And since it was laborious to insert their names at every point and to show by name what was said by which author, I thought it convenient to print at a distance, in the margin, the first letters of the names, and by these to indicate, man by man, where each of the fathers begins and where the discourse I have transferred ends, careful in all things lest I be said to steal the sayings of my elders and to compose these

to be said to put them together as though they were my own. And I earnestly beseech, and adjure readers by the Lord, that if any should perhaps judge these little works of ours, such as they are, worthy of transcription, they remember to affix also the said signs of the names, as they find them in our exemplar. Some things also which (to speak in the words of your holiness) the Author of light opened to me, I have added where it seemed fitting, as tokens of my own sweat. Although I am not equal (as you wrote) to spending days and nights wakeful in meditation on the divine law, yet I do not doubt that I have spent no little study on the Scriptures, and that I have been able to see, not in this little work only but in absolutely every reading, only those things which the Author of light has deigned to open to me, that is, to discern them by right understanding. As to what you say troubles some, why in the Apocalypse I assigned Matthew to the lion and Mark to the man by a new interpretation, whoever they are whom this troubles ought to have observed that I said this was handed down not by a new interpretation of mine but by an ancient explanation of the fathers. For I did not record that it seemed so to me of myself, but that it had been so expounded by the blessed Augustine, and in a few words I also added on what ground he affirmed it. It is not beside the point if, setting down his very words too, we show what he thought about the evangelists or the living creatures that are their types, so that by them both that work of ours may be saved from unjust censure and this one may be strengthened by the authority of so great a teacher placed at its head. When, then, in the first book of his work on their agreement he had set out beforehand many things beautifully and excellently about the evangelists, he adds among other things, saying: "And although each seems to have kept a certain order of narrating of his own, yet none of them is found to have wished to write as if ignorant of another who preceded him, or to have passed over in ignorance what another is found to have written; but as it was inspired in each, he added the not superfluous co-operation of his own labour. For Matthew is understood to have taken up the incarnation of the Lord according to the royal line, and most of His deeds and words according to the present life of men. Mark follows him and seems as it were his attendant and abridger. For with John alone he has said nothing, by himself alone very little, with Luke alone rather less, but with Matthew a great deal, in almost as many words as he, whether agreeing with him alone or with the rest. Luke, however, appears more occupied with the priestly line and person of the Lord. For even in ascending to David himself he did not follow the royal pedigree, but through those who were not kings he comes out at Nathan, son of David, who was not himself a king either. Not so Matthew, who, descending through King Solomon, followed the other kings too in order, keeping among them a mystical number (of which we shall speak later). For the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true King and the one true Priest, the former to rule us, the latter to expiate us, showed that these two persons, commended singly among the fathers, had borne His figure." And a little after: "For according to [His] manhood," he says, "Christ was made both king and priest. To Him God gave the throne of David His father, that of His kingdom there should be no end, and that there should be, to intercede for us,

the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. But Luke did not have one joined to him as an abridger, as Matthew had Mark; and this perhaps not without some mystery, because it belongs to kings not to be without the attendance of companions. Hence he who had undertaken to narrate the royal person of Christ had joined to him as it were a companion, to follow in some manner in his footsteps. But the priest, since he entered alone into the holy of holies, therefore Luke (whose aim concerned the priesthood of Christ) did not have as it were a comrade following after him, to abridge his narrative in some manner. These three Evangelists, however, were chiefly engaged with those things which Christ did in time through the human flesh. But John has in view above all the very Godhead of the Lord, by which He is equal to the Father, and took care to commend this chiefly in his Gospel, so far as he believed it sufficient among men. And so he is borne far higher than those three, so that you see them as it were conversing on earth with Christ the man, but him as having passed beyond the cloud by which all the earth is covered and come to the clear heaven, whence with the sharpest and firmest gaze of the mind he might see in the beginning the Word of the Lord with God, through Whom all things were made, and might recognize Him made flesh that He might dwell in us." Again, after some passages: "Hence," he says, "of those who have interpreted those four living creatures from the Apocalypse as signifying the four evangelists, those seem to me to have attended to something more probable who understood the lion in Matthew, the man in Mark, the calf in Luke, the eagle in John, than those who assigned the man to Matthew, the eagle to Mark, the lion to John. For they chose to draw a certain conjecture from the beginnings of the books, not from the whole aim of the evangelists, which ought rather to have been searched out. For much more fittingly is he who chiefly commended the royal person of Christ taken to be signified by the lion. Hence in the Apocalypse too the lion is mentioned together with the royal tribe itself, where it is said: The lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered (Rev. 5:5). For according to Matthew the magi too are related to have come from the East to seek and adore the King, Who, being born, appeared to them through a star; and King Herod himself fears the King Christ as an infant, and kills so many little ones so that he may slay Him. But that Luke is signified by the calf, because of the great victim of the priest, neither party has doubted. For there the narrator's discourse begins from the priest Zachary. There the kinship of Mary and Elizabeth is recorded. There the mysteries of the first priesthood are related as fulfilled in the infant Christ. And whatever else can be diligently observed, by which it may appear that Luke's aim concerned the person of the priest. Mark, however, who wished to narrate neither the royal line nor the priestly, neither kinship nor consecration, and yet is shown to be engaged with those things which the man Christ wrought, seems to have been signified only by the figure of the man among those four living creatures. Now these three living creatures, whether lion, or man, or calf, walk upon the earth. Hence these three evangelists, being chiefly occupied with these