The Church will celebrate the feast of St. Bede May 25. The English priest, monk and scholar is sometimes known as "the Venerable Bede" for his combination of personal holiness and intellectual brilliance.
Bede was born during 673 near the English town of Jarrow. His parents sent him at the age of 7 to study at a monastery founded by a Benedictine abbot who would later be canonized in his own right as St. Benedict Biscop. The abbot's extensive library may have sparked an early curiosity in the boy, who would grow up to be a voracious reader and prolific writer.
Later, Bede returned to Jarrow and continued his studies with an abbot named Ceolfrid, who was a companion of St. Benedict Biscop. The abbot and a group of other monks instructed Bede not only in Scripture and theology, but also in in sacred music, poetry and Greek.
Bede's tutors could see that his life demonstrated a remarkable devotion to prayer and study, and Ceolfrid made the decision to have him ordained a deacon when Bede was just 19. Another Benedictine monk and future saint, the bishop John of Beverley, ordained Bede in 691.
Bede studied for 11 more years before entering the priesthood at 30, around the beginning of the eighth century. Afterward, Bede took on the responsibility of celebrating daily Mass for the members of his Benedictine community, while also working on farming, baking and other works of the monastery.
As a monk, Bede gave absolute priority to prayer, fasting and charitable hospitality. He regarded all other works as valueless without the love of God and one's neighbor. However, Bede also possessed astounding intellectual gifts, which he used to survey and master a wide range of subjects according to an all-encompassing vision of Christian scholarship.
Bede declined a request to become abbot of his monastery. Instead, he concentrated on writing, producing more than 45 books – primarily about theology and the Bible, but also on science, literature and history. He taught hundreds of students at the monastery and its school, which became renowned throughout Britain.
His extensive scholarly contributions include championing the use of B.C. ("Before Christ") and A.D. ("Anno Domini," "the year of Our Lord") in dates, and contributing scientific calculations in the long-standing debate of the era over how to set the date for Easter, using the phases of the moon. With his renowned work "The Ecclesiastical History of the English People," Bede is also called the father of English history, credited with creating a sense of English national identity among the people of Britain that was founded on a common Christian faith.
During Bede's own lifetime, his spiritual and intellectual gifts garnered wide recognition. His writings on Scripture were considered so authoritative that a Church council ordered them to be publicly read in England's churches. Some of the most illustrious members of English society made pilgrimages to his monastery to seek his guidance, and he was personally invited to Rome by Pope Sergius.
Bede, however, was unaffected by these honors. Perhaps inspired by the Benedictine monastic ethos, which emphasizes one's absolute commitment to the monastic community, he chose not to visit Rome, or even to travel much beyond the Monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul in Jarrow throughout his entire adult life.
Instead, the world came to him – through the visitors he received, according to the Benedictine tradition of hospitality, and through his voluminous reading. And Bede, in turn, reached the world without leaving his monastery, writing books that were copied with reverence for centuries and still read today. He is one of the last western Christian writers to be numbered among the Church Fathers.
But Bede understood that love, rather than learning, was his life's purpose.
"It is better," he famously said, "to be a stupid and uneducated brother who, working at the good things he knows, merits life in heaven, than to be one who – though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a teacher – lacks the bread of love."
Bede died on the vigil of the feast of the Ascension of Christ in 735, shortly after finishing an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of John. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1899.
-- Benjamin Mann, Catholic News Agency
The image above is from "The Venerable Bede Translates John" by James Doyle Penrose, 1902.
Catholics honor St. Athanasius on May 2. The fourth century bishop, Father of the Church and Doctor of the Church is known as "the father of orthodoxy" for his absolute dedication to the doctrine of Christ's divinity.
St. Athanasius was born to Christian parents living in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 296. His parents took great care to have their son educated, and his talents came to the attention of a local priest who was later canonized as St. Alexander of Alexandria. The priest and future saint tutored Athanasius in theology, and eventually appointed him as an assistant.
Around the age of 19, Athanasius spent a formative period in the Egyptian desert as a disciple of St. Anthony in his monastic community. Returning to Alexandria, he was ordained a deacon in 319, and resumed his assistance to Alexander, who had become a bishop. The Catholic Church, newly recognized by the Roman Empire, was already encountering a new series of dangers from within.
The most serious threat to the fourth-century Church came from a priest named Arius, who taught that Jesus could not have existed eternally as God prior to His historical incarnation as a man. According to Arius, Jesus was the highest of created beings, and could be considered "divine" only by analogy. Arians professed a belief in Jesus' "divinity," but meant only that He was God's greatest creature.
Opponents of Arianism brought forth numerous scriptures which taught Christ's eternal pre-existence and His identity as God. Nonetheless, many Greek-speaking Christians found it intellectually easier to believe in Jesus as a created demi-god, than to accept the mystery of a Father-Son relationship within the Godhead. By 325, the controversy was dividing the Church and unsettling the Roman Empire.
In that year, Athanasius attended the First Ecumenical Council, held at Nicea to examine and judge Arius' doctrine in light of apostolic tradition. It reaffirmed the Church's perennial teaching on Christ's full deity, and established the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of faith. The remainder of Athanasius' life was a constant struggle to uphold the council's teaching about Christ.
Near the end of St. Alexander's life, he insisted that Athanasius succeed him as the Bishop of Alexandria. Athanasius took on the position just as the Emperor Constantine, despite having convoked the Council of Nicea, decided to relax its condemnation of Arius and his supporters. Athanasius continually refused to admit Arius to communion, however, despite the urgings of the emperor.
A number of Arians spent the next several decades attempting to manipulate bishops, emperors and Popes to move against Athanasius, particularly through the use of false accusations. Athanasius was accused of theft, murder, assault, and even of causing a famine by interfering with food shipments.
Arius became ill and died gruesomely in 336, but his heresy continued to live. Under the rule of the three emperors that followed Constantine, and particularly under the rule of the strongly Arian Constantius, Athanasius was driven into exile at least five times for insisting on the Nicene Creed as the Church's authoritative rule of faith.
Athanasius received the support of several popes and spent a portion of his exile in Rome. However, the Emperor Constantius did succeed in coercing one Pope, Liberius, into condemning Athanasius by having him kidnapped, threatened with death, and sent away from Rome for two years. The pope eventually managed to return to Rome, where he again proclaimed Athanasius' orthodoxy.
Constantius went so far as to send troops to attack his clergy and congregations. Neither these measures, nor direct attempts to assassinate the bishop, succeeding in silencing him. However, they frequently made it difficult for him to remain in his diocese. He enjoyed some respite after Constantius' death in 361, but was later persecuted by Emperor Julian the Apostate, who sought to revive paganism.
In 369, Athanasius managed to convene an assembly of 90 bishops in Alexandria, for the sake of warning the Church in Africa against the continuing threat of Arianism. He died in 373, and was vindicated by a more comprehensive rejection of Arianism at the Second Ecumenical Council, held in 381 at Constantinople.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, who presided over part of that council, described St. Athanasius as "the true pillar of the Church," whose "life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith."
— Catholic News Agency
Read more about the Doctors of the Church and the Fathers of the Church