Literatura Inglesa IV

MOCK EXAM
MOCK EXAM

That text belongs to Bedes Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, concretely, to

the fourth book, chapter XXIII. Bede was placed in the monastery of WearmouthJarrow at the age of seven. There, he was taught by Benedict Biscop and wrote many
rhetorical, scientific and historical works in Latin. He was the most important scholar of
the 8th century and the first English historian to achieve international reputation. He was
also the first historian to date events from the Incarnation of Christ.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum tries to provide an account of England
from the end of the Roman occupation to the year 731. It is focused on the spread of
Christianity and the growth of the English Church. But is it also a moral work and a
hagiography because it contains several stories of different saints and miracles in order
to testify the grace and glory of God.
Chapter XXIII deals with the life and death of Hild, foundress and abbess of
Whitby; she is the most widely known female saint of the early England. That particular
fragment is a very repetitive one insisting on the wisdom of Hild. She started her regular
life at the age of thirty three, curiously enough, just like Christ when died; before that,
she was a secular woman, she married, had children and fulfilled her duty as a wife and
as a mother. She came from a Christian family and that influenced her to learn and
follow a regular discipline, that is, Christian rules. In order to do that, monasteries were
founded, there people were taught the discipline of God.
She was the foundress of one of them, the Monastery of Whitby; that is very
significant because she is a woman and even nowadays it is difficult to find a woman
occupying a high position in the Church or even in other fields. However in those times,
men and women were equally educated and could occupy more o less the same
positions, monasteries were democratic institutions. Women had access to higher
education as if those were universities. Bede insisted very much on discipline and
regular basis on daily life.
She ruled her monastery following the example of the primitive church, that is,
she focused her teaching on sharing and the fact of being equal and having nothing as
own but for everybody. According to Bede, that was the way she tried to teach devotees
the maintenance of truth, religion, purity, and other spiritual virtues, and above all
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MOCK EXAM

peace and the love of God. She followed the spirit of the St. Benedictine Rule which
could be summed up in the motto of the Benedictine Confederation: pax (peace) and the
traditional ora et labora (pray and work). The Rule provides a moderate path between
individual zeal and formulaic institutionalism. Benedict's concerns were the needs of
monks in a community environment: namely, to establish due order, to foster an
understanding of the relational nature of human beings, and to provide a spiritual father
to support and strengthen the individual's ascetic effort and the spiritual growth that is
required for the fulfillment of the human vocation.
Her prudence and wisdom were highly recognized by people of different social
classes. All of them went to the monastery for advising. As the text showed, not only
ordinary men came to there about their business, but even kings and princes often
sought counsel and wisdom from her. In those words it can be observed how
influential she was, she was able to successfully advise about how to rule a kingdom or
how to manage a small business just following her studies of the Scriptures and working
on truth.
In order to prove that, Bede lists five prominent men who became Bishops of
different places, those were: Bose, Etla, Oftfor, John and Wilfrid; all of them had been
instructed in the Monastery of Whitby under Hilds rules. That monastery achieved a
great reputation because of Hilds instructions and the creation of men of great learning
and holiness as it was written by Bede.
Now, focusing our attention on the text written in Old English, it is important to
mention the preference in the use of English words instead of Latin ones. I think that is
a way of promoting the vernacular and England as a nation with his own history, culture
and language. The first curious symbol is the Tironian et written similarly to the
number seven and which is used as an abbreviation to the word and. That is still used
in Ireland and Scotland with the meaning of and.
Then, in the third line it can be seen the word sofstnesse which is an archaic
form of the Latin word soothely provided by the author in Old English. Another
compound word is arfstnesse, ar could mean honor or community and fst refers to
something fix, which is together; thus, the whole meaning is religion, a fixed
community. Those are complex words referred to complex meanings.

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MOCK EXAM

Another curious word is gastlicra because it has developed into the present day
English word ghost having been translated in the text as something spiritual. In old
English, that term refers to something spiritual, holy or clerigal. Then, mgena is
related to the virtue, to something that gives you strength, for instance, religion.
Gehaeld has been translated as maintenance which is related with its previous meaning
of keeping regarding. Sibbe in that text is related with a state in which a person has
peace of mind, he or she can feel freedom from agitation or fear. Curiously, that word is
connected with the present day English one sibling and related with the test because of
the community life they had in the monastery, they considered themselves siblings, that
is, brothers and sisters.
The Old English word Geornlice can be stated to be an adverb because of the suffix
lice. The adjective georn means something desirable so, putting everything together,
we obtain an adverb such as zealously, diligently, strenuously, carefully or willingly,
although the translator instead of choosing an adverb has preferred to use the
combination of and about all referring to the fact that taking all virtues into
consideration, the most desirable were peace and the love of God. Then, when Bede is
referring to Hilds wisdom, he use the adjective micelre which means intense, great or
big; and finally, it is also curious to note how the translator has used the word
Scriptures, when the author used the terms godcundra gewreota which literally means
godlike something-written.
As well as those interesting words, numerous symbols belonging to the Old English
alphabet are also visible in the text, symbols which never appear in the Latin one and,
once again, that shows the authors preference to the use of the vernacular instead of
using Latin words. That is also a sign of a time in which two distinct cultures were
coexisting, the Christian and the Pagan.
To conclude it could be stated that this is a text which demonstrates how important
were monasteries in those times in which Christian Religion was being established and
how important was also the figure of the abbot because he was not only a religious
figure but also a kind of adviser or consultant in which people of all social rates trusted.
Kings, princes or merchants entrusted their problems to the abbot in order to find the
right solution, a solution that was always related with the religious virtues. That fact
established a connection between peoples faith and their daily lives and Christian
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Religion became the only way of doing things in a successful way. Another important
issue is the fact that the figure of the abbot is performed by a woman, which enables us
to see that at that time men and women were equally educated and could get important
positions in the church which even nowadays is difficult to find. Finally, the figure of
Hild, as it has already mentioned, was extremely important in the conversion of England
to Christianity, she was abbess at several monasteries and recognized for the wisdom
that drew kings to her for advice as well as for the teaching given to men in her
monasteries, some of them, such as Bose, Etla, Oftfor, John and Wilfrid, became very
prominent men because of their works as bishops of different places and their lives
dedicated to the study and observance of the holy Scriptures. All those advices given by
Hild followed the St. Benedictine Rule which was one of the most important written
works to shape medieval Europe, embodying the ideas of a written constitution and the
rule of law. It also incorporated a degree of democracy in a non-democratic society, and
dignified manual labor. That is, it was the way the Church used to have people
controlled following its ideas by means of advices to people or by the studies of that and
other religious book in monasteries.