Bede and John Chrysostom

by Rosalind Love

Bede opens his metrical Life of Cuthbert by recalling the saints through
whom God has allowed divine light to penetrate the dark shadows of this
benighted world: Peter and Paul at Rome, John in Asia, Bartholomew in
India, Mark in Egypt, Cyprian in Africa, Hilary at Poitiers, and in
penultimate place before Cuthbert among the English, John Chrysostom at
Constantinople:
Constantinopolim Chrysostomus ille Iohannes
Aurato nitidae lustrat fulgore loquelae.1

The modest aim of this article is to consider the evidence for what Bede
knew of John’s “gilded lightning.”
In the light of the evidence laid out below, one might justifiably begin to
wonder what it was about Chrysostom’s work that so impressed Bede, but
the image he chose in the lines just quoted above is worth lingering over
very briefly as an aside for another reason. In some manuscripts of Jerome’s
De uiris inlustribus, instead of the original rather terse entry on John
Chrysostom (ch. 129) there occurs an interpolation which includes the claim
“his writings flash through the whole world like swift-spreading lightning, as
well in the Greek as in the Latin language” [“per totum orbem scripta eius
tam Graeco sermone edita, quam in Latinum translata, uelut fulgura
percurrentia micant”].2 Although Bede’s hexameter may owe the most to

1
Bede, Vita S. Cudbercti metrica, lines 23–24, ed. Werner Jaager, Bedas metrische Vita
S. Cuthberti (Leipzig, 1935), p. 60 (“that John Chrysostom who illuminates Constantinople
with the gilded lightning of his sparkling discourse”). All translations are my own unless
otherwise attributed.
2
The interpolation, attested earliest in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, lat. 6333
(South Italy, ninth-century), was not reported in the standard edition of the text by Ernest C.
Richardson, ed. Hieronymus Liber de viris inlustribus: Gennadius Liber de viris inlustribus,
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Band 14, Heft 1a
(Leipzig, 1896), but in the detailed introduction to his projected edition for the CSEL series
by Alfred Feder, Studien zum Schriftstellerkatalog des heiligen Hieronymus (Breisgau, 1927),

72
 Bede and John Chrysostom 73

Lucan’s Bellum ciuile 11.728 (“serpitis, aurato nitidi fulgore dracones”), one
wonders whether he could also have been swayed by the recollection of
having read that extended notice of John’s achievements. Bede certainly
knew De uiris inlustribus, but whether in such an interpolated copy seems
beyond recovery for now, since the extant manuscripts written or used in
Anglo-Saxon England are ninth century or later.3 Jerome’s original entry,
written while John was still a priest at Antioch, before his elevation to
Constantinople in 398, would have given Bede little sense of John’s
eminence as a preacher and exegete (Jerome wrote “he is said to have
composed a good deal, of which I have only read On the priesthood”).4 Even
Gennadius’s supplement to Jerome’s catalogue, which Bede also knew,
overlooks John except in one interpolated version (of which the earliest
manuscript is of sixth-century date),5 but it is an article for another day to
determine which versions of Jerome and Gennadius Bede had.
In fact, John “golden mouth” was the most voluminous of the Greek
fathers: manuscripts of his works survive in the greatest numbers of all,
running to over two thousand, and the edition of them in the Patrologia
Graeca runs to seventeen volumes, well ahead of the next largest, Origen
and Cyril at nine volumes each. A small part of this vast corpus was put into
Latin within fifteen years of John’s death in 407, notably by a disciple of
Pelagius, Anianus of Celeda in Campania, who translated John’s Homilies
on Matthew, for example.6 Apart from the special case of the seventh-

pp. 158–60; see also Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, ed. Gerolamo, Gli uomini illustri (Florence,
1988), pp. 226–27.
3
See Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), p. 217 for Bede’s
citations from the work. Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. A List of
Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe,
AZ, 2001), lists four copies of De uiris illustribus, of which the earliest (London, British
Library, Cotton Caligula A. xv) dates from the second half of the eighth century, was written
in north-east France, but reached England only in the late ninth or early tenth century; it does
not transmit the interpolation on Chrysostom.
4
Richardson, Liber de viris inlustribus, p. 54 (ch. 129), “Joannes Antiochenae ecclesiae
presbyter, Eusebii Emiseni Diodorique sectator, multa componere dicitur, de quibus περὶ
ἱερωσúνης tantum legi.”
5
Richardson, Liber de viris inlustribus, pp. 72–73. On Bede’s familiarity with
Gennadius’s work, see Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Libraries, p. 208.
6
See Rachel Skalitzky, “Annianus of Celeda: His Text of Chrysostom’s ‘Homilies on
Matthew,’” Aevum 45 (1971), 208–33; a helpful summary of the Latin translations of
Chrysostom is Jean-Paul Bouhot, “Les traductions latines de Jean Chrysostome du Ve au
XVIe siècle,” in Traductions et traducteurs au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque international du
CNRS organisé à Paris, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, les 26–28 mai 1986, ed.
Geneviève Contamine (Paris, 1989), pp. 31–39; see also Chrysostome Baur, “L’Entrée
74 Love

century Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian, where the presence of

Greek speakers may well have allowed fleeting direct access to the full range
of John’s thought and writings,7 it is Latin Chrysostom that we should most
reasonably expect to find circulating in Anglo-Saxon England.
Before returning to Bede, it is worth a glance at the few surviving
manuscripts of John’s works from England. The earliest are some mid-
eighth-century fragments now at Düsseldorf’s Universitätsbibliothek, K1 (B
215) + K2 (C 118) + K15 (009) + K19 (Z 8/8).8 They are in Northumbrian
cursive minuscule, and contain parts of two of John’s ascetic-monastic
treatises translated into Latin, De compunctione cordis books 1 and 2,9 and
De reparatione lapsi (also known as Ad Theodorum lapsum and actually two
treatises on a similar theme, only one of which is addressed to the young
Theodore of Mopsuestia).10 Since they ended up in bindings at Beyenburg
near Werden, it has recently been suggested that the book from which these
fragments derive came from York to Werden in the luggage of Alcuin’s
missionary pupil Liudger.11
A ninth-century collection of patristic material including excerpts from
John’s De reparatione lapsi, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 516 (SC
2570), had travelled from North Italy, via either Brittany or Wales, to
England, by the eleventh century, and was at Salisbury until the early

littéraire de Saint Chrysostome dans le monde Latin,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 8

(1907), 249–65.
7
On John as a source for the Canterbury Commentaries, see Michael Lapidge and
Bernhard Bischoff, eds. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and
Hadrian (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 214–16, where it is noted that although Chrysostom is
quoted seven times by name, in most cases it has not proved possible to identify the precise
source within his vast corpus. A preliminary search suggests that the Latin Chrysostom
material discussed in the present article will not supply the answers.
8
E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores. A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts
prior to the Ninth Century, 11 vols. and supplement. (Oxford, 1934–71), 8:1187, “cursive
minuscule of North English type.” K19 only came to light in 2001, and is not included in
Codices Latini Antiquiores, nor in the subsequently-published supplements to it.
9
Maurits Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum, 6 vols. in 7 (Turnhout, 1974–2003)
[hereafter CPG] nos. 4308–9; ed. W. Schmitz, Monumenta Tachygraphica Codicis
Parisiensis Latini 2718. Fasciculus alter: Sancti Iohannis Chrysostomi de cordis
conpunctione libros II latine versos continens (Hannover, 1883) and PG 47:411–22.
10
CPG 4305; ed. Jean Dumortier, Jean Chrysostome. À Théodore, Sources chrétiennes
117 (Paris, 1966).
11
Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, “Vom armarium in York in den Düsseldorfer Tresor: Zur
Rekonstruktion einer Liudger-Handschrift aus dem mittlerem 8. Jahrhundert,” Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 58 (2002), 193–203, at p. 196.
 Bede and John Chrysostom 75

seventeenth century.12 Finally an eleventh-century manuscript from St.

Augustine’s, Canterbury, London, British Library, Royal 5.B.xv, contains a
copy of a Latin version of the homily De muliere Cananaea, attributed to
John, but generally regarded now as not his work.13 For my purposes the
Düsseldorf fragments are most obviously of interest.
Let us now return to Bede. Wearmouth-Jarrow was once described as
having had “one of the best libraries in England in the eighth century.”14 In
his classic 1930s essay on the subject, Laistner could list just two works by
John in that library – a homily on the Nativity, and the treatise Quod nemo
laeditur nisi a semetipso (see below) – one of which, as we shall see, was
rather a stab in the dark, albeit an educated one.15 Helpfully, Bede cited John
Chrysostom by name as an authority five times altogether – in four cases of
the five referring to him as John, bishop of Constantinople. On one occasion,
Bede even named the work in question. For in his commentary on the
Catholic Epistles, discussing 1 Peter 3.13 (“Now who will harm you if you
are eager to do what is good?”), Bede recommended to his readers what was
possibly one of John’s best known treatises, written from exile, Quod nemo
laeditur nisi a semetipso, in which John argued that nobody can be harmed
by another unless of their own volition:16
Lege librum Iohannis Chrysostomi quem scripsit de eo: Neminem posse laedi ab alio
nisi a semet ipso.17

Since the homily’s usual title is fairly revealing of its subject matter it
would perhaps be mistaken immediately to assume that it was definitely in

12
See Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c.1075–c.1125
(Oxford, 1992), pp. 78–79.
13
CPG 4529; two Latin translations of this homily circulated, the one in Royal 5.B.XV
and a second, which is transmitted in the collection of thirty-eight homilies discussed below;
see Guiseppe Persiani, “Notes sur les deux antiques versions latines de l’homélie
Chrysostomienne De chananaea (CPG 4529),” Classica et Mediaevalia 49 (1998), 69–93.
14
Max L.W. Laistner, A Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts (Ithaca, NY, 1943), p. 1.
15
Max L.W. Laistner, “The Library of the Venerable Bede,” in Alexander H. Thompson
(ed.), Bede, His Life, Times and Writings (Oxford, 1935), pp. 237–66, repr. in The Intellectual
Heritage of the Early Middle Ages. Selected Essays by M.L.W. Laistner, ed. Chester G. Starr
(Ithaca, NY, 1957), pp. 117–49, at 141 and 146.
16
Greek text: CPG 4400; the Latin translation ed. Anne-Marie Malingrey, “Une ancienne
version latine du texte de Jean Chrysostome «Quod nemo laeditur…»,” Sacris Erudiri 16
(1965), 320–54.
17
Bede, Super epistolas catholicas expositio, 1 Peter 3.92–93, ed. David Hurst, Opera
Exegetica Pars 4, CCSL 121 (Turnhout, 1983), pp. 179–342, at 245: “Read John
Chrysostom’s book which he wrote on this subject, That nobody can be harmed by another
only by himself.”
76 Love

Bede’s library and that he had read it, though we may think it rather
pointless to recommend a work without being confident that it is accessible.
However, Bede’s exegesis of 1 Peter 3.13 shows unmistakeably that he had
read Quod nemo laeditur. Although he does not appear to cite it verbatim, he
borrowed one of John’s lines of argument, to my mind one of the least
obvious, which is perhaps itself quite telling. John – and following him,
Bede – pointed out that in the parable of the houses built on rock and on
sand, it was not because of the storm that the house on sand collapsed, but
because it had been foolishly built there in the first place. Adversity beat
upon the occupants of both houses, but only harmed the man who had
brought it on himself.18
An early Latin translation of Quod nemo laeditur, possibly by Anianus,
survives in over eighty manuscripts: significantly, it tends most often to
travel in manuscripts with two other treatises by John, precisely the same
two found in the Düsseldorf fragments, De compunctione cordis and De
reparatione lapsi.19
It is time to move on to the next two places where Bede cited John of
Constantinople by name, beginning with the most extensive example. In his
Commentary on the third Gospel, upon reaching Luke 1.24 (“After these
days his wife Elizabeth conceived”), Bede sought to answer the obvious
question, “at what date did John Baptist’s mother conceive?” He turned
immediately to his reading:
Huius sacratissime conceptionis Iohannes Constantinopolitanae urbis antistes
mentionem faciens ‘gesta sunt haec,’ inquit, ‘mense septembri octauo kalendas
octobris incipiente luna undecima quando oportebat iudaeos ieiunium scenopegiae
celebrare. …’ 20

Several lines of discussion then follow, on the significance of this dating

– that 24 September is the autumn equinox when days get shorter than
nights, an appropriate time for the conception of one who was to say “He
must wax, but I must wane” (John 3.50). Bede then observed “Quibus beati
Iohannis uerbis edocemur prima mox die post diem expiationis mutationem
18
Quod nemo laeditur ch. 12, lines 18–35, ed. Malingrey, “Une ancienne version,”
p. 347, to be compared with Bede, In Epistolas septem catholicas, 1 Peter 3.78–85 (CCSL
121:245).
19
Malingrey, “Une ancienne version,” pp. 321–23, lists the manuscripts.
20
In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 1.1.345–49, ed. David Hurst, Opera Exegetica Pars III,
CCSL 120 (Turnhout, 1960), pp. 1–425, at 28: “Making mention of this most holy
conception, John of Constantinople says ‘These things were done in the month of September,
on the eighth kalends of October, as the eleventh moon was beginning, when the Jews were
supposed to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles.’”
 Bede and John Chrysostom 77

tunc sacerdotalis uicis esse celebratam ideoque in hac praecursoris domini

conceptionem fieri.”21
The editor of Bede’s Commentary on Luke for the Corpus Christianorum
series, Dom David Hurst, offered in his apparatus fontium a reference to
John’s Homilia in diem natalem Domini, of which there is no attested Latin
translation;22 he was very likely following Laistner’s earlier attempt to
identify Bede’s source here (this the educated stab in the dark mentioned
above).23 Although John discussed precisely the same issue in that homily,
namely the timing of John Baptist’s conception, there is nothing quite like
what Bede reported him as saying. In fact, it emerges that Bede’s source was
the fifth-century Latin treatise De solstitia et aequinoctia [sic] conceptionis
et natiuitatis Domini nostri Jesu Christi et Iohannis Baptistae, sometimes
attributed to one Pontius Maximus or Pontius Maximianus, conjectured to be
an African, but thought by others to be of anonymous Syrian origin.24 This
Bede cited nearly verbatim for the passage just quoted – and more
extensively than Hurst had realized (running to sixteen lines: the bulk of the
commentary on Luke 3.24).25
In his discussion of the equinoxes in De temporum ratione (ch. 30), Bede
may well have had in mind this same treatise when he observed that “very
many of the Church’s teachers” assign the conception of John the Baptist to
the autumn equinox on 24 September, with the explanation that “it is fitting
that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the
increase of temporal light, and that the herald of penance, who must
decrease, should be engendered and born at a time when the light is
diminishing.”26 He did not on that occasion specify John Chrysostom as his
source.
Why, then, did Bede believe he was quoting John of Constantinople in
the Commentary on Luke? The answer may be found in the fact that De

21
In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 1.1.361–64 (CCSL 120:28): “from these words of
blessed John we learn that on the very first day after the day of expiation the change of
priestly ‘turn’ was observed, and therefore on this day occurred the conception of the Lord’s
precursor.”
22
CPG 4334, ed. PG 49:351–62. Hurst cited in particular cols. 357–58.
23
Laistner, “The Library of the Venerable Bede,” p. 141.
24
Eligius Dekkers, Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed. (Steenbrugge, 1995) [hereafter
CPL], no. 2277, ed. PL Supplementum 1:557–67, at col. 561.
25
In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 1.1.347–61 (CCSL 120:28).
26
De temporum ratione, ch. 30, ed. Charles W. Jones, Opera Didascalia Pars II, CCSL
123B (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 263–460, at 374; trans. Faith Wallace, Bede: The Reckoning of
Time (Liverpool, 1999), p. 87.
78 Love

solstitia et aequinoctia circulated as item 17 of a collection of thirty-eight

homilies first brought to scholarly attention by André Wilmart.27 The
collection survives in twenty-five complete copies, and in almost as many
partial copies, ranging in date from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries.
Where complete, the collection usually bears the title “Incipiunt omeliae
sancti Iohannis episcopi Constantinopolitani” (“here begin the homilies of
John, bishop of Constantinople”). That rubric is deeply misleading, for
scholars have shown that only fourteen of the thirty-eight homilies are
translations of genuine works by John Chrysostom, and some are Latin
compositions with no known Greek antecedents.28
Wilmart found that in many cases the thirty-eight–homily collection
travelled in manuscripts alongside four further Latin translations of genuine
Chrysostom treatises already mentioned here – that is, Quod nemo laeditur,
the two books of De compunctione cordis, and De reparatione lapsi – in
other words, the one work of John’s which Bede names, and the two others
which survive in the eighth-century Düsseldorf fragments. One wonders
whether Bede’s library contained just such an extended collection, and,
moreover, whether perhaps the fragments were also part of a similar
collection.
The earliest surviving manuscript of the thirty-eight–homily collection
has been dated to the early ninth century, namely Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Laud misc. 452, possibly from Lorsch, and Wilmart suggested, on the
evidence of orthography, that it had been copied from a seventh- or eighth-
century exemplar.29 Another ninth-century copy (though not a complete one,
as it contains just seven of the homilies) is preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, lat. 1771, fols. 1–30, written in Insular minuscule and
located by Bischoff to Fulda.30 When Wilmart first brought the collection to
light, scholars believed that Augustine’s use of certain items in it, under the
clear impression that he was quoting Chrysostom, proved its early origins.31

27
André Wilmart, “La Collection des 38 Homélies latines de Saints Jean Chrysostome,”
Journal of Theological Studies 19 (1917–18), 305–27; a summary of the contents of the
collection can also be found in José Antonio de Aldama, Repertorium Pseudochrysostomicum
(Paris, 1965), pp. 222–23.
28
Wolfgang Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien des Chrysostomus Latinus, Wiener
Studien Beiheft 10 (Wien, 1988).
29
“La collection,” p. 306, n. 1.
30
“La collection,” p. 306, n. 2.
31
See, for example, Berthold Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomus-
schriften,” Historisches Jahrbuch 61 (1941), 212–26, repr. in Altaner, Kleine patristische
 Bede and John Chrysostom 79

Wolfgang Wenk, who did the most recent extensive work on this subject,
showed convincingly, for complex reasons which do not need to be
rehearsed here, that Augustine may indeed have been citing early
Ps.-Chrysostom, but from a compilation that extended beyond Wilmart’s
thirty-eight–homily collection and had slightly different contents.32
Nevertheless, he suggested that the core of the collection may have been an
early fifth-century Pelagian preaching handbook, made in Africa. The
collection, as also individual items within it, enjoyed a wide circulation. If it
was in such a context that Bede encountered the treatise on the equinoxes
and solistices, there is, then, no problem with him regarding it as John’s.
Do we have further evidence that Bede used Wilmart’s homily
collection? Let us proceed to his next reference to Chrysostom. In his Thirty
Questions on the Book of Kings, at Question 28, Bede discussed the issue of
sun worship among the Hebrews before King Josiah’s time, in relation to 4
Kings 23.11, which records that Josiah destroyed horse images and chariots
related to that cult. Bede cited what he believed to be John’s opinion on the
subject:
ut autem eidem currus et equos tribuant de miraculo sumptum heliae prophetae quia
curru igneo et equis igneis est raptus ad caelum Iohannes Constantinopolitanus
episcopus aestimat.33

This left the editor Charles Jones rightly baffled: again the ideas Bede drew
on come from one of the items in the 38–homily collection (no. 6), the
anonymous De ascensione Heliae, another work composed in Latin with no
basis in any known Greek text.34 In it the homilist suggested that pagan poets
and painters derived the notion of the sun chariot from the Elijah story,
helped by the proximity of the name Helias to the word Helios:
Hinc poetas atque pictores in figuranda Solis imagine exemplar credo sumpsisse, qua
curru atque equis fulgentibus ipse rutilans atque radians et fluctu oceani sublevatus
inter praeruptos montium scopulos evadens quasi ad caelestia videtur ascendere in

Schriften, ed. Günter Glockmann, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
altchristlichen Literatur 83 (Berlin, 1967), pp. 416–36, at 427–28.
32
Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, pp. 30–31; and see also Bouhot, “Les traductions
latines,” p. 33.
33
In Regum libros quaestiones XXX, question 28, lines 12–15, ed. Charles W. Jones,
Opera Exegetica Pars II, CCSL 119 (Turnhout, 1962), pp. 289–322, at 319: “John, bishop of
Constantinople, believes that they attribute chariot and horse to it (namely the sun) because of
the miracle of the prophet Elijah who was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery
horses.”
34
CPL 917, ed. Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, pp. 100–8; Wilmart seems to
have been the first to identify this homily as Bede’s source (“La collection,” p. 311).
80 Love
similitudinem nominis eius inductus. Sol enim Graeco sermone Helios appellatur.
Vnde Helias quasi Helios vere curru atque equis igne fulgentibus de oceani fluctu, id
est de mundi commotione, per montium scopulos, id est per magnorum laborum
difficultates progrediens ad caelestia devectus ascendit.35

Perhaps wisely, he did not labour the point beyond this observation. But
clearly the wordplay appealed to Bede: his commentary goes on to imagine
how the Greeks could have heard from the Israelites the story of
Helias/Elijah – even seen it in a picture on the wall, he says – got the two
words confused, and foolishly believed that the Bible story was about the
sun’s passage:
Quia enim Graece helios dicitur sol sicut etiam Sedulius cum de Heliae ascensu
caneret ostendit …. [4 lines from the Carmen paschale 1.184–87, follow] …
audientes Graeci ab Israhelitis quos diuinas habere litteras fama prodebat praedicari
quod helias curru igneo et equis sit igneis ad caelestia translatus uel certe hoc ipsum
inter alia depictum in pariete uidentes crediderunt uicinia decepti nominis solis hic
transitum per caelos esse designatum et miraculum diuinitus factum commutauerunt
in argumentum erroris humana stultitia commentatum.36

With some satisfaction Bede then concluded “and by imitating the Greeks,
the Jews took pains not to appear less stupid than the most stupid of all the
Gentiles in some regard.”37
Wolfgang Wenk, who edited De ascensione Heliae, also noticed that
Bede had used material from another homily in the collection, De patre et
duobus filiis (on the parable of the prodigal son), again in his commentary on

35
Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, pp. 101–2: “From this [scil. Elijah’s fiery
chariot] I think that poets and painters acquired the model for depicting the sun’s image, in
which, with a chariot and blazing horses, red-glowing and radiant, rising up out of the ocean’s
surge and passing among the mountains’ rugged crags, it seems to ascend as if towards the
heavens, all on the basis of the similarity of its name. For in Greek the sun is called ‘helios’.
Hence Helias [Elijah], like the ‘helios’, truly ascended to the heavens borne by a chariot and
horses blazing with fire, advancing from the ocean’s surge (that is, the world’s trouble),
through the mountains’ crags (that is, through the tribulations of great labours).”
36
In Regum libros quaestiones XXX, question 28, lines 15–27 (CCSL 119:319): “For
because in Greek helios means the sun (as Sedulius also showed when he sang about Elijah’s
ascent…), the Greeks, hearing it proclaimed by the Israelites (of whom it was rumoured that
they had divine writings) that Elijah was transported to the heavens by a fiery chariot and
fiery horses – or for sure seeing just this scene painted, among others, on a wall – deceived by
the close similarity of the name [Helias Elijah and helios sun], they believed that here the
sun’s passage was referred to, and turned a divinely-wrought miracle into a proof of their
delusion worked out by human folly.”
37
In Regum libros quaestiones XXX, question 28, lines 27–29 (CCSL 119:319): “quos
imitati ipsi Iudaei sategerunt ne in aliquo gentilium stultissimis minus stulti parerent.”
 Bede and John Chrysostom 81

Luke.38 That homily also circulated as a letter of Jerome, though certainly

not an authentic one.39 Bede followed it for his discussion of the parable,
sometimes quite loosely but with sufficiently close verbal parallels to clinch
the source identification. On this occasion, he did not choose to attribute the
material he used to Jerome or to John, but merely wove the phrases silently
and seamlessly into the texture of his exegesis. That he did not name John
specifically may mean that he had found the homily in a context other than
Wilmart’s collection, but not necessarily.
Bede’s two other explicit references to John have remained hitherto
utterly enigmatic, and certainly eluded the editor of the work containing
them, namely De orthographia, Bede’s handbook on spelling and other
peculiarities. The work is a remarkable collation of a variety of sources:
glossaries, grammars, and the like.40 The two entries in question Bede
appears to have inserted independently of any of his regular sources.
I should like to consider them in reverse alphabetical order. Under the
letter O, Bede dealt with the Greek-derived word organum, noting that
properly it refers to one particular musical instrument, but can be extended
to refer to all instruments. To support this observation he then called on the
authority of John of Constantinople:
Iohannes Constantinopolitanus episcopus: “In salicibus in medio eius suspendimus
organa nostra,” id est citharam, psalterium, lyram, et cetera.41

Of course, “In salicibus…” is verse 2 of Psalm 136. Here Bede quoted the
version in the Gallican psalter, likely known to him from other contexts, and
it seems strange for him to have alighted on John in particular as an authority
(the Hebraicum reads citharas for organa). This mystified Jones, whose
apparatus fontium simply has the words “Johannes Chrysostomus (?).” Now
John did write a commentary on the psalms, and in relation to this verse of
136 he offered two alternatives for organa – ἕτερος κιθάρας ἡμῶν ἄλλος

38
In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 4.15.2436–37, “nuptiarum pignus illarum quibus
ecclesia sponsatur,” and 2447–50, “bene saginatus quia…. pro omnibus exorare” (CCSL
120:291), noted by Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, p. 93.
39
CPL 766; Ps.-Jerome, Epistula 35 (De duobus filiis frugi et luxurioso), ed. PL 30:256–
62, and Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, pp. 170–88.
40
For a thorough discussion of Bede’s sources and the purpose De orthographia was
intended to serve, see Carlotta Dionisotti, “On Bede, Grammars, and Greek,” Revue
Bénédictine 92 (1982), 11–41.
41
De orthographia, lines 776–79, ed. Charles W. Jones, Opera Didascalica Pars I, CCSL
123A (Turnhout, 1975), pp. 1–57, at 38: “John of Constantinople: ‘On the willows there we
hung up our instruments.’ That is cithara, psaltery, lyre, etc.”
82 Love

λύρας (“alternatively citharas or lyres”).42 That is not so very distant from

Bede’s gloss on organa. But John’s psalm commentary is not known to have
been translated into Latin, apart from his treatments of Psalms 50, 122 and
150, all included in the 38–homily collection.43 Psalm 150 does offer
possibilities for the source of Bede’s quotation, with its references to various
instruments on which God is to be praised (“praise him on the psaltery and
harp, on the strings and organ,” and so on), and indeed, John’s commentary
on the relevant verses offers sundry equivalents for those instruments, but
nothing exactly like what Bede was quoting.
Could the solution to this puzzle lie with the 38–homily collection?
Unusually, its contents lie largely outside the scope of those now
indispensable search tools Brepols CETEDOC Library of Latin Texts and
Chadwyck Healey’s Patrologia Latina Database, so that one is obliged to
resort to the old-fashioned method of reading books, in order to hunt through
every item in the homily collection. Even that is not a straightforward matter
since but a handful of the individual Latin homilies has been edited in
modern times;44 the hunt has, therefore, to be directed either to the
manuscripts preserving the collection, or to one of the sixteenth-century
printed editions of Latin Chrysostom which used them and transmitted their
contents.45 So it is that the line from Psalm 136 occurs quite unexpectedly in
the Latin translation of one of John’s genuine homilies, De proditione Judae,
“On Judas’s betrayal” (item 10 in Wilmart’s 38–homily collection), in a
strongly-worded invective against the Jews.46 John observed that during their
Babylonian exile the Jews forbore to carry out acts of worship – that is, they
hung up the musical instruments they would normally strum. In making this

42
CPG 4413, ed. PG 55:338–498, at cols. 405–7.
43
Wilmart, “La collection,” pp. 309–10 (items 2–4); see also Wenk, Zur Sammlung der
38 Homilien, pp. 9–10 and 15.
44
Item 18 (De Lazaro resuscitato), ed. Wilmart, “Le De Lazaro de Potamius,” Journal of
Theological Studies 19 (1917–18), 289–304; items 6, 8, 27, 32 and 33, by Wenk, Zur
Sammlung der 28 Homilien, pp. 100–88.
45
See the discussion of the early printed editions of Chrysostom which employed
manuscripts of the 38–homily collection, in Wilmart, “La collection,” p. 307 note 1. Simply
for reasons of ready access in the University Library at Cambridge, I have used the third
edition by Erasmus, Opera d. Iohannis Chrysostomi, archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani,
quotquot per Graecorum exemplarium facultatem in Latinam linguam hactenus traduci
potuerunt, 5 vols., printed by Johann Herwagen at Basel in 1539 (first printed by Johann
Froben at Basel in 1517, and then by Herwagen in 1525).
46
Opera d. Iohannis Chrysostomi, 3:535–41 at p. 539 (translating the John’s homily
[CPG 4336,1] printed in PG 49:373–82 at col. 379).
 Bede and John Chrysostom 83

point, he cited the relevant verse from Psalm 136, incidentally providing an
explanatory gloss, rendered thus in the Latin translation:
Dauid dicebat “Super flumina Babylonis ibi sedimus et fleuimus, in salicibus in
medio eius ibi suspendimus organa nostra” id est citharam, psalterium, lyram et
cetera. His enim olim utebantur, et his psalmos canebant: haecque in captiuitatem
abducti secum tulerant, ut monumentum patriae consuetudinis haberent, non ut iis
uterentur.47

And there, word for word, is what Bede quoted as the words of John of
Constantinople: the verse from Psalm 136 and the accompanying gloss on
organa, enumerating those silenced instruments. The Latin translation in the
38–homily collection is fairly faithful to John’s original Greek, only
departing from the order of the instruments named, which, one might argue,
confirms the source identification as lying with the Latin translation.48
When all is said and done, this adds up only to the identification of the
source for one more tiny snippet of information in De orthographia, yet
arguably it is of interest as a fleeting insight into the workings of Bede’s
mind. Perhaps John’s gloss on organa was something that struck Bede
during his reading of the 38–homily collection, which he then noted down
for future use. We should not entirely discount the possibility that he simply
came across it excerpted in some now-lost glossary, but there is evidence to
suggest that this was probably not the case. For in fact, Bede used the same
homily on Judas elsewhere, in his commentary on Luke, at the relevant
place, commenting on Luke 22.9, in which the disciples ask Jesus where he
wishes to celebrate the Passover:
Non habemus domicilium non habemus tabernaculum. Audiant quibus
aedificandarum domorum cura est et ambitiosarum porticuum cogitatur instructio
quos pretiosorum marmorum pompa et distincta auro laquearia delectant cognoscant
Christum omnium dominum qui locum ubi caput inclinaret non habuit. Et idcirco eum
discipuli interrogant: “Vbi uis paremus tibi manducare pascha?”49

47
“David said, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down and wept, on the willows in
the midst where we hanged our harps,’ that is cithara, psaltery, lyre, etc. For once they used
these instruments, and sang psalms with them, and these they took with them into captivity,
so as to have a memento of the custom of their homeland, but not in order to use them.”
48
The order of the instruments in John’s Greek is as follows (PG 49.379): τὰ ὄργανα
ἡμῶν, τουτ ἐστι ψαλτήριον κιθάραν λύραν καὶ τὰ λοιπά.
49
In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 6.22.489–95 (CCSL 120:375): “We have no home, no
tabernacle. Let them pay heed, those who trouble themselves over the building of houses and
grandiose porticoes, let this be a lesson considered by those who take pleasure in the pomp of
precious marbles and panelled ceilings picked out in gold: let them acknowledge Christ, the
84 Love

Bede drew this passage word-for-word from De proditione Judae, this time
with no explicit reference to John as the hitherto unidentified source for an
entire paragraph, indeed for all of his exegesis on Luke 22.9.
Now we must return to De orthographia for the last of Bede’s references
to John by name, and perhaps to the most puzzling one of all. Under the
letter C, Bede included an entry on cunabula:
Cunabula sunt panni infantiae, sed Iohannes Constantinopolitanus episcopus scribit
Lazarum in monumento cunabulis inuolutum.50

Jones identified a comparable entry within the corpus of extant glossaries for
the first part, “cunabula are the swaddling cloths of infancy.” What follows
betrays a hint of surprise with the observation: “but John bishop of
Constantinople wrote that Lazarus was wrapped in cunabulis in the tomb,”
referring to the raising of Lazarus at Bethany, recounted in the eleventh
chapter of John’s Gospel. In the Latin Vulgate, John 11.44 has Lazarus
bound with institis (from instita –ae, “hem, bandage”), rendering the Greek
κειρίαις (from κειρία, “bandages, swaddling bands”). Jones, in his
apparatus fontium for the edition of De orthographia, seized desperately
upon a passage in which Augustine quoted a homily by John on the raising
of Lazarus, and upon the Greek text of a sequence of homilies John preached
on Lazarus (not all of them actually relating to the same Lazarus). The
problem with the latter suggestion is that for none of those homilies does a
Latin translation survive.51 But Jones, unwittingly, had taken the first step
along a better trail with his reference to Augustine; the passage he pointed to
in Augustine’s Contra Iulianum (against the Pelagian, Julian of Eclanum)
cites as the words of John Chrysostom a Latin homily on Lazarus which is
transmitted as item 18 in the 38–homily collection.52 Dripping with gory
detail on the process of bodily corruption which Lazarus’s four-day-old
corpse must have exhibited, that homily is thought to have been composed

Lord of all, who had no place to lay His head. For this reason did the disciples ask him
‘Where do you wish us to prepare for you to eat the passover meal?’”
50
De orthographia, lines 262–64 (CCSL 123A:18).
51
The homilies which Jones suggested as possible sources are printed in PG 48, cols.
779–84 (In quatriduanum Lazarum [CPG 4322] attested in Armenian and Old Slavic
translations), and 963–1054 (De Lazaro conciones 1–7 [CPG 4329] which are in fact about
the other Lazarus, the pauper at the rich man’s gate); and PG 50:641–44 (In quatriduanum
Lazarum [CPG 4356], only transmitted in John’s original Greek).
52
CPL 351, ed. PL 44:641–874, at cols. 656–57 “Audi iam, Juliane, quid etiam Joannes
cum caeteris catholicis doctoribus dicat…. Item de resuscitatione Lazari: ‘Flebat Christus,’
inquit, ‘cur usque ad hoc mortalitas deliquisset.’”
 Bede and John Chrysostom 85

by one Potamius of Lisbonne.53 Regrettably, though, for our purposes, whilst

revelling in the putrefaction, Potamius nowhere mentioned Lazarus’s being
wrapped in cunabulis.
So much for Jones’s despairing guesswork. Nevertheless, a search
through the 38–homily collection again does in fact provide what seems to
be the solution to this second puzzle, again in a relatively unexpected
context. The collection contains, as items 11 and 12, two Holy-Week
homilies entitled De cruce et latrone, “On the Cross and the Thief,” the first
based on a genuine Chrysostom text, the second arguably not.54 Usually in
the manuscripts they follow directly after the homily on Judas’s betrayal just
discussed above. In the first of them, John worked over the passion
narrative, dwelling on the reproaches cast upon the crucified Christ, “come
down from the Cross,” and so on.55 He pointed out that of course Jesus could
have done so if had suited his purposes – he who had just shortly before
raised the dead Lazarus, wrapped in the grave clothes. John’s own Greek
follows the Greek text of John 11.44, in referring to Lazarus as μετὰ τῶν
κειριῶν (“with the bandages”), but the unnamed Latin translator chose, for
reasons of his own, to describe Lazarus as cunabilis … alligatum (“bound in
… cunabilis”), apparently a strange mistranslation, but precisely what Bede
reported with such surprise as the words of John of Constantinople.
Yet again we can perhaps see Bede picking something out of his reading
that is germane to another project. Since the two items in the 38–homily
collection that seem to have served as the sources for De orthographia occur
in sequence in most manuscripts, it is not too wild a flight of fancy to
imagine that Bede was working through the homily collection privately, or
hearing it read out, or maybe presiding over its copying in the Scriptorium,
perhaps at about the time he was writing the De orthographia or preparing
the materials to do so. His recording of this unusual use of cunabula
suggests very vividly the acuteness of a mind that scanned texts not
unthinkingly but with an eye for interesting, often minute, details,
particularly linguistic ones.
We must assume that Bede knew well enough that John Chrysostom was
a Greek author, and, moreover, that John Chrysostom and John, bishop of
Constantinople, were one and the same (this much seems evident from the
poetic lines with which this article began). Yet it is intriguing that in the case

53
Ed. Wilmart, “Le De Lazaro de Potamius,” pp. 298–304.
54
Wilmart, “La collection,” pp. 313–14; Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien, pp. 19
and 16.
55
PG 49:399–408, at col. 405; Opera d. Iohannis Chrysostomi, 3:541–46, at p. 545.
86 Love

of the word cunabula, Bede was quite untroubled about citing John as the
authority for the unusual use of a Latin word, apparently finding no
particular reason to doubt the authenticity of the material he had found in the
38–homily collection.
It is noteworthy that on the occasions when Bede named John as a
source, with the exception of his recommendation that a named work (Quod
nemo laeditur) be consulted, he was using the Greek Father as an authority
for factual information. But when he drew upon him (or believed that he
was) for images or ideas, which he then wove together with strands from
other sources, he chose not to break the flow of his commentary by citing
chapter and verse for his reading.
To sum up, then: there is good evidence that Bede had access to a copy of
the 38–homily collection that circulated under the name of John, bishop of
Constantinople. There is every possibility that the collection had appended
to it at least a Latin translation of Quod nemo laeditur, and maybe even the
two other pieces that also survive in the Düsseldorf fragments. At the present
state of our knowledge, there is no sign that Bede had any access to John’s
writings outside that collection, which must have conveyed to him a
somewhat unrepresentative view of John’s thought and preaching. Without
doubt there is a great deal more work to do on Bede’s use of this homily
collection. The use that I have made of it so far highlights the fact that we
are also still a long way from identifying all the sources that Bede worked
with, and that attention to the known manuscript transmission of materials is
an important part of that pursuit.56
Rosalind Love, University of Cambridge

56
I am profoundly grateful to Professor Tom Hall for allowing me to see a copy of his
entry on Chrysostom for the C fascicule of Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ahead of
publication.