Debating the End Times with Bede

Introduction

Over the last three decades, a growing body of articles and books has shed much light on early medieval beliefs about the end of the world. ¹ Building on the excellent foundation of recent scholarship on the writings of the Anglo-Saxon historian and exegete, Bede (672/673–735), in particular studies by Peter Darby and Faith Wallis, the present article seeks to make a small contribution to understanding the spectrum of eschatological thought in Bede’s monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow and its wider Northumbrian milieu. ² Two works in which he comments on ideas that he rejected lie at the initial centre of this inquiry. One is the letter that he sent in 708 to Plegwin, a monk or cleric in the circle of Bishop Wilfrid of Hexham (d. 709), the diocese to which Wearmouth-Jarrow belonged. The second text is Bede’s treatise, The Reckoning of Time, completed in 725. ³ The letter to Plegwin, which responds to a charge of heresy made against Bede at Hexham, refers to members of the Hexham and Wearmouth-Jarrow communities who favoured chronologies of world history divergent from the one he developed and who, unlike Bede, were ‘millenarians.’ This term is used here to describe the belief that the world would end with the close of the sixth or seventh millennium of history, and that knowing, therefore, the number of years passed since Creation made it possible to predict when the Last Things might unfold. Reckoning of Time does not explicitly state that millenarian views were still found in Bede’s circle, but Chapter 67 implies this, and Chapter 68, mostly composed of passages from Augustine, seems intended by Bede to clarify the danger of the ideas he criticizes in Chapter 67. ⁴

Any analysis of what these and other writings by Bede may reveal about contemporary beliefs he disapproved of is necessarily tentative. Not only is the information he gives obviously fragmentary, but it may well be distorted by the rhetorical agenda that led him to note ‘deviant’ concepts in the first place. Regarding the letter to Plegwin and Reckoning of Time, it must also be kept in mind that they represent distinct literary genres. The letter was written explicitly to defend Bede against critics. The treatise, on the other hand, is his most comprehensive teaching manual, a work in which his primary concern was to instruct readers in the principles of time measurement and computus, the calculation of Easter dates. Although the discussions of time, computus, and eschatology in Reckoning of Time are interconnected, in-depth analysis of the chapters concerned with the first two subjects lies beyond the scope of this article; they are referenced only where they illumine the discussions of eschatology. It is important to recognize, however, that given the treatise’s larger aims, the allusions to interlocutors of Bede in Reckoning of Time 67 are likely in part a pedagogical strategy to make the chapter’s contents accessible to readers. The references to conversations in the letter to Plegwin are doubtless to some extent rhetorical constructions as well, yet the passages in Reckoning of Time may be more distant from ‘real’ conversations that Bede actually experienced. ⁵

Nonetheless, while both texts need to be analysed with caution for what they imply about Bede’s circumstances, they suggest that millenarian beliefs were current in his milieu and that he worried about their attraction with Wearmouth-Jarrow brethren, the treatise’s first audience. One goal of this essay is to offer some new suggestions about the nature of the millenarian beliefs that troubled him and how they may have evolved between 708 and 725. Early medieval millenarianism is commonly linked not simply with the belief that the timing of the End can be foreknown, but with the apocalyptic notion that it will happen soon. The modern assumption seems to be that early medieval writers who rejected millenarian speculations were invariably concerned that they stirred popular anxiety about the imminence of Christ’s Return and the Last Judgment. Bede’s writings, however, suggest a more complicated situation. Although some of his contemporaries probably did think that Christ would return in the near future, others, it appears, were confident that both the Second Coming and the Eschaton lay in the remote future, long after their deaths. Their attitude, too, worried Bede.

An analogy to this notion of a ‘delayed Eschaton’ may be found in the Books of Histories by the sixth-century bishop, Gregory of Tours. In the preface to Book 1, Gregory refers to people in his day who ‘fail to hope for (despair of) the approaching end of the world’ (qui adpropinquantem finem mundi disperant). Although the statement has been interpreted as a reference to anxiety that the Eschaton was near, Peter Brown has shown that it more likely indicates Gregory’s fear that some Christians, refusing to believe the Last Judgment might soon occur, were thus prone to indolence. ⁶ If Bede possibly had similar concerns, it might be beneficial to re-examine other early medieval writings, too, consistently interpreted in the past as testimony of a popular conviction that the Last Things were close at hand. The present essay cannot address that larger task, but the hope is that its analysis may encourage other historians to take a fresh look at some of those sources.

For Bede as for Gregory of Tours, it seems, belief in a delayed Eschaton risked undermining moral will. Other works by Bede besides his letter to Plegwin and Reckoning of Time suggest that he was disturbed by other ideas, as well, that might reduce terror of the end times among contemporaries and diminish the drive to persevere in virtue. By bringing together the evidence for these ideas, the present study provides new insight into the diversity of eschatological belief in Northumbria during Bede’s lifetime. Clarifying the divergent views that worried him is also critical to the second aim of this article, which is to explore the relation between those concepts and an aspect of his thought that has not received much attention in this context: his doctrine of Christ’s hidden judgement in this life and at the time of death.

As background to the analysis, the first section below briefly surveys the core precepts and their biblical underpinnings that Bede’s writings suggest defined the parameters of contemporary eschatological thought, as revealed through patristic literature, works by Isidore, and one seventh-century insular text, the Laterculus Malalianus. The Laterculus is partly based on the chronicle of world history by the sixth-century Antiochene scholar, John Malalas, but it adds substantial material of the seventh-century author’s composition. Although anonymous, the treatise has been persuasively assigned to the school of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (669–90) and may have been written by Theodore. ⁷ It is possible that the Laterculus was known at Wearmouth-Jarrow; ⁸ but even without this, the close relationship between Theodore and Biscop, Wearmouth’s founder, the other ties between Canterbury and Wearmouth-Jarrow, and hints of analogous chronological and eschatological ideas in works known to Bede by Aldhelm (d. ca. 709), who studied in Ireland and at Canterbury under Theodore, make it a virtual certainty that the ‘Canterbury’ doctrine was familiar to Wearmouth-Jarrow monks and clergy. ⁹

The article’s second section outlines the main concerns of the letter to Plegwin and the last six chapters in Reckoning of Time (Chapters 66–71), especially Chapters 67 and 68. Like the texts surveyed in the first section, these and other writings by Bede discussed in this article have been much studied in earlier scholarship, but some of their teachings need to be revisited for readers less familiar with ancient and early medieval eschatology or Bede’s work. The third section analyses the clues in the letter and Reckoning of Time as to the nature of the beliefs that troubled him, and it points to other writings that also shed light on ideas with which he disagreed. The final section focuses on the connection between his apparent concern about these lines of thought, his doctrine of Christ’s hidden judgment, and his worries about contemporary moral decline.

Eschatology Before Bede

The fundamental principle underlying millenarianism in European antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as shown by a plethora of writings from these centuries, is that the Genesis account of Creation can be read typologically in the light of Psalm 89:4 and 2 Peter 3:8. Since both verses state that with God, a thousand years are like a single day, it was widely believed that the Creation Week symbolized a divine plan for a total of six or seven millennia of history before the Eschaton. ¹⁰

By the third century, this biblical exegesis had merged with the dating schemes of different chronicles that showed Christ’s earthly life had occurred in the sixth millennium after Creation. The third-century writers Hippolytus of Rome and Julius Africanus proposed that 5500 years had passed between Creation and the Incarnation; the early fourth-century bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, pushing the dates for Christ back almost three centuries, set the beginning of his ministry in Anno mundi (AM) 5228, which indicated a date of AM 5198 or 5199 for the Nativity. Later in the fourth century, Jerome’s continuation and translation of Eusebius’s chronicle dated Christ’s birth to AM 5199. In the prologue of his Easter table, the fifth-century mathematician Victorius of Aquitaine claimed that the world was 5228 years old at the Passion. Eusebius’s chronology of biblical events was based on Septuagint (Greek) translations of Hebrew scripture, while Jerome’s version of Eusebius and Victorius’s chronicle followed Old Latin translations of the Septuagint. Old Latin scripture and variants of Eusebius’s chronology lay behind most subsequent reckoning in Western Europe until the Carolingian era. ¹¹

That the world would endure a span of time symbolized by the days of Creation, and that Christ’s birth took place in the sixth millennium since Creation, were prevalent beliefs throughout pre-Carolingian Europe. ¹² For those who expected the Eschaton near the end of the sixth millennium (AM 6000), the chronology of Eusebius/Jerome meant the world would end around AD (CE) 801. Some early Christian writers also refer to ‘chiliasm,’ however: a belief, grounded in literal exegesis of Apocalypse 20:1–6, that when Christ returns in AM 6000, he will bind Satan and rule with the saints for another millennium of earthly paradise corresponding to God’s rest on the seventh day. The Last Things will happen only after this seventh ‘sabbatical’ millennium has passed. ¹³

From the late fourth century, although the doctrine of Christ’s Return in AM 6000 and chiliasm retained support, most surviving Latin literature rejects both ideas and indeed all forms of eschatological prediction. ¹⁴ There is no dispute that the apocalyptic events described in scripture will eventually happen, yet their timing is held to lie hidden with God. Commenting on Matthew 24:36 (‘But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of Heaven, but the Father alone’), Jerome quotes Acts 1:7 (‘It is not for you to know the times or moments, which the Father hath put in his own power’) to stress that God forbids the faithful to know when Christ will reappear in order to inspire constant expectation of and readiness for the Last Judgment. ¹⁵ In his revision of an Apocalypse commentary by Victorinus of Pettau, Jerome suggests that Apocalypse 20:1–6 is best interpreted, not as a prophecy of Christ’s future earthly reign, but as an account of his spiritual rule with the saints in the present from the Ascension to the Second Coming. The references in Apocalypse 20 to a thousand years should be interpreted figuratively, Jerome indicates; they do not reveal the actual time to transpire before the End. ¹⁶ The fourth-century Donatist Tyconius, whose lost Apocalypse commentary was critical to later Latin exegesis, similarly taught that Christ’s rule was already spiritually underway through the Church, and that when the End would happen could not be foreknown. ¹⁷

The most important Latin patristic rebuttals of millenarian eschatology appear in Augustine’s later work, especially City of God, a treatise known to Bede in its entirety. ¹⁸ Augustine, too, followed Old Latin scripture in dating his present to the sixth millennium, and he envisaged six world ages from Creation to the Second Coming symbolized by the six days of Creation; but each of the first five ages, Augustine implies, is properly measured in generations rather than years. Christ’s birth marked the beginning of the sixth age. ¹⁹ Following Tyconius, City of God 18 hints that this last historical age will endure no longer than a millennium, though neither in generations nor in years is it possible to fix the duration; God hides the timing of Christ’s Return. Chiliasm is also rejected; there will be no seventh age or millennium of earthly bliss. ²⁰ Although the conclusion of City of God 22 is ambiguous on this point, it suggests that the seventh age, corresponding to the seventh day of Creation, is a state of beatitude for the elect after the sixth age that will lead seamlessly, without intervening ‘evening,’ into the ‘Lord’s day’—the eighth day—of eternal glory. ²¹ For Augustine as for Jerome and Tyconius, Apocalypse 20:1–6 refers to the present. During the sixth age from the Incarnation until Christ’s Return, the devil lies bound in wicked hearts while the souls of the departed elect and the living faithful, having received the spiritual ‘first resurrection’ through baptism (Apocalypse 20:5), reign with Christ in the Church. ²²

Isidore, too, in his Chronica maiora and the shorter chronicle of Etymologies 5.38–39, accepted the Septuagint/Old Latin model of Eusebius/Jerome in dating events, but like Augustine he divided history into six ages. ²³ Although most ages do not coincide with millennia in Isidore’s chronicles, they indicate that the Incarnation occurred shortly after the beginning of the sixth millennium and sixth age; Chronica maiora dates the Crucifixion to AM 5229. At the end of both chronicles, however, Isidore makes clear that the time left in the sixth age is known to God alone. Chronica maiora then quotes from Acts 1:7 and Matthew 24:36 and notes that the significant ‘consummation of the age’ (consummatio saeculi) for the individual is death. ²⁴

As for the Canterbury Laterculus Malalianus, this draws from Malalas’s chronicle to place the Crucifixion in AM 6000, a dating that the Laterculus author implies is rejected by opponents described as ‘whelps of the Irish’ (Scottorum scolaces). ²⁵ The Irish beliefs attacked are uncertain, but the reference is likely to the chronology of Eusebius/Jerome, possibly mediated through Victorius, and the notion that there will be six historical millennia. ²⁶ While the Laterculus author accepts that each day of Creation symbolizes a millennium and a world age, and while he links the Incarnation with the sixth day, he sets Christ’s birth near the close of the sixth millennium/day instead of its beginning. The sixth millennial age, the Canterbury writer indicates, concluded with the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. ²⁷ Just as God rested on the seventh day, the present is the seventh sabbath age when ‘no workman is found in the vineyard of God’ (see Matthew 20:1–16). The ‘octave’ of eternal rest will begin after Christ’s Return. ²⁸ The possibility that the seventh age will endure a millennium is acknowledged, though the reference may be to doctrine attributed to the Irish but opposed by the Laterculus author; he implies that Christ could reappear before AM 7000. ²⁹ His language is difficult to interpret, however, and it is notable that some writings by Aldhelm hint at a belief, possibly prevalent in the Canterbury circle, that the world will pass through a full seven millennia of history. ³⁰

The Letter to Plegwin and Reckoning of Time 67–68

The letter to Plegwin was written in response to news that one of Plegwin’s brethren had accused Bede of heresy for teaching that Christ was not born ‘in the sixth world age’ (in Sexta Aetate saeculi). The accusation was made in Bishop Wilfrid’s presence, apparently with his acquiescence. Bede realizes that the charge stemmed from the dating of the Incarnation in his On Times, written in 703, a treatise he had shown to an unnamed member of Plegwin’s community. This interlocutor was the accuser. ³¹

While partly modelled on Isidore’s chronicles, Bede’s ‘Shorter Chronicle’ in On Times presented a new chronology based on the Vulgate, the translation, mostly by Jerome, directly from the Hebrew for scripture in that language. ³² Bede knew this translation well by 703 because of his involvement in the enterprise under his abbot Ceolfrith to make multiple full Vulgate Bibles; the project’s sole surviving intact manuscript witness is the Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms Amiatinus 1). ³³ Decoupling world ages completely from millennia, the Shorter Chronicle assigns the Incarnation to the beginning of the sixth and last age but gives a date, from Bede’s Vulgate-based calculations, of AM 3952, over 1200 years earlier than the dates indicated by Eusebius, Jerome, Victorius, and Isidore. ³⁴ The Shorter Chronicle ends with reference to the ongoing reign of Emperor Tiberius (d. 705) and Bede’s comment, echoing Isidore, that ‘the rest of the sixth age is known to God alone.’ ³⁵

In the first section of the letter to Plegwin, Bede quickly dismisses the charge that he denied Christ’s birth in the sixth age, though as evidence he cites scripture conforming to Augustine’s measurement of the first five ages in generations rather than years. Most of the letter defends Bede’s new chronology. It is important, he tells Plegwin, to trust ‘our Christian interpreter’ (Christianum nobis interpretem, i.e., Jerome) over the ‘Jewish translations’ (Iudaici interpretationes) or the ‘ignorance of chronographers’ (chronographorum imperitia), and he remarks that Eusebius sometimes departed from both Septuagint and Hebrew scriptures. Bede had tried to explain this to his accuser, he asserts, but the latter succumbed to the ‘darkness of blind error’ (tenebrae caecae falsitatis). ³⁶

The letter next sets out what Bede had supposedly conveyed to his accuser orally. The prefatory overview of the six ages in On Times is quoted, followed by an introductory statement on each age from the Shorter Chronicle. Bede then gently criticizes Eusebius for his deviations from scripture. ³⁷ He quotes from City of God, though attributing the text to Jerome, and Jerome citing Origen, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Augustine (City of God), and Jerome again to show that the discrepancies between Bede’s and Eusebian chronologies are not due to the Jews’ falsification of Hebrew biblical codices. Possibly, Bede was aware of similar charges in his circle against the Jews. The corrupted manuscripts were Greek, not Hebrew, he asserts through the quoted texts. ³⁸ He next explains why Jerome translated Eusebius’s chronicle without adapting it to Hebrew scripture. Verses by Isidore praising Jerome are quoted that were also copied into the prefatory gathering of the Codex Amiatinus (fol. 3/IVv) probably after the letter to Plegwin was written. Bede also quotes (in the letter) from a letter of Augustine to Jerome defending the Septuagint. The aim seems to be to confirm the legitimacy of Jerome’s approach to Eusebius’s chronicle. ³⁹

The discussion of eschatology, roughly the last fifth of Bede’s letter, begins with a warning to Plegwin not to accept the ‘common belief’ (opinio uulgaris) that there will be 6000 years of history. To illustrate the doctrine’s danger, Bede recalls a fourth-century chronography he read as a boy; he warns Plegwin not to believe, as the ‘heretical chronographer’ (chronographus heresiarches) taught, that God hides the day and hour of the Last Judgment but not the year (see Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32, Acts 1:7). Other teachings of the ancient chronography are then held up to ridicule: God ordained 6000 years of history divided into 12 segments of 500 years each, corresponding to the daylight hours; the Incarnation happened in AM 5500 (the chronology of Hippolytus and Julius Africanus); 1 John 2:18 (‘Little children, it is the final hour’) shows that the Judgment will occur 500 years later. Bede notes that the chronography was written in the 300s; an implication is that its teachings can be dismissed since the predicted date of the End has long passed. ⁴⁰

Bede next mentions ‘rustics’ (rustici) who daily ask him how many years remain until the End and believe the world is in its final millennium, although, he remarks, Christ has never revealed this knowledge and commands only that we remain vigilant. Similar discussions with Wearmouth-Jarrow brethren are also recalled. ‘Some less learned brothers’ (fratres … quidam simpliciorum), Bede states, argue that the world will endure 6000 years, while others argue for 7000 years because Creation took seven days; a passage from Augustine’s enarratio on Psalm 6 is quoted against the latter notion. ⁴¹ Christ was born in the sixth age, Bede affirms, but only the Judge knows how long the world will last. The timing of the Judgment cannot be predicted; ‘as the lightning, … so shall the son of man be in his day’ (Luke 17:24). It is the ‘opinion of the multitude’ (qua opinione uulgus) that Christ will return in six or seven thousand years; the authority behind Bede’s chronicle is, in contrast, ‘Hebrew Truth’ (Hebraica Veritas, i.e., the Vulgate). Eusebius’s errors are again noted; Bede then requests that Plegwin give his letter to a monk named David to read before Wilfrid and ask David to try to sway Bede’s accuser. ⁴² Apparently Bede knew David to be supportive of his doctrine and able to defend it.

Chapter 66 of Reckoning of Time consists of Bede’s ‘Longer Chronicle,’ also based on the Vulgate but much more detailed than the Shorter Chronicle. The preface of Reckoning of Time and Chapter 67, ‘On the remainder of the sixth age’ (De reliquis sextae aetatis) defend the superiority of the Vulgate and Bede’s chronology over the Septuagint and Eusebian chronologies; but in both sections of the treatise, echoing Jerome, Bede suggests that readers may ignore his work if they wish. ⁴³ Chronologies based on Septuagint scripture or on Hebrew Truth may be followed or consulted together. ⁴⁴ Whatever the preferences of readers, however, Bede states in Chapter 67, and whether the time passed is noted to be ‘longer or shorter,’ they should not conclude that the time left in this world age is ‘longer or shorter.’ ⁴⁵ He then quotes Matthew 24:36 to affirm that only the Father knows when the End will arrive.

Bede next urges readers to ignore ‘those who speculate’ that there will be six millennia of history, or who, mindful of the Matthew verse, assert that while the exact year of the Eschaton may be unknowable, ‘it should be hoped that it will occur around the end of the sixth millennium.’ ‘If you ask [those making such assertions] where they might have read’ the things they believe, Bede remarks, ‘they say, “Have you not read … how God made the world in six days”? Hence it deservedly should be believed that it will exist more or less 6000 years.’ Yet ‘what is more serious,’ because God rested on the seventh day, ‘there have been those who hoped’ that, after six millennia, they would rule with Christ ‘in this life’ for a seventh post-resurrection millennium of earthly delights. Such ideas are ‘heretical and frivolous.’ ⁴⁶ Creation’s six days signify not six millennia of toil but ‘six ages of the fleeting world’ (sex potius aetates … mundi labentis). Rather than a seventh millennium on earth with Christ, the seventh day denotes an age of rest for blessed souls concurrent with history from Abel to the final resurrection. Since the first five ages were of different lengths, the duration of the present sixth age cannot be foreseen. The timing of the End is known only to Christ, who ‘commanded his servants to keep watch with loins girded and lamps alight’ (see Luke 12:35–36). ⁴⁷

Chapter 68 is mostly composed of excerpts from Augustine’s letter to Hesychius discussing Matthew’s version of the same servant parable (Matthew 24:45–51). ⁴⁸ In text that Bede omits, Augustine allows that predictions of the Second Coming accord with the Gospel if made in hope, longing, and love for the Lord’s Return. ⁴⁹ In introducing the quoted text, Bede stresses the saints’ longing for Christ to return quickly but also the danger of thinking or preaching that this is either near or far off. Augustine’s exegesis, in the passages Bede gives, refers to four servants. The one who thinks the lord is delayed and ‘hates’ (odit) his return (Matthew 24:48–50) is described as wicked (nequam). ⁵⁰ The three servants identified as good are those ‘thirstily desiring, vigilantly expecting, and faithfully loving their lord’s advent.’ Still, the one who claims the lord will soon reappear, Augustine states, may undermine faith if the return takes longer than expected and listeners start to think that the lord does not exist. The servant who says the lord will come later, yet ‘believes, hopes for, loves his advent,’ may prove wrong if the lord should reappear before anticipated; but this would be a happy mistake, and this servant is more safely believed. ⁵¹ The third good servant desires the return yet admits ignorance of the timing. He is not guilty of any error.

Chapter 69 describes two events that will signal the coming End: the Jews’ conversion by Elijah and Enoch and the Antichrist’s persecution. Chapter 70 begins with another reminder that the timing of Christ’s Return cannot be foreknown and describes Judgment Day. Chapter 71, which concludes the treatise, presents a meditation on the eighth age of eternal beatitude and compares the eight ages to the last week of Christ’s life through his Resurrection. While the doctrine of the seventh and eighth ages expounded in Reckoning of Time must have been partly inspired by City of God, Bede, unlike Augustine, clearly defines the seventh age as preceding and the eighth age as following the Eschaton. ⁵²

Millenarianism in Bede’s Milieu

That Bede considered it necessary to defend Vulgate scripture and his Vulgate-based chronology in the preface and again in Chapter 67 of Reckoning of Time suggests that resistance to his chronicles continued at Wearmouth-Jarrow in 725. A persistent preference for Eusebian chronologies among some brethren is possibly also reflected in the support for Victorius’s Easter table implied in other passages of Bede’s treatise; the sympathy may well have extended to the Eusebian chronology of Victorius’s prologue. ⁵³ Regarding millenarianism, it is noteworthy that Bede’s commentary on Luke, finished ca. 716, criticizes those who, ‘computing the courses of ages, say that they have found the precise year, day, and hour of the age’s consummation.’ ⁵⁴ Recent scholarship has shown Wearmouth-Jarrow’s integration into wider Northumbrian society. ⁵⁵ In 725 as in 708, the many people from outside the monastery with whom its brethren interacted almost certainly included monks and clergy who accepted Eusebian chronologies and millenarian ideas, and new adult monks joining Wearmouth-Jarrow over the years possibly brought such attitudes acquired elsewhere. It is thus reasonable to think that the conversations described in Reckoning of Time 67 had some indirect basis in reality and are indicative of millenarianism among monks or clergy with whom Bede had contact. These brethren may have belonged to the Hexham as well as the Wearmouth-Jarrow communities.

What might the letter to Plegwin and Reckoning of Time further reveal about the ideas that concerned Bede in this group? First, assuming the letter’s report that he was accused of denying Christ’s birth ‘in the sixth world age’ is accurate, it would appear that in 708, and probably still in 725, certain brethren followed Isidore in dating the Incarnation shortly after the start of both the sixth millennium and the sixth age. Unlike Isidore, however, at least some expected the world to end near or in AM 6000. Bede’s reference to Matthew 24:36, in Reckoning of Time 67, may indicate that some interlocutors cited this verse to argue that while the exact year of the Eschaton cannot be predicted, God does not hide that it will happen around the close of the sixth millennium.

Although Reckoning of Time 67 does not mention the doctrine that the Creation Week symbolizes seven millennia or ages, this idea may have also had support in Bede’s circle in 725, as it evidently did in 708. Some brethren may have held tenets resembling those hinted in the Laterculus Malalianus or Aldhelm’s writings: Christ was crucified in AM 6000, the seventh millennium was unfolding, and he would return in AM 7000. ⁵⁶ Or, assigning their present to the sixth millennium, some perhaps anticipated a future seventh millennial reign of Christ with the blessed. Although the attack on chiliasm in Reckoning of Time 67 shifts to perfect tense, it may be a clue that Bede was concerned about contemporary interest. ⁵⁷

Two additional doctrines that Bede discusses in other writings merit notice. One, a variant on the concept of a future seventh millennium, is mentioned in his tract on 2 Peter, one of his commentaries on the Catholic Epistles written 709/12 and likely sent to Acca, Wilfrid’s successor as bishop of Hexham: since a millennium is one day for the Lord (2 Peter 3:8), Judgment Day will itself last a thousand years, during which time elect sinners will be purged so that they may enter Heaven. Again, the wording of Bede’s criticism implies awareness of contemporary support for the notion. ⁵⁸ The idea’s sources are uncertain, though there may have been Irish influence. City of God refers to a purgatorial fire at the Judgment that will cleanse the sinful who do not merit Hell, and this concept recurs in the seventh-century Irish De ordine creaturarum. ⁵⁹ Augustine and De ordine do not state how long purgation will last, but a millennial Judgment Day is predicted in the Catechesis Celtica, a Latin collection of sermon material written in a Brythonic area in the late 10th/early11th century, apparently based on earlier Irish texts. The doctrine is also found in the 11th-century Irish Tidings of Doomsday. ⁶⁰

Second, a letter from Bede to Acca on Isaiah 24:22 hints that members of Acca’s circle, or possibly the bishop himself, understood the Isaiah verse alongside Habakkuk 3:2 to mean that Christ would visit Hell and ‘remember mercy.’ ⁶¹ The letter was instigated by a query from Acca after he read Book 3 of Bede’s commentary on 1 Samuel, written by 716. As part of its exegesis of David and Goliath, Bede quotes Isaiah 24:22 in arguing against ‘those people’ (eos) who think Hell’s prisoners will someday be released. Just before this, he alludes critically to a belief that the damned will occasionally gain relief from their suffering, another concept with parallels in Irish literature. ⁶² Bede’s letter avoids identifying Acca with either notion, but both may have found favour at Hexham. ⁶³ The letter stresses that change of any kind in the soul’s situation can only occur before the end of time; thereafter, Hell and its torments will be immutable and eternal. Bede also attacks the idea of a future release of Hell’s prisoners, identifying supporters as ‘Origenists,’ in his undated commentary on Proverbs; the doctrine is again linked with the Isaiah verse. In his Retractio on Acts, written ca. 725–31, he connects the doctrine with Origen and notes that the wicked will be released from Hell on Judgment Day only to receive their bodies, then be thrown back for eternity, a notion also affirmed in the letter on Isaiah 24:22. ⁶⁴

To summarize: Two broad categories of eschatological belief that troubled Bede seem to have been discussed in his milieu. First, in 725 as in 708, despite years teaching against such ideas, it seems likely that he interacted with brethren drawn to millenarianism. Whatever the millennium to which they assigned their present and whether or not some were chiliasts, in other words, they thought that Christ’s Return or the Eschaton would occur on or near AM 6000 or 7000. Second, Bede worried about contemporaries interested in ideas concerning the Last Things and damnation that privileged divine mercy over judgment: Judgment Day will last a millennium, during which time sins will be purged so more people can reach Heaven; the sufferings of the damned will sometimes ease; Hell will not be eternal.

Let us turn back to the comment in Reckoning of Time 67 that readers may follow Septuagint- or Vulgate-based chronologies as they prefer. Although the statement echoes Jerome, Bede’s subsequent warning that readers should not think the time left in this age ‘longer or shorter’ ties the passage to his circumstances. ⁶⁵ While other explanations might be possible, one way to make sense of this warning is to interpret it against the backdrop of the beliefs described above that underscore divine mercy. A plausible context for Bede’s statement can be envisaged if we start with the reasonable premise that by 725, his Vulgate-based chronology had itself inspired new speculations about the timing of the End. If Christ was born in AM 5199—the date according to Jerome’s chronicle—by AD (CE) 708 or 725 the close of the sixth millennium in AD (CE) 801 was drawing near. For chiliasts expecting a future millennium of earthly paradise, the Last Judgment remained distant; but for those who expected Christ to return for the Judgment, both events were only decades away. Now, some eighth-century insular sources indicate an emerging belief in a form of ‘Purgatory’; the souls of dead sinners may still gain God’s forgiveness before the Judgment through suffering or prayers and alms offered by the living. ⁶⁶ Bede evokes these notions in later writings—one example is mentioned below—and they may have circulated earlier in his milieu. ⁶⁷ Yet some of his brethren surely worried that, if Christ was to reappear for the Judgment within a century, too few years remained to purge sins in this life or after death. For anyone in this group, Bede’s revised chronology may well have attenuated fears of the End. If Christ was born AM 3952, neither AM 6000 nor AM 7000 would arrive for another 1300 or 2300 years. The time since Creation was ‘shorter’ than previously thought, and the time left in the present age was that much ‘longer.’ Penance and moral discipline could wait; there were still many years in which to earn God’s mercy.

Bede on the Eschaton, Death, and Morality

In spite of the suggestions in Reckoning of Time that readers may follow any chronology they wish, Bede’s use of Vulgate scripture for his chronicles mirrors his preference for the Vulgate throughout his work. ⁶⁸ In his opinion, datings of the Incarnation to the sixth millennium rested on inaccurate chronologies and, behind them, the imperfections of the Septuagint or its codices. But millenarian beliefs, he was convinced, also stemmed from flawed exegesis. Regardless of which biblical manuscripts or chronologies were consulted, Bede thought, readers drawn to the eschatological tenets he rejected ignored the literal or historical sense of scripture and its proper figurative interpretation. ⁶⁹ Correct exegesis proves that Hell will be eternal and its torments without respite; that Christ’s reign is already underway; that when he returns it will be for the Judgment; that God hides the timing in order to encourage penitence and moral vigilance. While the Creation Week symbolizes world ages, accurate historical interpretation of the Old Testament shows that the first five ages had disparate numbers of years. Proper exegesis recognizes that 2 Peter 3:8 must be read spiritually, since God exists outside of time. A 1000-year Judgment Day is theologically impossible. ⁷⁰

Drawing from Tyconius, Augustine, Primasius, and Gregory the Great, the Apocalypse commentary that Bede wrote between 703 and 709, most likely closer to the former date, identifies Apocalypse 20:1–6 with the present sixth age. ⁷¹ During this era, the devil lies bound in the impious while the Church rules with Christ through its living and dead members. The brevity of the exegetical units in this, Bede’s first biblical commentary, sometimes makes his meaning uncertain; yet here, too, he is clear that Christ’s Return will be for the Last Things. Commenting on Apocalypse 6:1 and 11:15, Bede seems to imply in line with Augustine that the seventh age will begin after the sixth, with the Eschaton. ⁷² By the time he wrote his tract on 2 Peter, he had formulated the different doctrine mentioned above, more fully expounded in Reckoning of Time 67, of a seventh age of repose for elect souls parallel with the six historical ages. ⁷³

Occasionally, Bede hints that he thought Christ’s Return might be imminent. Like Gregory the Great, as Darby has noted, Bede refers to the present age as not merely old—Augustine’s notion—but ‘decrepit’ (aetas decrepita). The time left is unknowable, yet the implication is that it will not be long before the world’s ‘death.’ ⁷⁴ ‘Now we see the evening of this day approaching,’ Bede remarks in On Genesis, ‘when, with iniquity abounding through all things, the charity of many grows cold’ (Matthew 24:12). ⁷⁵ His Luke commentary ties the Matthew verse to Christ’s prediction that wickedness as ‘in the days of Noah’ will precede the Second Coming, and denounces contemporaries for sins comparable to those Jesus describes (Luke 17:26–30). Although Bede then suggests that worse horrors are still to come, the inference is that the End could be near. ⁷⁶

Other of his comments imply that he expected the world to endure for awhile, however, while a far more important refrain in his writing is the impossibility of knowing when the Eschaton will happen. ⁷⁷ God conceals the time to strengthen moral will. As Bede explains in his tract on 2 Peter (3:3–4):

Blessed Peter reproves and calls scoffers those who maintain that the Lord’s Advent and his promises are delayed; Paul restrains those who assert that the day of the Lord is approaching. Hence it is clear to all who ‘love his coming’ (2 Timothy 4:8) that the mind must be more moderately controlled in this conjecture, so that we surmise neither that the aforesaid day of the Lord is near at hand and about to arrive more quickly, nor again that it approaches more slowly. Rather, to this alone we should diligently attend, that whether coming sooner or later, when it comes, it can find us prepared. ⁷⁸

For Bede, the belief in a delayed Eschaton reproved by St Peter, which Bede’s Vulgate-based chronology may have encouraged in his milieu, likely posed more than one problem. One of his homilies for Lent implies recognition that some Christians, burdened with earthly cares, might grow despairing; ⁷⁹ but for Bede as for Gregory of Tours, the moral complacency that expectation of a delay could also foster was almost certainly of greater concern. The undisciplined who enjoy the easy life, falsely assuming they can put off repentance, may fail to hope or long sufficiently for Christ’s Return and exert themselves in preparation. Bede’s worry about this attitude is also suggested in his warning to readers of his tract on 1 Peter not to succumb to worldly temptations in the ‘flattering’ assumption that the Last Judgment lies far off. ⁸⁰ We should recall, too, that the only servant described as wicked in Reckoning of Time 68 is the one who models this behaviour: not only does he believe his lord is delayed, but he rejoices in this knowledge; it is apparently the desire to persist in immorality that underlies his ‘hatred’ for the lord’s return. The chiliastic belief that Christ would reign for a future millennium on earth and the idea that Judgment Day would last a millennium also pushed the Eschaton far into the future. To the extent that these notions had contemporary resonance, they would have disturbed Bede for similar reasons.

Another pressing related concern for Bede, as mentioned earlier, was to convince readers that they faced God’s ‘inner hidden judgment’ (intus … subtile Dei iudicium) already in this life. Repentance and moral discipline were imperative for this reason as well. While Isidore’s comment at the end of his Chronica maiora hints at this concept, the main source was again Gregory the Great. ⁸¹ Although Bede does not state this explicitly, the mental energy that the millenarians in his midst put into calculating the years until the End surely seemed to him a dangerous distraction from the Gregorian doctrine of judgment in the present. The prospect of the ‘universal manifest judgment’ (uniuersale manifestatum iudicium) at the Eschaton might seem terrifying; ⁸² but even before then Christ continually examines every heart, imposing adversities to incite repentance and convert the sinner. And he judges everyone at the point of death, the timing of which is also unpredictable, despite the certainty that life is short. ⁸³ The different judgments were entwined in Bede’s thought; it is due to both death’s unpredictability and the suddenness of the universal Judgment, his Luke commentary indicates, that Christ urges us to ignore mundane pleasures and cares and focus on prayer. ⁸⁴ Text from Pope Gregory quoted earlier in the commentary describes Christ hurrying to us as we die; he knocks on the door at that unforeseeable hour. ⁸⁵ Conversion and penitence are possible in this life; the soul weighed down by sins is spiritually asleep, but if it dreams of hellfire and the glories of Heaven, it may turn away from worldly pleasures in time, Bede suggests in his Song of Songs commentary. ⁸⁶ Still in the moments before death, the sinner may win mercy, just as did the good thief crucified with Jesus. Yet our situation may be inalterable once we lie dead. ⁸⁷

The references to Christ’s ongoing judgment in works by Bede that postdate the letter to Plegwin conform well with his doctrine, developed during the same years, of the seventh age of spiritual repose for the blessed elect concurrent with all history. That state was understood to be immediately within reach of any soul, in any historical period, whom Christ found worthy at death of such reward. A ‘happy death’ overcoming ‘these afflicted world ages, filled with toil,’ leads straight to the Sabbath, Bede notes in Reckoning of Time 66. ⁸⁸ In Book 5 of his Ecclesiastical History, completed ca. 731, Drythelm learns in a vision that the elect who die with unrequited sins will suffer purgative fire and icy cold until Judgment Day, unless they gain earlier release through the prayers and offerings of the living. ⁸⁹ For the irredeemably wicked, however, there is no hope. ⁹⁰

Divine judgment in this world also pertains to institutions. According to Ecclesiastical History 4, the convent of Coldingham burned because the nuns’ wickedness aroused the anger of the Judge. ⁹¹ The Church’s suffering in the present age is the hidden judgment by which God readies it for future joys, according to the tract on 1 Peter. ⁹² The heresy of Pelagianism is one affliction, Bede implies there; other writings point to other burdens. The dedicatory preface of his Apocalypse commentary criticizes the ‘inertia’ of the English in reading; ⁹³ the final section of Thirty Questions on Kings, written ca. 715 for Nothelm, a member of the Canterbury circle, attacks church leaders who neglect biblical study and meditation and their consequent tendency to fall—Bede claims—into heresy and apostasy. ⁹⁴ Later works rebuke monks and clergy for a range of vices: sloth, gluttony, neglect of scripture, and others. The climax to these denunciations occurs in the letter that Bede sent Bishop Ecgbert of York in 734. Ecgbert is admonished to watch out not only for monks and clergy in his charge but for his own spiritual welfare. The bishop who does not do so, Bede reminds him, evoking another servant parable (Matthew 25:16–30), may find Christ coming to him when he does not ‘hope’ for this to happen. Perseverance in virtue is essential in order to hope for rather than dread death or the Eschaton. ⁹⁵

As Scott DeGregorio has demonstrated, despite Bede’s affinity with the thought of Gregory the Great, moral exegesis from Bede’s later years is more likely than Gregory’s to show a practical bent. Frequently, Bede seeks to combat vice and error around him by offering ‘concrete’ guides to moral action, lessons developed from scripture about distinct types of virtuous behaviour, sometimes punctuated with criticisms of specific failings. ⁹⁶ Such writings testify to Bede’s increasing conviction, as he aged, that the Anglo-Saxon Church needed serious reform, and that change had to start with its leaders. ⁹⁷ Central to the successful fulfilment of their pastoral duties were careful reading of and meditation on spiritual literature, especially scripture, activities best nurtured, Bede thought, in well-ruled monasteries like Wearmouth-Jarrow. Sustained lectio diuina fostering correct interpretation of sacred texts was essential if the church’s ministers were to grow in moral discipline and knowledge. Thus it was fundamental to the quality of the pastoral care they offered others, so that all faithful would be ready to encounter the divine Judge in this life, at death, and at the end of time.

The resistance to his chronology and eschatology from other monks and clergy must have seemed to Bede to augment the afflictions of the Church in his day. Whether his brethren expected the End in the near or distant future, belief that the timing could be foreknown, that the elect would have a chance to purge sins in a 1000-year Judgment Day, that Hell would not be eternal, or, as some may have thought, that Christ would return first to reign for another millennium on earth—all such ideas threatened Bede’s efforts to teach biblical truth and advance spiritual reform. So, too, did the apparent failure of many to attend to Christ’s judgment in the present and at the moment of death. Gaining divine mercy now or at the Eschaton, they needed to realize, demanded penitence, hope and longing, and constant moral discipline.