Output details

Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

The division of editorial labour between Wood and his fellow-editor assigned the responsibility for translation to the latter, with Wood responsible for all the historical commentaries, the first 66 pages of the introduction and the majority of the 534 historical footnotes to the texts and translations. The outcome of this research demonstrates, on both historical and linguistic grounds (Wood being responsible for the historical argument), that the Life of Ceolfrith was not written by Bede, but by another author active in Wearmouth. Contrary to previous opinion, Wood demonstrates Bede wrote the Lives of the Abbots in the winter of 616-7: before the Anonymous author wrote the Life of Ceolfrith (thus the latter was in certain respects correcting or contradicting Bede, a point challenging assumptions that Bede was the only significant scholar at Wearmouth).

With regard to the content of the texts edited and translated, Wood provides a radically new reading of the origins of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, refuting the traditional view of their foundation as a twin monastery, proving that initially no such pairing was envisaged: they were put together as an act of political expediency in the years following the death of Ecgfrith, royal founder of Jarrow. He demonstrates that, far from being the ideal foundations of legend, the two monasteries were caught up in family politics, and that a brother of Benedict Biscop (Wearmouth’s founder) was laying claim to them: this puts Bede's arguments against family monasteries, which constitute the most famous section of the Letter to Ecgbert, in a new light. Wood also provides a new reading of Bede's origins, pointing out the probability he was an orphan, and that this was one factor in his attitude towards social status, which differs radically from that of the author of the Life of Ceolfrith.