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24 Chapter 1
ing to the average member of the lower clergy in Merovingian or
Carolingian Francia.
Moving forward from the dying Roman Empire to Anglo-Saxon
England in the age of Bede (d. 735), we find a sermon on the
marriage feast of Cana reading in the latter’s homiliary, but no
evidence that the homily was meant for a lay audience. It is worth
hearing Andries Van der Walt, the scholar who has studied it most
intensively: ‘There is little doubt among modern scholars that
Bede’s homilies were primarily intended to be delivered to his
fellow monks. . . . There is ample evidence in the homilies that
Bede was indeed talking to monks’ (ibid. 52). Among a good
deal of other evidence, Van Der Walt quotes the following words
from Bede’s Homily 1. 13: ‘we who have left behind carnal affections
and earthly possessions, who, out of love for the angelic
way of life, have declined to marry and produce children after
the flesh’—and comments that this ‘seems to be a fairly accurate
description of Bede’s usual audience’ (ibid. 56). A note of caution
is added: ‘there is no evidence in the homilies to support
the belief that he preached either outside the monastery or to a
purely secular audience. A few homilies, however, do suggest that a
larger audience than usual were present when they were delivered’
(ibid. 56–7). Van Der Walt discusses a few passages which may
suggest that ‘lay people from the vicinity came to the monastery
church either to attend the last week of Easter celebrations or to
receive baptism’ (ibid. 57). Thus ‘it . . . cannot be ruled out altogether
that on occasions such as Easter and Pentecost Bede had
a number of lay people among his audience. But in all these instances
the tone of the homilies remains distinctly monastic’ (ibid.
58). The Sunday with the marriage-feast reading was in any case
inmolatus. Et alio modo potest accipi: ut arras praesentem gratiam, dotem intellegamus
vitam aeternam’ (pp. 682–3, 688 Morin).
Bedae venerabilis Homeliarum libri II,inBedae venerabilis opera, pars III: opera
homiletica, pars IV: opera rhythmica, ed. D. Hurst (Corpus Christianorum Series
Latina, 122; Turnout, 1955), 95–104: homilia 14 post Epiphaniam. Hurst believes
that the homilies in this collection were written towards the end of Bede’s life
(ibid. vii).
A. G. P. Van Der Walt, ‘The Homiliary of the Venerable Bede and Early Medieval
Preaching’ (unpublished thesis, University of London, 1981). The early death
of this meticulous scholar (my first doctoral student) precluded publication of more
than a tiny fraction of his thesis.
The evidence is set out on pp. 52–8.