Note 74 — Chapter II · THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS
Reading edition
Bede frequently quotes Cicero, Virgil, and Horace; usually selecting some telling phrase, e.g. “caeco carpitur igni” (H. E. ii. 12). In his De Natura rerum he owes a good deal to Pliny and Isidore. In his commentaries on the Scriptures he displays an extent of reading which we have no space to give any idea of. His chronologies were based on Jerome’s edition of Eusebius, on Augustine and Isidore. In his H. E. he uses “Pliny, Solinus, Orosius, Eutropius, Marcellinus Comes, Gildas, probably the Historia Brittonum, a Passion of St. Alban, and the Life of Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius”; while he refers to lives of St. Fursa, St. Ethelburg, and to Adamnan’s work on the Holy Places. Cf. Sandys, i. 468; Camb. Lit., i. 80-81. Bede also got first-hand knowledge: the Lindisfarne records provided him with material on Cuthbert; information came to him from Canterbury about Southern affairs and from Lastingham about Mercian affairs. Nothelm got material from the archives at Rome for him.