Bede and the Psalter

By: Benedicta Ward

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 141

Anyone who has been in the habit of attending monastic Offices, or their equivalents, will be aware of the central place of the psalter in Christian worship. Sister Benedicta sheds a revealing light on the scholarship and piety of the Venerable Bede, showing how with the Abbreviated Psalter (which is included in her text) he made his own innovative contribution to the devotional use of the psalms. Bede knew the psalms as a religious, bound to the daily, weekly and seasonal observance of the liturgical year; as a scholar and historian of European renown; and as a monk, heir to the Desert tradition of unceasing prayer to which he remained faithful with his last breath. Concerned above all with their application to the whole range of human experience, Bede, by his use of the psalms, can help us to express in prayer that for which we have no words and so to discover a hope that is beyond hope. SISTER BENEDICTA WARD SLG is a member of the Anglican religious community of the Sisters of the Love of God, and has written and translated a number of books on early monasticism and aspects of the Middle Ages. She is Emeritus Reader in the History of Christian Spirituality at the University of Oxford and is a supernumerary Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Fellow of St Stephen’s House Theological College.