The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
701–800
71 works
c. 703–709
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Bede's earliest book, written in his twenties, dividing Revelation into seven recapitulating sections after Tyconius and firmly against reading it as a calendar. The thousand years are the age of the church, and the numbers are meanings rather than dates.
c. 703–728
Latin
Willibrord and his circle · c. 658–739
A working liturgical calendar from a missionary bishop's own book, with a marginal note in his hand recording the year of his consecration.
c. 710–720
Latin
Stephen of Ripon · 8th century
The combative career of the bishop who argued the Roman case at Whitby, was repeatedly expelled from his see, and twice appealed to Rome over the head of his king.
c. 700–740
Greek
Andrew of Crete · c. 650–740
Two hundred and fifty stanzas of penitence, running through the whole Bible and applying every figure in it to the singer's own soul.
c. 711–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Seven books on the Song, opening with an attack on Julian of Eclanum for reading it as a wedding poem, and closing with an anthology of Gregory the Great on the same text assembled so that readers without a library could still have him.
c. 700–750
Latin
Ordo Romanus I
Anonymous
A stage-by-stage description of a papal mass in Rome — the procession, the vesting, who carries what, where each official stands.
c. 709–716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A patient exposition of the third gospel that marks in the margin which father each borrowed passage comes from, so a reader can tell Bede's own words from Ambrose's.
c. 720–730
Syriac
Anonymous
A conversation between a monk and an Arab notable staying at his monastery, ranging over the cross, images, and why Christians do not pray toward a single direction.
c. 700–724
Syriac
George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes · d. 724
A bishop of the Arab tribes east of the Euphrates answering questions by letter — on the calendar, on Syriac grammar, on why the church made chrism, on Aristotle's categories — and completing Jacob of Edessa's unfinished Hexaemeron.
c. 721; a verse life c. 716
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
A rewriting of an anonymous Lindisfarne life, with every episode checked against named witnesses. Cuthbert prays all night standing in the North Sea and is dried by two otters; he clears the birds off his barley by talking to them; he asks to be buried where nobody will come looking for him.
c. 721–725
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
An allegorical reading of the desert tabernacle in which every measurement, curtain, and vessel figures the church and the Christian life.
c. 716–725
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
The history of his own monastery through its founders, including the book-buying journeys to Rome that built the library Bede worked in.
725
Latin
De Temporum Ratione
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A complete treatment of time — the day, the moon, the tides, the Easter cycle — closing with a world chronicle and an account of the six ages.
c. 720–730
Latin
Pirmin · d. 753
A short handbook of the faith for missionaries working among recently converted Germanic peoples, running from creation to judgement and listing forbidden pagan customs.
725
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A universal chronicle from creation to 725 arranged in six ages, forming the closing section of On the Reckoning of Time.
c. 726–730
Greek
Germanus of Constantinople · c. 634 – c. 740
Three letters to bishops who had begun removing images, written by the patriarch as the emperor turned against them. We do not make gods of colours, he argues; we remember, as a man keeps a portrait of someone absent. He resigned rather than sign the decree.
c. 730
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Fifty sermons for the monastic year at Jarrow, each taking the day's gospel line by line and turning it to the life the monks were actually living — short, plain, and built to be read aloud rather than studied.
c. 726–730
Greek
John of Damascus · c. 675–749
A defence of icons written from safety under Muslim rule against a Christian emperor destroying them, arguing that since God took flesh, matter may be depicted and honoured.
c. 715–730
Greek
Germanus of Constantinople · c. 634–c. 740
A commentary reading each part of the eucharistic service as a moment in the life of Christ, with the church building itself as heaven on earth.
734
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
Written months before his death to a former pupil now a bishop, complaining of absentee clergy, fraudulent monasteries founded as tax shelters, and dioceses too large to serve.
735
Latin
Cuthbert of Jarrow · 8th century
A pupil's account of Bede's last days, dictating a translation of John's gospel into English between fits of breathlessness and finishing the final sentence on the day he died.
c. 730–749
Greek
John of Damascus · c. 675 – c. 749
The canon sung at the Orthodox Easter midnight service — the day of resurrection, let us be radiant, O people — together with the funeral idiomela, which ask what earthly sweetness remains unmixed with grief, and answer that all is weaker than a shadow.
c. 716–754
Latin
Boniface · c. 675–754
The correspondence of an English missionary among the Germans — requests for books and warm clothing, appeals to Rome, complaints about wandering bishops, and letters to and from abbesses at home.
c. 730–740
Latin
Felix · 8th century
A warrior of noble birth becomes a hermit on an island in the fens, where he is tormented by demons who speak British and drag him to the mouth of hell.
c. 743
Greek
Pege Gnoseos
John of Damascus · c. 675–749
Three parts — philosophical definitions, a catalogue of a hundred heresies, and the exposition of the orthodox faith — assembled as one complete course of instruction.
c. 730–750
Greek
Cosmas of Maiuma · c. 675–c. 751
Festal hymns in the canon form for Christmas, Epiphany, and Holy Week, written at Mar Saba alongside his foster-brother John of Damascus.
c. 740–750
Greek
Sacra Parallela
John of Damascus · c. 675–749
An alphabetical anthology of scriptural and patristic passages arranged by subject, pairing virtues with the vices opposed to them.
c. 740–760
Latin
Egbert of York · d. 766
A northern English tariff of penances covering perjury, theft, violence, sexual sin, and the eating of blood, with reductions for the poor and the ill.
c. 700–800
Old English
Anonymous
A dreamer sees the cross, which then speaks: a tree cut down and made to hold its lord, forbidden to bend or fall, sharing the wounds driven through him.
c. 750; Roman material a century older
Latin
Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Ecclesiae
Anonymous
A Roman mass book copied in Francia, probably at Chelles by nuns, and adapted for Gallican use on the way. It carries the scrutinies of Lent, the Holy Week rites, the Easter vigil with its blessing of the font, and prayers for the sick and the dying.
c. 7th–8th century; date disputed
Aramaic
Anonymous
An Aramaic Torah that translates and rewrites at once, filling every gap: Cain and Abel argue theology before the murder, the names of Ishmael's wives are given, and a passage on Muhammad's wife and daughter dates the text after the conquests.
731
Latin
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
The conversion of the English told from Roman Britain to Bede's own day, with named sources, dated events, and a monk's eye for the moment a king's council decides the fate of a people.
754; survives in refutation
Greek
The Council of Hieria
The iconoclast council's ruling that any image of Christ either divides his natures or confuses them, and that the only permitted image is the eucharist.
c. 755–770
Arabic
Anonymous
A defence of the Trinity and the incarnation for a Muslim readership, arguing from the Qur'an's own vocabulary as readily as from the Bible.
c. 755
Latin
Chrodegang of Metz · c. 712–766
A rule for cathedral clergy living in common — shared meals, a daily chapter meeting, a dormitory — without the vow of poverty a monk would take.
c. 765–790
Old High German
Anonymous, probably at Freising
A Latin synonym dictionary with German equivalents written above the words, beginning at abrogans and running through some thirty-five hundred entries — made so that monks whose Latin was shaky could read the fathers.
c. 760–768
Latin
Willibald · 8th century
The career of the missionary from Devon who felled the oak of Thor at Geismar, reorganised the Frankish church, and was killed in Frisia holding a book over his head.
c. 767; surviving in Ibn Hisham's edition, c. 833
Arabic
Sirat Rasul Allah
Ibn Ishaq, in the recension of Ibn Hisham · c. 704 – 767
The earliest biography of Muhammad. Christians appear throughout: the monk Bahira who recognises the boy's prophethood, the Negus of Abyssinia who shelters the first emigrants and weeps at the recitation about Jesus and Mary, and the delegation from Najran who dispute the Trinity with him.
c. 760–780
Syriac
Joseph Hazzaya · 8th century
A map of the spiritual life in three stages — bodily, psychic, spiritual — with a precise phenomenology of the lights and stirrings that accompany each.
c. 758–767
Latin
Ambrosius Autpertus · c. 730–784
Ten books reading Revelation as the present life of the church rather than a forecast, with long passages on the interior conflict of the soul.
1–40 of 71 matching · 1780 in the Library