SOURCE: Benedicta Ward, "Miracles and History: A Reconsideration of the Miracle Stories Used by Bede," in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, edited by Gerald Bonner, SPCK, 1976, pp. 70-6.

In the following essay, Ward addresses Bede's miracle stories and argues that, for Bede, the emphasis was on the significance of the miracle, not the miracle itself

There is still a question mark against that part of the material in Bede's writings that concerns miracles. This has caused them to be either ignored by historians or treated to a cautious defusing so that they become safe to handle; at best they are considered as primitive survivals of white magic¹ or as a different kind of truth.² In Mr Colgrave's introduction to his edition of the Ecclesiastical History³ he expresses the doubts felt about miracles in the query, 'How is...