1The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14), so that in this way the Wisdom of God that consoles us as a mother may refresh us from that very same [angelic] bread and lead us through the sacraments of the incarnation to the knowledge and vision of divine splendor”¹. As this passage from his commentary on the Song of Songs indicates, the Venerable Bede was no stranger to the sapiential theology in which Christ is described in feminine (often maternal) guise as Holy Wisdom. But even though this theological tradition has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years, the focus has usually been on its earlier patristic or later medieval proponents ; as a result, the role played by Bede and other early medieval authors in transmitting Wisdom theology has not been sufficiently recognized². The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze a number of texts in which Bede describes Christ in feminine terms, note some of the patristic sources upon which he drew, and offer a preliminary sketch of the extent of his influence on the later development of this important theological tradition. We begin with three of Bede’s works on the New Testament and then turn to passages taken from three of his Old Testament commentaries.

Commentary on the Apocalypse

2The commentary on the Apocalypse, probably the earliest of all Bede’s exegetical works, was written between 703 and 709³. As Gerald Bonner has observed, “It is characterised by a dependence on earlier writers from whom, in fact, Bede reproduced considerable sections word for word”⁴. Both of the passages that refer to a feminine Christ are in fact derived largely from Bede’s sixth-century source Primasius. Commenting on Apoc. 1:13, where the Son of Man is described as being “girded with a golden sash across the paps [ad mamillas],” Bede follows Primasius in identifying the paps of Christ as the two testaments – presumably because they provide nourishment for the faithful⁵. Toward the end of the commentary, with reference to the measuring of the heavenly city in Apoc. 21:15, Bede again follows Primasius in linking 1 Cor. 1:24 with the personification of Lady Wisdom in Wisd. of Sol. 8:1 and 11:21 (Vulg.), so that it is “Christ, who is the Wisdom of God” that “reaches mightily from end to end,” “orders all things sweetly,” and distributes the gifts of grace by “disposing all things in number and measure and weight”⁶.

Commentary on Luke

3Another early work, the commentary on Luke was composed between 709 and 716⁷. Much of Bede’s exposition is derived from patristic sources, as when he quotes verbatim from Gregory the Great to interpret the woman lighting a lamp to search for a lost coin in Lk. 15:8 as God’s wisdom taking flesh to redeem humankind⁸.

4But there is no direct source behind Bede’s comment on Lk. 11:49, which reads : “Therefore also the Wisdom of God [sapientia Dei] said : ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute’”⁹. Bede notes that Jesus is here calling himself “the Wisdom of God,” as the apostle Paul also teaches in 1 Cor. 1:24. He then goes on to observe that this identification is confirmed by the parallel passage in Matt. 23:34, where the saying about sending prophets and other messengers is attributed directly to Jesus instead of having him quote personified Wisdom; since Jesus and Wisdom say the same words, they are obviously understood to be one and the same. (It is interesting to note that this point remains a commonplace of modern biblical scholarship.)

Homilies on the Gospels

5Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels may well be considered among his biblical commentaries ; indeed, he listed them along with the commentaries in the autobiographical account at the end of the Historia ecclesiastica¹⁰. It is impossible to date any of the individual homilies, though the collection as a whole was probably compiled some time in the 720’s¹¹. At least five of the fifty homilies contain clear references to Christ under the figure of personified Wisdom. In two instances, the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity is explicated with reference to a verse from the encomium on Wisdom found in Prv. 8¹². In two other homilies, Bede combines 1 Cor. 1:24 with Prv. 8 – first to explain how the boy Jesus’ listening to the elders in the temple fulfilled Wisdom’s declaration that she dwells in counsel and is present among learned thoughts (Prv. 8:12), and then to show that while both Christ and Peter could be called sons of God, only Christ is the Son of God by nature, since in the person of Divine Wisdom he declared, “The Lord possessed me from the beginning of his ways, before he made anything from the beginning.” (Prv. 8:22)¹³. Although there is no direct source for any of these homiletical points made by Bede, it is clear that he is drawing on a rich patristic tradition in which Prv. 8, associated with both 1 Cor. 1:24 and the prologue of John’s gospel, was frequently employed in debate against Arian theologies in which the Son of God was thought to have been a creature¹⁴. Similarly, in yet another homily, Bede says that it is the Word – God’s Son, Power, and Wisdom – who speaks the hymn recorded by Ben Sira (Ecclus. 24: 5, Vulg.) in which Wisdom praises herself, saying, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures”¹⁵.

Commentary on 1 Samuel

6Turning now to Bede’s Old Testament exegesis, we come to the Commentary on 1 Samuel. Books 1-3 were completed prior to Ceolfrid’s final departure for Rome in June, 716, and the fourth book was begun several months later¹⁶. There are two references to Christ as Wisdom in this commentary, and once again both of them involve quotations from the Book of Proverbs. In the first citation, the incarnate Christ is identified as the speaker of Wisdom’s words in Prv. 8:22 : “The Lord possessed me from the beginning of his ways”¹⁷. The second quotation is from Prv. 9:1 (“Wisdom has built herself a house”), which Bede interprets as follows : “By the power of his divinity, Christ has fashioned for himself the substance of the human being that he assumed when he was going to be born of a virgin”¹⁸. This link between Wisdom’s house and Christ’s incarnate flesh is again traditional, going back to Hippolytus of Rome in the second century¹⁹. For Bede, the most likely source is the Moralia of Gregory the Great²⁰.

7In all of the passages examined thus far, the identification of Christ with the female figure of personified Wisdom is left undeveloped, often limited to the simple attribution to Christ of a single verse from the Book of Proverbs. In none of these passages have we found any explanation or apologia for the description of Christ as feminine, and only in the first passage in the Apocalypse commentary does Bede’s exegetical point really depend upon a specifically female characteristic (in that case, the nurturing function of breasts that produce milk). In one sense, Bede’s untroubled and uncomplicated acceptance of a feminine Christ shows how deeply this sapiential theology was embedded in the patristic tradition that he had received. Not that all of the citations we have examined are directly derived from patristic authors; in several instances we have seen that Bede introduces traditional Wisdom material into his exegesis even when he was not following a particular source. But thus far, his treatment of the feminine Christ has been understated and largely incidental. The last two commentaries to be examined, however, offer us something quite different in this regard.

Commentary on the Song of Songs

8Scholars have long considered it impossible to date Bede’s commentary on the Song of Songs any more precisely than to say that it must have been written before 731 when Bede included it in the list of his works in the Historia ecclesiastica. But this significant commentary can now be assigned with considerable probability to the period not long before 716²¹. The most important source for Bede was the Song commentary of the fifth-century author Apponius, which he employed extensively but nonetheless selectively, and with a critical eye²².

9In Bede’s interpretation, the very first verse of the Song is spoken by the Old Testament Synagogue who is longing for Christ to become incarnate so that he might kiss her with the kisses of his mouth. She then goes on to say, this time directly to Christ: ‘For your breasts are better than wine’. The breasts of Christ, Bede explains, are the first principles of New Testament faith, which are better than the wine of the Old Testament law²³. As he noted, this was in accordance with St Paul’s reminder to the Corinthians that he had fed them with milk, not solid food²⁴. But if this verse is spoken by the Synagogue to Christ the bridegroom, how is it possible for a male bridegroom to have breasts²⁵ ? Bede first explains that this apparent anomaly is no accident, but is deliberately placed here, right at the beginning of the Song, in order to show us from the start that we are dealing with a text that must be interpreted figuratively²⁶. We ought not to be surprised, Bede says, that Christ is spoken of as having feminine body parts, for there are in fact other such passages in the Bible. He then cites four of them : the passage from the Apocalypse in which the Vulgate describes the Son of Man as ‘girded with a golden sash across the paps’(Apoc. 1:12-3) ; two verses from the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah, in which the Lord speaks of himself as giving birth (Is 66:9) and as being like a mother caressing her child (Is 66:13) ; and finally that passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says to the unbelieving city of Jerusalem : ‘How often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not !’ (Mt 23:37) All four of these passages seem to have been chosen because in Bede’s estimation they metaphorically refer to Christ as possessing female anatomy. Further on in the Song commentary he does not hesitate to refer to Christ the Teacher as magistra ueritas, or ‘Mistress Truth’²⁷.

10How did Bede come to compile this particular set of testimonies in support of a feminine Christ? Jerome cites the Matthew passage in his explication of the maternal imagery in Is. 66:13, but he makes no special apology for the feminine symbolism²⁸. The comparison of wine to law and milk to gospel is right out of Apponius, as is the imagery of the nursing Christ. But Apponius’s explication focuses on the two breasts of Christ as symbolic representations of the two heralds of the gospel who were named John – John the Baptist who acknowledged him as the suffering Lamb of God, and John the Evangelist who proclaimed him as the Word by whom all things were made²⁹. In Apponius there is no apology or scriptural warrant for the feminine Christ, or even any indication that it might present a problem. Bede thought that this imagery might trouble the reader, so he apparently consulted the concordance of his memory to bring forth other biblical passages using similar language.

11We have already seen that Apponius expounds the breasts of Christ as the two Johns who were heralds of the gospel, and elsewhere he says that Christian pastors are breasts when they nourish the Christian people with biblical teaching³⁰. As for Bede, we find him explaining that the breasts of Sg. 4:5 belong this time not to the bridegroom but to the Church as bride, whose teachers are “quite aptly referred to as breasts, since they supply the milk of the life-giving word to those who are still infants in Christ”³¹. Later, in reference to Sg. 4:10, he goes on to develop this imagery at considerable length by showing that pastors who nourish the faithful with the milk of doctrine are thereby imitating the mothering Christ in whose ministry they share:

Since an infant is not able to eat bread very well, the mother in a certain manner makes the very bread she eats into flesh and feeds the infant from that bread through the lowliness of breasts and the taste of milk. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’(Jn. 1:1) ; this is the eternal food that refreshes angels because they are satisfied with the sight of his glory. And ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’(Jn. 1:14), so that in this way the Wisdom of God that consoles us as a mother may refresh us from that very same bread and lead us through the sacraments of the Incarnation to the knowledge and vision of divine splendor. But holy teachers also take the bread with which they are fed in a sublime manner and convert it into milk with which they nourish little children, so that the more exalted their contemplation of eternal joys in God, the more humbly are they at the same time taking pity on their neighbors’ weakness³².

12None of this is particularly original with Bede. The image of Christ taking flesh in order to act as a mother who converts divine wisdom into more easily digestible milk is found in Augustine³³, and we have already noted how Apponius spoke of the maternal function of apostles and teachers. But Bede develops the theme throughout his commentary with both enthusiasm and a pleasing elegance. In the last commentary to be examined here, Christ as personified Wisdom plays an even more central role; indeed, this identification becomes the fundamental exegetical principle for the entire work.

Commentary on Proverbs

13No date has ever been assigned to Bede’s commentary on Proverbs, except that it must have been written before 731 when Bede mentions it in the Historia ecclesiastica. However, there is some reason to think that it was written shortly after the commentary on the Song of Songs, since Bede’s comment on the words ecclesia and sinagoga in Prv. 5:14 develops a distinction between the two that he developed in the prologue to his Song commentary, where the distinction is pertinent to the context in a way that it is not especially pertinent to the Proverbs text³⁴. Note that there are eight citations of the Song of Songs in Bede’s commentary on Proverbs, but only one citation of Proverbs in the commentary on the Song ; perhaps this indicates that the Song commentary was composed first³⁵. In addition, citations of Proverbs are much more frequent in Bede’s earlier commentaries on Luke, the Catholic Epistles, and 1 Samuel than in the several commentaries of the 720’s, which may indicate that Bede was devoting concentrated attention to Proverbs in the period 709-16 while he was in the process of composing his commentary on that book³⁶. If this provisional dating is correct, then it is remarkable that all of the commentaries we have examined – with the exception of the still-undated Homilies on the Gospels – appear to come from this early period in Bede’s exegetical career. A fascination with sapiential theology as a corrective against heresy may be characteristic of Bede’s early works, just as a concern for church reform appears as a recurrent theme in the later commentaries he was writing about the same time as the Historia ecclesiastica³⁷.

14As far as we know, Bede’s commentary on this biblical book – so important for both patristic theology and monastic formation – was the first complete verse-by-verse treatment of Proverbs by any Christian author³⁸. His interpretation is thoroughly Christological, with the key being the direct and complete identification of Christ as the feminine figure of Wisdom³⁹. Thus it is Christ/Wisdom who appears in flesh so that the disciples might understand parables ; who preaches openly in the streets when the apostles proclaim his resurrection ; who as the tree of life revives the church through the sacraments of his body and blood⁴⁰. God the Father created the world through Christ/ Wisdom, and according to Prv. 8:22 this divine figure was with God before the beginning of time⁴¹. As in the commentary on 1 Samuel, Wisdom is said to have built herself a house when Christ assumed human form⁴². She provides bread and mixes her wine when Christ offers his body and blood on the altar of the eucharist⁴³. Just as the harlot tempts the young man away from his true love Wisdom, so does the heretic shamelessly bid the believer to deny Christ⁴⁴. After bemoaning the ignorance of heretics, the first book of Bede’s commentary on Proverbs concludes: “But when the sacraments of Christ are properly celebrated in the church, and the word of Christ – who is the Wisdom of God – is heard and kept, surely the angelic powers are there, feasting with the faithful in highest heaven. For ‘he gave them bread from heaven, and mortals ate the bread of angels.’” (Ps. 77:24-5, Vulg.)⁴⁵

The Legacy of Bede’s feminine Christ

15Although the popularity of Bede’s biblical commentaries ensured that his reiteration of patristic traditions concerning the feminine Christ would be carried on into the Middle Ages, the later commentary tradition seems to have accepted his conclusions while omitting his more explicit rationale. For example, the three Carolingian commentators on the Song of Songs made extensive use of Bede’s own commentary on that book, and all of them followed Bede in identifying the breasts of Sg. 1:1 (Vulg.) as the breasts of Christ. However, neither Alcuin nor Angelomus nor Haimo of Auxerre quoted Bede’s apologia for the feminine Christ with its biblical warrants ; nor did any of them repeat his elaborate allegory in which the Incarnate Christ is described as acting like a nursing mother who feeds the church with the bread of divinity by turning it into sacramental milk⁴⁶. Even the twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria on the Song, which is heavily dependent on Bede, reduces his apologia on the femininity of Christ verse to a single sentence, saying : “He speaks of the ‘breasts’of the bridegroom, a female term, so that from the very beginning of this song he may reveal himself to be speaking figuratively”⁴⁷. It is possible that authors such as Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Aelred of Rievaulx were influenced somewhat by Bede when they developed their own much more elaborate treatments of Jesus as Mother, but they make no explicit mention of him in that regard.

16If we seek the wider effects of Bede’s influence, perhaps we should look outside the commentary tradition proper to consider the prominent role that sapiential theology played in the next generation in the writings of his Northumbrian compatriot Alcuin. As Mary Alberi has shown, Alcuin was drawing on the exegetical tradition of Gregory and Bede when he interpreted Wisdom’s house in Prv. 9:1 with reference to the Incarnation, though he went beyond them both when he identified that house’s seven columns with the seven liberal arts⁴⁸. We also know that Alcuin helped to supervise the construction of a church in York that was dedicated to Alma Sophia, and that he composed an order for a Mass of Holy Wisdom⁴⁹. Alcuin’s poem on the saints of York begins with an invocation of “Christ divine, strength and wisdom [sapientia] of the Father Almighty” that echoes 1 Cor. 1:24⁵⁰, and the epitaph he composed for himself declares that “Alcuin was my name and wisdom [sophia] always my love.” Even if he does not seem to have followed Bede in giving more explicit attention to the feminine character of Christ as Mother, Alcuin’s devotion to Holy Wisdom must surely have owed something to what he had read about her in the works of one he called “Bede the master”⁵¹.