Sir, - It is almost a crime to complain of errors in such a delightful piece as that on the Venerable Bede by Brendan McWilliams ("Weather Eye" May 27th). Nevertheless, here are two.
In his conclusion, McWilliams states that Bede was widely credited with being the first person to be able to read without having to move his lips. Certainly, the practice from classical times on was, even when reading to oneself, to pronounce the words aloud. Monks at work in a scriptorium were described as sounding like a hive of bees. Thus, reading silently was, indeed, noteworthy but Bede was not the first so described. Augustine, in his Confessions (V1,3) made the same observation of Ambrose - some three-plus centuries before Bede's time.
More significantly, McWilliams begins his piece by stating, "Bede never quite made it to the sainthood". This is a common mistake. Bede's cult as a saint was, in fact, established within a half-century of his death. His feast-day was, until 1969, May 27th in the Roman calendar of saints (moved from his day of death, May 26th, to avoid a clash with the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury). It is now on May 25th. The title "Venerable" was an honorific of affection; it has nothing to do with the now-initial stage in the progress towards canonisation, a formal process not established until many centuries after Bede's death. - Yours, etc., G. T. Dempsey,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.