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DRYTHELM'S JOURNEY TO T H E O T H E R WORLD: REDE'S L I T E R A R Y USE OF TRADITION In his service as Biblical commentator, hagiographer, and his torian, the Venerable Bede worked willingly from established au thorities. Using complex traditions, however, requires choices, and Bede controlled his diverse sources with a clarity of scholarship and charity of character that have always won admiration. Some of the most rigorous professional decisions he had to make in combining hagiography and historiography were in Historia Ec clesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Given the rich Irish and Roman heritage of the English church, the brief, effective miracle stories in Historia Ecclesiastica also presented Bede with many essentially literary choices. While Bede's literary skill is generally recognized, it has seldom been discussed in great detail; thoroughly examining a single story will, perhaps, illuminate his control of complex materials. Bede's spare account of Drythelm's journey to the other world (Historia Ecclesiastica, V, xii) is a particularly fitting example, both for its sources and its outstanding quality. Behind it lies one of the most elaborate and vital literary traditions of the medieval period. Most of the details of this miraculous story can be traced to widespread sources, and yet nothing else quite like it exists. [T]o stir up living men from the death of the soul (V, xii, p. 253), Bede has fashioned a consistently human and humane witness of the afterlife. Bede, Opera Historica, ed. by J . E . King. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library (London, 1930). All English and Latin quotations are from this edition and are cited in the text.
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