This is recorded by Lingard and Burke.

    Page 259

   .

    Bede's Last May.

   This narrative of the death of Bede is closely taken from a letter written by Cuthbert, a pupil of his, then residing in Jarrow, to a fellow-pupil at a distance. An English version of that letter is prefixed to Dr. Giles's translation of

    Bede's Ecclesiastical History

   . (Henry G. Bohn.) The death of Bede took place on Wednesday, May 26,

    A.D.

   735, being Ascension Day.

    Page 265

   .

    They hunger for your souls; with reverent palms.

   'But in a mystical sense the disciples pass through the cornfields when the holy Doctors look with the care of a pious solicitude upon those whom they have initiated in the Faith, and who, it is implied, are hungering for the best of all things—the salvation of men. But to pluck the ears of corn means to snatch men away from the eager desire of earthly things. And to rub with the hands is, by examples of virtue, to put from the purity of their minds the concupiscence of the flesh, as men do husks. To eat the grains is when a man, cleansed from the filth of vice by the mouths of preachers, is incorporated amongst the members of the Church.'—Bede, quoted in the

    Catena Aurea

   .

    Commentary on St. Mark

   , cap. ii. v. 23.

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