The Relevance of St Bede the Venerable to the Glossa Ordinaria

In the Middle Ages no book has influenced the existence of men as much as the Bible. This is the reason of the hard work of monasteries and universities of this age in the production of manuscripts and commentaries, and also in the creation of schools for the study and the exegesy of the Scriptures. Over the years a series of glosses and biblical commentaries, dating back to the Fathers of the Church, were collected in the Glossa Ordinaria, which soon became the reference commentary for the Scriptures in the West, having an enormous influence on Christian theology, on biblical exegesis and on culture in general. The Glossa was compiled between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, continuously updated and revised, until it fell almost in disuse in the sixteenth century. St Bede the Venerable was one of the most diligent scholars of the Scriptures in the medieval period and his contribution to the Glossa Ordinaria was of fundamental importance. The aim of this study is to analyze the contribution of St Bede to the Glossa from a historical and linguistic point of view, through the 716 explicit references in the text. Charles Berinyuy Sengka, born in Jakiri (Cameroon) in 1979, has been a priest since 2009 and teacher in the seminary of the diocese of Kumbo. He studied History of the Church at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, where he obtained his doctorate in 2015.