Bede the Venerable
c. 673 – 735 · Northumbria
Also known as Venerable Bede · Beda Venerabilis
Feast: 25 May (Catholic) · 27 May (Orthodox)
Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk at Jarrow. Author of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the principal source for early English Christianity. Wrote extensive biblical commentaries drawing on Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great. Declared Doctor of the Church.
Bede sat in a monastery in Northumbria and wrote the history of how Christianity reached England — his Ecclesiastical History of the English People is still the founding text of English historiography. He invented the convention of dating by Anno Domini. He preserved Latin learning at a time when most of the West had forgotten how to read it. He is the only Englishman in Dante's Paradiso. Patristic learning didn't die in 600 — it was carried on by people like Bede, in cold monasteries on the edge of the world.
Notable works
- ·Ecclesiastical History of the English People · 731
Primary sources
- ·Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
- ·Bede, De Temporum Ratione
- ·Cuthbert, Epistola de obitu Bedae
Book of the day
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Bede the VenerableA reading pick tied to today's figure, quote, era, or event. The classic early medieval church history in the West, written at the far end of this site's timeline.
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