Bede, Beda, or Bæda known as the Venerable Bede the adjective often being attached to express admiration to the Anglo-saxon scholar, who was also regarded as a saint.
He was born in 672 or 673 in the neighbourhood of Monkwearmonth, county Durham; and entered at St. Peter's monastery, when he was only seven. Two years later he was transferred to a new foundation at Jarrow, but soon after his arrival all the monks responsible for leading the worship were wiped out by plague, leaving only the abbot and the child Bede to maintain the services.
He took deacon's orders in his nineteenth year at St. Paul's monastery, Jarrow, and was ordained priest at thirty by John of Beverley, bishop of Hexham. Apart from brief visits to York and Lindisfarne he remained close to Jarrow's fine monastic library. His life was spent in studious seclusion, the chief events being the production of 40 books, a number of homilies, hymns, commentaries, lives of saints, and works in history, chronology, and grammar. This was achieved by a monk who spent virtually the whole of his life in a monastery at Jarrow, then a remote place on the Northumbrian coast.
Most of his writings were on scriptural and ecclesiastical subjects, besides his familiarity with Latin, he knew Greek and had some acquaintance with Hebrew. Bede wrote several commentaries on books of the Bible which were circulated widely among the monasteries of Europe. He used the work of the earliest Christian scholars and added his own understandings of particular passages .
The synod of Whitby in 664 decided that the English church should adopt the Roman method of determining the date of Easter. But few people in any part of Europe understood this system, until Bede explained it in a highly technical book of calculations to determine the date of Easter (in which, for the first time in England, the calendar years were dated from the birth of Christ).
He was the most learned Englishman of his day, and and in one sense the father of English history, his most important work written in Latin of the purest style, being his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (or Ecclesiastical History of England, completed in A.D. 731). Bede had gathered his material from reliable sources and even had a colleague researching for him in the Pope's archives in Rome, it details the history of England from the time of the Roman occupation until the 8th century. This was afterwards translated in the 9th century by King Alfred .
Bede later wrote a long letter to his pupil, Egbert, who had become Archbishop of York. In this he set out what he believed to be the duties of a bishop, stressing the importance of Confirmation, daily Communion, almsgiving and Masses for the dead. By now his own death was close an interesting record is preserved in a letter by his pupil Cuthbert. On the eve of Ascension Day in 735, after he had written the final words of his commentary on John's Gospel, he died.
He was buried at Jarrow, during the 11th century his bones were moved to Durham Cathedral, where the shrine can still be seen.
The Latin inscription remains, ending with the verse - 'Hac sunt in fossa Bedæ venerabilis ossa'.
