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Bede

Bede (/biːd/; Old English: BÄ“da [ˈbeːdÉ‘]; 672/3 â€“ 26 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (Latin: Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the greatest teachers and writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gained him the title "The Father of English History". He served at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles.

"Beda" redirects here. For other uses, see Beda (disambiguation) and Bede (disambiguation).


Bede the Venerable

c. 673[1]
Kingdom of Northumbria, possibly Monkwearmouth in present-day Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England[1]

26 May 735 (aged 61 or 62)
Jarrow, Northumbria[1]

Durham Cathedral, England

Born on lands belonging to the twin monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in present-day Tyne and Wear, England, Bede was sent to Monkwearmouth at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at Jarrow. Both of them survived a plague that struck in 686 and killed the majority of the population there. While Bede spent most of his life in the monastery, he travelled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles, even visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria.


His ecumenical writings were extensive and included a number of Biblical commentaries and other theological works of exegetical erudition. Another important area of study for Bede was the academic discipline of computus, otherwise known to his contemporaries as the science of calculating calendar dates. One of the more important dates Bede tried to compute was Easter, an effort that was mired in controversy. He also helped popularize the practice of dating forward from the birth of Christ (Anno Domini—in the year of our Lord), a practice which eventually became commonplace in medieval Europe. He is considered by many historians to be the most important scholar of antiquity for the period between the death of Pope Gregory I in 604 and the coronation of Charlemagne in 800.


In 1899, Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church. He is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation.[a] Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work made the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons, which contributed significantly to English Christianity. Bede's monastery had access to an impressive library which included works by Eusebius, Orosius, and many others.

List of manuscripts of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica

List of works by Bede

Medieval ecclesiastic historiography

; Bailey, Richard (2015). "The Skull of Bede". The Antiquaries Journal. 95: 325–350. doi:10.1017/s0003581515000244. S2CID 163360680.

Story, Joanna

Dickinson College Commentaries: Historia Ecclēsiastica

at Project Gutenberg

Works by Bede

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Bede

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Bede

Bede's World: the museum of early medieval Northumbria at Jarrow

from In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

The Venerable Bede

Books 1–5, L.C. Jane's 1903 Temple Classics translation. From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People

at CCEL, edited & translated by A.M. Sellar.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Continuation of Bede (pdf)

complete works, in Latin, with historical works also in English at The Online Library of Liberty

Saint Bede

Dionysius Exiguus' Paschal table