'At this time, Cuthbert was keeping watch over flocks of sheep on some remote mountains. One night he was staying awake, praying through the night, with his companions sleeping beside him. Suddenly he saw a light streaming down from heaven, breaking through the darkness. In the light were choirs of angels coming down to earth, and after taking away a soul that was full of light, they returned to their heavenly country...' Written only a few years after the death of Cuthbert himself, Bede’s Life is the definitive biography of the North’s favourite saint. With introduction and notes.
Author
Saint Bede (672/673 - 735), referred to as Venerable Bede (Latin: Bēda Venerābilis) for over a thousand years before being canonized, was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Monkwearmouth-Jarrow), both in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History.” In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII, a position of theological significance; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation (Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy). Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius among many others.
