Bede 'the Venerable, ' English theologian & historian, was born in 672/3 in the territory of the single monastery at Wearmouth & Jarrow. He was ordained deacon (691/2) & priest (702/3) of the monastery, where his whole life was spent in devotion, choral singing, study, teaching, discussion & writing. Besides Latin he knew Greek & possibly Hebrew. His theological works were chiefly commentaries, mostly allegorical in method, based with acknowledgment on Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory & others, but bearing his own personality. In another class were works on grammar & one on natural phenomena; special interest in the vexed question of Easter led him to write about the calendar & chronology. His most admired production is his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Here a clear & simple style united with descriptive powers to produce an elegant work. The facts diligently collected from good sources make it a valuable account. Historical also are his Lives of the Abbots of his monastery, the less successful accounts (in verse & prose) of Cuthbert & the Letter (11/734) to Egbert his pupil, so important for our knowledge about the Church in Northumbria. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Bede's historical works is in two volumes.
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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.
