These two complementary lives of Cuthbert illuminate both the secular history of the golden age of Northumbria and the historic shift from Celtic to Roman ecclesiastical practice which took place after the Synod of Whitby. Cuthbert was very much in the Irish monastic tradition. He adopted Roman usages, becoming prior and eventually bishop of Lindisfarne, but the essential nature of his commitment changed little and he lived for much of his later life as a hermit on the island of Farne, with the birds as his only companions. The two lives make an interesting contrast: the earlier, anonymous Life of 698 - 705 is clear, concise and rich in Lindisfarne tradition, viewing Cuthbert as no more than the great saint of his own house. Bede's prose Life of 721, however, is polished, literary, more than twice as long and altogether more didactic; treating Cuthbert as a model from which to draw lessons about how to be a perfect bishop and monk. Taken together, the lives vividly evoke the character of a remarkable churchman and provide a compelling picture of early monastic life."
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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.
