Feast day: May 25

St. Bede the Venerable

Monk, Doctor of the Church · c. 673–735

Patron of Historians, scholars

A Northumbrian monk who spent his whole life in one monastery yet, through his writings, became the most learned man of his age and the father of English history.

Bede was born about 673 in the north of England, in the kingdom of Northumbria, and at the age of seven was given by his family to the new monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow to be raised and educated. There he remained for the whole of his life, scarcely ever leaving, devoting himself, as he put it, to the study of Scripture and to the keeping of the monastic discipline and the daily round of prayer — 'always,' he wrote, 'it was sweet to me to learn, or to teach, or to write.'

From that one quiet monastery, at the far edge of the known world, Bede became the most learned man of his age. He wrote on Scripture, on the natural world, on the reckoning of time and the calculation of Easter, on grammar and on the lives of the saints, drawing on the monastery's remarkable library to gather and pass on the learning of the ancient Church to a new age.

His masterpiece is the 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People,' the first true history of England and very nearly the only source for the story of the island's conversion to Christianity. Careful with his evidence, scrupulous in naming his sources, and graceful in his telling, he earned the title 'the Father of English History,' and he did much to spread the custom of dating years from the birth of Christ, the 'A.D.' we still use.

He died at Jarrow in 735, on the eve of the Ascension, dictating to the last the final words of his translation of the Gospel of John, and the monks around him singing as he breathed his last. Honored almost at once as 'the Venerable,' he is the only Englishman named a Doctor of the Church, and the patron of historians and scholars.

His 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People' is why we know early England at all — and he helped popularize counting years as 'AD,' from the birth of Christ.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm