St. Bede the Venerable

Their story

Bede was born around 673 in Northumbria, in northern England. When he was seven, his family placed him in the care of the monks of Wearmouth, and he soon moved to the new sister monastery at Jarrow. He spent the rest of his life there. When plague swept through Jarrow, it is said that only the abbot and one young boy, probably Bede, were left to sing the daily prayers of the Church. He became a monk, was ordained a priest at about thirty, and never traveled far from home. Yet from that quiet monastery Bede became one of the most learned men in Europe. He wrote around sixty books, including commentaries on the Bible, works on science and the calendar, poems and lives of the saints. His most famous work, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, tells how the Gospel came to England, and it is why he is called the father of English history. He also helped make popular the practice of counting years from the birth of Christ, the system of dates we still use today. Bede loved to pray, to study and to teach. In the last days of his life, though very ill, he kept working to finish a translation of the Gospel of John into English. He died in 735, singing the "Glory be to the Father." Even during his lifetime he was called "Venerable" out of respect. In 1899 he was declared a Doctor of the Church, the only Englishman to receive that title.