Bede c. 672 – 735
Bede, called the Venerable, was an English Benedictine monk, scholar, and the most learned writer of the early medieval West. From the age of seven he lived at the joint monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria, where he produced a vast body of biblical commentary, scientific writing on chronology and natural phenomena, hagiography, and history. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, established the framework of early Anglo-Saxon historiography and the use of the Anno Domini system in Western chronology. He was canonized as a doctor of the Church in 1899, the only native of Britain to bear the title.
Key facts
- Nationality
- English
- Era
- Medieval
- Movements
- Medieval, Christian
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Bede:
“It is better to teach the ignorant than to remain silent.”
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Attributed to Bede:
“Better the simple brother who, doing the good he knows, gains heaven, than the learned one who knows much and lives ill.”
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Attributed to Bede:
“Time is what the wise measure carefully and the foolish waste.”
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Attributed to Bede:
“Better learning lit by faith than learning that knows no God.”
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Attributed to Bede:
“He who reads the lives of the saints kindles his own soul.”