Generations of college students have probably imagined that his first name was Venerable, and his family name Bede. But Bede–that’s B-E-D-E–was his only name. He was a native of Northumbria, in the north of what we now think of as England. Apparently never going abroad, his life was spent within a few miles of his monastery, and probably just a few miles from where he was born. Yet this seemingly narrow and circumscribed life was full of intense intellectual activity. Bede authored dozens of works: teaching texts to be used for young boys entering the monastery, as he had done; biblical commentaries; arithmetical works; sermons and homilies; and lives of Northumbrian saints. Yet when he is remembered by historians, it is for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People. 

With me to discuss Bede as historian is Rory Naismith, Professor of Early Medieval History and Fellow of Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge. This is his third appearance on the podcast; he was last on Historically Thinking in Episode 343 discussing whether we should talk about the Anglo-Saxons.

 

For Further Investigation

This is one of our occasional podcasts on important historians. For others, see this one on Polybius, and this on another medieval historian, Princess Anna Komnene

The remnants of the monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow

The historical site formerly known as "Bede's World": now Jarrow Hall Anglo-Saxon Farm Village and Bede Museum, reopened after a short closure.

FYI, in contemporary Britain it's probably true that Jarrow is best known for the "Jarrow Crusade" rather than for Bede

A good companion to Bede is, amazingly enough, J. Robert Wright, A Companion to Bede: A Reader's Commentary on The Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Rory Naismith also suggests:

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People/Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: "This is available in very many translations, including those of Bertram Colgrave and D. H. Farmer. A scholarly edition, with facing-page Latin and English, is available from Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors."

J. Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 1–48

G. Hardin Brown, A Companion to Bede (Woodbridge, 2009)

P. Hunter-Blair, The World of Bede (Cambridge, 1970)

H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (London, 1991)

R. Shaw, The Gregorian Mission to Kent in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History: Methodology and Sources (London, 2018)

A. Thacker, ‘Bede and History’, in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. S. DeGregorio (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 170–89

A. Thacker, ‘Bede’s Ideal of Reform’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. P. Wormald et al. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 130–53