After receiving ordination, he taught at the monastery. In relative isolation, Bede studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the Scriptures. Soon after, the monastic community relocated to Jarrow, a few miles north near the River Tyne, and there Bede remained for the rest of his life. He entered a monastery as an oblate when he was seven years old.

Bede was made a saint and declared a doctor of the church in 1899.īede was born in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of North Umbria in the area that is now Durham, England. Bede’s tomb in Durham Cathedral contains an inscription giving him the title “Venerable,” meaning that some officials in the Roman Catholic Church had found his person and life to be worthy of veneration.

In the end he is pleased to note that the Irish Church was saved from error by accepting the correct date for Easter.Bede (673–735) was a Catholic monk in England he is known as the Father of English History and was one of the most learned men in Europe at the time.

It is here, and only here, that he ventures some criticism of St Cuthbert and the Irish missionaries, who celebrated the event, according to Bede, at the wrong time. His final preoccupation is over the precise date of Easter, which he writes about at length. While Bede is loyal to Northumbria, he shows an even greater attachment to the Irish and the Irish Celtic missionaries, whom he considers to be far more effective and dedicated than their rather complacent English counterparts. In political terms he is a partisan of his native Northumbria, amplifying its role in English history over and above that of Mercia, its great southern rival. Bede sets out, not just to tell the story of the English, but to advance his views on politics and religion. The History of the English Church and People has a clear polemical and didactic purpose. Divided into five books, it covers the history of England, ecclesiastical and political, from the time of Julius Caesar to the date of its completion (731). It is believed to have been completed in 731, when Bede was approximately 59 years old. It is considered to be one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon history. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.

Venerable bede ecclesiastical history