Monastic Life
At age seven Bede became an oblate at the monastery of Wearmouth under Abbot Benedict Biscop, then transferred to the sister monastery of St Paul at Jarrow around 682, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was trained by Abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith, and the Wearmouth-Jarrow library, holding between 300 and 500 volumes, was among the largest in England at that time.
He survived the plague of 686 that killed most of the monastic community; according to the OCA, the young Bede and Abbot Ceolfrith maintained the monastery's liturgical services alone during that affliction. Bede was ordained a deacon around the age of nineteen and to the priesthood around the age of thirty (c. 702), in both cases by Bishop John of Beverley. His life was given over to prayer, the observance of the Rule, and the study of Scripture.
His accounts reveal practices familiar to Orthodox Christians, including the Wednesday and Friday fasts and a forty-day Nativity Fast.
Scholarship and Contributions
Bede's most famous work is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), completed around 731, which traces Christian history in England from Caesar's invasion through his own era. It survives in approximately 160 medieval manuscripts and earned him the title 'Father of English History.' He drew, in his own words, 'from ancient documents, from the traditions of our ancestors, and from my own personal knowledge.'
He wrote extensive biblical commentaries on both Testaments, as well as two treatises on computus — De temporibus (c. 703) and the comprehensive De Temporum Ratione (c. 723) — which addressed the dating of Easter and popularized the Anno Domini system of reckoning years. His educational works included De arte metrica and De orthographia. He possessed a knowledge of Greek and attempted to learn Hebrew, and is also credited with pioneering footnoting practices and producing single-volume Bibles compiled from multiple manuscript sources, unusual for his era.
He was described as the most accomplished Latinist of Anglo-Saxon England. Near death he was working on an Old English translation of the Gospel of John.
Repose
Bede fell ill in 735. His disciple Cuthbert documented his last illness: despite failing health and breathing difficulties, Bede remained cheerful and continued teaching his students and chanting the Psalms until his last hours. In his final weeks before Pascha he persisted in this work despite his weakness.
Working with a monk named Wilbert, he completed a translation of the Gospel of John into Old English together with an extract from St Isidore of Seville, and then, according to the OCA, died peacefully after the Doxology. He reposed on May 25 or 26, 735, at Jarrow, aged about sixty-one or sixty-two, on the Feast of the Ascension.
Relics & Shrines
Bede's relics were initially buried in the south porch of the monastery church at Jarrow, and were later moved near the altar. A cult around him began in the tenth century and spread widely.
His relics were translated to Durham Cathedral around 1020 and placed in a shrine in the Galilee Chapel there, where they rest to this day; they were reinterred in 1831 in a raised tomb that remains present.
Veneration and Legacy
He is designated 'Venerable,' a title that became attached to his name shortly after his death. The OCA commemorates him on May 27, his feast shifted from May 25 to avoid the Feast of St Augustine of Canterbury on May 26; across different traditions his feast is observed variously on May 25, 26, or 27.
Bede remains the only Englishman mentioned by Dante in the Divine Comedy. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church, making him the first Briton so honoured.
