Saint Bede the Venerable

Bede was born around 673 in Northumbria, England, on lands belonging to the monastery of Wearmouth. At the age of seven he was entrusted to the abbot Saint Benedict Biscop, and he spent the rest of his life at the twin monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow. He was ordained a deacon at nineteen and a priest at thirty. He once wrote that his delight was always "to learn, to teach and to write."

Bede wrote some forty works on Scripture, science, grammar, the saints and the calculation of time. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, is the main source for the early history of England, and its use of dating from the birth of Christ, "anno Domini," helped make that system common in Europe. He died at Jarrow on May 26, 735, the eve of the Ascension, while finishing an English translation of the Gospel of John. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1899.

Bede is the only English Doctor of the Church. His tomb is in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral, and many schools and colleges in England and the United States bear his name. Scholars and historians mark his feast with lectures and Evensong.