Bede

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

bed, a learned and industrious English monk of the monastery of Jarrow, in the county of Durham. He lived about 673-735. He says of himself: "I applied myself wholly to the study of the Scriptures and, amid the observance of regular discipline and the daily care of singing in the church, I always took delight in learning, teaching, and writing." As a teacher he made the monastery so famous a center of learning that 600 monks resorted thither to enjoy the library and be under the influence of Bede. He wrote treatises, in Latin, of course, on The Nature of Things, including astronomy, arithmetic, medicine, grammar, rhetoric, and music. His chief work, an Ecclesiastical History of Our Island and Nation, was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, and, being the earliest writing of the kind, gives Bede the honor of being called "The Father of English History." In this work occurs the famous sentence, "There are no snakes in Ireland." He declined the position of abbot, not wishing to fritter away his time in housekeeping affairs and office holding. Bede was buried at Jarrow. His bones were stolen by a pious man and carried to Durham cathedral on account of their sanctity, and were later inclosed in a fitting shrine; but during the riots and the sacking of Catholic places of worship in the reign of Henry VIII, the shrine was broken up and the ashes of the "Venerable Bede" were scattered. First among English scholars, first among English theologians, first among English historians, it is in the monk of Jarrow that English literature strikes its roots. In the six hundred scholars who gathered round him for instruction, he is the father of our national education. In his physical treatises he is the first figure to which our science looks back.--Green, History of the English People.