Saint Bede the Venerable

Saint Bede the Venerable was an English monk, priest and scholar. From childhood until his death he lived in the monastery at Jarrow in Northumbria, where he studied and explained Sacred Scripture. He is a Doctor of the Church, and his liturgical memorial falls on May 25.

He was born in 672 or 673 on lands belonging to the monastery of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul at Wearmouth and Jarrow. As he himself wrote, when he was seven years old his relatives entrusted him to Abbot Benedict to be educated, and later to Abbot Ceolfrid. In his nineteenth year he received the diaconate, and in his thirtieth priestly ordination, both from Bishop John.

His days were filled with the monastic rule, the daily singing in church, and study. He confessed that it had always been his delight to learn, to teach or to write. He drew on the manuscripts that the abbots brought back from the continent and from Rome. He studied the text of the Latin Bible critically; the monumental Codex Amiatinus of the Vulgate, on which he worked, has come down to us.

The most important part of his work consists of his commentaries on Sacred Scripture, in which he read both Testaments in the light of Christ, and of his homilies for Sundays and feasts. From his homily on the call of Saint Matthew come the words “Miserando atque eligendo,” the motto of Pope Francis. Bede arranged the history of the world by years counted from the Incarnation of the Lord, and his calculations of the date of Easter became the point of reference for the whole Church. In 731 he completed the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, on the conversion of the peoples of England, for which he is called the father of English historiography.

He also cared for pastoral work. He urged pastors to explain the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed to the faithful in their own language, and he himself did so in the speech of Northumbria. In a letter to Bishop Egbert he wrote that he knew many of the faithful who, if well guided, could receive Holy Communion every day. He worked to have the Churches of the Irish, the Celts and the Picts celebrate Easter according to the Roman calendar. Saint Boniface, the apostle of Germany, asked for copies of his works.

Toward the end of his life he fell gravely ill, but he did not stop working. As his disciple Cuthbert described, Bede went on praying, reading, teaching and working to the end, and until his last day he was occupied with the Gospel of Saint John in the language of his people. He died at Jarrow in 735, on the threshold of the solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord. His relics rest in Durham Cathedral.

His reputation for holiness and wisdom earned him the title Venerable. For centuries he was venerated as a saint in the north of England, and the Benedictines and Cistercians had long kept his feast. On November 13, 1899, Pope Leo XIII extended it to the whole Church and gave Bede the title of Doctor of the Church. Benedict XVI, who devoted a catechesis to him in 2009, said that through his works Bede made an effective contribution to building a Christian Europe.