Bede and his Books
2023 marks the 1350th anniversary of the birth of the Venerable Bede (c.723-735), one of the greatest scholars of the post-Roman West and the ‘Father of English History’. But how, within a generation of the conversion of his Northumbrian people to Christianity did this Anglo-Saxon, who at the age of 7 was entrusted to the care of the new monastery of Monkwearmouth and who spent his whole life there and at its twin foundation of Jarrow, achieve this? Having only travelled within the region, how did he write a guide to the sacred sites of the Near East that was still used by travellers there in the early 20th century? How did he produce the first tide timetables, having recognised the gravitational pull of the moon? What earned him the title of ‘the father of English history’? What was his role in the creation of the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Lindisfarne Gospels and in shaping the cult of St Cuthbert? How did he give us our earliest English poetry and the first translation of part of the Bible into the English language? What was his world like? What was his research programme and what library resources and experiences did he draw upon? How did this stimulate a publishing programme that bridged those of late Antiquity and the Carolingian period? These and many other questions are explored in this course, along with the cultural and historical context of the Golden Age of Northumbria.
