Who Was Bede The Venerable?
Bede the Venerable was a religious writer and historian, based in the locality of County Durham, England. He lived from 673-735. Bede became an orphan at the age of 7. Following this, he was looked after by a religious order, who taught him how to read and write, which was unusual for the majority of people at that time. At 19 he became a deacon in the Church and was a priest by the age of 30. He was an intelligent man, being versed in Latin, Greek and possibly Hebrew. His greatest claim to fame was his work ‘An Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation’ which was written in Latin, but translated into the English by Alfred the Great. His other works included De Orthographia and De Natura Rerum. His work is symbolic because it provided an insight of the thinking of the time as well as some good historical data.