The Venerable Bede, Anglo-Saxon England's most prolific Latin author and one of the greatest of the early Middle Ages, was born either in 672 or in 673, in the kingdom of Northumbria. His exact birthplace and parentage are unknown. He tell us himself, at the end of his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum [Ecclesiastical History of the English People], only that he was born somewhere in the territory of the monastery of Wearmouth and that, when only seven years of age, he was given by his relatives into the charge of the monastery's founder, the thane-turned-monk Benedict Biscop (d. 689). But as to who these relatives were and why they committed him to the monastic life, Bede says no more. It is possible that his …
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Citation: De Gregorio, Scott. "Bede". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 May 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4999, accessed 19 April 2024.]
