Sign up to British Heritage Travel's daily newsletter here! Pen and paper, light and warmth would have been to Bede luxuries beyond imagination. Services of worship that marked his priestly vocation regularly interrupted his attention, and for months at a time, the Northumbrian climate was damp, chilly, and dark. It is impossible to appreciate the scope of Bede's effort without recalling the conditions under which he wrote, working with hand-sharpened tools on coarse surfaces, minimal artificial light, and communication no faster than a horse on uneven ground. In the midst of this ascetic and repetitive life, however, Bede wrote a prodigious canon of scholarship by any historical standard.

Daily life was ordered, shoe-horned in between the constant rhythm of the services from prime to lauds. After the first office, sung at 2 am, any rest came in snatches before a general predawn rise to private prayer and manual duty. Celebrating the offices of the canonical day itself was an arduous, time-consuming, and endless cycle. The routine of the abbey day seems designed to deaden rather than awaken intellectual curiosity. It is, in fact, for his monumental Ecclesiastical History of the English People that Bede is best remembered. While many of his 60 works are biblical commentaries, he also wrote on natural history, science, poetry, and history. Certainly, Bede's intellectual range went much further than the Bible itself. In truth, the humble monk's studies encompassed a wide range of disciplines, including astronomy, classical languages, medicine, and seemingly everything else his imagination and resources would allow. I have spent all the remainder of my life in this monastery and devoted myself entirely to the study of Scriptures. 'I was born on the lands of the monastery, he later wrote, and on reaching seven years of age, I was entrusted by my family first to the reverend Abbot Benedict and later to Abbot Ceolfrith for my education. The 12-year-old Bede was present at the consecration of the new church on 23rd April 685.

Bede history of the english church