The Venerable Bede

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2004

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Venerable Bede. In 731 AD, in the most far-flung corner of the known universe, a book was written that represented a height of scholarship and erudition that was not to be equalled for centuries to come. It was called the Ecclesiastical History of the Angle Peoples and its author was Bede. A long way from Rome, in a monastery at Jarrow in the North East of England, his works cast a light across the whole of Western Civilisation and Bede became a bestseller, an internationally renowned scholar and eventually a saint. His Ecclesiastical History has been in copy or in print ever since it was written in the eighth century and his edition of the Bible remains the Catholic Church's most authoritative Latin version to this day.How did Bede achieve such ascendancy from such an obscure part of Christendom? And what was so remarkable about his work?With Richard Gameson, Reader in Medieval History at the University of Kent at Canterbury; Sarah Foot, Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Sheffield; Michelle Brown, a manuscript specialist from the British Library.

Transcript

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0:47.2	Hello in 731 a.D. in what Pope Gregory called the outermost edge of the known world a book was written
0:55.4	that reached a dazzling height of scholarship and erudition not to be equal for centuries
1:00.0	to come it was called the Ecclesiastical History of the English people. Its author was Bede, a monk.
1:06.0	Working far away from Rome in a monastery at Jarrow in the northeast of England,
1:10.0	his many and varied works cast a light across the whole of Western civilization,
1:15.2	and Bead became an internationally renowned scholar and eventually a saint.
1:19.4	His ecclesiastical history has been in copy or in print ever since it was written in the 8th century and
1:24.0	his addition of the Bible remains the Catholic Church's most authoritative Latin
1:27.4	version to this day. Dante put him in paradise. How did Bede achieve such ascendancy from such an obscure part of Christendom? How did his work define the English and what was so remarkable about his work? With me to discuss the venerable bead is Sarah Foote,
1:44.1	professor of early medieval history at Sheffield University,
1:46.9	Michelle Brown, a manist especially from the British Library and lay canon at
1:51.1	St Paul's Cathedral, and Richard Gameson Reader in Medieval History at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
1:56.6	Richard Gameson, can you just headline a few more in three or four sentences,
	...

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