In the words of Charles Plummer, one of the best-known editors of the Historia Ecclesiastica, Bede's Latin is " clear and limpid ... it is very seldom that we have to pause to think of the meaning of a sentence ... Alcuin rightly praises Bede for his unpretending style.

Bede's best-known work is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

The fifth book brings the story up to Bede's day, and includes an account of missionary work in Frisia, and of the conflict with the British church over the correct dating of Easter.

Bede's work as a hagiographer, and his detailed attention to dating, were both useful preparations for the task of writing the Historia Ecclesiastica.

It is likely that Bede's work, because it was so widely copied, discouraged others from writing histories and may even have led to the disappearance of manuscripts containing older historical works.

A page from a copy of Bede's Lives of St. Cuthbert, showing Athelstan of England | King Athelstan presenting the work to the saint.

Bede dedicated this work to Cuthbert, apparently a student, for he is named " beloved son " in the dedication, and Bede says " I have laboured to educate you in divine letters and ecclesiastical statutes " Another textbook of Bede's is the De orthographia, a work on orthography, designed to help a medieval reader of Latin with unfamiliar abbreviations and words from classical Latin works.

She makes no appearance in Bede's work, the Historia Brittonum, the Mabinogion or Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.

Patrick Sims-Williams is more skeptical of the account, suggesting that Bede's Canterbury source, for which he relied on for his account of Hengist and Horsa in his work Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, had confused two separate traditions.

A hagiography, or saint's biography, on Deusdedit was written by Goscelin after the translation of his relics, but the work was based mainly on Bede's account ; the manuscript of the De Sancto Deusdedit Archiepiscopo survives as part of British Library manuscript ( ms ) Cotton Vespasian B. xx.

Much of the work appears to be derived from Gildas's 6th century polemic The Ruin of Britain, Bede's 8th century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the 9th century History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, the 10th century Welsh Annals, medieval Welsh genealogies ( such as the Harleian Genealogies ) and king-lists, the poems of Taliesin, the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen, and some of the medieval Welsh Saint's Lives, expanded and turned into a continuous narrative by Geoffrey's own imagination.

Bede claimed he was a bishop (" Galliarum Episcopus "), who, according to Bede's history of the Church in England ( V, 15 ), was shipwrecked on the shore of Iona, Scotland on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was hospitably received by Adamnan, the abbot of the island monastery of Iona from 679 to 704, to whom he gave a detailed narrative of his travels, from which Adamnan, with aid from some further sources, was able to produce a descriptive work in three books, dealing with Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other places in Palestine, and briefly with Alexandria and Constantinople, called De Locis Sanctis (" Concerning the sacred places ").

The fifth book brings the story up to Bede's day, and includes an account of missionary work in Frisia, and of the conflict with the British church over the correct dating of Easter.

Bede's work as a hagiographer, and his detailed attention to dating, were both useful preparations for the task of writing the Historia Ecclesiastica.

Farmer cites Bede's intense interest in the schism over the correct date for Easter as support for this argument, and also cites the lengthy description of the Synod of Whitby, which Farmer regards as " the dramatic centre-piece of the whole work.

Arthur is not mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People or any other surviving work of the era until 820, the date ascribed to the Historia Brittonum, usually attributed to Nennius, a Welsh ecclesiastic.

Bede's most famous work is Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which is regarded as a highly influential early model of historical scholarship.

Bede's work De VIII Quastionibus may have been written for Nothhelm.

Almost everything that is known of Bede's life is contained in the last chapter of his Historia Ecclesiastica, a history of the church in England.

A minor source of information is the letter by his disciple Cuthbert which relates Bede's death.

Some manuscripts of the Life of Cuthbert, one of Bede's own works, mention that Cuthbert's own priest was named Bede ; it is possible that this priest is the other name listed in the Liber Vitae.

The canonical age for the ordination of a deacon was 25 ; Bede's early ordination may mean that his abilities were considered exceptional, but it is also possible that the minimum age requirement was often disregarded.

Nothhelm, a correspondent of Bede's who assisted him by finding documents for him in Rome, is known to have visited Bede, though the date cannot be determined beyond the fact that it was after Nothhelm's visit to Rome.

Cuthbert, a disciple of Bede's, wrote a letter to a Cuthwin ( of whom nothing else is known ), describing Bede's last days and his death.

Bede's account of the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons is drawn largely from Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae.

Almost all of Bede's information regarding Augustine is taken from these letters.

Bede's Latin has been praised for its clarity, but his style in the Historia Ecclesiastica is not simple.

However, unlike contemporaries such as Aldhelm, whose Latin is full of difficulties, Bede's own text is easy to read.

This goal, of showing the movement towards unity, explains Bede's animosity towards the British method of calculating Easter: much of the Historia is devoted to a history of the dispute, including the final resolution at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

Bede's extensive use of miracles is disconcerting to the modern reader who thinks of Bede as a more or less reliable historian, but men of the time accepted miracles as a matter of course.

The belief that the Historia was the culmination of Bede's works, the aim of all his scholarship, a belief common among historians in the past, is no longer accepted by most scholars.

It is clear from Bede's own comments that he felt his job was to explain to his students and readers the theology and thoughts of the Church Fathers.

Any codex of Bede's Easter cycle is normally found together with a codex of his " De Temporum Ratione ".

Some of Bede's material came from oral traditions, including a description of the physical appearance of Paulinus of York, who had died nearly 90 years before Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica was written.

Bede's primary intention in writing the Historia Ecclesiastica was to show the growth of the united church throughout England.

The native Britons, whose Christian church survived the departure of the Romans, earn Bede's ire for refusing to help convert the Saxons ; by the end of the Historia the English, and their Church, are dominant over the Britons.

Most of the 8th-and 9th-century texts of Bede's Historia come from the northern parts of the Carolingian Empire.

The main sources available for discussion of this period include Gildas's De Excidio Britanniae and Nennius's Historia Brittonum, the Annales Cambriae, Anglo Saxon Chronicle, William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum and De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, along with texts from the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Red Book of Hergest, and Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum as well as " The Descent of the Men of the North " ( Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd, in Peniarth MS 45 and elsewhere ) and the Book of Baglan.

The earliest English record of the kingdom dates to Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which noted the arrival of Bishop ( later Saint ) Mellitus in London in 604.

Hengist and Horsa are attested in Bede's 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ; in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius ; and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals compiled from the end of the 9th century.

Boniface also gave Justus a letter congratulating him on the conversion of King " Aduluald " ( probably King Eadbald of Kent ), a letter which is included in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.

Gregory's letter marked a sea change in the missionary strategy, and was later included in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.

While very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the late 6th century is known from a variety of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints ' lives such as that of Columba by Adomnán, and various Irish annals.

It is thought that Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ( Chapter XXIII ) includes a reference to the Battle of Poitiers: "... a dreadful plague of Saracens ravaged France with miserable slaughter, but they not long after in that country received the punishment due to their wickedness ".

According to a later continuation of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica ( written anonymously after Bede's death ) the king was " treacherously murdered at night by his own bodyguards ", though the reason why is unrecorded.