The preface makes it clear that Ceolwulf had requested the earlier copy, and Bede had asked for Ceolwulf's approval ; this correspondence with the king indicates that Bede's monastery had excellent connections among the Northumbrian nobility.

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 does not state that Æthelberht had a palace in Canterbury, but he does refer to Canterbury as Æthelberht's " metropolis ", and it is clear that it is Æthelberht's seat.

On the other hand, if Coenred went willingly, as Bede relates, then the apparently friendly relationship between Offa and Coenred, his overlord, makes it clear that the relationship between an overlord and his underking was not hostile in every case.

Bede makes clear that the wandering Anglian scholars were not yet priests, and ordination to the priesthood generally happened at the age of thirty – the age at which Jesus commenced his ministry.

York later became the diocesan city partly because it had already been designated as such in the earlier Roman-sponsored mission of Paulinus to Deira, so it is not clear whether Bede is simply echoing the practice of his own day, or whether Oswiu and Chad were considering a territorial basis and a see for his episcopate.

The Lichfield monastery was probably similar to that at Lastingham, and Bede makes clear that it was partly staffed by monks from Lastingham, including Chad's faithful retainer, Owin.

Bede also makes it clear that the church in Aldfrith's day was less subject to lay control of monasteries, a practice he dated from the time of Aldfrith's death.

The preface makes it clear that Ceolwulf had requested the earlier copy, and Bede had asked for Ceolwulf's approval ; this correspondence with the king indicates that Bede's monastery had excellent connections among the Northumbrian nobility.

Only the existence of other sources such as the Life of Wilfrid make it clear what Bede discreetly avoids saying.

19th century scholar Jacob Grimm notes, while no other source mentions the goddesses Rheda and Ēostre, saddling Bede, a " father of the church, who everywhere keeps heathenism at a distance, and tells us less than he knows " with the invention of the goddesses Rheda and Ēostre would be uncritical, and that " there is nothing improbable in them, nay the first of them is justified by clear traces in the vocabularies of the German tribes.

Bede makes clear, however, that the war between Mercia and Northumbria was not religiously motivated: Penda tolerated the preaching of Christianity in Mercia, even including the baptism of his own heir, and held those reverting to paganism after receiving baptism in despise for their faithlessness.

King Eadbert and his brother Egbert oversaw the re-energising and re-organisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun.

Bede, in the Historia, gives his birthplace as " on the lands of this monastery ".

Not all of his output can be easily dated, and Bede may have worked on some texts over a period of many years.

Bede may also have worked on one of the Latin bibles that were copied at Jarrow, one of which is now held by the Laurentian Library in Florence.

Bede died on Thursday, 26 May 735 ( Ascension Day ) and was buried at Jarrow.

Cuthbert's letter also relates a five-line poem in the vernacular that Bede composed on his deathbed, known as " Bede's Death Song ".

Depiction of the Venerable Bede ( on CLVIIIv ) from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

Although Bede is mainly studied as a historian now, in his time his works on grammar, chronology, and biblical studies were as important as his historical and hagiographical works.

For the period prior to Augustine's arrival in 597, Bede drew on earlier writers, including Solinus.

The historian Walter Goffart argues that Bede based the structure of the Historia on three works, using them as the framework around which the three main sections of the work were structured.

However, Bede, like Gregory the Great whom Bede quotes on the subject in the Historia, felt that faith brought about by miracles was a stepping stone to a higher, truer faith, and that as a result miracles had their place in a work designed to instruct.

Bede used both these approaches on occasion, but adopted a third method as his main approach to dating: the anno domini method invented by Dionysius Exiguus.

Although Bede did not invent this method, his adoption of it, and his promulgation of it in De Temporum Ratione, his work on chronology, is the main reason why it is now so widely used.

For many years, early Anglo-Saxon history was essentially a retelling of the Historia, but recent scholarship has focused as much on what Bede did not write as what he did.

Bede wrote homilies not only on the major Christian seasons such as Advent, Lent, or Easter, but on other subjects such as anniversaries of significant events.

Bede sometimes included in his theological books an acknowledgement of the predecessors on whose works he drew.

This was based on parts of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, and Bede also include a chronology of the world which was derived from Eusebius, with some revisions based on Jerome's translation of the bible.

In about 723, Bede wrote a longer work on the same subject, On the Reckoning of Time, which was influential throughout the Middle Ages.

His works were so influential that late in the 9th century Notker the Stammerer, a monk of the Monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, wrote that " God, the orderer of natures, who raised the Sun from the East on the fourth day of Creation, in the sixth day of the world has made Bede rise from the West as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth ".

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.

He was given a strongly positive assessment by the historian Bede, writing a little less than a century after Oswald's death, who regarded Oswald as a saintly king ; it is also Bede who is the main source for present-day historical knowledge of Oswald.

Oswald was apparently born in or around the year 604, since Bede says that he was killed at the age of 38 in 642 ; Æthelfrith's acquisition of Deira is also believed to have occurred around 604.

Bede says that Oswald held imperium for the eight years of his rule ( both Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle say that Oswald's reign was actually considered to be nine years, the ninth year being accounted for by assigning to Oswald the year preceding his rule, " on account of the heathenism practised by those who had ruled that one year between him and Edwin "), and was the most powerful king in Britain.

Bede makes the claim that Oswald " brought under his dominion all the nations and provinces of Britain ", which, as Bede notes, was divided by language between the English, Britons, Scots, and Picts ; however, he seems to undermine his own claim when he mentions at another point in his history that it was Oswald's brother Oswiu who made tributary the Picts and Scots.

Oswald apparently controlled the Kingdom of Lindsey, given the evidence of a story told by Bede regarding the moving of Oswald's bones to a monastery there ; Bede says that the monks rejected the bones initially because Oswald had ruled over them as a foreign king.

Oswald gave the island of Lindisfarne to Aidan as his episcopal see, and Aidan achieved great success in spreading the Christian faith ; Bede mentions that Oswald acted as Aidan's interpreter when the latter was preaching, since Aidan did not know English well and Oswald had learned Irish during his exile.

Several English scholars and churchmen are described by Bede as being fluent in Greek due to being taught by him.

Ælfric of Eynsham paraphrased Bede into Old English, saying " Now the Earth's roundness and the Sun's orbit constitute the obstacle to the day's being equally long in every land.

The queen herself was an avid reader of all of George Eliot's novels, being so impressed with Adam Bede that she commissioned the artist Edward Henry Corbould to paint scenes from the book.

Bede records Aethelbert of Kent as being dominant at the close of the 6th century, but power seems to have shifted northwards to the kingdom of Northumbria, which was formed from the amalgamation of Bernicia and Deira.

The Jutes, Iuti, or Iutæ ( pronounced ) were a Germanic people who, according to Bede, were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their time, the other two being the Saxons and the Angles.

The medieval chronicler Bede described Mellitus as being of noble birth.

Bede says that the spot where he died came to be associated with miracles, and people took dirt from the site, which led to a hole being dug as deep as a man's height.

Some of what is known about Penda comes through the hostile account of Bede, who disliked him both for being an enemy king to Bede's own Northumbria and for being a pagan.

However, Bede speaks of " the monastery of Bangor, in which, it is said, there was so great a number of monks, that the monastery being divided into seven parts, with a superior set over each, none of those parts contained less than three hundred men, who all lived by the labour of their hands.

Bede summarises Oswiu's reign in this way: Oswald being translated to the heavenly kingdom, his brother Oswy, a young man of about thirty years of age, succeeded him on the throne of his earthly kingdom, and held it twenty-eight years with much trouble, being harassed by the pagan king, Penda, and by the pagan nation of the Mercians, that had slain his brother, as also by his son Alfred Ealhfrith of Deira | Ealhfrith, and by his cousin-german Ethelwald Œthelwald of Deira, the son of his brother who reigned before him.

Bede also supplies a date ( which was traditionally accepted, but has been considered suspect since the late 20th century ) of AD 446, " Marcian being made emperor with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the empire seven years.