The Venerable Bede says in The Reckoning of Time that this month Eostur is the root of the word Easter.

Bede says nothing of his origins, but his connections with men of noble ancestry suggest that his own family was well-to-do.

Bede had another brush with Wilfrid, for the historian himself says that he met Wilfrid, sometime between 706 and 709, and discussed Æthelthryth, the abbess of Ely.

Bede says: " Prayers are hindered by the conjugal duty because as often as I perform what is due to my wife I am not able to pray.

The historian Walter Goffart says of Bede that he " holds a privileged and unrivalled place among first historians of Christian Europe ".

He says relatively little about the achievements of Mercia and Wessex, omitting, for example, any mention of Boniface, a West Saxon missionary to the continent of some renown and of whom Bede had almost certainly heard, though Bede does discuss Northumbrian missionaries to the continent.

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.

Bede also says that Æthelberht died twenty-one years after his baptism.

Bede says that Æthelberht received Bertha " from her parents ".

Bede says that Horsa was killed in battle against the Britons and was thereafter buried in east Kent.

The medieval chronicler Bede says that Augustine sent Laurence back to Pope Gregory I to report on the success of converting King Æthelberht of Kent and to carry a letter with questions for the pope.

In fact, Bede merely says that the Picts used matrilineal succession in exceptional cases.

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.

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.

This could conflict with Bede's saintly portrayal of Oswald, since an aggressive war could hardly qualify as a just war, perhaps explaining why Bede is silent on the cause of the war — he says only that Oswald died " fighting for his fatherland "— as well as his failure to mention other offensive warfare Oswald is presumed to have engaged in between Heavenfield and Maserfield.

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.

Bede says that Ninian was a Briton who had been instructed in Rome ; that he made his church of stone, which was unusual among the Britons ; that his episcopal see was named after Saint Martin of Tours ; that he preached to and converted the southern Picts ; that his base was at " hwit ærn ", which was in the province of the Bernicians ; and that he was buried there, along with many other saints.

Bede says that Alhfrith alone nominated Wilfrid, and that Oswiu subsequently proposed an alternative candidate, " imitating the actions of his son ".

Edwin's zeal, so Bede says, led to Raedwald's son Eorpwald also converting.

According to Bede, Justus received letters of encouragement from Pope Boniface V ( 619 – 625 ), as did Mellitus, although Bede does not record the actual letters.

Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs.

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

Although Bede records that Æthelberht gave lands to support the new episcopate, a charter that claims to be a grant of lands from Æthelberht to Mellitus is a later forgery.

Bede praised Mellitus ' sane mind, but other than the miracle, little happened during his time as archbishop.

Bede also mentioned that Mellitus suffered from gout.

The pallium accompanying that letter indicates Justus was archbishop by that time, and the duration of Mellitus ’ s archiepiscopate means that even if Bede ’ s dates are somewhat wrong in other particulars, Eadbald was converted no earlier than 621, and no later than April 624, since Mellitus consecrated a church for Eadbald before his death in that month.

Pope Gregory issued more practicable mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: he desired that temples become consecrated to Christian service and asked Augustine to transform pagan practices, so far as possible, into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since " he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps " ( letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30 ).

The principal source for his reign is the early 8th-century Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Bede ( d. 735 ), who claims to have derived his information about the missionary work of Mellitus among the East Saxons from Abbot Albinus of Canterbury through the London priest Nothhelm, later Archbishop of Canterbury ( d. 739 ).

Bede tells that Sæberht converted to Christianity in 604 and was baptised by Mellitus, while his sons remained pagan.

As the story would later be told by the Anglo-Saxon monk and historian Bede, Gregory was struck by the unusual appearance of the slaves and asked about their background.

Ælle was the first king recorded by the 8th century chronicler Bede to have held " imperium ", or overlordship, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Bede states that Theodore, a Greek, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 668, and he taught Greek.

Bede ( ; ; 672 / 673 – 26 May 735 ), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede (), was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow ( see Monkwearmouth-Jarrow ), both in the Kingdom of Northumbria.

In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII, a position of theological significance ; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation ( Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy ).

Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons.

It was completed in about 731, and Bede implies that he was then in his fifty-ninth year, which would give a likely birth date of about 672 – 673.

Bede's first abbot was Benedict Biscop, and the names " Biscop " and " Beda " both appear in a king list of the kings of Lindsey from around 800, further suggesting that Bede came from a noble family.

The name " Bede " was not a common one at the time.

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 name probably derives from the Old English bēd, or prayer ; if Bede was given the name at his birth, then his family had probably always planned for him to enter the clergy.

Bede does not say whether it was already intended at that point that he would be a monk.

Monkwearmouth's sister monastery at Jarrow was founded by Ceolfrith in 682, and Bede probably transferred to Jarrow with Ceolfrith that year.

The young boy was almost certainly Bede, who would have been about 14.

When Bede was about 17 years old, Adomnan, the abbot of Iona Abbey, visited Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.

In about 692, in Bede's nineteenth year, Bede was ordained a deacon by his diocesan bishop, John, who was bishop of Hexham.

Bede was a teacher as well as a writer ; he enjoyed music, and was said to be accomplished as a singer and as a reciter of poetry in the vernacular.

Translations of this phrase differ, and it is quite uncertain whether Bede intended to say that he was cured of a speech problem, or merely that he was inspired by the saint's works.