1-152-982 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

The Venerable Bede (c673-735), Anglo-Saxon theologian, scholar and historian, 1493. Seen here using a quill pen and a writing slope, Bede was a monk at Jarrow, Northumberland. As a scholar and historian his most important work was the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People), a political and ecclesiastical history of England from the time of Caesar to the date when Bede completed it (731).