BEDA, or BEDS (surnamed, on account of his learning, piety and talents, VENER ABLE), the greatest name in the ancient literature of Britain, and probably the most distinguished scholar in the world of his age, was b. about the year 673 A.D. The exact spot of his birth is a point in dispute among antiquaries, but is commonly believed to have been in what is now the parish of Monkton, near Wearmouth, in Durham. In his seventh year lie entered the neighboring monastery of St. Peter, at Weartnouth, where he remained for 13 years, and was educated under the care of the abbot Benedict Bis cop, and his successor, Ceclfrid. His religious instructor was the monk Trumberet; his music-master, John, chief-singer (archicantor) in St. Peter's Church, Rome, who had been called to England by the abbot Benedict. After these studies ut Wearmouth, 13, removed to the twin-monastery of St. Paul at Gyruum (now written Jarrow), founded. in 682; here he took deacon's orders in his nineteenth year, and was ordained priest in' his thirtieth, by John of Beverley, then bishop of Hexham. In the shelter of his quiet and sacred retreat, while the tempest of barbaric strife raged without, and the hearts of all men in England were torn by sanguinary passions, B. now began earnestly to conse crate his life to such literature as was possible in those days, including Latin and Greek, and at least some acquaintance with Hebrew, medicine, astronomy, and prosody. Ho wrote homilies, lives of saints, hymns, epigrams, works on• chronology and grammar, and comments on the books of the Old and New Testament. His calm and gentle spirit, the humanizing character of his pursuits, and the holiness of his life, present a striking contrast to the violence and slaughter which prevailed in the whole island. To none is the beautiful language of Scripture more applicable—" a light shining in a dark place." When laboring under disease, and near the close of his life, he engaged in a translation of St. John's gospel into Anglo-Saxon, and dictated his version to his pupils. He d.
May 26, 735, and was buried in the monastery of Jarrow: long afterwards (in the middle of the 11th c.), his bones were removed to Durham. His most valuable work is the Historic Ecelesiastica Geniis Anglorum, an ecclesiastical history of England, in five books, to which we are indebted for almost all our information on the ancient history of Eng hind down to 731 A.D. B. gained the materials for this work partly from Roman writers. but chiefly from native chronicles and biographies, records, and public documents, and oral and written communications from his contemporaries. King Alfred translated it into Anglo-Saxon. In chronology, the labors of B. were important, as he first intro duced the Dionysian reckoning of dates in his work, De Sex .iLtatiblis Nundi, which served as a basis for most of the medimval chroniclers of leading events in the world's history. Among the editions of B.'s history may be noticed: the first, published at Strasburg about 1500; a much better edition, by Smith (Cambridge, 1722): one not less valuable, by Stevenson (Lorl., 1838); another, hy the late Dr. Hussey (Oxf., 1846); a fourth in the Mouumenta Historica Britannica (Lond., 1848); and that included by Dr.. Giles in his edition of the whole works of B., with an English translation of the histor ical parts (6 vols., Loud., 1843-44). Entire editions of B.'s writings have been published in Paris (1544-54), Basel (1563), and Cologne (1612 and 1688). English versions of his Ecclesiastical History were published by Stapleton, in 1565; by Stevens, in 1723; by Hurst, in 1814; by Wilcock, in 1818; and by Giles, in 1840. See Gehle's De Beck Ven erabilis Vita et (Leyden, 1838); Wright's Biographic Britannica Litteraria, vol. L (Lond., 1843); Surtees's History of Durham, vol. ii., pp. 2 to 6, 66 to 69.