Bede is chiefly remembered as the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the most important source of information about Anglo-Saxon England prior to 731 (the date of the work's completion). In his own time, however, and throughout the Middle Ages, he was esteemed not only for his historical writings but also for his numerous works on grammar, poetry, chronology, biblical interpretation, and the lives of saints. Although English was his native tongue, all of his surviving works are in Latin, the language of the medieval European church. His vocation was that of a Christian teacher, and his efforts in a variety of literary fields were intended to edify the members (and especially the leaders) of the Church in his own land.

A brief autobiographical account at the end of Bede's Ecclesiastical History records that he was born around 673 in Northumbria, on lands that King Ecgfrith would...