he Venerable Bede (672/673‑735) is a saintly historian and scholar in the history of English letters. When young, he studied under Benedict Biscop, the abbot of Wearmouth. From there, he went in 682 to Jarrow, a holy town east of present‑day Newcastle in Northern England, where he spent most of his life. He was a diligent teacher and scholar of Latin and Greek, and had many pupils among the monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was buried at Jarrow, but his remains were moved to Durham during the first half of the eleventh century. Bede was first called “Venerable” during the ninth century. In 731, Bede completed his famous book, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by which time he had written nearly 40 works, mostly biblical commentaries. His early treatise De Natura Rerum contains rudimentary natural science, referring phenomena to natural causes. His other influential history work is the Lives of the Abbots, which gives an account of the earlier abbots in the Northumbrian Revival. Bede is generally considered the “father of English history”. His account of the medieval English people certainly sheds light on our understanding of the beginning of English literature.

比德尊者（672/673‑735）是英国文学史上一位德高望重的历史学家与学者。
年少时，他师从韦尔茅斯修道院院长本尼迪克特・比斯科普。公元 682 年，他前往贾罗，这座神圣的城镇位于如今英格兰北部纽卡斯尔以东，他人生大部分时光都在此度过。他勤勉治学，研习拉丁语与希腊语，教书育人，许多修士都曾是他的学生。他逝世后葬于贾罗，但他的遗骨在 11 世纪上半叶被迁移至达勒姆。比德在 9 世纪被尊称为 “尊者”。
公元 731 年，比德完成了他的名著《英吉利教会史》。到这时，他已经撰写了近四十部作品，大多是圣经评注。他早期的论著《论事物的本质》包含基础自然科学知识，用自然成因解释各类现象。另一部颇具影响力的史学著作是《修道院院长列传》，记述诺森布里亚复兴时期早期修道院院长们的事迹。比德普遍被视作 “英国史学之父”。他对中世纪英格兰人的记述，也为我们理解英国文学的起源提供了线索。