Saint Bede the Venerable

An Anglo-Saxon monk of the twin monastery of Wearmouth–Jarrow, Bede spent almost his whole life within its walls, given to prayer, teaching, and writing. He was the finest scholar of his age in the Latin West — historian, computist, and exegete — and his Ecclesiastical History of the English People remains the foundation of early English history. His many commentaries carried the reading of the Fathers into the medieval West, and in 1899 he was named a Doctor of the Church, the only Englishman so honoured.