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The Venerable Bede (c. 672 - May 25, 735) was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth (today part of Sunderland), and of its daughter monastery, St. Paul's, in modern Jarrow. He is well known as an author and scholar, whose best-known work is Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People), which gained him the title The Father of English History. Saint Bede wrote on many other topics, from music and musical metrics to scripture commentaries. His feast day is observed on May 25 or May 27.

The Venerable Bede's commentaries on Holy Scriptures owed much to other patristic sources, as he often inserted long quotations from other Latin Fathers, especially Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. Augustine of Hippo, and St. Jerome. In addition to two books of homilies on the Gospel pericopes of the liturgical year, the great monk of Wearmouth's surviving works include verse-by-verse commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, the Seven Catholic Epistles, and The Explanation of the Apocalypse. His commentaries on the Pauline Epistles are contained in The Biblical Miscellany. He also compiled St. Augustine's commentary on the Pauline Epistles into a single volume that follows their order in our present canon. His allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament survive in two works: On the Temple and On the Tabernacle.

"Better a stupid and unlettered brother who, working the good things he knows, merits life in Heaven than one who though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a doctor, lacks the bread of love."
—St. Bede the Venerable

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