SOURCE: Eleanor Shipley Duckett, "Bede of Jarrow," in Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars, The Macmillan Company, 1947, pp. 217-338.

In the following excerpt, Duckett examines several textbooks written by Bede on grammar, writing, and chronology, and asserts they were composed before he was a mature writer.

The bishop who ordained Bede deacon was that John of Beverley who was just then causing Wilfrid anguish of spirit in holding the see of Hexham; the same John advanced him to the priesthood in his thirtieth year.¹

Shortly after he entered the diaconate we may imagine him as not only teaching in Jarrow but also as writing manuals that would aid his instruction. His first efforts would naturally be concerned with text-books, and of these we have three from this earlier time. One of them describes itself as On Orthography;² but its matter scarcely deserves the name. It is simply a list of...