SOURCE: R. W. Southern, "Bede, the Monk of Jarrow," in The Listener, Vol. 71, No. 1820, February 13, 1964, pp. 267-69.

In the following excerpt, Southern examines the significance and impact of Jarrow, the site of Bede's monastery, on Bede 's works.

One of the first things to recognize about the Middle Ages is that, far from being a period of substantial uniformity in which men thought and fought, prayed and expressed their beliefs in much the same way from beginning to end, the diversity of experience is immense.

All cats are grey in the dark and it was the darkness of the Middle Ages, now largely dispelled, which encouraged the belief that all men were more or less alike. The diversity of experience in the 1,000 years known rather absurdly as the Middle Ages is immense, and some of the revolutions in thought and feeling which took place at different moments in...