and of my daily task of chanting in chapel, I have always amused myself either by learning, teaching, or writing.  In the nineteenth year of my life I received ordination as deacon; in my thirtieth year I attained to the priesthood; both functions being administered by the most reverend bishop John [afterwards known as St. John of Beverley], at the request of Abbot Ceolfrid.  From the time of my ordination as priest to the fifty-ninth year of my life, I have occupied myself in briefly commenting upon Holy Scripture, for the use of myself and my brethren, from the works of the venerable fathers, and in some cases I have added interpretations of my own to aid in their comprehension.”

The variety of Baeda’s works, the large knowledge of science and of classical literature which he displays (when judged by the continental standard of the eighth century), and his familiar acquaintance with the Latin language, which he writes easily and correctly, show that the library of Jarrow must have been extensive and valuable.  Besides his Scriptural commentaries, he wrote a treatise De Natura Rerum, Letters on the Reason of Leap-Year, a Life of St. Anastasius, and a History of his Own Abbey, all in Latin.  In verse, he composed many pieces, both in hexameters and elegiacs, together with a treatise on prosody.  But his greatest work is his “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” the authority from which we derive almost all our knowledge of early Christian England.  It was doubtless suggested by the Frankish history of Gregory of Tours, and it consists of five books, divided into short chapters, making up about 400 pages of a modern octavo.  Five manuscripts, one of them transcribed only two years after Baeda’s death, and now deposited in the Cambridge library, preserve for us the text of this priceless document.  The work itself should be read in the original, or in one of the many excellent translations, by every person who takes any intelligent interest in our early history.

Baeda’s accomplishments included even a knowledge of Greek—­then a rare acquisition in the west—­which he probably derived from Archbishop Theodore’s school at Canterbury.  He was likewise an English author, for he translated the Gospel of St. John into his native Northumbrian; and the task proved the last of his useful life.  Several manuscripts have preserved to us the letter of Cuthberht, afterwards Abbot of Jarrow, to his friend Cuthwine, giving us the very date of his death, May 27, A.D. 735, and also narrating the pathetic but somewhat overdrawn picture, with which we are all familiar, of how he died just as he had completed his translation of the last chapter.  “Thus saying, he passed the day in peace till eventide.  The boy [his scribe] said to him, ’Still one sentence, beloved master, is yet unwritten.’  He answered, ’Write it quickly.’  After a while the boy said, ‘Now the sentence is written.’  Then he replied, ‘It is well,’ quoth he, ’thou hast said the truth:  it is finished.’...  And so he passed away to the kingdom of heaven.”