The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) was an Anglo-Saxon monk of the twin monastery of Wearmouth–Jarrow in Northumbria, and the most learned scholar of early medieval Europe. He wrote in Latin across history, biblical exegesis, hagiography, computus, grammar, and poetry, and is honoured as a Doctor of the Church.
This collection gathers Bede’s works that exist in good public-domain English translations. His masterpiece, the Ecclesiastical History, is given complete in Sellar’s revision of Giles; the shorter historical and hagiographical works and the one public-domain biblical commentary (on Revelation) follow.
On completeness. A truly complete Bede in English is not possible from public-domain sources. Bede wrote in Latin, and most of his biblical commentaries (on Genesis, 1 Samuel, Kings, Ezra–Nehemiah, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Tobit, Habakkuk, Mark, Luke, Acts, the Seven Catholic Epistles, On the Tabernacle, On the Temple), his fifty Homilies on the Gospels, and his scientific works (On the Reckoning of Time, On the Nature of Things, On Times) were first translated into English only in the late twentieth century, in editions that remain in copyright (Cistercian Studies; Translated Texts for Historians; Faith Wallis). Those works are therefore not included here. What follows is the complete public-domain English Bede.
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
- Ecclesiastical History — completed 731; 140 chapters in five books, plus Preface and Continuation. (Trans. A. M. Sellar, 1907.)
Minor Historical & Hagiographical Works
- Minor Historical Works — the Life of St Cuthbert, Lives of the Abbots, Letter to Egbert, Of the Holy Places, the Letter on Bede’s death, and more. (Trans. J. A. Giles, 1843, re-read from the page images.)
Biblical Commentary
- Explanation of the Apocalypse — Bede’s commentary on Revelation (c. 710–716), 22 chapters. (Trans. Edw. Marshall, 1878, re-read from the page images.)
Homilies
- Homilies — the one homily (on All Saints) available in public-domain English. (Trans. J. M. Neale, 1906.)
Sources: Project Gutenberg #38326 (Ecclesiastical History); archive.org
theminorhistoric00bede (Minor Historical Works) and explanationapoc00bedegoog
(Apocalypse); Wikisource (Homily on All Saints).
The two works taken from archive.org were first converted from the OCR text that ships with those scans, which was unreadable in places. They have since been read again from the page images themselves. Six pages the Apocalypse scan is missing — printed pages 28-29, 56-57 and 124-125, which carry the opening of chapter iv and the whole of BOOK THE SECOND’s heading — were supplied from the Bodleian copy on Google Books, and seventy further pages were taken from that copy where it reads more clearly than the Internet Archive’s.