I've chosen the name Bede for my screen name as I have a particular fondness for the Venerable Bede. Venerable for his learning rather than his age.
Bede was born on land of St. Peter’s monastery in Wearmouth, North-East England in 672/3. At the age of seven he was entrusted to the monastery for his education. After two years he moved to a new monastery (called St. Paul’s) that was being built a few miles away at Jarrow. The two monasteries considered themselves as one community. Bede remained at St. Paul’s for the rest of his life. While he was still young a plague swept through the monasteries killing many of the monks but Bede survived
He received a good education and became very learned. He is well known for his ecclesiastical history of the early Church in England. But he also wrote commentaries on the scriptures and translated them into the local language. He just completed the Gospel of John before he died in 735.
During his life the Abbot of Bede’s monastery commissioned the monks to produce three complete Bibles (called Pandects). Each Bible used the hides from 1,030 calves to provide the vellum with nine scribes working on each Bible. When complete one Bible weighed 75 pounds and with its protective box would have taken two men to carry it. Not exactly the thing to slip into your back pocket!
The Church was altered after Bede’s time but some of the original Saxon features remain. During an archaeological dig in 1973/4 some fragments of Saxon glass were found and they have been incorporated into a small round Saxon window which was there in Bede’s time. I’m using that as my avatar picture at the moment.
I've visited the site of his monastery twice.