IN 686, a devastating plague swept the monastery in Jarrow, and responsibility for the monastery’s daily worship fell on the thirteen-year-old Bede. So expert did he become that at nineteen, six years before the minimum age, Bede was ordained deacon by St John, bishop of Hexham, and priest at thirty.

Bede was a keen student of music, Biblical interpretation, astronomy and mathematics; he was fluent in Latin and Greek, and well-acquainted with classical authors including Virgil, Ovid and Horace. Towards the end of his life, he compiled a history of the English church and people, setting a new standard in historical accuracy, and fostering a sense of national unity and Christian enlightenment in a land that had known only petty kings and pagan superstition.*

Yet Bede was foremost a monk, devoted to St Cuthbert and delighting in Psalms and Northumbrian sacred verse in English, who used to say that he could not skip any church service because the angels would miss him.