The council of Aix la Chapelle bestowed the title of ‘The Venerable Bede’ upon this saint and Doctor of the Church in 835. It was St. Bede the Venerable who not only categorized and began writing down some of the histories of the world, but he actually began the dating system which includes B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (After Death). Bede had actually taken what began as the Cycle of Dionysius and arranged it according Christ’s life and death. Making Christ the first cause of all history, he created the system and introduced it to England and other parts of the world.
A Religious Life from a Very Young Age
An interesting point in the life of the Venerable St. Bede is that he was taken into a monastery in England and began his religious education at the age of three years. Born near St. Peter and St. Paul Monastery, perhaps this seemed logical at the time. Abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid were his teachers while young and remained so at least until his Ordination at the age of thirty years. Unlike a lot of the Doctors of the Church, St. Bede the Venerable truly spent the majority of his life inside a monastery, devoting himself to writing.
St. Bede’s Title, ‘The Venerable’
The amount of writings that he accomplished in his time were profoundly prolific and very well studied. If you remember the tools of the day given to writers, to compile a history of ALL learning in the world when scribes and papyrus were still in use is astonishing. His title ‘The Venerable’ was given to him while still alive to acknowledge his unusual intelligence and wisdom. The Council of Aachen in 853 A.D. made the title permanent. (Check out the General Councils of the Church.)
In 1899, St. Bede the Venerable was declared a Doctor of the Church, and was the only English Doctor up until that point in time.
St. Bede the Venerable’s Written Works
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation from the Coming of Julius Caesar into this Island in the Sixtieth Year before the Incarnation of Christ till the Year of Our Lord 731, Biographical Writings and Letters of Venerable Bede, Commentaries on Scripture. - St. Bede wrote about music and poetry but is best known as a historian and is known to have written at least 39 works contained in 74 books.
The Fifteenth Doctor of the Catholic Church
The Seventeenth Doctor of the Catholic Church
Sources: The 33 Doctors of the Church – By Fr. Christopher Rengers, A Catholic Dictionary – By William Addis, The Writings of the Early Church Fathers (Thirty Eight Volumes): Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post Nicene – Hendrickson Publishers, A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham – Edited by Eugene R. Fairweather, A Short History of Christian Doctrine: From the First Century to the Present – By Bernhard Lohse
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