Remembering Bede

From a BlueSky post by UK author Brian Groom:

Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) died on this date in Jarrow. A Benedictine monk, widely seen as the foremost scholar of early medieval Europe, and the only Englishman named in Dante’s Paradiso. Bede was the polymath’s polymath, England’s first historian, and its only [UK] native Doctor of the Church.

He died 1,290 years ago. Who knows if I'll still be doing this blog in 10 years when it's 1,300 years since his death, so this seems like a round enough year to note it.

I don't remember what grade I was in when I learned about Venerable Bede... maybe 6th? I've had a soft spot for him ever since. 

My family tried to go to a tourist attraction called Bede's World in Newcastle, England, when we were there briefly in 2007, but due to our incompetence with English roads and limited time to return a rental car and catch a ferry, we never made it.

It looks like it closed in 2016, then reopened as a museum called Jarrow Hall in late 2017. Maybe I'll get there some day.

I had a bet with another person at a party last year that less than 5% of Americans would know who Venerable Bede was. The population at the particular party we were attending was not anywhere close to a representative sample of the U.S. population, so the percentage we found was more like 15%, but I think I'd be right.

Less than 10% of respondents can name the members of the Supreme Court, so how many can possibly know who Venerable Bede is?