The Venerable Bede

Most of us (hopefully) remember this name from our history classes in school. (If we recall nothing that he did, we may remember the adjective which was generally connected to his name.) Evidently we owe a great deal to what we know of early European years to the writings of Bede.

"The feature which makes Bede's history really distinctive, however, in spite of some of his yarns, is the spirit of research, which led him to track down the story of things as they really happened, either from documents or from the participants. In his thoroughness Bede would put to shame many a modern historian." (from A History of England and the British Empire)