Several quaint and beautiful legends have been handed down as to the origin of the epithet of "venerable" generally attached to his name. Probably it is a mere survival of a title commonly given to priests in his day. It has given rise to a false idea that he lived to a great age; some medieval authorities making him ninety when he died. But he was not born before 672 (see above); and though the date of his death has been disputed, the traditional year, 735, is most probably correct. This would make him at most sixty-three. Of his death a most touching and beautiful account has been preserved in a contemporary letter. His last hours were spent, like the rest of his life, in devotion and teaching, his latest work being to dictate, amid ever-increasing bodily weakness, a translation into the vernacular of the Gospel of St John, a work which unhappily has not survived. It was a fitting close to such a life as his.
Bibliography. - The above sketch is largely based on the present writer's essay on Bede's Life and Works, prefixed to his edition of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, &c. (2 vols., Clarendon Press, 1896). Beda der Ehrwierdige and seine Zeit, by Dr Karl Werner (Vienna, 1875), is excellent. Gehle, Disputatio . . . de Bedae vita et Scriptis (Leiden, 1838), is still useful. Dr William Bright's Chapters of Early English Church History (3rd ed., Clarendon Press, 1897) is indispensable. See also Ker, Dark Ages, pp. 141 ff. Of the collected works of Bede the most convenient edition is that by Dr Giles in twelve volumes (8vo., 1843-1844), which includes translations of the Historical Works. The Continental folio editions (Basel, 1563; Cologne, 1612 and 1688) contain many works which cannot by any possibility be Bede's. The edition of Migne, Patrologia Latina (1862 ff.) is based on a comparison of the Cologne edition with Giles and Smith (see below), and is open to the same criticism. On the chronology and genuineness of the works commonly ascribed to Bede, see Plummer's ed., i., cxlv-clix.
On the MSS. early editions and translations of the Historia Ecclesiastica, see Plummer, u.s., i., lxxx-cxxxii. The edition of Whelock (Cambridge, fol. 1643-1644) is noteworthy as the first English edition of the Latin text, and as the editio princeps of the Anglo-Saxon version ascribed to King Alfred (see Alfred The Great). Smith's edition (Cambridge, fol. 1722) contained not only these, but also the other historical works of Bede, with notes and appendices. It is a monument of learning and scholarship. The most recent edition is that with notes and introduction by the present writer, u.s. It includes also the History of the Abbots, and the Epistle to Egbert. Of books iii. and iv. only, there is a learned edition by Professors Mayor and Lumby of Cambridge (3rd ed., 1881).
A cheap and handy edition of the text alone is that by A. Holder
(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882, &c.). The best-known modern English
translation is that by the Rev. L. Gidley (1870). Of the minor
historical works a good edition was edited by Rev. J. Stevenson for the
Eng. Hist. Soc. in 1841; and a translation by the same hand was included
in Church Historians of England, vol. i., part ii. (1853). See
also Plummer's edition, pp. cxxxii-cxlii. (C. PL.)
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