Saint Bede is well known as an author and scholar.
His scholarship covered a huge range of subjects, including commentaries on the bible, observations of nature, music and poetry. He wrote around 40 books mainly dealing with theology and history. He wrote a famous book entitled The Ecclesiastical History of the English People and he wrote about Saxon history in latin (church) language, a classic which has frequently been translated and is available in Penguin Paperbacks. It gives a history of Britain up to 729, speaking of the Celtic peoples who were converted to Christianity during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their subsequent conversion by Celtic missionaries from the north and west, and Roman missionaries from the south and east.
Bede’s book is seen as the first attempt by a historian to describe nationhood in England and It is the first work of history in which the AD system of dating is used.