Jarrow
Monastery of St Paul near the river Tyne in Northumbria, one house with St Peter’s at Wearmouth. Bede lived, taught and wrote in this double house and finished his Ecclesiastical History there in 731.
Bede calls his house the monastery of the apostles Peter and Paul, “at the mouth of the river Wear, and near the river Tyne, at the place called Ingyruum”, that is, Jarrow (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.21). He says that Benedict Biscop built the house at the mouth of the Wear and brought the chief cantor of St Peter’s in Rome to teach its monks the Roman chant (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 4.18). Bede was given to the monastery as a child and spent his life there (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.24).
What happened here
- AD 731, firm dateBede Completes His Ecclesiastical History
At Wearmouth-Jarrow the monk Bede finishes a history of the English church in five books, dated by years from the birth of Christ and built on named sources. He lists his other works, mostly on Scripture, and dies four years later while translating John’s Gospel.
Primary sources
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
- Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.21gutenberg.org
- Bede, Ecclesiastical History 4.18gutenberg.org
- Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.24gutenberg.org