The father of Bede may, for all we know, have been in his youth a heathen fighter and sea-rover such as we encounter in that poem. While Bede was composing his History in the new monastery at Jarrow, built by Benedict Biscop, some brother-scribe in a Northumbrian monastery-quite conceivably in Jarrow itself-may have been at work, redacting the text of Beowulf, our precious Old English epic of the slayer of monsters and dragons. Their spirit is sweetly reasonable as that of Westcott, tranquil as that of Keble or Stanley. For here are the first fruits of the Christian scholarship of England, and they read as if behind them lay a long tradition of gentle learning. The sensitive reader handles these pages with reverence not untouched by amaze. Source: Introduction to Bede's The Eccesiastical History of the English Nation (and Lives of Saints and Bishops), with an Introduction by Vida D.
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