Bede and Monastic Learning

While book learning on the continent barely holds on, the monasteries of Ireland and Britain copy and study texts. Bede, a monk of Jarrow, composes the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, expounds Scripture, and writes on time and on the computation of the date of Easter. It is he who brings into common use the counting of years from the Nativity, which all Europe will later adopt. The monastic scriptoria preserve the ancient authors too: nearly everything that survives of Latin letters is known through medieval copies.