Venerable Bede: The Brilliant Scholar Instrumental in Reviving Western Civilization After the Fall of Rome

Commentary The impetus for the revival of Western civilization after the fall of Rome can largely be ascribed to one man. In the 7th and 8th centuries, after the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, the old Roman culture was extinct. The light of learning had almost gone out. Scholarship was rare, and books were not widely circulated. Schools and scholarship were confined to monasteries. If you were looking for the world’s greatest scholar during that “Dark Age,” you would find him in the remotest corner of the old Roman world: northern England, right on the eastern edge of Hadrian’s Wall. There you find a man with the unusual name of Bede (AD 672–735), the “Venerable Bede” as he came to be known....