This volume contains Latin texts, facing translations, and full commentary on four texts which are key to an understanding of the development of monasticism in early medieval Northumbria: Bede's History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, his Homily on Benedict Biscop, and his Letter to Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, together with the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith. The texts are based on a fresh collation of all available manuscripts, and a complete apparatus criticus is included. The translation is as close to the original as possible while communicating its sense clearly. A series of essays in the introduction examines the importance of the texts, the picture they paint both of Bede and his monastic milieu, and the Latinity of the texts included in the volume.

As the major texts on the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, these works are vital for our understanding both of the context in which Bede was writing and also of the nature of monasticism in Northumbria in the pre-Viking period.