The news of the closure of Jarrow’s visitor attraction Bede’s World was disheartening. It was one of England’s very few museums solely devoted to the Anglo-Saxon past and I fondly remember visiting the place several years back (one of the highlights of my visit was adopting Hilda the pig via the animal adoption then still in place). I have always promoted Bede’s World in my lectures and I am happy to say some of my Dutch students visited the place (at their own initiative!) in early 2016. (update: In August 2016, it was announced that Bede’s World will be relaunched as Jarrow Hall (more info here) and rightly so!). With this blog I just want to share one of the many reasons why the Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar Bede (672/673-735) deserves his own museum: the man’s theological, exegetical and mathematical works are filled with interesting tidbits!

Bede had…