CHAPTER III.
THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; TILL A.D.

1000 In Professor Earle's excellent manual on Anglo-Saxon Literature, chapter V is entirely occupied with "the Anglian Period," and begins thus:--"While Canterbury was so important a seminary of learning, there was, in the Anglian region of Northumbria, a development of religious and intellectual life which makes it natural to regard the whole brilliant period from the later seventh to the early ninth century as the Anglian Period....

Anglia became for a century the light-spot of European history; and we here recognise the first great stage in the revival of learning, and the first movement towards the establishment of public order in things temporal and spiritual." Unfortunately for the student of English, though perhaps fortunately for the historian, the most important book belonging to this period was written in Latin.

This was the _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, or the Church History of the Anglian People.

The writer was Beda, better known as "the Venerable Bede," who was born near Wearmouth (Durham) in 672, and lived for the greater part of his life at Jarrow, where he died in 735.