Michelle P. Brown, Bede and the Theory of Everything . London: Reaktion Books, 2023, 312 pp.; 32 color plates, 20 halftones.

The ubiquity of the Venerable Bede in scholarly discourse about the early Middle Ages masks the fact that there is no modern biographical study of this prolific and influential Northumbrian exegete and historian. Michelle P. Brown attempts to remedy this situation in this book, which appears in a series dedicated to Medieval Lives. Until recently, this series has focused almost exclusively on late medieval subjects like Albertus Magnus, Francis of Assisi, and Margery Kempe, so the inclusion of Bede in this company is welcome and hopefully heralds more volumes dedicated to early medieval authors. At first glance, Bede seems like an obvious candidate for a biographical study. Between his birth in 672/73 and his death in 735, this industrious priest and monk produced over forty works, the most famous of which was his Ecclesiastical History of the English People ( Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum ). Despite the wealth of words produced by Bede during his lifetime, his writing was rarely autobiographical and is often difficult to date, which complicates attempts to reconstruct his life. In the face of these challenges, Brown proceeds thematically through Bede’s vast œuvre , arguing that the many disparate strands of his inquiries have an underlying unity of method and purpose, which she refers to as “a theory of everything” (8).