Saint Petersburg Bede

[1] It is so named because it was taken to the Russian National Library of Saint Petersburg in Russia at the time of the French Revolution, by Peter P. Dubrovsky.

The validity of these Memoranda (and similar notes in the Moore Bede) as evidence for the precise year in which the manuscript was copied has been vigorously challenged.

The manuscript has been copied by four hands, with textual "accessories" (colophons, chapter numbers, and the like) in a fifth (Parkes 1982, 6-11).

This may be intended to be St. Gregory the Great, although a much later hand has identified the figure as St. Augustine of Canterbury in the halo.

The Saint Petersburg Bede contains one of the two oldest surviving examples of the "m-type" text of the Latin Historia ecclesiastica (Colgrave and Mynors 1969, xliv).

Folio 3v from the Saint Petersburg Bede
The Saint Petersburg Bede contains the oldest historiated initial known, from the 8th century (shown above)
The oldest historiated initial known, full page view