When did Saint Bede die?

Bede refers to having a wife twice, each time in passing and relating to how conjugal duties distract (in e first case in his commentary on the epistles) or formerly distracted (in his commentary on Luke) him from his prayers. There has been little scholarly discussion of these two allusions though Benedicta Ward has suggested that they might be in some sense allegorical. We know from elsewhere that some of the brothers at Jarrow in Bede's time were untonsured and he never tells us that he was a monk (he became a deacon at 19 and a priest at 30 but in his day celibacy was not yet a requirement for priesthood).

Alex Woolf, University of St Andrews