How do we know about St Hilda?
Our only source of information about Hilda is The Ecclesiastical History of the English Church and People, written by the Venerable Bede in 731. This means that we see Hilda through the mind of a Benedictine monk who was born eight years after her death.

Bede lived all his life in the monastery of Wearmouth/Jarrow, some 65 miles NW of Whitby. He is rightly acclaimed as the father of English history. We are greatly indebted to his scholarship but we have to remember that he wrote from a particular standpoint and there is much that we should like to know about Hilda which he does not record. As we read this book we might like to ask ourselves: why is it that St Hilda is still remembered 1400 years after her death?

Further reading

Bede
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
World classics series. Oxford University Press 1996

Ian Bradly
Celtic Christianity
Edinburgh University Press 1999

Paul Cavill
Anglo- Saxon Christianity; exploring the earliest roots of Christian spirituality in England.
Fount paperback, 1999

Basil Hume
Footprints of the Northern Saints
Darton, Longman and Todd 1996

Anne Warin
Hilda
Lamp Press 1989 (out of print)

Web sites
Entering Bede or St. Hilda in your internet search engine will call up a wealth of information.