A vellum page in two columns of small insular script. At the top left a tall initial B, outlined in red and filled with interlace and leaf patterns, stands beside the rest of the word in display capitals; the Latin text continues below and in the right-hand column.
The opening of book I in the Saint Petersburg Bede (National Library of Russia), an 8th-century Northumbrian copy written within a few years of Bede's death: Brittania Oceani insula, 'Britain, an island of the Ocean', under a decorated initial B. Chapter 15 comes some pages later.Unknown Northumbrian scribe, 8th century (about 746) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Sound key