And so they did. The young novice had, remarkably, already learned the entire sequence of offices the whole monastic community held in memory. He and the abbot fulfilled the mission of the abbey while they waited for new brothers to be sent or feel the call and join. So capable was the young novice -- and so prodigious his memory and so wide-ranging his thought -- that he was ordained deacon several years in advance of the usual canonical age. He was eventually ordained a priest, and went on to become the leading scholar of all Europe.
His name was Bæda. We know him as the Venerable Bede.
