A smoking quill? Notes in Bible margin could be handwriting of the Venerable Bede

Part of an extract from St John’s Gospel in the Lindisfarne Gospels. Photograph: Handout

His life of service through scholarship earned him the title “venerable”. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the post-Roman world, and acknowledged as a saint in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican traditions.

Now a leading academic believes she has identified an example of the handwriting of Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, along with his “lost” Old English translation of the St John’s Gospel.