A manuscript portrait of Bede, set within the first letter of a copy of his Life of St. Cuthbert. This is the letter d, with the monster’s head forming the upward line and Bede’s foot the short downward line. There are no contemporary descriptions of Bede, so the later manuscript illuminator was free to imagine what he looked like.
(The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Ms Digby 20, folio 194r)