Bede's list in HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM V.xxiv (ed. Lapidge 2010.480-84) establishes not only what he had written up to 731 but, more remarkably, what he considered a work to be even though here he ingeniously avoided using any word to characterize his own compositions. From it Michael Lapidge (2010 1.xliv-xlvi) enumerates 30 items. While most can be identified with a simple reference to the Clavis Patrum Latinorum, a few problems, to which we will turn in a moment, appear. Lapidge then lists nine “altre opere” that can be attributed to Bede “con certezza.” While we accept Lapidge's judgement that Bede composed them, we would point out that he might not have considered all to be, as we do, opera. Clearly, the EPISTOLA AD ECGBERCTUM is both a work and was considered one by Bede, as the slight but significant evidence of a fifteenth-century manuscript now in Merton College Oxford indicates: after he wrote it in 734, he placed a copy into his LIBER EPISTOLARUM. Would he, however, have viewed the MAGNUS CIRCULUS SEU TABULA PASCHALIS ANNIS DOMINI DXXXII AD MLXIII and the PAGINA REGULARUM, tables designed to help students as they studied DE TEMPORUM RATIONE, opera? That we do calls attention to perhaps other lost handouts, other lost letters that Bede must have sent, other verse that he might have included in his LIBER HYMNORUM and his LIBER EPIGRAMMATUM, and three are listed there: other HOMILIES that he probably preached. Two more potentially lost works were mentioned by CUTHBERT in his EPISTOLA DE OBITU BEDAE (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors 1969 pp 580-87), a translation of John's Gospel (to 6:9) and selections from ISIDORE's DE NATURA RERUM.

That there are so few lost works is a mark of the respect Bede has been given over the centuries. While the work of editing, translating, and interpreting the corpus is ongoing, identifying what Bede wrote has been largely accomplished, as several recent discoveries may make clear. Paul Meyvaert and Carmela Vircillo Franklin (1982) pick out the PASSIO ANASTASII that Bede mentioned in Historia ecclesiastica V.xxiv from among the anonymous versions of this work; Franklin (2004) edits and analyzes it. Lapidge (1996c) has identified the first version of the VITA CUTHBERTI METRICA, which he will edit in Bede's Latin Poetry.