In seventh century England, the years of (672-735), Venerable Bede, a Benedictine monk, proposed a system for representing the letters of the Latin script on the fingers called fingerspelling. Monastic sign languages used throughout medieval Europe used manual alphabets as well as signs, and were capable of representing a written language, if one had enough patience. Aside from the commonly understood rationale of observing a "vow of silence", they also served as mnemonics for preachers. These manual alphabets began to be used to teach the deaf children of royalty in 17th century Spain. Such alphabets are in widespread use today by signing deaf communities for representing words or phrases of the oral language used in their part of the world.