07 — Sources
The honest accounting of the evidence. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) is not merely the principal source for Aidan but very nearly the sole one, and understanding its character — its date, its vantage at Roman Wearmouth-Jarrow, its partisanship on the Easter question, and its methods — is the precondition of all the rest. Beyond Bede the independent record is thin almost to vanishing, and even the basic dates of Aidan’s life are reconstructed rather than given. These files set out what the sources are and how little, independently, can be known.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; apostle of Northumbria)
A reference guide built on a single source owes its readers a clear statement of that fact, and of what follows from it. This section provides it. The first file examines Bede’s Ecclesiastical History as the foundational and effectively unique source for Aidan: its composition, its sources and methods, its Wearmouth-Jarrow standpoint, and the partisanship on Easter that conditions everything it says about the Irish. The second file takes the measure of the independent record — the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert, the later martyrologies, and what little else survives — and confronts the problems of dating a life for which almost no fixed points exist outside Bede’s narrative frame.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Bede’s Ecclesiastical History | Bede’s HE (731) as essentially the sole source; its composition, sources, and methods; the Wearmouth-Jarrow vantage and the Roman-Easter partisanship that condition the account (cross-link St. Bede). |
| The Thin Record | How little independent material survives beyond Bede; the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert and later witnesses; the problems of dating Aidan’s life and the absence of fixed points. |
See Also
- Bede’s Portrait — the source’s double judgment of Aidan
- The Miracles and the King — how the source reports the miracles
- The Sending from Iona — the limits of the record on Aidan’s origins
- St. Bede the Venerable — the author of the source
- The Church Fathers — Bede among the fathers and doctors
References
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
- Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.
- Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.
- Higham, N. J. (Re-)Reading Bede: The Ecclesiastical History in Context. London: Routledge, 2006.