03 — The Ecclesiastical History

St. Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed in 731 and dedicated to King Ceolwulf of Northumbria, is the single most important narrative of the conversion of the English and the work that earned its author the title of the Father of English History. In five books it carries the story from Roman Britain through the Gregorian mission of 597, the conversion of the kingdoms, the Synod of Whitby in 664, and Theodore of Tarsus’s reordering of the church, down to Bede’s own day — a providential history of a people gathered into the universal Church. This section sets out the work itself and then weighs its sources, its critical care, and its biases, both sides.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Doctor of the Church; the Father of English History)

The Ecclesiastical History is Bede’s masterpiece and the foundational source for almost the whole world of the seventh-century English church — for Gregory’s mission, for Aidan and the Irish, for Cuthbert, for Hild and Whitby, for the Easter controversy and its settlement. It is also a work of conscious art and conscious argument, written under the conviction that God was making the gens Anglorum a Christian people and incorporating them into the one undivided Church of the first millennium. Reading it well means doing two things at once: receiving it as the indispensable record it is, and reading it critically, because Bede selects and shapes his story for a purpose. The two files below do these two things in turn — the first expounds the work, its structure, thesis, and great set-pieces; the second examines how Bede gathered his information, where his method is exemplary, and where his Roman, Northumbrian, and providential commitments tilt the account. Both are written to the source-critical standard of this collection, with the genuinely contested episodes flagged rather than smoothed over.

Files in This Section

File Description
The Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum The work of 731, dedicated to King Ceolwulf: its five-book structure and span (Roman Britain to 731), its providential thesis of the English brought into the universal Church, and its great set-pieces — Gregory and the English boys (non Angli sed angeli, HE 2.1), the Gregorian mission of 597, Edwin’s council and the parable of the sparrow (HE 2.13), Oswald, the Synod of Whitby (HE 3.25), and Caedmon (HE 4.24); its literary art and Goffart’s revisionist reading.
Bede’s Sources and Reliability Bede’s method and his biases, both sides: the documents, the papal letters from the Roman archive via Nothhelm, the named informants (Albinus, Daniel, the Lastingham monks), the earlier writers, and the vera lex historiae — set against his pro-Roman and anti-British shaping (HE 1.22, 2.2, 3.25), his pro-Northumbrian focus, and his providential selection; the scholarly balance of high accuracy with purposeful design, with the disputed episodes flagged.

See Also

References

  • Bede. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum). Edited and translated by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
  • Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Historical Commentary. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
  • Goffart, Walter. The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Higham, N. J. (Re-)Reading Bede: The Ecclesiastical History in Context. London: Routledge, 2006.
  • Brown, George Hardin. A Companion to Bede. Anglo-Saxon Studies 12. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009.
  • DeGregorio, Scott, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Bede. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.