Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum

The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

: Ecclesiastical History of the English People) is a work in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

by Bede

Bede

Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...

on the history of the Christian Churches in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

and Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity or Insular Christianity refers broadly to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages...

.

It is considered to be one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

history. It is believed to have been completed in 731, when Bede was approximately 59 years old.

Overview

Bede's best-known work is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Completed in about 731, the first of the five books begins with some geographical background, and then sketches the history of England, beginning with Caesar's

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

invasion in 55 B.C. A brief account of Christianity in Roman Britain, including the martyrdom of St Alban

Saint Alban

Saint Alban was the first British Christian martyr. Along with his fellow saints Julius and Aaron, Alban is one of three martyrs remembered from Roman Britain. Alban is listed in the Church of England calendar for 22 June and he continues to be venerated in the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox...

, is followed by the story of Augustine

Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597...

's mission to England in 597, which brought Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. The second book begins with the death of Gregory the Great in 604, and follows the further progress of Christianity in Kent and the first attempts to evangelize Northumbria. These ended in disaster when Penda

Penda of Mercia

Penda was a 7th-century King of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is today the English Midlands. A pagan at a time when Christianity was taking hold in many of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Penda took over the Severn Valley in 628 following the Battle of Cirencester before participating in the...

, the pagan king of Mercia, killed the newly Christian Edwin of Northumbria

Edwin of Northumbria

Edwin , also known as Eadwine or Æduini, was the King of Deira and Bernicia – which later became known as Northumbria – from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christianity and was baptised in 627; after he fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, he was venerated as a saint.Edwin was the son...

at the Battle of Hatfield Chase

Battle of Hatfield Chase

The Battle of Hatfield Chase was fought on October 12, 633 at Hatfield Chase near Doncaster, Yorkshire, in Anglo-Saxon England between the Northumbrians under Edwin and an alliance of the Welsh of Gwynedd under Cadwallon ap Cadfan and the Mercians under Penda. The site was a marshy area about 8...

in about 632. The setback was temporary, and the third book recounts the growth of Christianity in Northumbria under kings Oswald of Northumbria

Oswald of Northumbria

Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is now venerated as a Christian saint.Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile; after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of...

and Oswy. The climax of the third book is the account of the Council of Whitby, traditionally seen as a major turning point in English history. The fourth book begins with the consecration of Theodore as Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

, and recounts Wilfrid

Wilfrid

Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Gaul, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon...

's efforts to bring Christianity to the kingdom of Sussex

Kingdom of Sussex

The Kingdom of Sussex or Kingdom of the South Saxons was a Saxon colony and later independent kingdom of the Saxons, on the south coast of England. Its boundaries coincided in general with those of the earlier kingdom of the Regnenses and the later county of Sussex. A large part of its territory...

. The fifth book brings the story up to Bede's day, and includes an account of missionary work in Frisia, and of the conflict with the British church

Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity or Insular Christianity refers broadly to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages...

over the correct dating of Easter. Bede wrote a preface for the work, in which he dedicates it to Ceolwulf

Ceolwulf of Northumbria

Ceolwulf was king of Northumbria from 729 until 737, except for a short period in 731 or 732 when he was deposed, and quickly restored to power. Ceolwulf finally abdicated and entered the monastery at Lindisfarne. He was the "most glorious king" to whom Bede dedicated his Historia ecclesiastica...

, king of Northumbria. The preface mentions that Ceolwulf received an earlier draft of the book; presumably Ceolwulf knew enough Latin to understand it, and he may even have been able to read it. The preface makes it clear that Ceolwulf had requested the earlier copy, and Bede had asked for Ceolwulf's approval; this correspondence with the king indicates that Bede's monastery had excellent connections among the Northumbrian nobility.

Scope

Divided into five books (about 400 pages), the Historia covers the history of England, ecclesiastical and political, from the time of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

to the date of its completion (731). The first twenty-one chapters, covering the period before the mission of Augustine

Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597...

, are compiled from earlier writers such as Orosius, Gildas

Gildas

Gildas was a 6th-century British cleric. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during this period. His renowned learning and literary style earned him the designation Gildas Sapiens...

, Prosper of Aquitaine

Prosper of Aquitaine

Saint Prosper of Aquitaine , a Christian writer and disciple of Saint Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle.- Life :...

, the letters of Pope Gregory I

Pope Gregory I

Pope Gregory I , better known in English as Gregory the Great, was pope from 3 September 590 until his death...

, and others, with the insertion of legends and traditions.

After AD 596, documentary sources that Bede took pains to obtain throughout England and from Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

are used, as well as oral testimony, which he employed along with critical consideration of its authenticity. This is impressive; nevertheless, the Historia, like other historical writing from this period

English historians in the Middle Ages

Historians of England in the Middle Ages helped to lay the groundwork for modern historical historiography, providing vital accounts of the early history of England, Wales and Normandy, its cultures, and revelations about the historians themselves....

has a lower degree of objectivity

Objectivity (journalism)

Parent article: Journalism ethics and standardsObjectivity is a significant principle of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.- Definitions :In the context...

than modern historical writings. It seems to be a mixture of fact, legend and literature. For example, Bede quotes at length some speeches by people who were not his contemporaries and whose speeches do not appear in any other surviving source; it is doubtful whether oral traditional history supported these ostensible quotations.

Sources

The monastery at Jarrow had an excellent library. Both Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith had acquired books from the Continent, and in Bede's day the monastery was a renowned centre of learning.

For the period prior to Augustine's arrival in 597, Bede drew on earlier writers, including Orosius, Eutropius, Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, and Solinus. He used Constantius

Constantius of Lyon

Constantius of Lyon was a priest from what is Auvergne in modern-day France, who wrote a hagiography of Saint Germanus of Auxerre....

's Life of Germanus as a source for Germanus

Germanus of Auxerre

Germanus of Auxerre was a bishop of Auxerre in Gaul. He is a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, commemorated on July 31. He visited Britain in around 429 and the records of this visit provide valuable information on the state of post-Roman British society...

's visits to Britain. Bede's account of the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons is drawn largely from Gildas

Gildas

's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a work by the 6th-century British cleric Gildas. It is a sermon in three parts condemning the acts of Gildas' contemporaries, both secular and religious, whom he blames for the dire state of affairs in sub-Roman Britain...

. Bede would also have been familiar with more recent accounts such as Eddius Stephanus's Life of Wilfrid, and anonymous Lives of Gregory the Great and Cuthbert. He also drew on Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

's Antiquities, and the works of Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank.- Life :Cassiodorus was born at Scylletium, near Catanzaro in...

, and there was a copy of the Liber Pontificalis
Liber Pontificalis
The Liber Pontificalis is a book of biographies of popes from Saint Peter until the 15th century. The original publication of the Liber Pontificalis stopped with Pope Adrian II or Pope Stephen V , but it was later supplemented in a different style until Pope Eugene IV and then Pope Pius II...

in Bede's monastery.

Bede also had correspondents who supplied him with material. Albinus, the abbot of the monastery in Canterbury, provided much information about the church in Kent, and with the assistance of Nothhelm

Nothelm

Nothhelm was a medieval Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury. A correspondent of both Bede and Boniface, it was Nothhelm who gathered materials from Canterbury for Bede's historical works. After his appointment to the archbishopric in 735, he attended to ecclesiastical matters, including holding...

, at that time a priest in London, obtained copies of Gregory the Great's correspondence from Rome relating to Augustine's mission. Almost all of Bede's information regarding Augustine is taken from these letters, which includes the Libellus responsionum
Libellus responsionum
The Libellus responsionum or Responsiones is a section of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum that is a reply by Pope Gregory I to questions posed by Augustine of Canterbury about specifics of the Gregorian mission.-Creation:...

as chapter 27 of book 1 is often known. Bede acknowledged his correspondents in the preface to the Historia Ecclesiastica; he was in contact with Daniel

Daniel of Winchester

Daniel of Winchester was Bishop of the West Saxons, and Bishop of Winchester from ca. 705 to 744.-Life:The prominent position which he held among the English clergy of his time can best be appreciated from the fact that he was the intimate friend of St. Aldhelm at Sherborne, of Bede at Jarrow and...

, the Bishop of Winchester, for information about the history of the church in Wessex, and also wrote to the monastery at Lastingham

Lastingham

Lastingham is a village and civil parish which lies in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, England. It is on the southern fringe of the North York Moors, five miles north east of Kirkbymoorside, one and a half miles to the east of Hutton-le-Hole. It was home to the early missionaries to the...

for information about Cedd

Cedd

Cedd was an Anglo-Saxon monk and bishop from Northumbria. He was an evangelist of the Middle Angles and East Saxons in England and a significant participant in the Synod of Whitby, a meeting which resolved important differences within the Church in England...

and Chad

Chad of Mercia

Chad was a prominent 7th century Anglo-Saxon churchman, who became abbot of several monasteries, Bishop of the Northumbrians and subsequently Bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People. He was later canonized as a saint. He was the brother of Cedd, also a saint...

. Bede also mentions an Abbot Esi as a source for the affairs of the East Anglian church, and Bishop Cynibert

Kinebertus

Cyneberht was a medieval Bishop of Lindsey.He was consecrated between 716 and 731. He died in 731. His death is recorded in the second continuation of the medieval chronicler Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum under the year 732. He was also one of the informants for Bede's historical...

for information about Lindsey.

The historian Walter Goffart

Walter Goffart

Walter Andre Goffart is a historian of the later Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages who specializes in research on the barbarian kingdoms of those periods. He is a senior research scholar and lecturer at Yale University....

argues that Bede based the structure of the Historia on three works, using them as the framework around which the three main sections of the work were structured. For the early part of the work, up until the Gregorian mission, Goffart feels that Bede used Gildas

Gildas

's De excidio. The second section, detailing the Gregorian mission

Gregorian mission

The Gregorian mission, sometimes known as the Augustinian mission, was the missionary endeavour sent by Pope Gregory the Great to the Anglo-Saxons in 596 AD. Headed by Augustine of Canterbury, its goal was to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. By the death of the last missionary in 653, they...

of Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury

Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597...

was framed on the anonymous Life of Gregory the Great written at Whitby. The last section, detailing events after the Gregorian mission, Goffart feels were modelled on Stephen of Ripon

Eddius

Stephen of Ripon is the author of the eighth-century Vita Sancti Wilfrithi . Another name which has been traditionally attributed to him is Eddius Stephanus or Æddi Stephanus, but since his identification with the bearer of this name is no longer accepted by historians today, modern usage tends to...

's Life of Wilfrid. Most of Bede's informants for information after Augustine's mission came from the eastern part of Britain, leaving significant gaps in the knowledge of the western areas, which were those areas likely to have a native Briton presence.

The History of the English Church and People has a clear polemical and didactic purpose. Bede sets out, not just to tell the story of the English, but to advance his views on politics and religion.
In political terms he is a partisan of his native Northumbria

Northumbria

Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

, amplifying its role in English history over and above that of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

, its great southern rival. He takes greater pains in describing events of the seventh century, when Northumbria was the dominant Anglo-Saxon power, than the eighth, when it was not. The only criticism he ventures of his native Northumbria comes in writing about the death of King Ecgfrith

Ecgfrith of Northumbria

King Ecgfrith was the King of Northumbria from 670 until his death. He ruled over Northumbria when it was at the height of its power, but his reign ended with a disastrous defeat in which he lost his life.-Early life:...

in fighting the Picts at Nechtansmere in 685.

Bede attributes this defeat to God's vengeance for the Northumbrian attack on the Irish in the previous year. For while Bede is loyal to Northumbria he shows an even greater attachment to the Irish and the Irish Celtic missionaries, whom he considers to be far more effective and dedicated than their rather complacent English counterparts.

His final preoccupation is over the precise date of Easter, which he writes about at length. It is here, and only here, that he ventures some criticism of St Cuthbert and the Irish missionaries, who celebrated the event, according to Bede, at the wrong time. In the end he is pleased to note that the Irish Church was saved from error by accepting the correct date for Easter.

Models

Bede's stylistic models included some of the same authors from whom he drew the material for the earlier parts of his history. His introduction imitates the work of Orosius, and his title is an echo of Eusebius's Historia Ecclesiastica
Church History (Eusebius)
The Church History of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea was a 4th-century pioneer work giving a chronological account of the development of Early Christianity from the 1st century to the 4th century. It was written in Koine Greek, and survives also in Latin, Syriac and Armenian manuscripts...

. Bede also followed Eusebius in taking the Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

as the model for the overall work: where Eusebius used the Acts as the theme for his description of the development of the church, Bede made it the model for his history of the Anglo-Saxon church. Bede quoted his sources at length in his narrative, as Eusebius had done. Bede also appears to have taken quotes directly from his correspondents at times. For example, he almost always uses the terms "Australes" and "Occidentales" for the South and West Saxons respectively, but in a passage in the first book he uses "Meridiani" and "Occidui" instead, as perhaps his informant had done. At the end of the work, Bede added a brief autobiographical note; this was an idea taken from Gregory of Tours

Gregory of Tours

Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather...

' earlier History of the Franks.

Bede's work as a hagiographer, and his detailed attention to dating, were both useful preparations for the task of writing the Historia Ecclesiastica. His interest in computus

Computus

Computus is the calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar. The name has been used for this procedure since the early Middle Ages, as it was one of the most important computations of the age....

, the science of calculating the date of Easter, was also useful in the account he gives of the controversy between the British and Anglo-Saxon church over the correct method of obtaining the Easter date.

Themes

One of the important themes of the Historia Ecclesiastica is that in the conversion of the British Isles to Christianity, it had all been the work of Irish and Italian missionaries, with no efforts being made by the native Britons. This theme was developed from Gildas' work, which denounced the sins of the native rulers during the invasions, with the elaboration by Bede that the invasion and settlement of the British Isles by the Angles and Saxons was God's punishment for the lack of missionary effort and the refusal to accept the Roman date for celebrating Easter. Although Bede discusses the history of Christianity in Roman Britain, significantly he utterly ignores the missionary work of Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick was a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary, who is the most generally recognized patron saint of Ireland or the Apostle of Ireland, although Brigid of Kildare and Colmcille are also formally patron saints....

. He writes approvingly of Aidan and Columba

Columba

Saint Columba —also known as Colum Cille , Colm Cille , Calum Cille and Kolban or Kolbjørn —was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period...

, who came from Ireland as missionaries to the Picts and Northumbrians, but disapproved of the failure of the Welsh to evangelize the invading Anglo-Saxons. Bede was a partisan of Rome, regarding Gregory the Great, rather than Augustine, as the true apostle of the English. Likewise, in his treatment of the conversion of the invaders, any native involvement is minimized, such as when discussing Chad of Mercia

Chad of Mercia

's first consecration, when Bede mentions that two British bishops took part in the consecration, thus invalidating it. No information on who or where these two bishops came from is presented. Also important is Bede's view of the conversion process as an upper-class phenomenon, with little discussion of any missionary efforts among the non-noble or royal population.

Another view, taken by historian D. H. Farmer, is that the theme of the work is "the progression from diversity to unity". According to Farmer, Bede took this idea from Gregory the Great, and illustrates it in his work by showing how Christianity brought together the native and invading races into one church. Farmer cites Bede's intense interest in the schism over the correct date for Easter as support for this argument, and also cites the lengthy description of the Synod of Whitby, which Farmer regards as "the dramatic centre-piece of the whole work." The historian Alan Thacker wrote in 1983 that Bede's works should be seen as advocating a monastic rather than secular ministry, and Thacker argues that Bede's treatment of St Cuthbert is meant to make Cuthbert a role-model for the role of the clergy advocated by Gregory the Great.

The historian Walter Goffart says of the Historia that many modern historians find it a "tale of origins framed dynamically as the Providence-guided advance of a people from heathendom to Christianity; a cast of saints rather than rude warriors; a mastery of historical technique incomparable for its time; beauty of form and diction; and, not least, an author whose qualities of life and spirit set a model of dedicated scholarship." Goffart also feels that a major theme of the Historia is concerned with local, Northumbrian concerns, and that Bede treated matters outside Northumbria as secondary concerns to his main concern with northern history. Goffart sees the writing of the Historia as motivated by a political struggle in Northumbria between a party devoted to Wilfrid, and those opposed to Wilfrid's policies.

Much of the "current" history in the Historia is concerned with Wilfrid

Wilfrid

, who was a bishop in Northumbria and whose stormy career is documented not only in Bede's works, but in a Life of Wilfrid. A theme in Bede's treatment of Wilfrid is the need to minimize the conflict between Wilfrid and Theodore of Tarsus

Theodore of Tarsus

Theodore was the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury, best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury....

, the Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

, who was involved in many of Wilfrid's difficulties.

The Historia Ecclesiastica includes many accounts of miracles and visions. These were de rigueur in medieval religious narrative, but Bede appears to have avoided relating the more extraordinary tales; and, remarkably, he makes almost no claims for miraculous events at his own monastery. There is no doubt that Bede did believe in miracles, but the ones he does include are often stories of healing, or of events that could plausibly be explained naturally. The miracles served the purpose of setting an example to the reader, and Bede explicitly states that his goal is to teach morality through history, saying "If history records good things of good men, the thoughtful reader is encouraged to imitate what is good; if it records evil of wicked men, the devout reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse."

Omissions and bias

Bede apparently had no informant at any of the main Mercian religious houses. His information about Mercia came from Lastingham

Lastingham

, in Northumbria, and from Lindsey, a province on the borders of Northumbria and Mercia. As a result there are noticeable gaps in his coverage of Mercian church history, such as his omission of the division of the huge Mercian diocese by Theodore in the late 7th century. His sympathies were with Northumbria; Bede viewed Mercia under King Penda

Penda of Mercia

in the 7th century as an aggressive pagan force, responsible for the death of the Christian king Edwin of Northumbria

Edwin of Northumbria

. Mercia was a rising power when Bede wrote the Historia Ecclesiastica, and Bede's regional bias is apparent.

There were clearly gaps in Bede's knowledge, but Bede also says little on some topics that he must have been familiar with. For example, although Bede recounts Wilfrid's missionary activities, he does not give a full account of his conflict with Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, or his ambition and aristocratic lifestyle. Only the existence of other sources such as the Life of Wilfrid make it clear what Bede discreetly avoids saying. The omissions are not restricted to Wilfrid; Bede makes no mention at all of Boniface, though it is unlikely he knew little of him; and the final book contains less information about the church in his own day than could be expected. A possible explanation for Bede's discretion may be found in his comment that one should not make public accusations against church figures, no matter what their sins; Bede may have found little good to say about the church in his day and hence preferred to keep silent. It is clear that he did have fault to find; his letter to Ecgberht contains several criticisms of the church.

The Historia Ecclesiastica has more to say about episcopal events than it does about the monasteries of England. Bede does shed some light on monastic affairs; in particular he comments in book V that many Northumbrians are laying aside their arms and entering monasteries "rather than study the arts of war. What the result of this will be the future will show." This veiled comment, another example of Bede's discretion in commenting on current affairs, could be interpreted as ominous given Bede's more specific criticism of quasi-monasteries in his letter to Ecgberht, written three years later.

Bede's account of life at the court of the Anglo-Saxon kings includes little of the violence that Gregory of Tours mentions as a frequent occurrence at the Frankish court. It is possible that the courts were as different as their descriptions makes them appear but it is more likely that Bede omitted some of the violent reality. Bede states that he wrote the work as an instruction for rulers, in order that "the thoughtful listener is spurred on to imitate the good". It also was no part of Bede's purpose to describe the kings who did not convert to Christianity in the Historia.

Anno Domini

Bede's use of something similar to the anno Domini
Anno Domini
and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....

era, created by the monk Dionysius Exiguus

Dionysius Exiguus

Dionysius Exiguus was a 6th-century monk born in Scythia Minor, modern Dobruja shared by Romania and Bulgaria. He was a member of the Scythian monks community concentrated in Tomis, the major city of Scythia Minor...

in 525, throughout Historia Ecclesiastica was very influential in causing that era to be adopted thereafter in Western Europe. Specifically, he used anno ab incarnatione Domini (in the year from the incarnation of the Lord) or anno incarnationis dominicae (in the year of the incarnation of the Lord). He never abbreviated the term like the modern AD. Bede, like Dionysius, counted anno Domini from Christ's birth, not from Christ's conception. Within this work, he was also the first writer to use a term similar to the English before Christ. In book I chapter 2 he used ante incarnationis dominicae tempus (before the time of the incarnation of the Lord). However, the latter was not very influential—only this isolated use was repeated by other writers during the rest of the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. The first extensive use of "BC" (hundreds of times) occurred in Fasciculus Temporum by Werner Rolevinck

Werner Rolevinck

Werner Rolevinck was a Carthusian monk and historian who wrote about 50 titles. He was born near Laer, Westphalia, the son of a wealthy farmer. In 1447 he entered the Carthusian Monastery of Santa Barbara in Cologne where he died...

in 1474, alongside years of the world (anno mundi).

Continuation of Bede

Some early manuscripts contain additional annalistic entries that extend past the date of completion of the Historia Ecclesiastica, with the latest entry dated 766. No manuscripts earlier than the 12th century contain these entries, except for the entries for 731 through 734, which do occur in earlier manuscripts. Much of the material replicates what is found in Simeon of Durham's chronicle; the remaining material is thought to derive from northern chronicles from the 8th century. The Historia was translated into Old English sometime in the 9th century in southern Britain, and this translation has traditionally been held to have been done by King Alfred of England, but scholarship now has cast doubt on this tradition. Although Alfred may not have personally made the translation, it probably was connected with the promotion of learning that Alfred fostered. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, composed around this time, drew heavily on the Historia, which formed the chronological framework of the early parts of the Chronicle.

Assessment

The Historia Ecclesiastica was copied often in the Middle Ages, and about 160 manuscripts containing it survive. About half of those are located on the European continent, rather than on the British Isles. Most of the 8th- and 9th-century texts of Bede's Historia come from the northern parts of the Carolingian Empire. This total does not include manuscripts with only a part of the work, of which another 100 or so survive. It was printed for the first time between 1474 and 1482, probably at Strasbourg, France. Modern historians have studied the Historia extensively, and a number of editions have been produced. For many years, early Anglo-Saxon history was essentially a retelling of the Historia, but recent scholarship has focused as much on what Bede did not write as what he did. The belief that the Historia was the culmination of Bede's works, the aim of all his scholarship, a belief common among historians in the past, is no longer accepted by most scholars.

The Historia Ecclesiastica has given Bede a high reputation, but his concerns were different from those of a modern writer of history. His focus on the history of the organization of the English church, and on heresies and the efforts made to root them out, led him to exclude the secular history of kings and kingdoms except where a moral lesson could be drawn or where they illuminated events in the church. Besides the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the medieval writers William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. C. Warren Hollister so ranks him among the most talented generation of writers of history since Bede, "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impressively well versed in the literature of classical,...

, Henry of Huntingdon

Henry of Huntingdon

Henry of Huntingdon , the son of a canon in the diocese of Lincoln, was a 12th century English historian, the author of a history of England, Historia anglorum, "the most important Anglo-Norman historian to emerge from the secular clergy". He served as archdeacon of Huntingdon...

, and Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...

used his works as sources and inspirations. Early modern writers, such as Polydore Virgil and Matthew Parker

Matthew Parker

Matthew Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was also an influential theologian and arguably the co-founder of Anglican theological thought....

, the Elizabethan Archbishop of Canterbury, also utilized the Historia, and his works were used by both Protestant and Catholic sides in the Wars of Religion.

Some historians have questioned the reliability of some of Bede's accounts. One historian, Charlotte Behr, feels that the Historia's account of the arrival of the Germanic invaders in Kent should not be considered to relate what actually happened, but rather relates myths that were current in Kent during Bede's time.

Manuscript tradition

Manuscripts of the Historia Ecclesiastica fall generally into two groups, known to historians as the "c-type" and the "m-type". Charles Plummer

Charles Plummer

Charles Plummer was an English historian, best known for editing Sir John Fortescue's The Governance of England, and for coining the term 'bastard feudalism'....

, in his 1896 edition of Bede, identified six characteristic differences between the two manuscript types. For example, the c-type manuscripts omit one of the miracles attributed to St Oswald in book IV, chapter 14, and the c-type also includes the years 733 and 734 in the chronological summary at the end of the work, whereas the m-type manuscripts stop with the year 731. Plummer thought that this meant the m-type was definitely earlier than the c-type, but this has been disputed by Bertram Colgrave in his 1969 edition of the text. Colgrave points out that the addition of a couple of annals is a simple alteration for a copyist to make at any point in the manuscript history; he also notes that the omission of one of Oswald's miracles is not the mistake of a copyist, and strongly implies that the m-type is a later revision.

Some genealogical relationships can be discerned among the numerous manuscripts that have survived. The earliest manuscripts used to establish the c-text and m-text are as follows. The letters under the "Version" column are identifying letters used by historians to refer to these manuscripts.

Version	Type	Location	Manuscript
K	c-text	Kassel Kassel Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :... , Landesbibliothek	4° MS. theol. 2
C	c-text	London, British Museum British Museum The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...	Cotton Tiberius C. II
O	c-text	Oxford Oxford The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through... , Bodleian Library Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...	Hatton 43 (4106)
n/a	c-text	Zürich Zürich Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich... , Zentralbibliothek	Rh. 95
M	m-text	Cambridge Cambridge The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the... , University Library	Kk. 5. 16
L	m-text	Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea... , Public Library	Lat. Q. v. I. 18
U	m-text	Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, located on the Oker river about 13 kilometres south of Brunswick. It is the seat of the District of Wolfenbüttel and of the bishop of the Protestant Lutheran State Church of Brunswick... , Herzog-August Bibliothek	Weissenburg 34
E	m-text	Würzburg Würzburg Würzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian.... , Universitätsbibliothek	M. p. th. f. 118
N	m-text	Namur Namur (city) Namur is a city and municipality in Wallonia, in southern Belgium. It is both the capital of the province of Namur and of Wallonia.... , Public Library	Fonds de la ville 11

Relationships between the manuscripts

With few exceptions, Continental copies of the Historia Ecclesiastica are of the m-type, while English copies are of the c-type. Among the c-texts, manuscript K only includes books IV and V, but C and O are complete. O is a later text than C but is independent of it and so the two are a valuable check on correctness. They are thought to have both derived from an earlier manuscript, marked "c2" in the diagram, which does not survive. A comparison of K and c2 yields an accurate understanding of the original c-text, but for the first three books, which are not in K, it is sometimes impossible to know if a variant reading in C and O represents the original state of the c-text, or is a variation only found in c2. One long chapter, book I chapter 27, is also found in another manuscript, Rh. 95 at the Zürich Zentralbibliothek; this is another witness to the c-text and appears to be independent of c2, and so is useful as a further cross-check on the c-text.

The m-text depends largely on manuscripts M and L, which are very early copies, made not long after Bede's death. Both seem likely to have been taken from the original, though this is not certain. Three further manuscripts, U, E and N, are all apparently the descendants of a Northumbrian manuscript that does not survive but which went to the continent in the late-8th century. These three are all early manuscripts, but are less useful than might be thought, since L and M are themselves so close to the original.

The text of both the m-type and c-type seems to have been extremely accurately copied. Taking a consensus text from the earliest manuscripts, Bertram Colgrave counted 32 places where there was an apparent error of some kind. However, 26 of these are to be found within a transcription from an earlier source, and it is apparent by checking independent copies of those sources that in such cases Bede copied the mistake faithfully into his own text.

History of the manuscripts

K appears to have been written in Northumbria in the late 8th century. Only books IV and V survive; the others were probably lost during the Middle Ages. The manuscript bears a 15th-century pressmark of the Abbey of Fulda.
C was written in the south of England in the second half of the 8th century. Plummer argued that it was from Durham, but this is dismissed by Colgrave. The manuscript contains glosses in Old English that were added in the south during the 9th century.
O dates to the early 11th century, and has subsequent corrections many of which are from the 12th century.
L, also known as the St Petersburg Bede, was copied by four scribes no later than 747. The scribes were probably at either Wearmouth or Jarrow Abbey.
M was written in Northumbria in 737 or shortly thereafter. The manuscript was owned at one time by John Moore
John Moore (Bishop of Ely)
John Moore was an English cleric, scholar, and book collector. He was bishop of Norwich and bishop of Ely ....

, the Bishop of Ely, and as a result it is known as the Moore MS. Moore's collection was purchased by King George I and given to Cambridge University in 1715, where it still resides.
U dates to the late 8th century, and is thought to be a copy, made on the continent, of an earlier Northumbrian manuscript ("c2" in the diagram above). It has been at Weissenburg since the end of the Middle Ages.
E dates from the middle third of the 9th century. In 800, a list was made of books at Würzburg cathedral; the list includes one Historia Anglorum and E may be a copy of that manuscript. Subsequently E is known to have been in the possession of Ebrach Abbey
Ebrach Abbey
Ebrach Abbey was a Cistercian monastery in Ebrach in Oberfranken, Bavaria, Germany. It is located in the Bishopric of Würzburg....

.
N was copied in the 9th century by several scribes; at one point it was owned by St Hubert
Hubertus
Saint Hubertus or Hubert , called the "Apostle of the Ardennes" was the first Bishop of Liège...

in the Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...

.

Manuscripts written before AD 900 include:

Corbie MS, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
St. Gall Monastery Library

Copies are sparse throughout the 10th century and for much of the 11th century. The greatest number of copies of Bede's work was made in the 12th century, but there was a significant revival of interest in the 14th and 15th centuries. Many of the copies are of English provenance, but also surprisingly many are Continental.

Printing history

The first printed copy of the Historia Ecclesiastica appeared from the press of Heinrich Eggestein

Heinrich Eggestein

Heinrich Eggestein is considered, along with Johannes Mentelin, to be the earliest book printer in Strasbourg and therefore one of the earliest anywhere in Europe outside Mainz.- Life :Before he came to Strasbourg in the beginning of the 1440s, Heinrich Eggestein had already...

in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, probably between 1475 and 1480. A defect in the text allows the identification of the manuscript Eggestein used; it subsequently appeared in a catalogue of the Vienna Dominicans of 1513. Eggestein had also printed an edition of Rufinus

Tyrannius Rufinus

Tyrannius Rufinus or Rufinus of Aquileia was a monk, historian, and theologian. He is most known as a translator of Greek patristic material into Latin—especially the work of Origen.-Life:...

's translation of Eusebius

Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...

's Ecclesiastical History
Church History (Eusebius)
The Church History of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea was a 4th-century pioneer work giving a chronological account of the development of Early Christianity from the 1st century to the 4th century. It was written in Koine Greek, and survives also in Latin, Syriac and Armenian manuscripts...

, and the two works were reprinted, bound as a single volume, on 14 March 1500 by Georg Husner, also of Strasbourg. Another reprint appeared on 7 December 1506, from Heinrich Gran

Heinrich Gran

Heinrich Gran was a German book printer of the incunabulum era. Together with Johannes Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein, he was one of the pioneers of book-printing in Alsace....

and S. Ryman at Haguenau

Haguenau

-Economy:The town has a well balanced economy. Centuries of troubled history in the buffer lands between France and Germany have bequeathed to Haguenau a rich historical and cultural heritage which supports a lively tourist trade. There is also a thriving light manufacturing sector centred on the...

.

A Paris edition appeared in 1544, and in 1550 John de Grave produced an edition at Antwerp. Two reprints of this edition appeared, in 1566 and 1601. In 1563, Johann Herwagen included it in volume III of his eight-volume Opera Omnia, and this was in turn reprinted in 1612 and 1688. Michael Sonnius produced an edition in Paris in 1587, including the Historia Ecclesiastica in a collection of other historical works; and in 1587 Johann Commelin included it in a similar compilation, printed at Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

. In 1643, Abraham Whelock produced at Cambridge an edition with the Old English text and the Latin text in parallel columns, the first in England.

All of the above editions were based on the C-text. The first edition to use the m-type manuscripts was printed by Pierre Chifflet in 1681, using a descendant of the Moore MS. In 1722, John Smith obtained the Moore MS., and also having access to two copies in the Cotton Library

Cotton library

The Cotton or Cottonian library was collected privately by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton M.P. , an antiquarian and bibliophile, and was the basis of the British Library...

was able to print a very high quality edition. Subsequently the most notable edition was that of Charles Plummer, whose 1896 Venerabilis Bedae Opera Historica, with a full commentary, has been a foundation-stone for all subsequent scholarship.

Editions

1475: printed in Germany
1563: "basic edition" (incomplete)
1643: first edition printed in England
1688: "Cologne edition"
1742: John Smith
1884: Giles, reprinted in Patrologia Latina
Patrologia Latina
The Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865....
1896 C. Plummer, Oxford
1969: Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors
Roger Mynors
Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was a British academic and classical scholar.Mynors was educated at Summer Fields School, Oxford and won a scholarship to Eton. He was Newcastle Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. At Eton and Balliol, he was a friend of Cyril Connolly. He was Hertford and...

, Oxford, Clarendon Press, reprint with corrections 1992
2005: Michael Lapidge
Michael Lapidge
Michael Lapidge D.Litt. is a Canadian historical linguist, fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy A lecturer in Anglo-Saxon studies at Cambridge from 1974 onwards, Lapidge was Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1991 to 1998...

, Paris

Translations

Bede's Ecclesiastical History was translated into Old English probably in the late 10th century.

1565: Thomas Stapleton
Thomas Stapleton
Thomas Stapleton was an English Catholic controversialist.-Life:He was the son of William Stapleton, one of the Stapletons of Carlton, Yorkshire. He was educated at the Free School, Canterbury, at Winchester College, and at New College, Oxford, where he became a Fellow, 18 January 1553...

, Antwerp (Imprinted at Antwerp: By Iohn Laet, at the signe of the Rape)
1643/4: Anglo-Saxon version parallel with the Latin in Abraham Whelock's edition (editio princeps of the Anglo-Saxon)
1866: M. M. Wilden, Schaffhausen.
1903: L. C. Jane, Temple Classics.
1907: A. M. Sellar, London, George Bell & Sons.
1955: Leo Sherley-Price, Penguin, reprinted with revisions 1965, revised 1968, revised 1990.
1969: Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford, Clarendon Press, reprint with corrections 1992.
1982: Günter Spitzbart, Darmstadt.
1994: McClure, Judith and Roger Collins, Oxford, Oxford University Press
2005: Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, notes by André Crépin, ed. Michael Lapidge, trans. Pierre Monat and Philippe Robin (Paris: Cerf).
2008: Hirosi Takahashi (Tokyo: Kodansha).
2009: Beda il Venerabile, Storia degli Inglesi, ed. M. Lapidge, trans. Paolo Chiesa (Milan: Fondazione Valla-Arnoldo Mondadori).

Literature

Jones, Putnam Fennell, A Concordance to the Historia ecclesiastica of Bede, Cambridge, 1919.
Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Bede's Ecclesiastical history of the English people: a historical commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

External links

Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in Latin from The Latin Library
The Latin Library
The Latin Library is a website that collects public domain Latin texts. The texts have been drawn from different sources. Many were originally scanned and formatted from texts in the Public Domain. Others have been downloaded from various sites on the Internet . Most of the recent texts have been...

.
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Excerpts. From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
Bede, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, A.M. Sellar's 1907 Translation. From the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library is a digital library that provides free electronic copies of Christian scripture and literature texts....

.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Overview

Scope

Sources

Contents

Models

Themes

Omissions and bias

Anno Domini

Continuation of Bede

Assessment

Manuscript tradition

Relationships between the manuscripts

History of the manuscripts

Printing history

Editions

Translations

Literature

See also

External links