Bede's Ecclesiastical History Research Articles

Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi

Reviewed by: Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi Timothy Graham Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric. By Joseph Grossi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. East Anglia—on a map of Britain, the prominent bulge to the northeast of London—has often defined itself as geographically and culturally distinct from the rest of England. Largely flat, it is in part cut off from the Midland region to its west by fenland. Bounded on the north and east by the Wash and the North Sea, it naturally looks to the European Continent, whence many influences have flowed into it. A kingdom of the East Angles, with its capital at Rendlesham (Suffolk), emerged in the course of the sixth century. In the late ninth, the kingdom was overthrown and the region settled and ruled by Danish Vikings. In the tenth, East Anglia was incorporated, though not without resistance, into the single kingdom of England that resulted from aggressive West Saxon political and military initiatives. Joseph Grossi's book examines the treatment of the region in texts produced between the 730s and the late tenth century by authors who, for the most part, did not hail from East Anglia. The book is formidably researched, engaging, and thoughtprovoking, though, in the end, some of its arguments fail to convince. The core of the book comprises five chapters that offer in-depth critical evaluations of key passages in some half-dozen texts. Chapters 1 and 2 ("Rædwald's Unhappy Realm: Bede's Mixed Views of East Anglian Imperium" and "Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness") discuss the presentation of specific episodes of East Anglia's early history in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Grossi argues that the kingdom was an outlier to Bede's largely triumphal narrative of England's Christian conversion: notoriously, East Anglia experimented with syncretism after its ruler Rædwald (d. ca. 625; the likely occupant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial) received baptism in Kent. Grossi's analysis focuses on Ecclesiastical History II.5, II.12, and II.15, where Rædwald is first named by Bede within the list of those rulers who held imperium over other English kings, then shamed by his wife into lending military support to King Edwin of Northumbria, and then persuaded by her to maintain Christian and pagan altars side by side in a shrine probably located at Rendlesham. Grossi argues persuasively that Rædwald's religious ambivalence reflects tensions between the new and the old religions that were ongoing under his Christian son and [End Page 224] successor Eorpwald (d. 627/8), Eorpwald's killer the pagan Ricberht (r. 627/8–630/1), and the Christian Sigeberht (acc. 630/1), who was forced out of monastic retirement to die defending his kingdom against the pagan Penda of Mercia. For Bede, Grossi contends, East Anglia's flirtation with syncretism was finally redeemed only several decades later, when Æthelthryth, herself the daughter of the East Anglian King Anna (d. 654), founded a house of nuns at Ely and, sixteen years after her death in 679, was discovered to be incorrupt when translated to a new tomb. Æthelthryth had maintained her chastity through two marriages, of which the second was to the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith, the founding patron of Bede's own monastery. In Grossi's interpretation, Bede's underlying goal in the two chapters that he dedicates to Ætheltryth (Ecclesiastical History IV. 19–20)—of which the second includes his remarkable abecedarian poem in her honor—is to make the case that only through her virginal and royal sanctity could East Anglia rescue itself from the religious equivocation into which Rædwald had plunged it. This is an arresting literary interpretation, though it risks underplaying Bede's dependence upon sources and his incorporation of Æthelthryth's story within the broader narrative of his fourth book, which seeks to highlight Christian accomplishment throughout England during the archiepiscopate of Theodore (669–90). Chapter 3, "Solace for a Client-King: Felix's Vita sancti Guthlaci," addresses the seeming anomaly that circa 740, an East Anglian king, Ælfwald, commissioned from an otherwise...

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages by Karen A. Winstead

Reviewed by: The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages by Karen A. Winstead Derrick Higginbotham (bio) The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages Karen A. Winstead Oxford UP, 2018, ix + 243 pp. ISBN 9780198707035, $61.00 hardcover; ISBN 9780198707042, $27.95 paperback. Karen A. Winstead's contribution to the multivolume series The Oxford History of Life-Writing richly surveys medieval English (and select European) texts produced roughly from the seventh to the fifteenth century. Life writing in the Middle Ages is capacious since it surfaces in different types of texts with the genres of history and hagiography looming large; Winstead returns to these two genres repeatedly, examining them from different angles in successive chapters. On the whole, Winstead's survey capably fulfills its mandate to address texts that are central to the literary-historical tradition, such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History (731) and Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women (1385–87), even as she includes lesser-known works such as The Life of Saint Gilbert of Sempringham (c. 1200) and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Life of Merlin (1150). She divides the book into six chapters, and for the most part, each one traces a chronological arc. Beyond chronology, Winstead begins by focusing predominantly on texts categorized as history, yet by the end, she concentrates chiefly on fictional texts, a divide between history and literary fiction that she evokes and astutely troubles throughout the book. In the end, Winstead amply demonstrates that "lives serve the living," as she carefully situates and examines the generic fluidity of life writing over the long Middle Ages (158). In chapter one, Winstead takes readers on a tour of biographies about career religious—a crowd of mostly monks and abbots—starting with those composed before the Norman Conquest. When exploring these texts, she notes at least three common qualities: these narratives offered audiences individualizing details; expressed a concern for the accuracy of the story told; and sometimes adapted details from earlier tales, especially hagiographic tales, thus relying on preexisting narrative conventions that could compromise the impulse for accuracy. This assessment of pre-Conquest biographies enables Winstead to pivot argumentatively when she turns to twelfth-century texts. She contends that sacred biographies, such as William of Malmesbury's The Deeds of English Bishops (c. 1125), show an increasing emphasis on verifiable events (via sources) and a new attention to personal lives. With this textual history established, she more deeply investigates specific narratives such as the itinerant poet Garnier of Pont-Sainte-Maxence's Life of Thomas Becket, composed around 1175, because Garnier, she contends, "is the first medieval biographer to experiment seriously with narrative voice" (30). She also considers two well-known twelfth-century autobiographies, Abbot Guibert of Nogent's Monodies (c. 1115) and Peter Abelard's The Story of My Calamities (c. 1130), as evidence that as a literary mode, autobiography did not disappear in the Middle Ages after Augustine's late fourth-century landmark Confessions appeared. Chapter two complements the first, attending to biographies of religious women, with special attention to the importance of friendship in life writing. Even [End Page 94] as this chapter focuses more strictly on English texts, it too charts a historical trajectory, starting with Goselin of St. Bertin's Book of Encouragement, which he wrote circa 1080, and The Life of Christine Markyate, which an unnamed monk of St. Albans composed sometime in the 1140s. Winstead then transitions to a short analysis of a very early thirteenth-century text, The Life of Saint Gilbert of Sempringham. The chapter ends with the famous Book of Margery Kempe, which narrates Kempe's struggle to have her life story written down some time in the late 1430s. Via this historical trajectory, Winstead shows that this body of life writing highlights the "intense heterosexual bonds" that appear between Goselin and the nun Eve of Wilton and between abbot Geoffrey and the recluse Christina of Markyate (53). Like chapter one, this trajectory enables Winstead to dramatize a shift—a shift linked once more to the twelfth century—that appears specific to English culture. When discussing The Life of Saint Gilbert, Winstead illuminates a cultural change in...

THE POWER OF ORATORY: REREADING THE WHITBY LIBER BEATI GREGORII

This article offers a new perspective on the anonymous Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii. The oldest extant life of Pope Gregory the Great, the Liber was composed at the double monastery of Strænæshalch, conventionally known as Whitby, under Abbess Ælfflæd probably between ca. 704 and 714. A principal concern of my article is the function, within the Liber, of its report of Gregory's encounter with a group of Deiran Angles in Rome, and that story's relation to the emphasis throughout the Liber on orality: the transmission of knowledge miraculously from heaven and through earthly channels by means of speech and other sounds. The Liber survives in an early ninth-century redaction, part of St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 567 (pp. 75–110). After discussing some issues that pertain to the modern edition and translation made by Bertram Colgrave from this manuscript, I compare the legend of Gregory and the Deirans in the Liber with the version in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. I then review the larger hagiographical narrative in which the Whitby author frames this episode, and I examine the story and other distinctive thematic as well as stylistic aspects of the Liber in the light of the following circumstances: seventh- to eighth-century regional developments that affected Whitby; conditions of teaching at this monastery, a major early English educational center; the documented interest at Whitby under Ælfflæd, as under her predecessor Hild, in heaven-inspired or miraculous forms of oratory; and liturgy and commemoration of the dead. Of interest for analyzing all these topics, but especially the last two mentioned, is Whitby's status as a female-led institution.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. An Introduction and Selection. By Rowan Williams and Benedicta Ward.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. An Introduction and Selection. By Rowan Williams and Benedicta Ward.

The Earliest Women's Writing? Anglo-Saxon Literary Cultures and Communities

Who were the first women writers in the English literary tradition? This question continues to preoccupy feminist scholars in the twenty-first century, but very few would look back to the centuries before the Norman invasions in order to find the answer. Focusing on the religious houses of Ely and Whitby in the seventh and early eighth centuries, this article reviews some of the surviving evidence of the first monastic women's writing. Looking for traces of early texts by women, it re-examines the lives of the abbesses Æthelthryth of Ely and Hild of Whitby found in the fourth book of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, alongside the account of Hild found in the Old English Martyrology, and, more speculatively, it reconsiders the case for women's involvement in the production of the anonymous first Life of Gregory the Great. This article argues that texts by women were “overwritten” by the earliest male monastic writers, a process reinforced by later scholarship. By focusing on texts associated with religious houses ruled by women, and by seeing them as the productions not of individuals but of communities, it is possible to get a fuller and more balanced understanding of women's writing in this earliest period of English literary history.

Anglo-Saxons. Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart. Edited by simon keynes and alfred p. smyth. Pp. 320. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005. Cloth, £55.00.

This volume brings together 17 essays on a wide variety of subjects within Anglo-Saxon studies, ranging from literary and linguistic analyses to history, art history, history of medicine and numismatics. The collection indicates the diversity of current work in Anglo-Saxon studies, and encompasses a broad range of scholarly backgrounds and perspectives. This variety of content is a fitting reflection of Roy Hart's own broad range of interests in the period, as is the recurrent emphasis on local studies and focused case analyses that serve to illuminate wider questions. As always with edited collections, it falls upon the reader to navigate their own way through the dialogues and debates implicit between different essays and their approaches. As with the best collections, this volume allows us to listen in on current conversations, controversies and emerging consensuses in Anglo-Saxon studies. The essay by Richard and Fiona Gameson that opens the collection examines the changing status of Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, in a number of Anglo-Saxon and later accounts. Overshadowed by Gregory in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Augustine's role is strengthened through the re-ordering of material in the Old English translation, and grows in later accounts as the archbishop is increasingly connected to local legends and traditions—though he remains a figure of ambivalence or paradox for many commentators. Paul Szarmach's essay on ‘The “poetic turn of mind” of the translator of the OE Bede’ also considers the altered presentation of the Augustine–Gregory relationship in the Old English version of the History, but argues that the changes are purely structural and aesthetic rather than political. Szarmach also notes that a portrait in the Leningrad Bede, now believed to be a stylised image of Gregory, is labelled by a later hand ‘augustinus’—an amusing footnote on the continued fluctuation of Augustine's status in relation to Gregory in medieval popular perception.

King Oswald's Holy Hands: Metonymy and the Making of a Saint in Bede's Ecclesiastical History

(2005). King Oswald's Holy Hands: Metonymy and the Making of a Saint in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Exemplaria: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 33-56.

King Oswald's Holy Hands: Metonymy and the Making of a Saint in Bede's Ecclesiastical History

(2005). King Oswald's Holy Hands: Metonymy and the Making of a Saint in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Exemplaria: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 33-56.

Two 17th century Jesuit plays in Ljubljana inspired by English literature

Jesuit teachers, whose members came to Ljubljana in the late 16th century, placed great emphasis on the production and staging of the school drama. Despite the domination of religious themes, the range of its subject matter was wide and varied. The article discusses two plays which derived their subject matter from English literature, namely from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Holinshed's Historie of Britain.The texts themselves are lost, but in the case of the Holinshed-inspired work (a version of the King Lear story), a detailed synopsis has been preserved. The article examines the synopsis and the extant manuscript reports about the plays, the original English sources, and the treatment of the two works in contemporary scholarly treatises.

The Kingdom and Name of Elmet

'NORTHERN ENGLAND', we are told, 'retains an opacity during the early middle ages which is barely penetrable: the lives, group identities, cultural perspectives, economic activities and world pictures of the vast majority of its inhabitants are all but a closed book to us.' This is especially so of Elmet, which 'teeters into the light of historicity sometime between c. 616-33, only then to be taken into Edwin of Deira's direct rule'.l No doubt this is true. Yet para-historical techniques can sometimes recover the past, as all historians know. Anthropology, archaeology, comparative law, palaeography, place-name studies, and even micro botany and genetics come to mind here.2 This paper thus falls into two parts. The first approaches the material in a familiar way, setting out the standard historical sources for Elmet and what historians have made of them. But the second part uses less familiar techniques. It applies Celtic philology to suggest what the name of Elmet means, and to translate two Welsh poems (apparently of the late sixth century) on Gwallog, king of Elmet in the 580s. It is here, then, in using work by previous Celtic scholars, that we try to prise open a little that 'closed book' of Elmet. First, previous discussion of Elmet. The normal historical sources are meagre. They consist of two passages in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, an entry in Annales Cambriae, and a brief reference in Historia Brittonum. Bede says (n. xiv) that Paulinus built a church at Campodonuln, which was destroyed (with the royal dwelling beside it) by Penda (d. 656). Editors have taken this as a Roman site near Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Later kings replaced the palace with one in the region known as Loidis (= Leeds and its environs). But the stone altar survived the fire, and 'is still preserved in the monastery of the most reverend abbot and priest Thrythwulf, which is in the forest of Elmet.'3 Bede also writes (IV. xxiii) of a prophetic dream which Breguswith, mother of St Hilda (614-80), had 'while her husband Hereric was living in exile under the Britisl1 king Cerdic, where he was poisoned'.4 Many regard this Cerdic as I N. J. Higham, 'Britons in Northern England in the Early Middle Ages: Through a Thick Glass Darkly', Northern History, XXXVIII (2001),5, 16. 2 Cf. Walter Bodmer, 'The Genetics of Celtic Populations', Proceedings of the British Academy, LXXXII (1992), 37-57. 3 Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), p. 189; English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, 2nd edn (1979), p. 673. 4 Colgrave and Mynors, Bede, p. 411; Whitelock, Documents, p. 722.

Old English prose translations of King Alfred's reign

Bibliographical works general studies dealing with Alfred's life and works history literary history anthologies and readers translations linguistic studies manuscripts Gregory's Pastoral Care' Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy Augustine's Soliloquies the prose psalms of the Paris Psalter Orosius's Bede's Ecclesiastical History Gregory's Dialogues.

The expressivity of grammar: Grammatical devices expressing emotion across time By Axel Hübler (review)

198 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) plete structural understanding of the language since it soon becomes apparent that Nateni has a very complicated system of tonal alternations and verb-stem allomorphy underlying the expression of tense, aspect , and modality. N states, however, that the original focus of this project was primarily to provide a description ofthe verbal morphology and verb phrase syntax, so it is not surprising that phonology receives only brief mention. The following chapter is a thorough description of the verbal structure and verb phrase syntax with many examples (14-105). This chapter includes a number of tables and schematic diagrams which help to visually orient the reader to the complexities of the morphophonemic and tonal aspects ofthe language. Though it is unclear whether the examples in this section are from texts or elicitation , they are nonetheless very useful in demonstrating the functional explanations for the categories described. This chapter on the verb represents the aspect ofNateni most thoroughly analyzed by N. The following sections on nomináis (106-26) and clauselevel syntax (127-87) are somewhat smaller though still quite informative. The final section (189-244) contains 10 texts and a dialogue which provide a very useful introduction to the language as it functions in a discourse context. Morpheme-by-morpheme glossing and translation are provided throughout. N's account of Nateni is a concise description of the syntax of a language from a not-so-well-documented subbranch of the Niger-Congo family. As such it is a welcome addition to the linguistic knowledge ofthese languages. [Jonathan Banks, University of California, Santa Barbara.] The expressivity of grammar: Grammatical devices expressing emotion across time. By Axel Hübler. (Topics in English , 25.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. vii, 253. Here, HUbler studies six grammatical devices which communicate expressivity, specifically, the speaker's attachment to the proposition and/or the receiver. H argues that traditional linguistics has failed to provide an adequate framework for understanding the expressive function of language implicit in such structures as the ge?-passive and the periphrastic do. Following an introductory chapter, the author proceeds to devote one chapter each to the possessive dative, ethic dative, expanded form (progressive ), present perfect, periphrastic do, and getpassive . The conclusion places H's findings in a histoncal perspective. H's overview affirms expressivity as one of the key charactenstics of human communication. He draws on theories from numerous fields, beginning with Charles Bally's division of expressivity into mode vécu (e.g. Damn it) and mode pur (e.g. / am getting mad). The mode vécu, in which the emotion is lived or relived at the moment of utterance, becomes a focus ofthe work. Another key conceptfrom this chapter is Harald Weinrich's distinction between Besprechen (discussing) and Erzählen (storytelling); the former generates an adoptive attachment to the proposition (based on the speaker's needs) while the latterresults in an adaptive attachment (empathy with what or whom the speaker is addressing). Finally, the devices studied are all indexed, or 'meaningrich ' . Since an alternative is clearly available to the speaker, H argues that the use of the 'heavier' form marks an attachment to the proposition. Each device is studied in a similar fashion. H first defines the problem, then reviews past and current theory and points out limitations. He outlines his methodology and employs examples from representative works, ranging from Beowulf to Studs Terkel's Working. Among the expressive devices analyzed is the possessive dative (as studied in Beowulf), where the attachment is toward the person to which the dative refers. Similarly, the use ofthe expanded form allows for both an attachment to the proposition and preaching (discussing) in the midst ofnarrating (e.g. Bede's Ecclesiastical history). Furthermore, H asserts that the present perfect reflects an adoptive attachment (related to speaker needs), especially in statements containing 'now' adverbials. Similar arguments are developed for the ethic dative, the periphrastic do, and the gei-passive (the last being common in present -day English). H concludes by showing how the various devices studied have fared over time, noting periods of peak usage and decline. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that many of the devices have resurfaced...

La prédication en Pays d'Oc (XIIe-début XVe siècle)

70BOOK REVIEWS mixture of direct and indirect discourse might carry other significance as well. Groundbreaking work on the problem of decoding synodical records was undertaken by Samuel Laeuchli in Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Synod of Elvira (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1972). Laeuchli divided the terse canons of Elvira (a.d. 309) into linguistic units and then classified the canons into six "decision patterns" in order to shed light on the debates and struggles that had been part of the synod. "The bishops and presbyters are long gone from the fertile plain of Granada," Laeuchli wrote.Yet, he added, "we are not left in the dark. In the canons that have survived, the observer discovers traces of a human drama in the inferable procedures and patterns of group confrontations" (p. 9). One would like to see similar linguistic analysis of the ecclesiastical records Cubitt writes about—and of others, of course. The use of direct speech in accounts of synods found in other genres—for example, letters by Boniface, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History (Book IV, chap. 5; see Cubitt, p. 83, notes 26-27)— communicates something of the atmosphere of such gatherings. It would surely be profitable to analyze the canons for evidence of differences in style and idiom that might reflect divergent sources and other circumstances relevant to their composition. For example, Cubitt points out that three canons of the "Clofesho" synod discuss almsgiving, psalmody, and relations with the laity at unusual length (p. 101). Inquiries into these and similar anomalies would illuminate methods of composition and might also reveal more of the political atmosphere in which some ecclesiastical records took shape. Cubitt gives generous credit to the scholars who have been remedying the neglect of these vital sources (Hanna Vollrath, Ian Wood, Patrick Wormald, and others), but even with this work acknowledged she finds herself with a large and fertile field to plow. Cubitt has produced a richly detailed and careful account that gives this important aspect ofAnglo-Saxon church history the prominence that is its due. Allen J. Frantzen Loyola University Chicago Laprédication en Pays d'Oc (XLL'-début XV siècle). [Cahiers de Fanjeaux: Collection d'Histoire religieuse du Languedoc aux XIIP et XIVe siècles,Volume 32.] (Toulouse: Éditions Privat. 1997. Pp. 428. 170 FF paperback.) This volume, the thirty-second in the Cahiers de Fanjeaux series, considers the subject of preaching in the Midi between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries . However, the chronological scope of the majority of the articles is much narrower, concentrating on preaching activity in the thirteenth century. The work itself consists of fifteen articles, an introduction and conclusion, and abstracts both in French and English. It is divided into three sections treating in BOOK REVIEWS71 turn (1) Preaching at the Time of the Crusade; (2) the Mendicant Pastoral, and (3) Preachers and their Audiences. This volume is a very welcome addition to the growing field of sermon studies. Section one, touching upon preaching at the time of the Crusades, is a curious mélange of articles ranging from the pastoral endeavors of Augustinian canons in Catalonia to the sermons of four preachers (Héliland of Froidmont, Jacques of Vitry, Philip the Chancellor, and Eudes of Châteauroux) against Cathar teachings. Unfortunately, only one article,"La prédication dissidente" by Jean Duvernoy, raises the issue ofheterodox preaching in the Midi. Section two contains five articles; two of these examine southern French mendicant exempta collections. The three others consider the sermons of Robert ofUzès, the two sermons preached byArmand of Belvezer on the life of Thomas Aquinas, and the sermons delivered by Bonaventure in the Midi. In this last article,Jacques Paul addresses the claim that Bonaventure, while in Montpellier ,preached in gallico. Paul offers some innovative suggestions about what possible nuances this phrase could have. The most impressive section of this volume, section three, is comprised of five articles which consider the audience of the preachers. In this section,Jean Longère examines preaching in the southern French synodal statutes of the thirteenth century. He concludes that they were heavily indebted to earlier collections of synodal statutes from northern France (Paris c...

Holy Queens as Agents of Christianization in Bede's Ecclesiastical History: a Reconsideration

AbstractThe Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People contains numerous accounts of what has been termed by some scholars "conversion by marriage," episodes in which a royal bride acts as the first agent of Christianity in a heathen land. Yct, a close examination of the accounts of the Northumbrian, Kentish, Middle Angle and South Saxon conversions reveals a manipulation of the historical accounts which serves to de-emphasize the power and participation of these queens in the subsequent Christianization of the nation. This article argues that the "conversion by marriage" model in the Ecclesiastical History is, in fact, not a viable model at all. This article will further argue that analysis of these particular conversion narratives reveals less about the power and influence of royal women (or Bede's own attitudes and concerns regarding the matter) and more about the larger agenda of the text. An analysis of the intersection of gender and faith within Bede's work points to the subtlety of purpose and design behind the massive undertaking which was the Ecclesiastical History.

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate

The conversionary dynamic - more laws for times like these some special irregularities in - Theodore's Penitnential and the case of Saint Aethelthryth Aldhelm's De Virginitate - Soldiers of Christ and Brides of the Lamb confessors and spiritual mentors - hagiographic ideals and the Boniface circle the advice of women and Eddius's Life of Wilfrid a beautiful friendship ruined - Bede's revisionist writing of Aeffled in the Life Cuthbert' queen conversters and the conversion of the queen - Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the royal marriage rewriting female lives - Hild of Whitby and monastic women in Bede's Ecclesiastical History Rudolph of Fulda's Life of Leobba - an elegy for the double monsatery.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Edited by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. vii + 618 pp. $110.00

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. A Historical Commentary. By J. M. WALLACE-HADRILL. Pp. xxxv+299. (Oxford Medieval Texts.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. £35. GERALD BONNER GERALD BONNER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 40, Issue 2, October 1989, Pages 642–648, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/40.2.642 Published: 01 October 1989

Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Material Conditions of Anglo-Saxon Life

The author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People was the greatest historian writing in the West between the later Roman Empire and the twelfth century, when we come to William of Malmesbury, Otto of Freising, and William of Tyre. Bede's qualities as a historian are well known and widely appreciated, and they need no further exposition here. Instead, we propose to be perverse and to attempt to read Bede's text as though he had been a sociologist or an economic anthropologist: What can we learn from him about the “material conditions” of life in post-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England, especially about life in the sixth and seventh centuries. This is surely a strange purpose for which to use the Ecclesiastical History. We do so both to show that Bede is so rich and so multifaceted that he is immensely valuable for many purposes besides those of greatest obvious interest to him, and because the sources for social and economic life in those years are so poor that everything available is legitimate grist for the mills of our analysis.Actually there are two reasons why Bede might have furnished us with the kind of information we are seeking. One is that among classical and early medieval historians there was a considerable tradition of describing the barbarian world, of paying particular attention to the institutions, mores, and customs of the Germanic people or whoever might be the subject of the tale.

An Analysis of Non-Finite Verb Forms as an Indication of the Style of Translation in Bede's Ecclesiastical History

An Analysis of Non-Finite Verb Forms as an Indication of the Style of Translation in Bede's Ecclesiastical History

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bertram Colgrave , R. A. B. Mynors

<i>Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People</i>. Bertram Colgrave , R. A. B. Mynors