Opening Passage:
Britain, formerly known as Albion, is an island in the ocean, lying towards the north west at a considerable distance from the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which together form the greater part of Europe. It extends 800 miles northwards, and it is 200 in breadth, except where a number of promontories stretch further, so that the total coastline extends to 3600 miles. To the south lies Belgic Gaul, to whose coast the shortest crossing is from the city known as Rutubi Portus, which the English have corrupted to Reptacaestir. The distance from there across the sea to Gessoriacum, the nearest coast of the Morini, is fifty miles, or, as some have written, 450 furlongs. On the opposite side of Britain, which lies open to the boundless ocean, lie the isles of the Orcades. Britain is rich in grain and timber; it has good pasturage for cattle and draught animals, and vines are cultivated in various localities. There are many land and sea birds of various species, and it is well known for its plentiful springs and rivers abounding in fish. Salmon and eels are especially plentiful, while seals, dolphins, and sometimes whales are caught. There are also m any varieties of shell-fish, such as mussels, in which are often found excellent pearls of several colours, red, purple, violet, and green, but mainly white. Whelks are abundant, and a beautiful scarlet dye is extracted from them which remains unfaded by sunshine or rain; indeed, the older the cloth, the more beautiful the colour.... (pp. 44-45)
Summary: We could all the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by a different title: the Ecclesiastical History of How the English Became a People. It begins not with the English but with the Britons, who are the denizens of Roman Britain and, as part of the Roman Empire, receive Christianity and form Christian polities early. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes begin to arrive in various contexts afterward. But the Britons commit a grave error (indeed, Bede thinks of it as a sin); they do not evangelize the newcomers. Instead this falls to Pope Gregory the Great, who far away in Rome sees what needs to be done and what the Britons are not doing, and who sends the monk Augustine to preach the faith to the Angles and establish the See of Canterbury. The faith spreads among the various kingdoms that had grown out of the immigration of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, reforming the mores and building monastic institutions. This culminates in Book IV with the second non-English figure to play a direct role in the formation of the English as a people, Theodore, a Greek from Tarsus who is sent by Pope Vitalius to become the bishop of Canterbury. Under Theodore, and in part due to his holiness, balanced judgment, and orthodoxy, the English Church is for the first time unified, both institutionally and and as English. From that point, the English Church is blessed with saints, miracles, and increasing political peace, up to Bede's own day.
It's well known that a major concern throughout the Ecclesiastical History is the dating of Easter; the method of dating used by the Celtic Britons having diverged from that of the rest of the Church, probably due to the need of missionaries to simplify the matter as they were originally spreading the faith. Bede, of course, was interested in calendars in their own right. But the calendrical dispute is much more for him. It is, along with the recurring Pelagian heresy, a sign that the Britons, and some of the English due to their influence, were insufficiently connected to the rest of the year. One reason why Gregory and Theodore loom so large in the history is that they are representatives of the greater Church -- Gregory establishing the close connection between the English Church and the Apostolic See and Theodore representing the fact that the authority of Rome was also the authority of the whole Church, including the Eastern churches. The Church as a whole is one, holy, universal, and catholic. Bede is quick to recognize the holiness of the British saints, whose commitment and ascetic devotion he admires, but the struggle over the Easter dating shows that the links required for apostolicity and catholicity are not as strong as they should be; the hold-outs slowly converting to the Roman method of dating are not merely changing their calendar but re-establishing the essential links, and in particular the Roman link, that makes the English Church apostolic and catholic. Thus the history begins with the conditions that eventually lead up to the divergence, and essentially ends with the most important center for the hold-outs, Iona, accepting the Roman method, a sign that the disrupted channels of apostolicity and catholicity have been finally healed.
Thus the English people are formed as such by the formation of the English Church, at least in part, and the English Church develops into a form suitable to a people not by isolation but by greater integration into the broader Church. Nor is this a purely abstract thesis. Bede is recognized as a significant historian in part by his diligence in connecting his account with a diverse array of testimonial evidence, unusual for his time (and, indeed, most times). He does this, however, not for purely scholarly reasons, but because the story he is telling is about himself and his initial readers; the concern for evidence is a concern for situation himself and his readers in such a way that they are clearly connected with the events and people described in the history. It is a book with a 'we' -- namely, the English of Bede's day -- and it is about the identity and nature of this 'we', a 'we' that has grown up slowly but providentially, a 'we' that is deeply rooted and, partly because of it, is thriving in the days of Bede and his readers. It is not merely a book about a people; it is a book constructed from that people's testimonies and written for that people to appreciate themselves as a people.
Favorite Passage:
...For when Wilfrid had first arrived in teh province and found so much misery from famine, he taught the people to obtain food by fishing; for although fish were plentiful in the sea and rivers, the people had no knowledge of fishing and caught only eels. So the bishop's men collected eel-nets from all sides and cast them into the sea, where, by the aid of God's grace, they quickly caught three hundred fishes of various kinds. These they divided into three portions, giving a hundred to the poor, a hundred to those who had lent their nets, and retaining a hundred for their own needs. By this good turn the bishop won the hearts of all, and the people began to listen more readily to his teaching, hoping to obtain heavenly blessings through the ministry of one to whom they already owed these material benefits. (pp. 226-227)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
*****
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Sherley-Price, Latham, and Farmer, trs, Penguin (1995).
