Bede and his Historia Ecclesiastica

Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica (731) is one of our primary sources of information about the settlement and conversion of Anglo-Saxon England. Bede (673–735) was a monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria. According to the short account of his life that he includes at the end of the Historia Ecclesiastica, his kinsmen gave him into the care of the monastery at the age of seven. He lived the life of a scholar monk, devoting himself to learning, teaching and writing. In addition to the Historia Ecclesiastica, which M. L. W. Laistner describes as ‘the supreme example of Bede's genius’, Bede also wrote textbooks on natural history and the calculation of Easter, a history of the abbots of WearmouthJarrow, homilies, and an extensive collection of exegetical works. According to Sir Frank Stenton, Bede's greatness as a historian derives from his ability to coordinate ‘fragments of information’ from many sources, so that, ‘in an age when little was attempted beyond the registration of fact, [Bede] had reached the conception of history’. Dorothy Whitelock summarizes Bede's contributions to historical writing, observing that his ‘historical work has been read continuously ever since it was written, and it has formed a model for later writers’. Bede's groundbreaking emphases on chronology and evidence helped shape the historiography of the Western world. Because the Historia Ecclesiastica gave a coherent narrative structure to the origins of Christian England, it also played a foundational role in the construction of English national identity.