From Alfred the Great to Stephen 9781472598875

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Bede after Bede Alan)- historians have discussed ~ s h a Bedc t intended in his Eccle.riastica1 Histocy. T h e title. which unlike many medir\.al titles is authentic. is Historia Ecclesiastics Genti.r dnglorum and it expresses exactly the clouhle nature of the work. O n the one hand it w-as about Cod arid His C:hurch. and on the other hand it Tvas about the \.arious Anglo-Saxon peoples - Northumhrians. Xlercians. East Xnglians. Kentishmen or \Yest Saxons - whom Rede treated as a unity and identified as the people or nation of the English. As D r Stephens has put it: H e qa\ e thc \nqlo-Saxons a neb name. or qa\ e it currcnc\ , that the\ h e r e one Enqllsh genr H e shoned them that thelr mlnds need no lonqer linger 'in the forests of German\' H e showed them a neu home T h a t war one ancestrx .\nother mas C'hnsr~an H e shoued them that the\ \$ere descended from God and not from \ \ odrn ' T h e trouble about complex messages is that they are often misunderstood. I t is a r generations understood Bede correctly or not. real question ~ s h e t h e subsequent Did they understand the subtle balance of his work. or did they stud:,. his history primaril>-for religions inspiration. or primaril>,for the inspiration of'the English nation? I f w c are to attempt to answer this question. we must try to disc-ox-erthe rxtent to which the Ecc/e.riastical H i r t o v was read in the Sliddle Ages. This is not an easy task. hut we can get some idea of the relative popularity of the ~vorkby studying the knolsn manuscripts. These are ver)- numerous, about 160 in all. but for the sake of simplicity we will confine ourselves to the 14.0 discussed by Sir Roger X'lynors. in his introduction to the C:olgra\.e and hlynors edition of Bede's Eccle.~iasticalhis toy^ o j the English P e o p l ~in Oxtbrd hIedieval Texts (1969).' Using the information ~ s h i c hhe has there presented, accepting all his dates and attributions - though these latter are only to the earliest k n o w location of each manuscript - we can construct a table which, for all its imperfections of detail. points unmistakeably to some general conclusions. I t is. for example. elident that o\.er the !\.hole hliddle L4ges the HE was as * This paper w a oripiriall) read at a S ~ r n p o s i r ~inm honour of'Profeswr Den\§ Ha! at Edinh~irqhon 'I Rla) 1080. Sincr much of its interest lies in the Norman prriod. I \.enturf to think that it ma! interest Alien and hope that he uiil accep: this jharrd offerinx. ' ,J. X . Stephens. 'Bede's Ecclesiastical Histon'. H i ~ t o rIxii. ~ 1977. 1-14. rsp, p. I ? . Bede'r Eccietinr!zcai Hlstori. o/ the E n ~ i i s hPeople. ed. Brrtram C'oleqra\.r and R .A. B. I\l\.nors. OhlT 1969. xxxix-Ixx\..