Bede Completes His Ecclesiastical History

Bede tells his own story in a few lines at the end of his History. He was born on the lands of the twin monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria, given to it at the age of seven, ordained deacon at nineteen and priest at thirty, and spent his whole life there. “I always took delight in learning, or teaching, or writing” (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.24).

In 731 he finished the Ecclesiastical History of the English People in five books, from the Roman invasions to his own day (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.23) (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.24). The preface, addressed to King Ceolwulf of Northumbria, names his informants so that readers may know what he rests on. Abbot Albinus, who had been trained at Canterbury, supplied what was known of Kent. The priest Nothelm searched the archives of the Roman church and brought back letters of Pope Gregory. Bishop Daniel wrote from Wessex, and monks of several houses supplied more. Bede asks that if anything is found untrue the blame not be laid on him, since he has set down what common report gave him (Bede, Ecclesiastical History preface). He dates events by the year of the Lord’s incarnation, as when he places the Synod of Whitby in 664 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.26).

The History is one item in a long list. Bede appends a catalogue of what he had written since becoming a priest, and most of it is commentary on Scripture drawn from the fathers: on Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Ezra and Nehemiah, Mark, Luke, Acts, the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. There are also homilies, lives of saints, a history of his abbots, hymns, and books on the reckoning of time (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.24).

His pupil Cuthbert describes his death. Short of breath from before Easter, Bede went on teaching and dictating. He was turning the Gospel of John into English “for the benefit of the Church of God” and had reached the sixth chapter (John 6:9). On the eve of the Ascension the boy who was writing for him said that one sentence remained. Bede dictated it, and when the boy said it was written he answered, “thou hast said truly, it is finished”. He died on the floor of his cell, singing the Gloria Patri (Cuthbert, Letter on the Death of Bede pp. xl–xliii).

The History is a principal narrative source for the conversion of the English and for the church in Britain in the seventh century, and its author’s care in naming where his information came from is one reason it can still be weighed.