What is history for? H.G.Wells’ Outline of History, a popular read during the Great Depression of the 1920s, is about the rise and particularly the fall of species, cultures and empires. Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, completed a few years later, looks more optimistically towards a democratic Commonwealth. Each of these books speaks powerfully to their own time and place. Histories are as much about interpreting the present as they are about describing what happened in the past. Saint Bede’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples is no exception.
Bede is carefully selective in his use of sources. He prefers matters that relate to Northumbria and the eastern side of Britain. He says almost nothing at all about the very British and Celtic western side. In fact he blames those people for not converting the Anglo-Saxon invaders to Christianity and so helping to unify the country in one common faith. The Anglo-Saxons were converted from Rome.
Bede was worried that too many young men in Northumbria were leaving their living and weapons behind and entering monasteries as quasi monks and avoiding defending their lands from any invaders. “What the result of this will be,” he said, “the future will show.” He was critical about the Church too, divided as it was between the Celtic and Roman traditions. He has a lot to say about Pope Gregory and Saint Augustine who evangelised Britain but says nothing at all about Saint Patrick. Neither does he have much to say about non-Christian kings. Bede is definitely on the side of Rome and the universal church.
In his own day Bede was renowned for his commentaries on books of the Bible. Indeed it was these works of theology that earned the title ‘Doctor Anglorum’, that is, Teacher of the English; the only English person ever to counted as Doctor of the Church. These works are the reason he was canonised as a saint.
His monastery in Jarrow had one of the largest collections of books in Britain, 300-500 books in all. Bede knew the works of Jerome who translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin to make it much more widely accessible, and Isidore of Seville. He tried to explain the thoughts of the earliest Christian writers to his students and to a wider audience. His work became known throughout Europe.
Bede’s interests were also scientific at least insofar as science served his religious purpose. He knew that the world is round and how this affected the length of days from summer to winter. He also knew how the Sun and the motion of the Moon changed the way the Moon appears. He was also familiar with the connection between the tides and the motions of the Moon and the Sun. These were facts that helped him to compute the date of Easter and to teach others how to do the same. This was at a time when the Celtic and Roman branches of the Church celebrated Easter at different times. This work was so influential that it led a Swiss monk in the 9th century to declare enthusiastically, “God, the orderer of natures, who raised the Sun from the East on the Fourth Day of Creation, in the Sixth Day of the world has made Bede rise from the West as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth!”
Bede wrote, “If history records good things of good men, the thoughtful reader is encouraged to imitate what is good; if it records evil of wicked men, the devout reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse.”
Author: C B Whittle