An Ecclesiastical History of the English People

"Bede lived in the 7th and 8th centuries of the Christian era. He lived in England, and he’s very, very conscious of being what he would call an Anglus, or Englishman. He’s writing about 130 years after the English had first experienced Christianity, and so one reason to choose Bede is that if you’re in any sort of English-speaking tradition, his history is the first really, really big piece of history in that tradition. If you’re in the United States or in Australia, you’re still in a sense the heir to this man’s book. “If you’re interested in numbers, the future is bright for Christianity.” Another reason it’s important is that when he was writing there wasn’t a thing called England. There were these people, many of whom would call themselves Angli, and he calls his book An Ecclesiastical History of the English People , the Gens Anglorum. He doesn’t use the word ‘England’ because it didn’t yet exist. Bede is actually one of the people who creates this sense of Englishness – and it’s very much associated with the idea of the Church. His book is a celebration of the English becoming Christian, and, in the centuries after him, these people, the Angli, will think of themselves as a single nation, England. It’s a very important piece of history – the first real, proper history that the English wrote about themselves – and it’s one of the earliest pieces of church history. The third thing about it is that it’s just delightful. Christian history had been going for six centuries or so; there were little fragments of history in some big books. But Bede is really readable. He has wonderful stories, human interest stories, and he talked to people – very old men who remembered things before his time. He was careful about getting documents, and there are all sorts of little ways in which he feels a bit like a modern historian. I find that very engaging and exciting – that you can meet someone from this very remote place, this very remote world, and still feel, ‘Yes – I could talk to this person.’ It’s a very Rome-centred history, because the mission that came to England was sent by the Pope and that was very unusual; popes weren’t great at starting missions at the time. The English were very, very proud of that fact. They felt really drawn to Rome, and united with Rome. So Bede’s story is celebrating his people’s association with this far away place, Rome, which was the centre of the Roman Empire. The people who also shared his land, the British Isles, – the Celts, the Irish, the Welsh, and the Scots – were not as loyal to Rome. He makes a big point about this and sort of sneers at them. I’ll read you a little bit: ‘The Britons [in other words the people who aren’t Angli] for the most part have a national hatred for the Angli and uphold their own bad customs against the true Easter of the Catholic Church.’ That was a big sticking point, at that time, which date they celebrated Easter on. So you get a sense that for him being in a relationship with Rome is what it is to be true, and yet also curiously what it is to be local, to be where he is in the north of England."