Bede was a prolific writer who, over the course of his prodigious literary career, produced a diverse range of Latin texts encompassing educational and scientific treatises as well as Biblical commentaries. Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica is regarded as his greatest achievement, as it provides significant insights into an otherwise undocumented period in English history. Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica commences at the end of Roman occupation with the narrative eventually culminating in the year 731. Bede’s anxiety regarding the accuracy of his account of the “angel þeode ond seaxum” (Angle and Saxon people) is evident in his preface to the Historia ecclesiastica, and prompted his decision to validate this history by including a detailed list of his reputable sources; this has helped establish Bede’s reputation as the Father of English historiography (CCCC41 OEB 18.11).

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica was translated into the vernacular sometime in the late ninth and early tenth century. The translation, commonly referred to as the Old English Bede, deviates from the Latin original in the omission of certain material and the re-ordering of specific chapters, which results in a tighter narrative that details the history and conversion of the English people. This revision of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica is notable not only for its omission of controversial material regarding Church matters such as the calculation of Easter and the Pelagian heresy, but because of the scribe’s decision to preserve, almost word for word, the sections relating stories of English inspirational figures for instance, “Books III and IV, which contain the stories of early English saints, Christian kings and visionaries, [are translated] almost in their entirety” (Rowley 222). The translation of the Historia ecclesiastica into a language that all levels of society could understand and the translator’s decision to omit certain clerical matters and preserve tales of English saints like Oswald and Cuthbert, rendered Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica more accessible to a lay audience as this material was specific to the English Church (Rowley 221).

Works Cited

Rowley, Sharon M. “Bede in Later Anglo-Saxon England.” The Cambridge Companion to Bede. Ed. Scott DeGregorio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 216–228. Print. Cambridge Companions to Literature.