ecclesiastical history of the english nation

Hadrian’s Wall is normally attributed to Severus in medieval texts.

Bede, in attempting to fit in the stone wall which Gildas says was built at this point, claims that it was built where Severus had earlier built his earthwork. Then follows Gildas’s second Pictish invasion and the coming of the last Roman legion to aid the Britons.

Bede explains Gildas’s incorrect belief that only at that point in time did the Picts settle in Britain by weakly explaining that the earlier Pictish territory in Britain was sundered from the rest of Britain by two sea estuaries.īede follows Gildas in describing how the Britons sought Roman aid and how a legion was sent to them and built a turf wall across the island. 5 Bede Summarizes Gildas’ Judgment on the Britonsīeginning with Book I, chapter 12, Bede begins to rely mainly on Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae which appears to be almost Bede’s only source for this era.2 Beden's Independent Tradition about the Saxons.Prepared for the press by Thomas Charles-Edwards, helped by Patrick Wormald and others, this book completes the new Bede, and is prefaced by a paper characteristic of Professor Wallace-Hadrill on `Bede and Plummer'. Wallace-Hadrill devoted the last years of his life to a new commentary, one of the finest and most mature fruits of his scholarship - more succinct than Plummer, tauter, more relevant, above all drawing together and adding to the findings of a galaxy of modern scholars. Mynors's masterly text and textual introduction replaced much of Charles Plummer's great edition of 1896 but the historical notes did not attempt to match in scale and detail Plummer's second volume of commentary. In 1969 the Clarendon Press published the new edition in Oxford Medieval Texts, edited by Bertram Colgrave and Sir Roger Mynors.

Completed in 731, it comprises in a single flowing narrative a coherent history of the conversion of the English peoples to Christianity, and the story of the island kingdoms and churches from the 590s to the early eighth century, prefaced by a sketch of the earlier history of Britain.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People is recognized as a masterpiece among the historical literature of medieval England and Europe.

Ecclesiastical history of the english nation