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How, When and Why did Bede Write his Ecclesiastical History? book cover

1st Edition

How, When and Why did Bede Write his Ecclesiastical History?

By Richard Shaw Copyright 2022
316 Pages
by Routledge

316 Pages
by Routledge

316 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is our main source for early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, but how was it written? When? And why? Scholars have spent much of the last half century investigating the latter question – the ‘why’. This new study is the first to systematically consider the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. Richard Shaw shows that rather than producing the History at a single point in 731, Bede... Read more
1. Introduction  2. The process and logistics of collecting and analysing material for the HE  3. Bede, Canterbury, and the origins of the HE  4. The original context for the HE: Easter and ecclesiastical authority  5. The HE after 731  6. Post-731 Northumbria and the HE  7. Conclusion: the HE's shifting purposes in context

Biography

Richard Shaw is Associate Professor and Chairman of the History Department at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College, in Ontario, Canada. His first book, The Gregorian Mission to Kent in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History: Methodology and Sources, was published by Routledge in 2018.

‘The results [of Shaw’s research] are illuminating and thought-provoking … He has read very widely and thoroughly, and his book provides an excellent overview of the current state of play in the study of Bede’s most famous work’ – Barbara Yorke in Northern History.

‘Shaw’s textual analysis often provides intriguing insights … The most compelling part of this argument is the discussion of Bede’s source collection, particularly when Shaw uses the differences between the narratives in Bede’s chronicles, the Historia abbatum, and the Historia ecclesiastica to identify potential dates for Bede’s reception of specific sources. Likewise, the discussion of redrafts under Ceolwulf ’s patronage is equally compelling in fleshing out the argument for a post-731 dating of the Historia’s final version … The monograph’s overall thesis is an interesting and often compelling one’ - Peritia, 34 (2023).

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