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

Bedes 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 was working on it for as much as twenty years, from c. 715 to just before his death in 735. Unpacking and extending the period of composition of Bedes best-known book makes sense of the complicated and contradictory evidence for its purposes. The work did not have one context, but several, each with its own distinct constructed audiences. Thus, the History was not written for a single purpose to the exclusion of all others. Nor was it simply written for a variety of reasons. It was written over time  quite a lot of time  and as the world changed during that time, so too did Bedes reasons for writing, the intentions he sought to pursue  and the patrons he hoped to please or to placate.

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

Bedes 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 thlƒE