The Gregorian Mission to Kent in Bede's Ecclesiastical History

Methodology and Sources

Richard Shaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138060814
• eBook ISBN: 9781351669443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Historians have long relied on Bede's Ecclesiastical History for their narrative of early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, but what material lay behind Bede's own narrative? What were his sources and how reliable were they? How much was based on contemporary material? How much on later evidence? What was rhetoric? What represents his own agendas, deductions or even inventions?

This book represents the first systematic attempt to answer these questions for Bede's History, taking as a test case the coherent narrative of the Gregorian mission and the early Church in Kent. Through this critique, it becomes possible, for the first time, to catalogue Bede's sources and assess their origins, provenance and value – even reconstructing the original shape of many that are now lost. The striking paucity of his primary sources for the period emerges clearly. This study explains the reason why this was the case. At the same time, Bede is shown to have had access to a greater variety of texts, especially documentary, than has previously been realised.

This volume thus reveals Bede the historian at work, with implications for understanding his monastery, library and intellectual milieu together with the world in which he lived and worked. It also showcases what can be achieved using a similar methodology for the rest of the Ecclesiastical History and for other contemporary works.

Most importantly, thanks to this study, it is now feasible – indeed necessary – for subsequent historians to base their reconstructions of the events of c.600 not on Bede but on his sources. As a result, this book lays the foundations for future work on the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England and offers the prospect of replacing and not merely refining Bede's narrative of the history of early Christian Kent.

1 Introduction

An early medieval historian at work

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica [HE] is one of the best known and most extensively studied early medieval texts. The work’s status as the main source for Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh and early eighth centuries means it has attracted near constant historiographical attention. Surprisingly, however, the materials Bede used and the way he used them have never been systematically considered. The present book aims to begin to fill these gaps and to provide answers to the questions of what Bede’s sources were in writing the HE and how he employed them to construct his History. In other words, how did Bede work as a historian and with what did he work? Although this is an exercise that could – and should, I will argue – be carried out for the entire Historia, in the first instance, it will be more practical to confine this study to a specific area: Bede’s account of the Gregorian mission. Through analysis of this narrative, both the process and the sources for Bede’s creation of the HE’s account of the Gregorian mission to Kent can be reconstructed.

The implications of these findings extend beyond the classification of Bede’s materials. A better appreciation for the way in which Bede compiled the HE will cast light on Bede the scholar and his milieu, on his connections and informants, and on the stages in which he composed the work. It will be possible to gain a more nuanced view of the nature and purpose of the library at his disposal with potential lessons for its role as an archive and in education. Furthermore, reconstructions of Bede’s sources and assessment of their provenance and reliability will provide a firmer foundation for future investigations of early Christian Kent. Such a basis will mean that Bede’s narrative can potentially be replaced and not simply refined.

1.1 Recent work on Bede and the Historia ecclesiastica

Given how important a source the HE is, it may seem rather remarkable that its own sources have not already been subjected to systematic analysis. There are many reasons for this: probably the principal one has been the strength of Bede’s enduring reputation. This has been so revered that the HE was often treated as a primary source for the events it described. Modern historiography has long recognised that this is not the case. Nonetheless, the chief focus of Bedan studies over the last half-century has not been an attempt to understand Bede’s sources in the History, but to uncover his agendas in writing the work in the first place. Recent work on Bede has sought to provide a more complicated account of the man and his scholarship, especially by offering a greater appreciation for the HE in the context of his complete catalogue of writings, dominated as it was by works of biblical exegesis (for instance, DeGregorio, 2006a; DeGregorio, 2010a; Darby and Wallis, 2014).

With a deeper awareness of Bede’s intellectual background, the HE appears less the independent and objective work it was once considered. Bede was not primarily a historian (Campbell, 1986a, 1986b). He came to write the History only after a career mainly spent producing biblical commentaries (DeGregorio, 2006b). This background underlay his writing of history and affected his presentation of the past. Moreover, he was not just writing within the context of his exegesis but also within the tradition of ecclesiastical history (Ward, 1998).

As Bede’s biblical commentaries, and his corpus as a whole, are better understood, his creativity in both the exegetical and ‘scientific’ fields becomes all the more evident. Bede did, as he often claimed, walk in the ‘footsteps of the Fathers’, but he went even further down the path they had laid. These findings have indirect and important impacts on our understanding and interpretation of the HE: first, Bede’s background and his assumptions are clearer, helping us to see what he took for granted in the HE, arguably affecting his portrayal of events – consciously or not; second, the evidence of his originality demonstrates that Bede was no mere compiler and suggests that the HE itself may be imbued with a higher degree of intentionality than was long believed.

This conclusion supports the connected work, specifically on the HE, which has gone beyond offering mere descriptions of the conscious and unconscious attitudes that must be taken into account in interpreting the evidence of the HE and has instead sought to unravel Bede’s possible motivations for writing. These studies have provided nuanced perspectives on the work, especially illuminating the plausible ideologies and agendas that Bede intentionally brought into his writing of the history of the conversion of the English. Through these proposed rationales, which tend to be grounded in contemporary ecclesio-politics, whether the ‘Ghost of Bishop Wilfrid’ (Goffart, 1988; 2002; 2005), ecclesiastical reform (Thacker, 1983; DeGregorio, 2010a; Darby, 2018a), monastic competition (Gunn, 2009), or moral regeneration (Kirby, 1974: 2; Mayr-Harting, 1991: 43–45; Hilliard, 2010), we should, it is argued, read the entire Historia. Not all of these – or other competing explanations (Rollason, 2001; Higham, 2006) – can be correct; but, taken together, they have enriched our appreciation of the complexity of Bede and the HE itself.

Because Bede is still the main, and often the only, source for the history of early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, a better sense of the prism(s) through which he viewed the world is a crucial building block for reconstructing the events of the period. But in discerning the reality behind the HE’s descriptions, identifying Bede’s agendas is only part of the task, and arguably not the most important one. The HE is mainly a secondary source. This inevitably affected Bede’s account, even if he had had no agendas. The world looked very different from Kent in 600 and Wearmouth-Jarrow in 731. We must therefore ask not only why he wrote but also how he wrote and what he wrote with.

1.2 Bede’s methods and materials: the need for a systematic analysis

It has long been acknowledged in theory that the HE is at best a secondary source for most of its account. This realisation, however, has only infrequently affected the historiography. Given that the HE is not a direct witness to most of the events it records, we need to ask what lay behind it. Bede writes so well that it is not always immediately obvious what is ‘him’ and what is his ‘source’. Bede’s very qualities as historian have complicated the task. His ability to weave together his sources and connect them into a convincing story is one of his most impressive characteristics and has long been praised by scholars (Markus, 1975: 7; Mayr-Harting, 1991: 45; Brooks, 1999: 3). Thus, the HE reads like a primary source, while the latent trust for Bede’s authority even now means the work is often implicitly treated as one. How did Bede construct his History? What was Bede’s basis for his statements? Is the HE’s narrative built on reliable sources? Are they from the time they describe or merely retrospective recreations? Which parts of his text effectively repeat his sources? Which are deductions?¹ Which are mere rhetorical flourishes or even inventions?

These questions are especially critical in light of recent research into Bede’s agendas, motivations and assumptions in writing the HE. Without a complete analysis of the sources lying behind Bede’s narrative, even though in a general way it is possible to recognise his bias and the limitations in the evidence available to him, the reliability of his account in specific instances cannot properly be assessed. Such a systematic examination of how Bede worked, based in an analysis of his sources – what they are and how well informed they were – has yet to be carried out for the HE. As a result, although we now have plenty of reasons to tread cautiously in using the History as a source, it does still remain our source, and indeed our chief one. While we know much more about the possible reasons for which the HE was written, or at least about the ideologies under the influence of which it was drafted, we still know very little about how it was written, giving the work a deceptively monolithic appearance.²

These questions have been asked, and to a large extent answered, for Bede’s other works. Researches into Bede’s sources for his exegetical and educational works reveal an impressive library (Laistner, 1966b; Ganz, 2004: 91–108; Lapidge, 2006: 37 and 191; Love, 2012: 631). In contrast, in the case of the HE, comparable investigations have only covered literary texts and, even then, little has been done since Charles Plummer’s liminal edition of Bede’s historical works (Plummer, 1.l–lii, n. 3). Furthermore, Plummer’s treatment, while characteristically scholarly, was not comprehensive. Most of the sources he identified were concentrated within the first section of the book, from HE 1.1–22. Bede was frank in the HE’s preface about the extent to which the narrative in these chapters represented a collection of borrowings from the writings of earlier authors (ex priorum maxime scriptis).

In later sections of his commentary, Plummer pointed out Bede’s reliance on other works, such as his prose Life of Cuthbert [VCP], or his adaptation of Adomnan’s On the Holy Places. In the century since Plummer’s groundbreaking volumes, scholars have added few sources to those he identified, although there have been individual treatments of certain types of material or of Bede’s use of individual authors. Discussion continues about the nature of the relationship between the HE and the Life of Gregory [VG],³ and with Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid [VW].⁴ Bede’s borrowings from Gildas have been analysed (Miller, 1975), as has his use of Orosius (Scully, 2002), and his handling of certain papal letters in the History (Markus, 1963; Hunter Blair, 1971; Story, 2012). Other studies have assessed Bede’s sources for dates in wider examinations of chronology (Jones, 1947; Harrison, 1976a); and, evidently, focused analyses of episodes in the HE have sometimes included limited treatments of Bede’s sources and attempts to explain them.⁵

Literary texts, however, can hardly be called the basis for the HE.⁶ These are not, in the main, what is meant when talking of the sources of the HE, or, besides Gildas, of any of Bede’s stories within it. Bede had and used many sources beyond the ‘classics’ in composing his History: some were documentary or administrative, some were oral and many are lost. In fact, probably the majority of Bede’s sources no longer survive.⁷ Identifying the raw material behind the HE cannot be achieved simply by searching electronic databases. Instead, a more complex assessment of the viable and plausible sources is required, with the conclusions inevitably less certain.

This justifiable caution should not devolve into a dismissal of the enterprise as impossible. That might be tempting. Much of the HE tends to be implicitly, or explicitly, explained away as reliant not on ‘written sources’ but on what might be termed, in a general sense, ‘tradition’.⁸ For David Kirby, the HE, in the main, was a ‘mosaic of personal memories’ (Kirby, 2000b: 56).⁹ Such comments are grounded in a reality: many stories in the HE do come from ‘oral tradition’, which would not be found in a library.¹⁰ Bede is often frank that his source is a named individual who has told him the tale. At other times, though more ambiguously, generic expressions point in the same direction.¹¹ To say that Bede uses ‘traditions’, however, is not to say that the majority of the work was written without identifiable ‘sources’. Nor does it preclude analyses of both the basis upon which he made his claims and of how he utilised his materials – oral and written – to compile his narrative.¹² Establishing provenance allows us to begin to judge reliability. There are often quite stark differences in genre between the sources used across the HE. The beginning of the account of the Gregorian mission, for instance, marks a watershed as much in evidence as in narrative.

Thus, though difficult, the task is not impossible, and, as we have seen, carrying it out is not only vital, but necessary. Indeed, it has been too long delayed. What is required for the HE is an exercise whose nature and value were set out in plain terms by Rosalind Love for the entire Bedan corpus: ‘a very great deal still remains to be discovered about his reading, by a painstaking process of interrogating every single paragraph he wrote, a lifetime’s task’ (Love, 2012: 619).

This book represents the beginning of such a broader undertaking. In the long run, of course, the work needs to be carried out across the whole HE. Such a comprehensive examination of the text is a major desideratum for scrutiny of the History. Nonetheless, given the scale of the question, the focus here is on a single significant and coherent narrative within the HE: the account of the Gregorian mission and ecclesiastical life in Kent until the advent of Theodore. I will analyse the sources for Bede’s account of the mission and how he used them in the HE, consistently seeking answers to the question of the basis for Bede’s individual statements. The emphasis is on the early Church in Kent as the most fruitful grounds for such an investigation. This was a period that Bede himself, in the Preface, marked as an essentially discrete element in the composition and sourcing of the HE. As a finite and connected narrative within the work, the sources and informants, while rarely simple, are often clearer and more easily identifiable.¹³ Consideration will be given to those non-Kentish chapters dealing with papal letters, as the wider question of Bede’s use of papal letters is valuable for understanding his information on Kent.

Therefore, while earlier works have sought to give an impression of Bede’s library, in this book, I shall show him at work in it. It will be possible to see Bede at his desk, in the scriptorium, surrounded by his notes and books, and to gain a much better sense of how he obtained his materials and how he used them. In short, I hope to provide an insight into how an early medieval historian – albeit an exceptional one – worked. The methods and conclusions should point the way for others to attempt something si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: an early medieval historian at work
• PART I: Constructing the narrative of the Gregorian mission to Kent
• PART II: Bede’s sources for Kent before Theodore
• Bibliography
• Index