- EH
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford 1969
The starting point for any comment on Bede's agenda in his later years must be Alan Thacker's essay, ‘Bede's ideal of reform’, published in 1983, which explores his intentions in reference particularly to the prose Life of St Cuthbert (c. 721) and the Ecclesiastical history (731).Footnote 1 Thacker is also, however, always mindful of the Letter to Ecgberht,Footnote 2 written late in 734 only months before Bede's death,Footnote 3 which provides by far his most explicit comments on the reform of the Northumbrian Church. In a consummate analysis, Thacker argued that Bede was looking to the past to construct exemplary individuals with whom he could contrast the sloth and ignorance that he was witnessing among contemporaries, and that he was writing with a view to restoring moral and spiritual values in the present to the heights that he considered that they had attained in an earlier, ‘golden’ epoch. As a Northumbrian, he was interested particularly to address the ills which he saw in that kingdom. The audience for which the Letter was intended allowed him to argue quite explicitly in favour of suppressing monasteries where no proper rule was kept, using the resources released thereby to establish new sees and improve pastoral care. With some passion he was advocating more teachers, more bishops, better training of clergy and an end to the abuse posed by ‘secular’ monasteries. That this agenda is not unique to Bede's later ‘historical’ works but also pervades his exegesis, in particular the commentaries that he wrote in later life, was recognised by Thacker but has since been elaborated in a series of important studies by Scott DeGregorio.Footnote 4 His work has identified Bede's On Ezra and Nehemiah as central to this purpose, since it comments on a text which deals with the re-foundation of the Israelites as the Chosen People in the Promised Land following their captivity in Babylon and so provided Bede with a blueprint for reform and reconstruction more widely,Footnote 5 and a context in which he felt able to make several comments regarding the present. This agenda is now well established and needs to be taken into account in any attempt to explore Bede's purposes in his writings, particularly his later writings.
The Ecclesiastical history and Bede's reform agenda
The Ecclesiastical history was, of course, one of those later writings, and it is not difficult to find explicit comment therein contrasting a morally superior past with a present which Bede considered inferior. A clear example occurs regarding Bishop Aidan in bk iii. 5:
Aidan's life was in great contrast to our modern slothfulness; all who accompanied him, whether tonsured or laymen, had to engage in some form of study, that is to say, to occupy themselves either with reading the scriptures or learning the psalms.Footnote 6
The intention here, self-evidently, was to press home to his readers the message that they had much to learn from the founding fathers of the English Church and should seek to do as those great missionaries did and be as they were. Bede, like Gregory before him, advocated not just high-quality preaching by clergy versed in Scripture and its interpretation but also an ascetic Church, whose leaders set an example to others by the lives that they lived, much as had Augustine and his followers in Canterbury in his portrayal of the early years of the mission.Footnote 7 Aidan was therefore being offered here as a type of the ideal bishop to be emulated in the present.
There are, however, dangers if we allow the reform agenda entirely to dominate understanding of the Ecclesiastical history and its author's purposes therein. While Bede's treatment of Aidan does, of course, offer a prime example, such explicit comparison as we find here between the excellence of the clergy in the past and failings in the present just does not occur elsewhere in the History. Nor does the phrase ‘nostri temporis segnitia’, which Colgrave translates ‘our modern slothfulness’,Footnote 8 otherwise occur; ‘segnitia’ only appears elsewhere in this work once, in the context of the ineptitude of the Britons at the start of the Anglo-Saxon settlement.Footnote 9 Of course, tempus is used very frequently but it is not otherwise deployed in a context which explicitly contrasts past perfections with present inadequacies. Given the absence elsewhere in the work of comments of this type, we should perhaps view this one example as an exception rather than the norm. This was a unique point, therefore, at which Bede's personal views escaped his customary restraint into a work which is not otherwise focused on this aspect of the ‘reform agenda’, however dear that was to his own heart and central to his self-perception as Northumbria's moral and spiritual adviser in the present.Footnote 10
Nor are other of the ‘reformist’ views which we find expressed in the Letter much in evidence in the Ecclesiastical history; indeed, most are conspicuous by their absence. While he repeatedly commented in favour of education and learning,Footnote 11 he nowhere made the point that he thought the present generation of churchmen any less learned than their predecessors. Rather, he singled out several as noticeably better educated than earlier generations, having benefited from the teachings of Theodore and Hadrian at Canterbury so as to achieve an excellent command of Latin and even some expertise in Greek.Footnote 12 Nor does he here urge such structural reforms as the appointment of larger numbers of bishops,Footnote 13 and there is virtually no criticism whatsoever of churchmen either in the recent past or the present.Footnote 14 Instead, numerous contemporary clerics are praised and held up as exemplary,Footnote 15 while the remainder are mentioned in a matter of fact way and without criticism.Footnote 16 While Bede does of course deal with the division and multiplication of sees under Theodore,Footnote 17 his is a cautious account which gives his audience little guidance regarding where he stood on such issues, if they did not already know. One suggestion has been that the précis of Stephen's vita Wilfridi which Bede offered as book v, chapter xix was critical of the exiled bishop's attempts to resist Theodore.Footnote 18 However, though Goffart was convinced that this was the case, this chapter has close parallels with the summary of Gregory's life which Bede offered in the same work in book ii, chapter i and should arguably be read more as ‘an obituary précis in Gregorian fashion’,Footnote 19 than as an implicit criticism of Wilfrid himself, whom he is in fact holding up as an exemplary figure.Footnote 20 Of course, Bede was a prominent individual whose views may have been well-known, in outline at least, to the Northumbrian elite, some of whom may have listened to his preaching,Footnote 21 so it may be fair to assume that his immediate audience was interpreting this work with pre-existing knowledge and would therefore know where he stood on such issues and so interpret it accordingly, but we cannot be sure that this was the case.Footnote 22
It was with such concerns in mind that I recently explored Bede's agenda in the Ecclesiastical history:
While acknowledging that Bede had a reformist agenda, therefore, as expressed in several of the works of his later years, that agenda is comparatively low key and very largely implicit in the Ecclesiastical History, occurring primarily in a host of carefully constructed characterisations which are offered up in affirmative contexts as exemplars of appropriate behaviour to his audience. While cumulatively these should be recognised as extremely influential both in terms of the whole work and (even more so) in terms of role models for his readership (as he himself stressed of Gregory's Dialogues), it must be remembered that the ‘Bede as advocate’ whose voice is so powerful in the Letter to Ecgberht is generally absent from the History the tone of which is far more muted and far less openly hortatory. Indeed, Bede rarely expressed his own views with any degree of openness, preferring generally to guide his interpretation of the past along particular pathways without overtly himself staging an appearance.Footnote 23
Scott DeGregorio has responded to these words of caution by re-stating his conviction that the Ecclesiastical history should be viewed very much within the reformist framework, emphasising the numerous vignettes devoted to setting down the qualities of religious individuals in the past and seeing these as central to his purposes of moral and spiritual reform in the present.Footnote 24 Such brief characterisations are, of course, spread across the work from late in the first book onwards but DeGregorio focused on book iv to make the point. While accepting whole-heartedly the argument that Bede was seeking to encourage emulation in the present of the qualities that he was depicting in Christians in the past, it is important to be alert to the danger to our deeper understanding of the work that is posed by pigeon-holing the Ecclesiastical history as just one of several works of reform.
To an extent, the issue is one of terminology. When considering the Ecclesiastical history, Thacker used the term ‘reform’ in a holistic sense embracing the whole of society rather than just the Church, particularly recognising Bede's interest in kings.Footnote 25 However, ‘reform’ is often used in a limited sense specific to the Church (as ‘The Reformation’), and it was in that sense, in terms of the main drive of Bede's agenda as set out in the Letter to Ecgberht, that my own comments were made in 2006 and it was also predominantly in that sense that DeGregorio in 2010 discussed reading the Ecclesiastical history as a vehicle for Bede's reforming agenda. If the narrower terms of reference are applied, then it is very difficult indeed to portray the Ecclesiastical history as primarily and explicitly about reform, even while it does of course offer a whole host of good monastic and/or clerical examples from the English past through which to encourage its readers and hearers in the present to improve their lives.Footnote 26
In this context, it is worth exploring Bede's use in this work of terms which Thacker considered key to his reform agenda and central to his vision of a society obedient to God. He particularly singled out the terms rector (‘head of’, ‘governor’), praedicator (‘preacher’) and doctor (‘religious teacher’, ‘learned man’).Footnote 27
Rector occurs only five times in the Ecclesiastical history: in ii. 1, Bede used it in reference to rulers in the context of Gregory's Pastoral care; in ii. 2 of the heads of the sections of the British monastery of Bangor; in iii. 4 of the head of the Scottish/Irish monastery of Iona; in iii.14 of Oswine as king of the Deiri; then in v.21 of Adamnan as head of Iona, in Bede's reconstruction of the letter of Ceolfrith to the Picts. Such few occasions in such a breadth of contexts suggests that in this work the term rector has no particular connection with reform.
Praedicator was used only marginally more frequently, occurring seven times, of which six are in book ii and one in book iii. In ii.1, it was twice used by Bede of Augustine and his companions. It then occurs in a series of papal letters which Bede quotes (in ii. 8, 10, 11 and 17) with reference variously to Gregory, Bishop Paulinus and ‘those who preach the gospels’. In iii. 5, it was used of Aidan's predecessor as the missionary bishop sent from Iona to the Northumbrians, who achieved little and returned home disheartened (hardly a strong role model for the present). Again, this usage seems incidental to the reform agenda in this work, particularly given that over half of the instances occur in received texts written by others, which Bede was quoting rather than himself authoring.
More promising is Bede's use of doctor which occurs in all twenty-four times in the Ecclesiastical history, twice in book i, four times in ii, five times in iii, seven in iv and six in v. In i. 26 it was used twice of Augustine and his companions. In ii.2 it occurs as ‘bishops and doctores of the Britons’; in ii.14 it refers to Bishop Paulinus; in ii.15 to pagan advisors to King Rædwald; in ii.19 it forms part of the address to the Irish in a letter from John the pope-elect quoted by Bede. In iii. 4, it was used of Columba as ‘the first doctor of Iona’; in iii.7 it occurs in the context of Bishop Birinus’ mission to the West Saxons, where no doctores had preached before; in iii.22 it was used in the context of Cedd's mission to the East Saxons; in iii. 26 of Bishop Colman and his companions; and in iii.30 of Bishop Jaruman and his associates when correcting the apostasy of the East Saxons. It then occurs in iv.11 of St Paul; three times in iv.17 in Bede's introduction to, and then (twice) in the official transcript of, the synod of Hatfield; in iv.24 of the monks teaching Cædmon; then in iv.27 and 28 in the context of St Cuthbert. In v.9, it was again used of Columba; in v.19 of Bishop Wilfrid; in v.21 of the Old Testament figure of Joseph and of ‘learned men’ generally, within Bede's reconstruction of Ceolfrith's letter to the Picts; in v.22 Ecgberht is termed doctor suauissimus (‘most persuasive scholar’); and then in the ‘recapitulation’ in v.24 it is used once again of Augustine and his companions.
Of these terms, therefore, only doctor is used in the Ecclesiastical history sufficiently frequently to merit attention. It is used most often in the context of those engaged in primary conversion to Christianity, the recovery of a people from apostasy and/or the persuasion of Iona to adopt Catholic practices, occurring both early in the conversion of the peoples of Britain (so of Augustine, Columba, Paulinus and unnamed Britons) and comparatively late (of Cuthbert, Wilfrid and Ecgberht). It is also used as a very general term, so of ‘the learned of the Church’. While it is generally a term of approbation, it is worth bearing in mind Bede's use of doctores of British churchmen, whom he considered deeply flawed as regards their doctrine, and pagan East Angles working against Christian conversion, both of which demonstrate his willingness to use the term in circumstances where he was clearly not seeking to encourage contemporaries to follow these examples. All these terms, therefore, occur in the Ecclesiastical history in contexts which are incidental to the reform agenda, as well as pertinent to it. Only doctor was used with any frequency of exemplary Christian figures of the past but even this term occurs well outside a reformist context.
As Thacker recognised, Bede believed that the spiritual and political health of his own people depended on their obedience to the Lord, and particularly on the active furtherance of this agenda by both their spiritual and secular leaders working together. There is nothing exceptional here, since this was the natural assumption at this date of any member of the clergy able to study the Scriptures and it was a view shared across generations and across ethnic boundaries. Bede based substantial passages of his first book on Gildas's Concerning the ruin of Britain, which directly addresses first a selection of British kings by name and then the clergy as an anonymous group, in both instances arguing for moral and spiritual reform so as to repair the fractured relationship between the Britons as a people and God.Footnote 28 Although he expressed himself with less vehemence, Bede was similarly concerned that his own people, the English Northumbrians, had lost or were in danger of losing the active protection of the Lord and might be risking a loss of land, status and identity comparable to that suffered by the Britons earlier. Across the last two decades of his life he therefore promoted moral, spiritual and academic reform of the monastic and clerical community in a series of works written for their consumption. However, the Ecclesiastical history is different in two important respects. It addresses Ceolwulf, the Northumbrian king of the day, and in so doing it represents Bede's one attempt to reach beyond his normal clerical and monastic audience and engage with the secular leader of society at large, to persuade him to follow a particular model of Christian leadership. Central to this purpose is the assumption that runs across books iv and v of the History that everything that was wrong in the present was the consequence of a long-running failure of royal leadership, even alongside churchmen who had retained their excellence throughout.
The Ecclesiastical history differs markedly, therefore, from the Letter to Ecgberht in portraying English religious leaders even up to the present as still exhibiting the qualities first introduced by Augustine and his companions in 597, with periodic reinforcement from Theodore, Wilfrid and others. The insular Church in 731 was in the safe hands of archbishop Tatwine, with such learned bishops alongside him as Acca and Daniel.Footnote 29 There is no hint of criticism of such figures herein and Bede's message is in this respect entirely reassuring. He was, however, telling a parallel tale of successive kings who had failed to match the excellence of the clerical leaders around them. He was advising them as leaders of the Chosen People, pointing out that they had fallen away from the demanding standards expected of them and placed in jeopardy God's protection of their people. Bede was thus offering two contrasts to rhetorical effect. On the one hand he was comparing the glorious, God-beloved, Northumbrian kings of the past with the morally suspect, obdurate and wrong-doing monarchs of the last few decades. On the other hand he was asserting that the clergy remained of a high calibre, learned and beloved of the Lord even while the kings were no longer sufficiently good to earn divine support, and that there was much in the behaviour of both clergy and monks from which the king might learn.
The Ecclesiastical history, exemplary kingship
Book iv is crucial to the portrayal of these themes, serving as the cusp from which the moral collapse of Northumbrian kingship actually begins. This is laid out with care and tact, since Bede's purpose was to advise the king of the day and he was clearly conscious of the risks of antagonising his audience. Central to his case are his repeated reminders of the excellent qualities shown by the clerical and monastic community of the day. To place his argument here in its broader context, Bede had already set out his ideal of kingship in the Ecclesiastical history for his king in the present via his depictions of the Northumbrian kings Edwin and Oswald, in books ii and iii respectively. In each book there is a repeating pattern, with difficulties at the beginning surmounted by the glorious achievements of a king working in active collaboration with a great churchman, but then problems recurring which may or may not be resolved satisfactorily within the book. For example, the parlous state of the Church in England in the early chapters of book ii were addressed through King Edwin, in chapters ix–x, who showed himself open to the advice and teaching of Bishop Paulinus and, by letter, to that of Boniface, bishop of Rome, experienced a vision sent by God (ii.12), showed enormous respect to his bishop, was a deeply thoughtful man and finally accepted baptism (ii.14), along with his people. The king then placed his political weight behind conversion, not only among the Northumbrians but also in Lindsey and East Anglia (ii.14–16) and his reign was presented as a ‘golden age’ of peace and order (ii.16), with the king ruling gloriosissime (‘most gloriously’: ii. 20). His kingship ended nevertheless in disastrous defeat and a setback for the faith at the close of the book. This is, of course, a picture of English kingship with a strong biblical flavour.Footnote 30 So too is Bede's depiction of Oswald, the Christianissimus rex who reclaimed Northumbria following Edwin's catastrophic death and who brought in missionaries headed by the saintly Bishop Aidan from Iona (iii.3). Oswald was singled out by Bede for his religiosity, humility, kindness, charity and piety, and it was Oswald, rather than Edwin, who became the focus of a successful cult after his death (iii. 6). Oswald is even depicted acting as Aidan's translator from Irish into English, so as actively involved in the process of preaching. In both cases Bede connected their temporal power with their greatness as Christian kings, so Oswald's openness to the instruction of Aidan was set beside his reward by God with ‘greater earthly realms than any of his ancestors had possessed’.Footnote 31
Following Oswald's death in battle, his brother Oswiu (Ecgfrith's father) did not receive anything like comparable approbation from Bede, who instead characterised his much longer (and ultimately more successful) reign as laboriosissime (‘full of toil’), referring in this context to Mercian attacks and conflict with both his son, Alhfrith, and nephew Oethelwald (Oswald's son).Footnote 32 Bede reserved his admiration at this point instead for Oswine, who ruled the Deiri for seven years following Oswald's death in parallel to the rule of the Bernicians by Oswiu, whom he termed ‘a man of exceptional piety and religiosity’ and portrayed as keen to accept guidance from Aidan.Footnote 33 Again, a king's willingness to be guided by his bishop is associated with the peace and prosperity of his rule. Oswine's death thereafter was one of the several evils for which Bede held Oswiu responsible,Footnote 34 but the latter's reputation was gradually repaired, for he was depicted championing missionary efforts in eastern England, defeating the pagan Mercians as if an Old Testament king, then overseeing their conversion and steering the Synod of Whitby to a successful conclusion. Finally, towards the close of the book, Bede went as far as to term him nobilissimus (‘most noble’), alongside Ecgberht of Kent, in the context of the dispatch of Wigheard as their candidate for the see of Canterbury to Rome for his pallium,Footnote 35 enabling Oswiu to occupy the moral high ground at the start of book iv. However, whereas he had been eager to praise Oswald, Bede was markedly cautious regarding Oswiu, and often attributed his potentially more praiseworthy initiatives to others. His nephew Oethelwald was more closely associated here with the venerable brothers, bishops Chad and Cedd,Footnote 36 and Alhfrith, Oswiu's son, was the more closely linked with Wilfrid, who was depicted as the vir doctissimus (‘most learned man’) responsible for his faith.Footnote 37 Bede had, therefore, opportunities to promote Oswiu as a great Christian king of the Northumbrians which he chose to forego, preferring to depict him as a flawed ruler whose passage towards the light was tardy and came only late in life, laboriosissime indeed. Bede was clearly selective regarding which past rulers to champion and Oswiu's role as the founder of that branch of the royal dynasty which King Ceolwulf finally supplanted in 729 may well be the key to Bede's unwillingness to laud him in 731. It is pertinent to point out that he chose to conclude book iii with a story about Wulfhere, who responded to the apostasy of part of the East Saxons by sending Bishop Jaruman and his associates ‘to correct their error and recall the province to the true faith’. Having achieved this, the ‘priests and doctores returned home rejoicing’. This was precisely the close co-operation of king and bishop in the furtherance of God's purposes that Bede advocated and it marks a high point on which the book closes. That it portrays a Mercian king here in an exemplary role will not have been lost on Bede's Northumbrian audience.
Book iv of the Ecclesiastical history
At the start of book iv, therefore, Bede was able to present all England as experiencing a ‘golden age’, blessed with a succession of exemplary monastic and/or clerical figures. Attention focuses particularly on Theodore and Hadrian, whose arrival opens the book,Footnote 38 extolling their learning and their leadership of the Church, but there is also passing reference to the ‘most brave and Christian kings’,Footnote 39 who are unnamed at this point but had already been identified as Oswiu of the Northumbrians and Wulfhere of the Mercians in the last two chapters of book iii. This ‘golden age’ then continued through the appointment of the learned Putta as bishop of Rochester,Footnote 40 the ascetic Chad as bishop of the Mercians,Footnote 41 Bede's depiction of the humble monk Owine,Footnote 42 and the foundation of the monastery of Mayo by the excellent Bishop Colman for his English followers.Footnote 43 This is the last point in the work at which Bede was presenting a past epoch as an unadulterated ‘golden age’. Although the principal focus is on the clergy, a central characteristic is the partnership of excellent kings working alongside and accepting the advice of learned and ascetic churchmen to provide Christian leadership of high quality capable of steering their people in accordance with God's plan.
The point is best made by focussing on a single example. In book iv.3, Bede deals with Chad's appointment as bishop of the Mercians, his subsequent career, his death and his sanctity. Although Chad himself increasingly occupies the centre stage, the chapter opens with as clear a demonstration of Bede's ideal of Christian leadership as occurs anywhere in this work. At the start, Bede depicted King Wulfhere, whose goodness he has already established in iii. 30, requesting a bishop of Archbishop Theodore. Theodore then asked Oswiu to allow the Northumbrian Chad to undertake the task (he was at ‘his own monastery of Lastingham’), Oswiu's agreement is understood (though unstated) since the appointment was made. Then Wilfrid's role as bishop of the Northumbrians is recalled, carrying with it a reminder that Oswiu and Wilfrid had authority over some at least of the Picts,Footnote 44 so providing confirmation of divine approval. Chad's humility is emphasised,Footnote 45 and Theodore's continuing advice to him is stressed, so asserting his authority over and care for his suffragan and the people of his diocese. Chad ‘administered the diocese in great holiness of life’ and finally Wulfhere granted him fifty hides in Lindsey to build a monastery. All players in this drama, therefore, performed their roles in accordance with Bede's ideal of a society led by exemplary kings and churchmen co-operating effectively to lead their people in the ways of the Lord.
This ‘golden age’ occupies the first eleven of book iv's thirty-two chapters. For a while Bede continues to characterise a whole succession of worthy churchmen and recount the deeds of the excellent Archbishop Theodore.Footnote 46 In iv.5 Bede remarks the death of Oswiu, who ‘by that time had so great a love of the Roman and apostolic institutions that, had he recovered from his infirmity, he proposed even to travel to Rome and end his life there among the holy places’, hoping to be guided in this enterprise by Wilfrid, the current bishop of the Northumbrians. Again, we have the ageing Northumbrian king aspiring to actions of which Bede thoroughly approved, in co-operation with an esteemed and much-praised senior churchman.Footnote 47 Ecgfrith's succession is passed over without comment, moving on to detailed treatment of the Church Council of Hertford, in the third year of his reign. Church business was continuing smoothly, therefore, with a series of decisions made regarding adherence to ‘the canonical decrees laid down by the fathers in ancient times’, and Bisi, ‘a man of great sanctity and religiosity’, was appointed bishop of the East Angles. Even Theodore's deposition of Winfrith, his recent appointee as bishop of the Mercians, does not disturb the general sense of wellbeing, since he ‘returned to his own monastery, which is called Barrow, and there lived out a life of great holiness’.Footnote 48 Theodore's appointment of the entirely worthy Eorcenwold as bishop of London then attracts Bede's attention, including miracle stories and several chapters devoted to his foundation of Barking and its oversight by his devout sister, St Æthelburh.Footnote 49 Bede then finds in Sebbi of the East Saxons a king whose deeds were worthy of commendation, and spends an entire chapter telling his story, supported by a post-mortem miracle.Footnote 50
Cracks began to appear, however, in iv.12, which marks the first falling away of the English kings from God's design for his people. Warfare within Wessex opens the account but a far more significant event was Æthelred of Mercia's devastation of Kent, destroying the see of Rochester (of the godly and learned bishop Putta) with a ‘wicked army’, ‘without respect for piety or fear of the divine’. There follows the appearance of a comet, dated to King Ecgfrith's eighth regnal year, and ‘dissension between King Ecgfrith and the most reverend bishop Wilfrid’, leading to the latter's expulsion. These events signal the beginning of the descent of Ecgfrith from the excellence achieved by his uncles Edwin and Oswald and even belatedly by his father, Oswiu, to a figure abandoned by God to his death, in iv. 24(26). Bede made no effort to justify Ecgfrith's behaviour here. Rather, he devoted the following chapter to a detailed depiction of Wilfrid as a devoted missionary to the South Saxons, which was clearly designed to establish the bishop, rather than the king, as the beloved of the Lord. This message is reinforced in iv.14, by reference to miracles occurring at Wilfrid's monastic foundation of Selsey, relayed to Bede by Bishop Acca, which confirm divine support for this missionary effort.
In iv.15, Bede then returns to the West Saxon king whom he had briefly introduced in iv.12, Cædwalla, who now killed Wilfrid's royal patron among the South Saxons, King Æthelwealh, ‘and ravaged that province with savage slaughter and depopulation’, after which his successor, Ine, ‘similarly transferred that province to a time of affliction for many years’. Although Cædwalla is then depicted as working with Wilfrid in converting the Isle of Wight, even this was presented as achieved with excessive brutality, with the island suffering under external rule and long deprived of a diocese of its own.Footnote 51 As in iv.12, therefore, kings were once more behaving in a reprehensible manner, despite the best efforts of senior clergy attempting to push forward the Christian agenda alongside.
These events contrasted the brutal, pagan King Cædwalla with the learned and god-beloved Northumbrian missionary, Bishop Wilfrid, so making Bede's point regarding the comparative moral value of senior clergy and kings, but he was moving very slowly and was content for the moment to restore at least a semblance of the collaborative well-being with which the book had begun. First he switched attention back to the excellence of the Church, quoting from the official transcript of the Synod of Hatfield confirming the conformity of the English Church with the Catholic faith.Footnote 52 This was dated by reference to the regnal years of Ecgfrith of the Northumbrians, Æthelred of the Mercians, Ealdwulf of the East Angles and Hlothere of Kent, so implicitly at least engaging them in this act of unity. Bede followed this by recounting the association between his own earlier abbot, the reverentissimus Benedict Biscop, and the venerabilis John, who had come to England with him from Rome and had attended the synod, taking this opportunity to insert a brief vignette regarding Benedict's foundation of Monkwearmouth. Once again, he reverts here to a past characterised by co-operation between secular and religious leaders: Benedict had built a monastery ‘in honour of the most blessed chief of the apostles’; he came to Rome with his collaborator and fellow-worker Ceolfrith; he was received honourably by Pope Agatho of blessed memory and sought and received from him, in protection of the liberty of the monastery which he had built, a letter of privilege with the authority of the apostolic see, just as he knew ‘King Ecgfrith wanted and had given approval for, having given permission and provided land liberally to found that same monastery’. Having graced Monkwearmouth with his presence for a year and passed on to the brethren his skills as a chorister after the Roman style, John set out on his way back to Rome but died in France where he was buried by his friends at Tours, in accordance with his particular love of St Martin.
The ‘golden age’, therefore, reappears here briefly in the immediate context of Bede's own monastery, in a story featuring collaboration between his own first abbot, a Roman precentor, the pope and King Ecgfrith, and the consequent sense of well-being is sustained through the next chapter (19[17]), which deals with Ecgfrith's wife, Æthelthryth, the daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, ‘a very religious man and entirely noble in mind and deed’. Bede names Bishop Wilfrid ‘of blessed memory’ as his witness to the queen's ‘glory of perfect virginity’, then describes her later life once she had taken the veil. Here Bede allowed himself a rare reflection on the present: ‘Nor should it be doubted that it could happen even in our time, through the help of the Lord, who has promised to remain with us even to the end of the age.’ As abbess of Ely, Æthelthryth then lived and died as an exemplary bride of Christ, and Bede added in a further chapter (iv. 20[18]) a hymn which he had himself in earlier years composed in her honour.
Just as his audience were beginning to believe that the ‘golden age’ of the early chapters of the book had returned, however, iv. 21 (19) reverted to the terrible deeds of kings: Ecgfrith of the Northumbrians and Æthelred of the Mercians fought a great battle beside the Trent in which Ecgfrith's brother, Ælfwine, was killed. Given that Æthelred was the slain man's brother-in-law, this was a particularly heinous act but Theodore, ‘a bishop beloved of God, trusting in divine aid, completely extinguished this great and dangerous fire by his healing advice’. Once again, therefore, we have the interaction of kings and a senior churchman but now it was a matter of the archbishop bringing to an end the violence of two competing kings. The moral high ground is no longer shared, rather it belongs to the archbishop alone as weaver of peace. Bede went on to recount a miracle story emanating from the battle, which he hoped would ‘lead to the salvation of many’.Footnote 53 This to an extent softens the story but this again is about the power of prayer in the mouth of a worthy priest to free the fetters of his brother in captivity – once again it is the clergy appealing to God on behalf of the secular elite. Bede then moved on to deal with the life and death of Abbess Hild, ‘from whom kings and princes sometimes took counsel at times of necessity’, reinforcing his account by reference to the five exemplary bishops who had been trained in her monastery and then to the equally exemplary works of the poet Cædmon, who was in later life a member of Hild's community. These are heavyweight accounts, told at considerable length and replete with language signifying approval, which make it clear both that the religious and clerical leadership remained staunch in these years and that female members of the royal family, such as Æthelthryth and Hild, were to the fore, leading a Christian people down God's path on a route blazing with evidence of the miraculous.
Not all was well, however, in the monastic world even under the aegis of such royal women, for Bede turned in iv.25 to the fire which destroyed the monastery at Coldingham, ruled by Æbbe, Ecgfrith's aunt, which he interpreted as a result of ‘the wickedness of the inhabitants’. Bede concluded the story by drawing out its meaning: ‘We thought it well to include this story in our history so as we might warn the reader of the workings of the Lord, how terrible is His judgement on the children of men.’ This is explicitly an attempt to use the past as a means of influencing behaviour in the present, but offers an example of wickedness bringing down punishment, rather than the exemplary behaviours of old in contrast to inadequacies in the present.
It must be significant that Bede moved immediately from this dire warning of divine vengeance on the wicked to the final terrible deeds of King Ecgfrith, in iv.26(24). Ecgfrith's army, despatched by the king to Ireland, ‘miserably ravaged a harmless people who had always been most friendly towards the nation of the English, and spared neither churches nor monasteries from the end of an enemy’. The Irish resisted force with force and called down the vengeance of God upon their assailants; ‘it is believed that those who were cursed deservedly for their impiety quickly suffered the penalty of their guilt at the avenging hand of God’. Ecgfrith then ‘heedlessly led the army to ravage the province of the Picts, despite the dissuasions of his friends and particularly Cuthbert of blessed memory, who recently had been ordained bishop’. There followed the defeat and death of the king at Nechtansmere, and Bede returned to his theme:
And even, as I said, his friends opposed it, that he should not undertake this battle; but in the previous year he had been unwilling to listen to the reverentissimus father Ecgbert, who had urged him not to attack the Irish who had done him no harm, and the punishment of that sin was that he would not now listen to those who wished to save him from destruction.
The Irishman, Adamnan, was the one inmate of Coldingham whom God warned through a vision of impending calamity, that the monastery would be destroyed, but his efforts to warn the abbess failed to change the behaviour of its inmates sufficiently to regain divine protection. Ecgfrith's death was similarly linked to the Irish, but this time to their appeals to the Lord for vengeance on the wickedness of the king, who had refused to listen to the good advice of Ecgberht, in Ireland, and Cuthbert. Bede then turned within the same chapter to narrate the outcomes, with praise still for the churchmen affected. The reverentissimus vir Trumwine, bishop of the Picts, withdrew southwards from Abercorn to live out a holy life at Streanaeshalch (conventionally Whitby).Footnote 54 Thereafter, he turned to Cuthbert as a fitting subject for the remainder of the book, giving over six chapters in all to the good life of the sanctus et venerabilis bishop of Lindisfarne. Bede knew this story well, having already himself written two Lives of the saint, one in verse and one in prose, on the basis of an earlier one written by a member of the Lindisfarne community. Undoubtedly, Cuthbert was always going to feature in the History but his use here reveals Bede's purposes. Book iv tells the story of a ‘golden age’ of the English people established collaboratively by Theodore, Hadrian and their associates with such kings as Oswiu, Wulfhere and Sebbi, obedient to the will of God. While the churchmen and noble abbesses featured across the book maintained the faith, gave advice appropriately and were exemplary in their conduct, the kings who followed were inclined to violence and cruelty, tempestuous men in pursuit of war, who took too little heed of the illustrious churchmen of the day, dismissing them from their counsels or ravaging their dioceses. In a slowly developing story, Bede takes us through successively worsening scenarios, interspersed with passages which demonstrate the continuing excellence of members of the religious. A final notice of the risk of God's anger towards the disobedient is followed by the story of Ecgfrith's final fall, condemned by God to ignore the warnings of the wise.
If we are to assess the overall purposes of the Ecclesiastical history, therefore, close reading of book iv reveals much about Bede's agenda. This is clearly not a work through which he was attempting to persuade those about him to reform the Church. Nor was he explicitly urging the reformation of the lifestyles of individual churchmen in the present, even though he let few opportunities go to waste in offering exemplary models of clerical behaviour conducive to the furtherance of learning, asceticism and spirituality. On the contrary, he portrayed religious leadership across the whole period of English Christian history as in excellent general health, with bishops who were well-versed academically, virtuous and beloved of the Lord. It was the kings who were in his sights. Bede was writing for King Ceolwulf in an attempt to persuade him to adopt the reform agenda, and for the secular community at large, urging them to adopt a lifestyle far more akin to that of the good priests and monks who were his most numerous exemplars. To encourage Ceolwulf, the History lays out case studies of successful Northumbrian kingship from the more distant past, primarily in books ii and iii, which show how obedience to the Lord and close co-operation with senior clergy resulted in temporal success, greater power and more extensive lordship. There follows a narrative focused on the progressive and episodic decline of the relationship between Northumbria's kings and their senior clerical advisors, always taking care to position God in the latter camp. In particular, the kings had engaged in strife and slayings within their close kin, and undertaken aggressive warfare which was neither necessary nor justified, and against which their more learned and venerable advisors had counselled. The focus is ultimately on Ecgfrith, who divested himself of his reverentissimus bishop, the blessed Wilfrid, and divorced his devout and holy queen. Ignoring the advice of the God-beloved Cuthbert, whose enthronement as bishop he had himself only very recently pushed through, and similarly taking no notice of the views of Ecgberht, an English doctor suasissimus located among the Irish, Ecgfrith attacked this innocent and friendly people without mercy or respect for their holy places. When he then marched against the Picts, God struck him down, refusal to listen to good advice being his punishment on the king. The message is very clear: Ecgfrith provides a case study as to how a king should not behave, in contrast to the exemplary Edwin and/or Oswald in previous chapters.
How then does the Ecclesiastical history relate to Bede's reform agenda? The answer must that it does so quite centrally, so long as we recognise that that agenda was conceived holistically. Bede's model for his own people was the Israelites as the people of the Lord. In his On Ezra and Nehemiah, he clearly recognised Ezra as a religious leader and Nehemiah as secular leader. It was the overall moral and spiritual health of his own people that interested Bede and he was well aware that this encompassed not merely the affairs of the Church but of the whole of society, under the leadership of kings. It was in furtherance of this agenda late in life that he wrote his great Ecclesiastical history, as a means to reach out beyond his normal audience to preach to the secular leadership of the whole community. We should conclude that Bede's History served as a central plank of his reform agenda but it is written with a particular brief in mind and that determines the way it is written. The general ‘feel-good’ factor with which it resonates,Footnote 55 and the near ubiquitous praise that it lavishes on a religious community that we know from the Letter to Ecgberht was far from immune to Bede's criticism, serve important rhetorical purposes in persuading the king of the day to take on the role of King David.
