Bede’s "Historiae": Genre, Rhetoric, and the Construction of Anglo-Saxon Church History

Description

The church history of the Anglo-Saxons can only be approached through the lens of a few writers, arguably the greatest of whom is Bede. Bede's writings illuminate an otherwise impoverished landscape of ecclesial development from conversion to established Christian church amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Bede, however, had his own agendas - monastic, political, and rhetorical. Reappraising Bede's "Ecclesiastical History", "Lives of the Saints", "History of the Abbots", the "Lesser" and "Greater Chronicles" and the "Martyrology" and the audience for these texts, the author draws out the role played by classical forms of genre and rhetoric in the crafting of his work. She also explores the underlying political influences that caused Bede to write historia as he did. In particular, she notes the role of historia in monastic affairs, especially through the generation of a rhetoric of orthodoxy and the power of the cultural capital afforded by this within the relatively newly constituted Christian community in Northumbria. Acknowledgements 6 Abbreviations 8 Introduction 10 1. Understanding Bede's Audience 24 2. The Historical and Contemporary Context of Northumbrian Hagiography and "Historiae" Production 36 3. Bede's Agenda Revisited: Monastic Superiority in the "Ecclesiastical History" 68 4. Bede's Approach to the Genre of "Historia" 94 5. A Case of Generic Discomfort: Bede's "History of the Abbots" 116 6. A Case of Innovation within Generic Boundaries: Bede's "Martyrology" 131 7. Bede's Compositional Techniques in the Genre of Ecclesiastical History 144 Conclusion 182 References 189 Bibliography 226 Index 253