Bede's creation of a nation in his Ecclesiastical

History
Bede completed the Ecclesiastical History of the English People at some
time between 731, the year of his last entry, and 735, the year of his death.1 So
powerful is the Anglo-Saxon present he evokes, so influential on subsequent
chroniclers and historians, from later Anglo-Saxon times through the medieval
period to our o w n present, that it can sometimes be necessary to remind
ourselves h o w m u c h more Anglo-Saxon history still lay ahead. Bede's picture
of contemporary Anglo-Saxonracialand political groupings united by Christian
purpose and practice, an ordered society of 'winners' with a firm collective sense
of its destiny, is presented by a 'reliable nanator',2 w h o offers the comfort of
closure by depicting the establishment in Anglo-Saxon affairs of guidelines
which have merely to be followed through by any future generations.
Beyond the actual lifetime of the writer, however, lay another two hundred
years of separate, sometimes mutually hostile, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; shifts
southward in the centre of cultural and political power from his native
Northumbria to Mercia, then Wessex; and Scandinavian incursions of long-term
occunence and effect. Virtually all the literature w e think of as the (extant) Old
English corpus, in which both primitive and Christian elements of Germanic
culturefindexpression, had yet to be written: it would be some two centuries,
for instance, as Audrey Meaney has shown, before the Beowulf prologue would
articulate its ancient dynastic concerns, and almost another century before the
manuscript in which that text survives would be produced.3 But Bede's
understanding of the world would probably have enabled him to take such events

1
All references to the text in this essay are to Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the
English People', ed. (and trans.) Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford,
1969; for Bede's death see pp. 572-73, 'Continuations from the Moore MS.', under
735. That Bede did not necessarily complete this work in 731, as often assumed, has
been observed by J. M . Wallace-Hadrill, in the companion volume to this edition,
Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People': A Historical Commentary,
Oxford, 1988, p. 203.
2
The expression is that of Donald K. Fry, in "The Art of Bede U: The Reliable
Narrator as Persona', in 77M: Early Middle Ages, The Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, State University of N e w York at Binghamton, Acta 6,
Binghamton, N Y , 1979, pp. 63-82.
3
See Audrey L. Meaney, 'Scyld Scefing and the dating of Beowulf—Again', Bulletin
of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 71 (1989), 7-40 (the T.
Northcote Toller Memorial Lecture delivered in the John Rylands University Library
of Manchester 14 March 1988: passim). The standard text of the poem is that in
'Beowulf and 'The Fight at Finnsburg', ed. Fr. Klaeber, 3rd edn with supps., Boston,
1950. For the approximate date of the manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A.xv in the
British Library, see Meaney's article, p. 7, and Klaeber's edition, p. cvii.

P A R E R G O N ns 10.2, December 1992

 140 D. Speed

on board without difficulty: although the History obviously records events of

linear time, as it is itself an event in linear time, it simultaneously locates itself
and other events in non-dimensional eternity, all equally present to the eye of the
Creator. This textual simultaneity, I suggest, imitates, or mimes, the actual
simultaneity which is the very essence of eternity.
The classical concept of 'imitation'—Latin imitatio, Greek mimesis—has
been discussed as an explanation of Bede's procedure in the History in an
important essay of 1979 by Calvin B. Kendall.4 T h e History, Kendall argues,
both portrays exemplary lives for the reader to imitate and itself imitates
exemplary literature. A s the ultimate exemplary life in Christian history is that
of Christ, so the ultimate exemplary literature is the Bible, both life and
literature being revelations of G o d himself, Word, in h u m a n and written form
respectively. Kendall's article is specifically concerned to show the 'centrality of
the concept' in the History,5 and concludes by discussing some ways in which
the initial account of Britain and Ireland imitates Genesis 1 in order 'to illustrate
... h o w Bede managed to give an imitative coloring to the raw materials of
historical nanative'.6 The present essay continues exploration of this mimetic
relationship7 between Bede's History and the Bible, again with particular
reference to thefirstchapter of the History, in order to explain the textual
creation of Bede's nation. T h e discussion involves reference to postulated
sources for this chapter and expresses s o m e qualifications of existing
scholarship.

Book one, chapter one, provides an outline of the geography of Britain and
the prehistory of its inhabitants, as the heading promises: 'De situ Brittaniae uel
Hiberniae et de priscis earum incolis' ('Of the situation of Britain and Ireland and
of their earliest inhabitants': pp. 8-9 8 ). The twofold introduction affords a
suitably informative base for the following account of events in Britain from the
recorded time of Julius Caesar (i.2)toBede's o w n day (v.23-24), but the terms

4
'Imitation and the Venerable Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica', in Saints, Scholars, and
Heroes: studies in medieval culture in honour of Charles W. Jones, 2 vols., ed.
Margot H. King and Wesley M . Stevens, Collegeville, M N , 1979, 1, pp. 161-90.
5
Ibid., p. 161.
6
Ibid., p. 178.
7
I use 'mimesis' rather than 'imitation' in this essay because there is less possibility
of confusion: 'mimesis' is little used except in this technical sense, in which it will
be recognizable to m a n y because of Eric Auerbach's influential Mimesis: The
Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton,
NJ, 1953.
o
This translation of the text is that of Colgrave and Mynors (Bede's 'Ecclesiastical
History'); translations of the text henceforward are m y own, providing a more literal
guide to specific passages.
Bede's creation of a nation 141
in which the land and its people are presented m a k e this chapter more than a
simple starting-point for the chronological narrative. Consideration of the
materials which Bede seems to have had in mind as he wrote is instructive in
this regard.
In both the Preface and the conclusion (v.24) Bede referstothe whole work
as historia ecclesiastica ('ecclesiastical/Church history'), thereby attaching it
overtly to a generic tradition which was founded in the N e w Testament itself and
developed by subsequent writers, beginning with Eusebius.9 There are several
ways in which Bible can be described as thetextualfoundation of ecclesiastical
history. Like any Christian writing, for a start, ecclesiastical history frequently
builds its o w n statements out of Biblical language, just as it often selects,
arranges, and presents material on the model of Biblical passages.10 Again, the
discourse is doctrinally informed, and the Bible is the source par excellence of
Christian doctrine. Perhaps most significantly in generic terms, the human
history of the world as set out in the Old Testament then the N e w , is where the
history of the Church begins: from a chronological point of view all people,
including those w h o n o w constitute the Church, are descended from A d a m and
Eve; from a typological point of view the Church is foreshadowed, preceded
figuratively, by the children of Israel.
T w o ecclesiastical histories k n o w n to Bede are those of Eusebius, in the
Latin version of the Greek by Rufinus, and Gregory of Tours. 11 In Eusebius'
History12 book one centres on thefigureof Christ first showing that Christ has

9
The tradition and Bede's place in it are discussed, for example, by Wilhelm Levison,
'Bede as Historian', in Bede, His Life, Times, and Writings: Essays in
Commemoration of the Twelfth Centenary of His Death, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson,
1932, repr. N e w York, 1966, pp. 111-51; Robert W . Hanning, The Vision of History
in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth, N e w York, 1966; Roger D.
Ray, 'Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress
of Research', Viator 5 (1974), 33-59; L. W . Barnard, 'Bede and Eusebius as Church
Historians', and Roger D . Ray, 'Bede, the Exegete, as Historian', in Famulus Christi:
Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable
Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner, London, 1976, pp. 106-24 and 125-40, respectively;
Kendall, 'Imitation'; Brian Croke and Alanna M . Emmett 'Historiography in Late
Antiquity: A n Overview', in History and Historians in Late Antiquity, ed. Croke and
Emmett Sydney, 1983, pp. 1-12. The tradition before Bede is also discussed by
R. A. Markus, 'Church History and Early Church Historians', in The Materials,
Sources, and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, Studies in Church History 11,
Oxford, 1975.
10
According to Colgrave and Mynors, for example, the History has one hundred and
seventy odd quotations from the Bible: Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History', pp. 589-91.
11
The probable extent of Bede's reading is canvassed by M . L. W . Laistner, "The
Library of the Venerable Bede', in Thompson, Bede, pp. 237-66; historical works:
pp. 244-47.
12
Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller, 9, in 3 parts, ed. Edouard Schwartz,
Leipzig, 1903-09 (repr. Loeb Clasical Library, 2 vols., Cambridge, M A , 1926-32),
142 D. Speed

always existed as the Word, as declared at the beginning of John's Gospel, and
that he is mentioned prophetically at various points in the Old Testament then
recounting his incarnate life, death, and resurrection. The next nine chapters
narrate the story of the Church from that point to the time of Constantine and
Eusebius himself; two further chapters added by Rufinus continue the story up to
the death of Theodosius in 395. Likewise set out in ten books, Gregory of
Tours's History13 is a variation on the Eusebian model. In book one the eternal
co-existence of Christ with G o d the Father is refened to in an introductory
rendering of the Nicene Creed; the first half of the book covers the history of the
world from Creation to the Ascension of Christ and death of Pilate and Herod,
and tbe second half covers the early years of the Church, particularly in Gaul, up
to the death of St Martin of Tours in 397. The remaining nine chapters then
narrate in detati the story of the Church in Gaul from that point to 591, shortly
before Gregory's death in 594. Both Eusebius and Gregory refer to God's
eternity as distinct from Man's time and recall Biblical events as the prelude to
the state of the Church as each of them knows it, but their nanative procedures
differ: Eusebius bases bis narrative in the N e w Testament and looks back to the
Old Testament for antitypological conespondences and prophecies fulfilled in
Christ whereas Gregory begins his narrative in the Old Testament and simply
moves on through time, with an occasional typological comment.
In the early fourth century the world of the R o m a n Empire was not greatiy
different from that of the Church; Eusebius speaks from the centre of both, and
of the civilized world at large. T w o and a half centuries later, when Gregory
wrote, the circumstances were different and it becomes appropriatetodistinguish
between a universal ecclesiastical history and a national ecclesiastical history
arising out of a universal one. Bede's national ecclesiastical history incorporates
further change. Unlike Gregory's, Bede's prehistory of the nation springs
retrospectively from the description of a present-day situation, namely the
existence of five languages in the land, and is concerned with the migrations of
pagan peoples to Britain to become the ancestors of the present inhabitants-
there is no narrative mention of A d a m or Moses, or, indeed, of the incarnate hfe
of Christ. Acknowledgement of the fact of the Incarnation is, however, implicit
in Christian reference throughout the work, above all in the prefened dating of
events to anno Dominicae incarnationis, a departure from previous practice to

with an edition of the Latin by T. E. Mommsen; Schwartz's text trans. G. A.

Williamson, rev. Andrew Louth, as The History of the Church from Christ to
Constantine, Harmondsworth, 1989.
13
Latin text from the Corbie and Brussells manuscripts ed. Henri Omont and Gaston
Collon, Collection des textes pour servir a I'itude et a I'enseignement de I'histoire,
and 13, Paris, 1886, 1893; trans. Lewis Thorpe, as The History of the Franks,
Harmondsworth, 1974.
Bede's creation of a nation 143
which Bede seems to draw attention as chronological references begin with the
narrative proper at the beginning of the second chapter:
... anno ab Vrbe condita sescentesimo nonagesimotertio,ante uero
incarnationis Dominicae tempus anno sexagesimo ... (p. 20)
(... in the six hundred and ninety-third year from the founding of the
City, and the sixtieth year before the incarnation of the Lord ... ) 1 4
Thisre-positioningof N e w Testament narrative as a referential frame is matched
by a re-positioning of Old Testament nanative as a figurative frame. The
transition from one literal account to another, from the geography of Britain to
the prehistory of its inhabitants, involves a striking use of the figurative
language of simile, in the observation that at the time of writing there are five
languages in Britain 'iuxta n u m e r u m librorum quibus lex divina scripta est'
('paralleling the number of books in which the divine law is written': p. 16).15
It is thus implied as the h u m a n history of the land begins that this ecclesiastical
history wUl stand in afigurativerelationship to the Bible.
The authorities which are generally identified as sources of specific
information in this chapter are Pliny's Natural History, Gildas' Ruin of Britain,
Solinus' Collection of Memorable Things, Orosius' Seven Books of History
against the Pagans, Basti's Hexameron, in the Latin translation of the Greek by
Eustathius Afer, and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies; there m a y also have been
other sources not k n o w n to m o d e m scholars, but it is thought that the greater
part of the information given should be attributed to Bede's independent
knowledge. 16 The overall idea of beginning with a geographical and historical

14
Bede has preferred dating to the Christian era over less straightforward systems
such as regnal years and indictions and, in the passage quoted, years from the
traditional founding of R o m e , as used in classical literature. The expression ab
incarnatione Domini, for which the variant anno Domini also came to be used, was
introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in 525: see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical
Chronology: Principles of Time Reckoning in the Ancient World and Problems of
Chronology in the Bible, Princeton, NJ, 1964, p. 132. See also Colgrave and
Mynors, Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History', pp. xviii-xix, and Wallace-Hadrill,
Commentary, pp. 10-11.
15
The passage containing these words is discussed further below, pp. 152-54.
16
The starting point for this discussion lies in the annotations and notes to this
chapter in Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols, in one, ed. Charles Plummer,
Oxford, 1896, repr. 1961, accepted by Colgrave and Mynors, and by Wallace-Hadrill
with additional suggestions. Plummer also says (2, p. 5) that in his report of the
distance between Richborough and Boulogne (p. 14) 'Bede possibly alludes' to an
early-fourth-century traveller's account by Antoninus the Elder, the Itineranum
Antonini. If this was indeed a source for Bede, it would be functioning, like Isidore,
as a Christian work on geography, and would not change the argument of this essay;
it is never named by Bede himself, or mentioned elsewhere by Plummer or other Bede
scholars such as Laistner ('The Library of the Venerable Bede') or Wallace-Hadrul
(Commentary). See further below, n. 26.
144 D. Speed

review has been attributed to the possible influence of Orosius' description of the
world in his History and/or Gregory of Tours' introductory survey of world
history in his History of the Franks.11 Orosius, as will be seen, clearly was in
Bede's mind as he wrote; Gregory, as already seen, would have been prominent
in Bede's conception of ecclesiastical history as a genre, though it is difficult to
detect m u c h influence at all on Bede's first chapter.
O f these seven authors, Pliny,18 Solinus (largely reproducing Pliny),19 and
Isidore (relying substantially on Solinus and Orosius for the relevant material)20
provided general geographical information in an encyclopaedic mode; Gregory of
Tours wrote specifically ecclesiastical history; and Orosius and Gildas wrote
other kinds of Christian history, Orosius a universal chronicle presented as
Christian apologetic,21 and Gildas a fulmination against the British for then
history of failure in the manner of the children of Israel.22 All six works,
having geographical or historical subjects, would seem logical kinds of literature
to draw on for the n e w project. The relevance of the seventh work, however, is
less immediately obvious, and yet Basil alone has the distinction of being cited
by n a m e in the text itself. His Hexameron has a majestic subject, being a
commentary on the Genesis account of the six days of Creation,23 but the overt
function of the only named source in this chapter is merely to supply a means of
transition from one point of geographical description to another: the land has
w a r m springs; water, 'as St Basil says' ('ut sanctus Basilius dicif: p. 14),
becomes w a r m in contact with certain metals; the land has various metals. It
seems not unreasonable to wonder whether Basil and his work are really evoked

1 7
Colgrave and Mynors, Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History', pp. 6-7, 208.
18
C. Plini Secundi Naturalis Historiae Libri XXXVII, 6 vols., ed. C. Mayhoff, repr.
Stuttgart, 1, 1967: I-VI; Britain and environs: IV. 16. A parallel edition and
translation m a y be found in the Loeb Classical Library (LCL), ed. H. Rackham and
others in 11 vols, (full details of relevant vols, in revised form not available to me).
19
C. Iulii Solini Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium, ed. Th. M o m m s e n , Berlin,
1958; reproduction of Pliny established pp. v-xxiv, 238-49; Britain and environs:
22.1-12.
20
Sancti Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Libri XX, Patrologia Latina
(PL) 82, ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris, 1850; Britain and environs: XTV.VI.2-6; reliance on
Solinus and Orosius observed in footnotes.
21
Pauli Orosii Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, ed. C. Zangemeister,
Leipzig, 1889; Britain and environs: 1.2, p. 12; trans, as The Seven Books of History
Against the Pagans by R o y J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church 50, Washington, DC,
1964. Translations in this essay are mine.
•" GUdas, The Ruin of Britain and other works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom,
Chichester, 1978; general account of Britain: ch. 3.
23
For the Latin text see Eustathii in Hexameron S. Basilii Latina Metaphrasis, PL
53, ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris, 1865, cols. 867-966; for the Greek text, with a French
translation, see Basile de Cesare, Homilies sur I'Hexameron, ed. and trans. Stanislaus
Giet, Sources cluetiennes, Paris, 1949.
Bede's creation of a nation 145
for some more important purpose, namely, to call to mind the overall account of
the six days in the Bible itself.

Specific mimesis of the Bible, I suggest begins with the opening words:
B R I T T A N I A Oceani insula, cui quondam Albion n o m e n fuit, inter
septentrionem et occidentem locata est Germaniae Galliae Hispaniae,
maximis Europae partibus, multo interuallo aduersa (p. 14)
(Britain, an island of the Ocean, whose n a m e was formerly Albion, is
located in the north-west opposite Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which
account for most of Europe, though with a great space between them.)
The first topic is thus the identity of the place whose inhabitants are to be the
subject of the History, and that identity is established via its n a m e and its
location, the latter topic being continued through the next three sentences, to
'insulas habet'.
Naming has a prominent part in the process of Creation in Genesis.24 After
naming D a y (Dies) and Night (Nox) on the first day (1.3) and Heaven/Sky
(Caelum) on the second (1.6), G o d names the Earth (Terra) on the third day
(1.10), distinguishing it from the Seas (Maria). This stage of Creation, which
involves the last explicit naming in the six days, is where Bede's mimesis can
be said to begin, his 'Britain-Albion' conesponding to 'Earth' and his 'Ocean' to
'Seas'.
The introductory focus is on the familiar n a m e of the island, that which it
has as an inhabited place, as a subsequent observation makes clear:
In primis autem insula Brettones solum, a quibus n o m e n accepit,
incolas habuit (p. 16)
(In the beginning the island had as inhabitants only Britons, from
w h o m it received its name.)
The former, less familiar n a m e 'Albion', which at first glance m a y look like an
antiquarian afterthought is in fact a significant qualification of the concept
'Britain', looking back to pre-Briton Britain, the physical land which was in
existence before thefirstinhabitants arrived, like Earth before the arrival of life
forms. This reading of 'Albion' gains support from a consideration of its
etymology: the root alb- connotes whiteness, and the etymology has been traced

24
The Bible text to which Bede would normally have referred is the Vulgate, and the
discussion here is therefore based on the Vulgate: La Sainte Bible: Texte latin et
traduction francoise d'apres les textes originaux, ed. Louis Pirot and Albert Clamer,
12 vols., Paris, 1946-61. Specific translations are m y own, but I have been guided
by several English translations. O n e or more versions of the Vetus Latina were also
available to him, and probably the Septuagint: Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera
Historica, 1, pp. liv-lvi, and Laistner, "The Library of the Venerable Bede',
pp. 2 5 7 - 5 8 .
 146 D- Speed
to the famous land formation of the white cliffs of Kentish coast25 In contrast
with the etymology of 'Britain', that of 'Albion' is not explicit but the reader
might have been reminded of it retrospectively by the reference, just a few lines
on, to the Channel port of 'Reptacaestir' (Richborough). Thefirstsentence as
a whole is derived from Pliny's Natural History (IV.16). In a significant
variation, however, Bede has brought Pliny's reference to Albion forward from
the beginning of Pliny's next sentence, where matter of the n a m e is taken up
again after the intervening discussion of the location, thereby both foregrounding
the topic of n a m e and articulating the virtuady simultaneous identification and
contrast of the two names of the land. The text records a passage of historical
time between the start and finish of the naming process, but it verbalizes this
passage in as a short sequence of mortal words as possible, yielding a near-
mimesis of the paradoxical co-existence of created time and divine eternity.
The third day of Creation has actually been evoked even before 'Albion' is
mentioned, in the amplification of Britain as 'an island of the Ocean', Oceani
should almost certainly be understood as a proper noun (as the editorial capital
letter assumes), functioning at the sametextuallevel as Brittania, but Brittania
is n o w presented from a different perspective as the c o m m o n noun insula. On
the third day of Creation, the Earth receives its distinct identity in relation to the
movement of the waters (aquae), which G o d causes to be gathered into one
distinct body, the Seas, thereby allowing dry land to m a k e its appearance
(Genesis 1.9-10). Earth and waters have c o m e into being together as Creation
starts (1.2), though without definition, and attention has then been directed to the
waters alone, as they are divided in two by the firmament (firmamentum),
becoming waters above and beneath Heaven (1.6-7). The Seas, as the defined
form of the latter group of waters, have thus acquired a kind of textual
prominence over the Earth, and n o w they effectively give birth to the Earth in its
defined form. This situation is m i m e d in the grammatical and semantic
relationship of the first three words of the History: Brittania, the subject of the
sentence and of the History, is revealed as existing because Oceanus has
generated it as insula.
This reading of the first three words is supported by consideration of a
second variation from Pliny. Bede appears to have imposed on Pliny's two-word
beginning, 'Brittania insula', the three-word beginning of the account of Britain
in Orosius' History (1.2, p. 12), which places 'Oceani' between the other words,
and hence permits the whole mimesis of Genesis 1.9-10 argued above. 26 It is

25
See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short A Latin Dictionary, Oxford, 1876, repr.
1966, pp. 80-81.
2
Plummer's note that Pliny's phrase 'Brittania insula' is Bede's source here is
corrected by Levison, 'Bede as Historian', pp. 141-42. General accounts of Britain,
bearing a greater or lesser resemblance to each other, are found in several of the
Bede's creation of a nation 147
perhaps worth adding that the subsequent citation of the Basil-Eustathius
Hexameron on the subject of heated water 27 is drawn from a discussion of the
four elements prompted by consideration precisely of Genesis 1.10, 'vocavit
Deus aridam Terram' ('God called the dry land Earth'), the discussion moving
from the dryness (ariditas) of the earth to the plural properties of earth and the
other three elements (IV.5, col. 907,10-37).
Orosius' treatment of Britain is contained within the lengthy geographical
survey of the world which constitutes the second chapter of his History. It
begins with a summary statement that the great land masses are sunounded by
the ocean:
Maiores nostri orbem totius tenae, oceani limbo circumsaeptum,
triquadrum statuere eiusquetiespartes A S I A M E V R O P E A M at A F R I C A M
uocauerunt... (1.2, p. 5)
(Our ancestors established a threefold division of the whole earth,
sunounded by a girdle of ocean, and called the three parts Asia, Europe,
and Africa...)
Each land mass is then examined in the order given; Britain, Ireland, and some
minor nearby islands are examined at the end of the account of Europe, for the
specific reason that 'the ocean contains islands' ('oceanus habet insulas': p. 12),
a statement privdeging 'ocean' over 'islands'. This picture preserves the standard
classical view that the inhabited world was encircled by the ocean, 28 but that
view is not contradicted by Genesis 1, and Orosius' survey remained a major
authority in the West for hundreds of years.29

postulated sources for i.l. In this case Solinus and Gildas agree with Pliny, but
Isidore, like Bede, has copied Orosius. Other apparent echoes of Isidore in i.l are
always shared with Solinus and/or Orosius, and it is not certain that Isidore is in fact
recalled in this chapter. Each of Solinus and Orosius, on the other hand, is apparently
the unique known source at certain points, and their works may be assumed to have
been at hand as Bede wrote. H e probably knew all the accounts very well, however,
and, in the manner of one w h o has rehearsed his opening sentence many times, may
have said what he wanted to say without being fully conscious of his precise source
for every individual phrase.
27
See above, p. 144.
28
See, for example, John Kirkland Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the
Crusades: A Study in the History of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western
Europe, 2nd edn, N e w York, 1965, p. 18. In ancient times the world was thought of
as a disk, but after the fifth century B C it was usual to envisage it as a sphere: Wright,
p. 15.
29
See, for example, C. Raymond Beazley, The Dawn of Modem Geography, London,
1897, 1, pp. 40, 46, 314-15, 353-55, 366, 385; Wright, Geographical Lore,
pp.44, 48, 103, 258-59; and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, 'Reading the world: the
Hereford mappa mundi', Parergon ns 9.1 (1991), 117-35, especiahy p. 124.
148 D. Speed

The Orosian depiction of the world accords with the 'T-O' type of world
m a p . 3 0 This is more or less centred on the eastern Mediterranean, where the
three continents most closely approach each other, separated by seas in a T-
shape, with Asia above the cross-bar, Europe and Africa on the two sides of the
vertical bar, and the whole ringed by the Ocean. Britain is located at outer edge
of Europe, facing on to the Ocean. Orosius actually concludes his brief report of
Britain and the neighbouring islands with the statement: 'Hi sunt fines totius
Europae* ("These are the limits of Europe as a whole': p. 12). Gildas similarly
places Britain 'virtually at the end of the world' ('in extremo ferme orbis':
chapter 3, pp. 16, 89), and Solinus says the world would end with the shores of
Gaul, except for Britain ('finis erat orbis ora Gallici litoris, nisi Brittania ... ':
22.1, p. 99).
Bede's o w n account of the name and location of Britain ends with a striking
statement in which the limits of Britain are set by the limitless Ocean, quoted
word for word from Orosius:
A tergo autem, unde Oceano infinito patet Orcadas insulas habet
(p. 14; Orosius, p. 12)
(At the back [of Britain], from which point it opens out on to the
infinite Ocean, it has the Orkney Islands.)
Located thus at the edge of the inhabited world, Kendall argues, Britain can be
seen schematically as the last place on Earth to be reached by the Church (even
though this was not the case historically). The account of its conversion in
Bede's History, it follows, completes the mission of the Church in the world
geographically and chronologically: it remains only to await the Day of
Judgment. 3 1 This factor would, of course, help to account for the sense of
closure noted earlier.32 In Kendall's o w n words,
Not only does [the Ecclesiastical History] extend and in a geographical
sense complete the story of the Apostolic mission to the gentiles which
is begun in Acts, but it also tells the story of one complete mission
which leads to the founding of a n e w Church which by syne[c]doche
equals the universal Church. 33

u
Wright notes that both Augustine and Orosius probably made use of such maps:
Geographical Lore, pp. 66-68 (p. 67 provides examples in line drawing).
See 'Imitation', pp. 173-74, and also his 'Bede's Historia ecclesiastica: The
Rhetoric of Faith', in Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of
Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy, Berkeley, 1978, pp. 145-72 (pp. 145-46).
Kendall further observes that the conversion of Britain as marking the end of the
sixth age of the world in Augustinian terms, for details of which see Plummer,
Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 1, pp. xli-xlii.
32
See above, p. 139.
33
'Imitation', p. 174.
 Bede's creation of a nation 149
The terms in which the n a m e and location of Britain are articulated allow
'Britain'tostand both for the Earth at large and for a particular place on Eartii—
in one sense Britain itself, in another sense any and every individual nation,
since every nation isfiguredin the children of Israel.

After expounding the name and location, Bede moves on to the topic of the
abundance of Britain, to which is appended a comment on times and seasons
(pp. 14-16, to 'compleat horas'). Then follows a discussion of the languages
and inhabitants of the land, Britons, Picts, and the Irish, in succession (pp. 16-
18, to 'partem significat'), incorporating an account of the location of Ireland
(p. 18, 'Est autem Hibernia insula ... interiacendi peruenif). The rest of the
chapter deals with the abundance of Ireland, including comment on times and
seasons there, and ends with a further note on the Irish setdement of Britain
(pp. 18-20). Kendall's demonstration of the mimesis of Genesis 1 in this
chapter focusses particularly on Bede's presentation of the abundance of Britain
and Ireland, along with the comments on times and seasons.34
The abundance of Britain lies in its plant and animal life, its waters and
metals, and its twenty-eight great cities of the past In Genesis 1, still on the
third day, G o d creates plant life (1.11-13); on the fourth day, the sun, moon, and
stars, to provide light according to the time and the season (1.14-19); on the
fifth day, the animal life of the waters and the air (1.20-23); and on the sixth
day, the animal life on dry land, culminating in h u m a n beings, into whose
charge all other life forms are put (1.24-31). A s Kendall shows in a general
way, conespondences between the two accounts of plant and animal life are more
or less self-evident. Bede's addition of waters and metals (with jet listed here
rather than as a plant product) can be explained as the explication of what is
probably implicit in Genesis 1, namely that it is the whole earth that is put into
the charge of humanity 35

34
Ibid., pp. 178-82.
35
Similar information about waters and metals can be found variously in Pliny,
Solinus, Isidore, and Tacitus: see especially Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera
Historica, 2, pp. 6-7. Gildas' account of Britain pays great attention to the waters
(and speaks figuratively of the land as a bride decked in 'jewels': 'monilibus'; pp. 17,
90); verbal correspondences are not exact, but note that this same chapter of Gildas
provides the adjacent information about the twenty-eight cities (discussed in the next
paragraph). Wallace-Hadrill reports that no written source is known for Bede's 'hot
springs' ('fontes calidos': p. 14), from which flow rivers that supply hot baths for
the use of m e n and w o m e n , and he explores, inconclusively, the possibility that they
derive from material later k n o w n also to 'Nennius' (Commentary, pp. 6-7, 208).
Fontes calidi are, however, mentioned by Solinus in a verbal context close to Bede's
(22.10, p. 102): he has just mentioned rivers; he explains that the hot springs have
been equipped for h u m a n use; and he subsequently refers to metals (though his
reference is a couple of sentences later, whereas Bede refers to metals in his next
150 D. Speed
O n e matter which has not as far as I know, been clarified by Kendall or
other Bede scholars is the function of Bede's reference to the twenty-eight noble
cities of times past recognized as a bonowing from Gildas (chapter 3). In the
context of the mimetic reading the difficulty is that cities in Genesis belong to a
stage beyond both Creation and Fall, and in various ways tend to signify the loss
of innocence. Thefirstcity specifically mentioned, Babel, experiences a tangible
rise and fall through arrogance (Genesis 11.4—9) that in one w a y or another
foreshadows the experiences of Sodom, Gomorrah, Jerusalem, and other cities.
A n d for Bede and most of hisreadersthe idea of any city in the world would have
been likely to carry a resonance of Augustine'sfigurativecity of cupiditas, self-
seeking love, opposed to the city of caritas, godly love.36 I would suggest that
one function of Bede's cities is simply to place humanity more firmly in the
landscape than preceding allusions to the usefulness of the abundance has done,
with the cities coming at the end of the discussion of abundance to parallel the
appearance of humanity as the last act of Creation. The particularreferenceto
fortified cities, with strong walls and towers, moreover, connotes the defence of
sunounding areas, and this takes up the Biblical discourse of human
responsibUity for and mie over the rest of the created world.
A s a mimesis of Creation in Genesis 1, Bede's Britain represents the world
before the Fall, re-expressed in Genesis 2 as the Garden of Eden. Bede's Ireland,
on the other hand, as Kendall shows, is a mimesis of the Promised Land of
Exodus, which itself prefigures God's eternal kingdom. Kendall particularly
draws attention to the description of Ireland as abounding in milk and honey
('diues lactis et mellis': p. 20), echoing Exodus 3.8 and 33.3, and the discussion
of the fact that there are no snakes in Ireland—a 'lack' which in fact occupies
over half of the account of Ireland's abundance. The jet of Britain, it has been
noted (p. 16), drives away snakes w h e n set on fire, meaning that snakes
evidently do live in Britain—Bede understood them to be included in the reptiles
created on the sixth d a y 3 7 — w h e r e a s no reptile or snake (reptile ... serpens,
p. 18) can live in Ireland, making a distinction between the two lands which
reflects that between the earthly and the heavenly Paradise (in Kendall words, 'it

sentence, via his citation of Basil). Significantly, Solinus' discussion of metals

includes a discussion of jet (as a stone, 'lapis': 22.11) which is recognized as a source
for much of Bede's o w n discussion of jet. Isidore includes reference to the hot springs
as he summarizes Solinus here.
The understanding of Genesis 1 referredtoties,for instance, behind Romans 8.19-
22, where the Fall of humanity is understood to have been accompanied by the Fall of
all Creation.
36
See Augustine, City of God, ed. and trans. G. E. McCracken and others, 7 vols.,
L C L , Cambridge, M A , 1957-72, especially XJV.vii (4, trans. Philip Levine, 1966).
31
Kendall cites Bede's commentary Libri Quatuor in Principium Genesis, ed. Ch. W .
Jones, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 108A, Turnout 1967, I.i.24, p. 23.
Bede's creation of a nation 151
isfittingthat there are no snakes or reptiles in the land that prefigures the
promise of eternal life'38). Not only have no snakes been created in Ireland, the
air of Ireland actually drives them away if they approach, and the land is full of
deer, which, Kendall points out were a traditional enemy of the snake, hence a
strong detenent Perhaps this active rejection of snakes by Irelandrecallsthe
apocalyptic defeat of the ancient serpent equated with Satan, by Michael and the
heavenly host in Revelation 12.9 (the serpent of Genesis 3 was commonly
associated with Satan 39 ).
Consideration of source materials again provides further support for a
mimetic reading. T h e absence of snakes in Ireland has been traced to Solinus
(22.3-4) and/or Isidore's reproduction of Solinus (XIV.VI.6). In the same place,
however, both Solinus and Isidore go on to say that there are few birds ('avis
rara') and no bees ('apis nusquam/nulla'). Bede bas reversed the direction of both
remarks as he insists that Ireland is both a land of milk and honey and one not
lacking in vines,fish,and birds ('nee uinearum expers, piscum uolucrumque':
p. 20). The honey reference is a clear signpost to the Promised Land (as
discussed above). The bird reference helps to establish the parallel with Britain,
as do the unsourced references to vines andfish,all three having been described
as part of the abundance of that land (p. 14). It might be added that the whole
idea of juxtaposing Britain and Ireland for parallel and contrast, as figures of
Paradise in time and eternity, respectively, appears to be original with Bede.
Therelationshipbetween Britain and Ireland, however, seems at the same
time to go beyond one of parallel and contrast. Bede's first chapter ends with a
backward glance to a previous statement that some of the Irish have migrated to
Britain, and the observation that they n o w live on the north side of a wide arm of
the sea, which originally divided the Britons from the Picts, and which 'runs a
long way inland from the west' ('ab occidente': p. 21). Ireland has just been said
to be 'properly the native land of the Irish' ('proprie patria Scottorum'), so that
the Irish immigrants to Britain might be said to bring with them something of
the quality of Ireland when they establish themselves a considerable distance into
Britain. Again, just as the air of Ireland has been said to deter snakes, so it has
been reported that scrapings from Irish (presumably religious) books, mixed with
water, are an antidote to snakebite. T h e books concerned are 'de Hibernia'
(p. 21), exports from Ireland, and anyone w h o suffers snakebite must be in a
place with snakes, hence outside Ireland. Since Britain is the only other land
being discussed, the overall implication is that a remedy from Ireland is available
in Britain to counteract the evU wrought by snakes. Although the two lands are

38
'Imitation', p. 181.
39
In his commentary on Genesis (I.iii.l), for example, Bede says the Devil entered
into the serpent in the Garden and spoke through it.
152 D. Speed

separate, then, something of the good of the superior 'Paradise' is available on

an individual basis in the inferior 'Paradise': all is not lost for the one w h o will
seek the appropriate remedy.
This reading is supported by a feature not previously commented on. In the
passage between the accounts of the respective abundance of Britain and of
Ireland, where the prehistory of the inhabitants of Britain is set out the Irish are
listed as the last racial group to arrive in Britain, but they have already allowed
some of their w o m e n to accompany the previous group, the Picts, with the Picts
agreeing to observe a matriarchal principle of succession. The only earlier
arrivals have been the Britons themselves, and they therefore acquire neighbours
w h o are all connected with Ireland in some degree. This presence of Ireland in
Britain is realizedtextuallyin the narrative arrangement as the travels of the
Picts to Ireland and then Britain are interrupted by details of tbe location of
Ireland, for which there is only a slight pretext in logical terms (p. 18).

The focal idea of the reading offered is likewise realized in the narrative
anangement At the actual centre of this chapter comes the sentence which
effectively defines the work in hand in terms of its extent and procedure:40
Haec in praesenti iuxta n u m e r u m tibrorum quibus lex diuina scripta est
quinque gentium Unguis u n a m eandemque s u m m a e ueritatis et uerae
sublimitatis scientiam scrutatur et confitetur, Anglorum uidelicet
Bretonum Scottorum Pictorum et Latinorum, quae meditatione
scripturarum ceteris omnibus est facta communis, (p. 16)
(This land at present pursues and confesses one and the same knowledge
of the most exalted truth and tine exaltation in the languages of five
peoples, paralleling the number of books in which the divine law is
written, namely the English, the British, the Irish, the Picts, and the
Latin-users, for the Latin language is in c o m m o n use amongst speakers
of all the other languages through the study of the Scriptures.)
Opening this n e w topic with the cohesive device 'haec' (that is, Brittania), the
text repeats the primary focus on Britain with which the chapter has begun. The
languages there at the time of writing, unlike the natural abundance of the land
itself, imply a h u m a n past and thus provide a transition from the geographical
description to the prehistorical nanative. At the same time, references to the
languages acquire particular prominence in the Latin, in being preceded and
followed, and, less specifically, monitored along the w a y by the only overt
references to the Bible in the chapter, thus:
re Bible: 'tibrorum quibus lex diuina scripta est'
re languages: 'quinque gentium Unguis'
re Bible: 'summae ueritatis et uerae sublimitatis'

See also above, p. 143.

Bede's creation of a nation 153
re languages: 'Anglorum ... Brettonum Scottorum Pictorum et
Latinorum'
re Bible: 'scripturarum'
This ordering, which is not the only one that would have yielded the required
literal sense, suggests some special relationship between the languages of Britain
and the text of the Bible, and this relationship can be understood in terms of
mimesis.
At the intratextual level of nanative arrangement, discussion of the
languages generates discussion of the peoples. Just so, at the ultratextual level
of human action, Bede's utterance generates the History. A n d at the ultrahuman
level of Providence, G o d as W o r d (John 1.1) generates the Bible as the Word.
The nanative anangement is what provides the key to the mimetic reading. The
History as a whole, as well as in its various parts, is a mimesis of the
Bible,41 and Bede himself imitates the example of G o d in authoring the text.
The end result of the entire exercise is greater glory to G o d and greater godliness
for Bede.
The same result is reached through a related set of mimetic correspondences.
As the listing of the languages brings the various peoples into existence in the
text so Bede speaks and brings the nation of the History into existence, just as
God speaks and brings the created world into existence. The expression 'Bede's
creation of a nation' is based on this mimetic reading. The nation of his title,
the Angli,42 must be understood to signify someting like 'the English
community', to embrace potential I y all the inhabitants of Britain, which is n o w
dominated by the descendants of the last wave of immigrants, and actually all
those of whatever racial background w h o have chosen to identify themselves
with the English—just as the universal Church embraces potentially all people
and actually all those w h o have chosen to accept their adoption as children of
God (Romans 8.14-17). It is clear from the first word that Britain at large is to
define the extent of Bede's concern, and the population of Britain goes beyond
those of stricdy Germanic-English background. Even that background, Bede
tells us, is not itself a unity, for the Germanic peoples in different parts of the
land have c o m e from three different continental tribes (i.l5). Racial background
would be a shaky premise on which to decide w h o was 'English', for this reason
and also because of the likelihood that intermaniages had occuned over the

41
Kendall arrives at this conclusion by showing, first, that the record of events in
the History has parallels in various parts of the Bible from Creation to the envisaged
end of the world, and, second, that the various literary modes used in the course of the
History imitate the 'heterogeneity' of the Bible in this respect: 'Imitation', pp. 175-
76.
42
In the Preface Bede refers to King Ceolwulf s desire to see his 'Historiam gentis
Anglorum ecclesiasticam': p. 2.
154 D. Speed

centuries. M o r e important however, is the concept of the one nation resulting

from the eventual christianization of the whole population—or, rather, the
reaching of the whole population with the Gospel, so that salvation can become
a matter of individual choice. The story of this conversion process is, of course,
the narrative matter of the work.
The nation, for Bede, coincides with the Church in Britain, a unified body
acknowledging the leadership of R o m e and functioning in Latin. A s the
speakers of various languages are brought together through their shared use of
Latin for the Bible (and for adhering to the derivative observances of the Church),
so thetextof the History defines the shape of the nation and endows it with its
distinctive identity through the medium of Bede's educated and authoritative
Ecclesiastical Latin, which becomes here a metalanguage in which to discuss
other languages. In this act Bede's Ecclesiastical History becomes a sacrifice
offered to the glory of God, and also a figure in human language of a mystery
too complex for h u m a n reason to comprehend or explain: the old Creation
brought about by the W o r d through the W o r d (the most special language of all),
and the N e w Creation brought about by the W o r d through the sacrifice of the
W o r d (the most special person of aU: 2 Corinthians 5.17, Revelation 21.1).
Diane Speed
Department of English
University of Sydney