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chapter 25
Conversations in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica
Michael Winterbottom
1 introduction
Bede died in 735, at the twin monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow near
the modern Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he had been a monk since his
childhood. He was an Anglo-Saxon, living in an Anglo-Saxon kingdom,
and will have spoken the local dialect of Old English. Shortly before
his death, he completed his best-known work, the Historia ecclesiastica
gentis Anglorum, by far the most important source for the early history of
Christian Britain. Like the rest of his extensive oeuvre, it was in Latin.
Bede’s mastery of the language owed everything to the use he made of
the astonishing library built up by the founder of his monastery, Benedict
Biscop, during repeated visits to the Continent. What most influenced him
were not classical texts, with the exception of Virgil, but the Latin Fathers
and, it need hardly be said, the Bible. 1
Bede’s narrative manner in the Ecclesiastical History is consistently grave
and measured. 2 But he follows his models, hagiographic as well as historiographic,
in allowing direct speech to play a significant part. I propose in
this contribution to make some observations on the style of passages where
two of his characters are represented as conversing, 3 usually in private but
occasionally in public.
1 For Bede’s reading see Lapidge 2006: 191–228.
2 This manner is perfectly compatible with the use of ‘low’ or technical words where necessary. For
an example of technical vocabulary in conversation see 5.3.2 (285), where John of Beverley reports
advice of Archbishop Theodore that ‘periculosa sit satis illius temporis flebotomia, quando et lumen
lunae et reuma oceani in cremento est’ (for reuma cf. e.g. 3.3.2 (132), Vita Cuthberti 17; perhaps culled
from Vegetius). I am very grateful to Michael Lapidge for placing a machine-readable text of HE at
my disposal, and for his help and encouragement during my revision of the present contribution.
3 I include passages where Bede gives one side of the conversation in oratio obliqua (cf. esp. 2.1.11 (80)).
For a piquant oddity, see below, p. 425.Wordsinoratio recta are often represented as being only part
of what was said (so in passage (1) below); this highlights them as especially memorable. I do not
normally treat public utterances on formal occasions, like the dealings of Augustine archbishop of
Canterbury with the British bishops in 2.2.1–5 (81–3).
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