HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

66 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROare introduced as a providential nation sent by God to take Britainaway from an unworthy and sinful people. This is a point Bedemakes even when the Britons are known to be Christians of longstanding and the English have not yet converted: the raids of thepagan king Ethelfrid of Northumbria on the Britons are describedapprovingly, with typological parallels from the Old Testament tomake sense of the apparent paradox (I,34). What modern historicalscholarship has had to correct in Bede’s account of the Anglo-SaxonLandnahme is precisely this sense of alienation and lack of contact andmutual assimilation between Britons and English, together with theidea that the spread of the latter pushed the former into Wales andareas of the North. 71With Christianity in place, the HE becomes more exclusively ecclesiasticalin focus, covering political developments and secular affairsthinly and unsystematically, only as they impinge on the life of thechurch. Book II is largely dedicated to the conversion of Northumbriaunder King Edwin, Book III to the clash of Roman and Irish missionsover the Easter controversy and the eventual victory of theRomans at the synod of Whitby in 664 (III,25). Book IV describes theinstitutional birth of an English church under Archbishop Theodore,who arrived in England in the year of Whitby and brought thebranches of the new church together at the synods of Hertford (673)and Hatfield (680). Book V covers more recent matters, such asWillibrord’s mission on the Continent, the tempestuous career ofBishop Wilfrid of York, and, somewhat triumphalistically, the finalacceptance of the Roman Easter by the Irish and the Picts (theBritons remained unpersuaded at the time of writing). The workcloses with a diffident appraisal of the situation of Britain in 731, achronological summary, and a famous personal statement by theauthor: an account of his career followed by a list of his works.Bede writes Christian history, molding his narrative on typologicalschemes borrowed from exegesis—redemption history (Heilsgeschichte)and the theory of the six ages of the world—and on contemplativeideals characteristic of his own monastic background. 72 A feature ofthe HE that often has disturbed modern historians is the frequencyof hagiographic episodes, more numerous and important in Bede’s71Cf. Collins (1991), 162–82.72Hanning (1966), 63–90; Davidse (1982).