Ryan Dorney
I chose to submit my essay ‘Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the ‘English’ People:
The Venerable Bede and the formation of an ‘English’ identity’ because it was the
most gratifying to write and is the one I am most proud of. I enjoyed exploring the
em ergence of the ‘English’ and it s relationship, or supposed relationship, to
Christianity and the Anglo-Saxon conversion. Of course, Bede was an Englishman
and a monk and it was part of his agenda to show that the converted Anglo-Saxons were the righteous forbears to the more united ‘English’ of Bede’s day (8 th century).
Considering this agenda, it was interesting to analyse Bede’s portrayal of the Britons
and the Germanic peoples regarding the consequences of their piety or impiety and
how that linked to the coming of an idea of united ‘Englishness’. The Historia
Ecclesiastica is a work so fundamental to the development of the history of England
and it was fascinating to explore such an important text in this way. The medieval
literature seminar group for the ‘Practice of History Module’ gave me a fascinating
insight into the mechanics of how m edieval ‘histories’ ( Historias, Gestae, etc.) were
written to legitimise and flatter their subjects whilst promoting their own authority. It
was also interesting to see how the tropes and styles, as well as quotations, of
classical works influenced Medieval writers in their works.
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