For Bede, the ‘English’ were a chosen tribe by God and his aim was to expound the development of God’s plan for the ‘English’ through their unified Church. 34 In Bede, the Britons fall into sin when the Romans leave and God abandons them. 35 Fallen into sin, the unwarlike Britons were terrorised repeatedly by the Irish and Picts, then beset by famine. 36 This period of war, famine and death was followed by times of
unchristian indulgence and “every kind of foul crime; in particular, cruelty and hatred
of the truth and love of lying”, when even the clergy “cast off Christ’s easy yoke and thrust their necks under the burdens of drunkenness,… and other similar crimes”. 37 Then, “a virulent plague suddenly fell upon these corrupt people”. 38 The Britons experienced all four horsemen of the apocalypse, yet those alive were not enticed back from their “spiritual” death. 39 When the Britons ceased their worthiness, it fell to King Vortigern to call upon the Saxons for aid, “so that evil might fall upon those miscreants”, so the ‘English’ came as God’s vengeance on the Britons . 40 Following this, the Historia presents a series of events leading, through Augustine’s mission, to divinely sanctioned ‘English’ dominance in Britain. 41 Bede believed that the ‘English’ had a covenant with God and their spiritual and political fate, success and dominion depended upon their continued worthiness of divine favour and obedience to God. 42 The main focus, especially in books one to three, is on the Christianisation of the ‘English’. 43 The first sense of unity comes through the conversion of Æthelberht of Kent. One of the earliest mentions of “the whole English race” comes from his mouth. 44 From then, “every day more and more began to… join the unity of Christ’s holy Church”, portraying Christianity as the force that unified the people of Britain. 45
Bede shows the creation of a single Church, describing the establishment of sees in
the different ‘English’ Kingdoms, bringing unity through obedience to Bishop
34 Brown, pp. 103, 106 35 Wormold, p. 216 36 Bede, pp. 22-5
37 Bede, p. 26 38 Bede, p. 26 39 Bede, p. 26 40 Bede, p. 26; Molyneaux, 1298-1300 41 Higham, ‘Bede’s vision of an English Britain’, p. 18
42 Nicholas J. Higham, ‘Bede’s Reputation as a Historian in Medieval England’ in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 64, No. 3, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, July 2013), 482; Wormold, p. 216; Molyneaux, 1297; Higham, ‘Bede’s vision of an English Britain’, p. 18 43 Brown, p. 108
44 Bede, p. 40 45 Bede, p. 41
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