Bede’s text had a powerful impact on the political unity of England many years
after its original publication. Although not an objective of Bede, political unity came about because of King Alfred. 83 Bede’s assertion of shared cultural tradition, common origin and shared history was key to this. 84 Bede’s presentation of the
common Church, tongue and origin ‘myth’ of the ‘English’, and his promotion of unity,
helped Alfred to promote the ‘English’ as one unified people with one faith who should be politically unified. 85 Alfred acknowledged the debt he owed to Bede in the
concept of the ‘English’ as a people of England unified by Christian faith, through the
commonality of Latin, in the eyes of God despite different ethnic and political groups. 86 The Historia Ecclesiastica was recognised for its importance by later
chroniclers during Alfred’s reign and was translated into Old English, possibly at the
King’s instigation, to make the history of ‘English’ achievements accessible to a wider audience. 87 Alfred’s manipulation of Bede’s history helped formulate a cultural and spiritual identity among his subjects. 88 He styled himself as king of the
Angolsaxones and Rex Anglorum Saxonum by the 880s, and he may have created
the political idea of ‘the English’, using the term Angelcynn in papers, cultivating and appealing to shared West Saxon and West Mercian memory. 89 Later, Cnut referred to his subjects as ‘the whole race of the English’ and he legislated as “King of all Engla Land ”. 90 By 1066, the Normans saw themselves as conquering a single peoples. 91 In conclusion, it is clear that Bede was not just writing a Church history of the ‘English’, but one also of the ‘English’ themselves. 92 He shows the birth of a nation that, although not a political entity, came about through Christianisation. 93 This nation
of the ‘English’ necessarily coincides with the emergence of the unified Church in
83 Wormold, p. 215; Dumville, p. 109; Molyneaux, 1289-90 84 Foot, 35 85 Foot, 29, 35, 41 86 Foot, 38-9
87 Molyneaux, 1290; Antonia Gransden, ‘Bede’s Reputation as a Historian in Medieval England’ in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 32, No. 4, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Oct.
1981), 399 88 Foot, 37 89 Foot, 25, 30-1; Dumville, p. 109 90 Wormold, p. 211; Foot, 47 91 Foot, 47 92 Wormold, p. 207 93 Speed, 153-4
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