![]() Brady, Lindy, Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England. ![]() Understanding Bede is a key to understanding British society in the present as well as the past. when did the Venerable Bede not write in Latin English translation of the Gospel of John. Bedes Ecclesiastical history of the English people, Oxford Medieval Texts. The issues around these questions are not academic or antiquarian. The attraction and fascination of his work is partly in seeing the tension between the strategic use of wealth and political power for religious ends and the example of self-effacing service and simplicity of life offered by some of Bede's greatest Christian heroes. But Bede also wrestles with the difficult question of how the Church relates to and serves the political order. Rowan Williams shows in his introduction how Bede works to create a sense of national destiny for the new English kingdoms of the seventh century, a sense that has helped to shape English self-awareness through the centuries, by using the imagery both of imperial Rome and of biblical Israel. Yet it is a key text for any student of English history. Bede's best known work, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, was written in Latin and is not immediately easy to understand and follow. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |