“Ic Beda” … “Cwæđ Beda”: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

2011 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Sharon M. Rowley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica

Dublin, Trinity College, MS 492: A New Witness to the Old English Bede and its Twelfth-Century Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica

AbstractThis article draws attention to a series of seven English annotations in a mid-twelfth-century copy of Bede’sHistoria ecclesiasticafrom Bury St Edmunds. It demonstrates that the annotations reflect the comparison of Bede’s Latin with a now-lost manuscript of the Old English Bede shortly after the twelfth-century codex’s production. The annotations are shown to hold a respect for the authority of the Old English Bede that contrasts with the prevailing twelfth-century attitude of gentle suspicion towards earlier vernacular translations.

Germanisches Karaoke

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76
Author(s):  
Markus Edler
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary History ◽  
English Poem ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Vernacular Poetry ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica

In seiner Historia ecclesiastica führt Beda Venerabilis den Beginn der englischen Literaturgeschichte und die Berufung des ersten englischsprachigen Dichters im Kontext einer Inspirationsszene vor. Der Aufsatz erklärt den verblüffenden Umstand, daß Beda statt des ursprünglichen Wortlauts eine lateinische Paraphrase des Gedichts wiedergibt, mit dem Bemühen Bedas, die nichtchristlichen Implikationen der Inspiration zurückzudrängen und die Semantik volkssprachiger Dichtung zu christianisieren. In his ›Historia ecclesiastica‹, Beda Venerabilis presents the origins of English literary history and the vocation of the first English poet within the context of non-Christian inspiration. The article argues that the irritating fact that Beda omits the original wording of the first Old English poem and gives a Latin paraphrase instead, is part of a strategy to defy the pagan implications of inspiration and to christianize the semantics of vernacular poetry.

Genesis A and the Anglo-Saxon ‘migration myth’

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 43-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Battles
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Cultural Myth ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
Adventus Saxonum ◽  
Genesis A

In his study of Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, Nicholas Howe has argued that the Anglo-Saxons regarded the ancestral migration from the Continent as ‘the founding and defining event of their culture’. He suggests that the adventus Saxonum gave the Germanic tribes in England a shared identity, and proved central to their historical, cultural and even theological self-definition. Howe investigates what he calls the Anglo-Saxon ‘migration myth’, which links the Germanic tribal migration to England with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, both being transmarine journeys from a land of spiritual bondage to one of spiritual salvation. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England traces the development of this concept from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica to Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi, and discusses its function in the writings of Alcuin and Boniface, as well as in Old English poetry. Howe's elegant analysis succeeds in demonstrating the pervasiveness of migration as a cultural myth, that is, a story that endures in a people's memory because it speaks powerfully to their collective imagination.

Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Culture ◽  
Old English ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Distinct Region ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
The Impact

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman arrival in England, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Its conclusions significantly alter our current picture of Anglo/Welsh relations before the Norman Conquest by overturning the longstanding critical belief that relations between these two peoples during this period were predominately contentious. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier in Anglo-Saxon England, but a distinctively mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone which was depicted as a singular place in contemporary Welsh and Anglo-Saxon texts. This book studies how the region of the Welsh borderlands before 1066 was depicted in a group of texts from early medieval Britain which have traditionally been interpreted as reflecting a clear and adversarial Anglo/Welsh divide. Chapters focus on some of the most central literary and historical works from Anglo-Saxon England, including Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Latin and Old English Lives of St. Guthlac, the Old English Exeter Book Riddles, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These texts depict the Welsh borderlands region differently than the rest of Wales — not as the site of Anglo/Welsh conflict, but as a distinct region with a mixed culture. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England alters our understanding of how the Anglo-Saxons and Welsh interacted with one another in the centuries before the Norman arrival. It demonstrates that the region of the Welsh borderlands was much more culturally coherent, and the impact of the Norman Conquest on it much greater, than has been previously realised.

scholarly journals Marginalised Texts: The Old English Marginalia and the Old English Bede in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41.

2015 ◽  
pp. 152-157
Author(s):  
Patricia O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
English History ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Bede was a prolific writer in Anglo-Saxon England who, over the course of his prodigious literary career, produced a diverse range of Latin texts encompassing educational and scientific treatises as well as Biblical commentaries. Out of all his Latin works, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) is regarded as his greatest achievement, as it provides significant insights into a largely undocumented period in English history. The Historia Ecclesiastica was translated into the vernacular sometime in the late ninth or early tenth century and this translation is commonly referred to as the Old English Bede. The Old English Bede survives in five extant manuscripts, dating from the mid tenth and late eleventh century: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10; London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi; Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 279; Cambridge, University Library Kk. 3.18 and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 41, the last of which ...

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