Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Heritage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Fay
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Local Region ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Opinions

Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822) is an attempt to promote national ecclesiastical unity at a time when Wordsworth considered the Anglican Establishment to be threatened by the prospect of Catholic Emancipation. In preparation for this sonnet series, Wordsworth engaged closely with the work of the Anglo-Saxon scholar, St Bede. This chapter explores the importance of Bede’s eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People as both a model for Wordsworth’s sonnets and as a channel through which he became particularly aware of his heritage as a descendent of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. In this light, the chapter argues for an expanded view of what constitutes Wordsworth’s ‘local’ region, noting that Grasmere was once part of a powerful Kingdom that stretched across the breadth of England. In order to balance his local attachments and appreciation for monasticism with his political opinions, Wordsworth shifts the sonnet form towards the loco-descriptive inscription.

The landed endowment of the Anglo-Saxon minster at Hanbury (Worcs.)

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 77-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
History Of

AbstractMany of the minsters founded and generously endowed in the first century and a half of Anglo-Saxon christianity were evidently failing as efficient managers of their estates by the late eighth century, if we judge by the actions of the bishops in whose dioceses they sat. In the diocese of Worcester bishops can be seen transferring the administration of the lands of such minsters to the cathedral community, and then seeking ratification from the Mercian kings whose direct ancestors or royal predecessors had often been involved in the original acts of foundation. When ninth-century kings were acutely short of land, they alleviated the problem by engineering forced loans of the lands concerned from the see of Worcester. These processes are well exemplified in the history of the minster at Hanbury (Worcs.) and its landed endowment, for which particularly good contemporary evidence survives.

The Early Medieval Textiles at Maaseik, Belgium

1985 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article offers an account of the components, the structure and the history of the so-calledcasulaandvelaminaof Sts Harlindis and Relindis preserved at the Church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Belgium as relics of the two sisters who founded the nearby abbey of Aldeneik (where the textiles were kept throughout the Middle Ages). The compositecasulaof Sts Harlindis and Relindis includes the earliest surviving group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries, dating to the late eighth century or the early ninth. Probably similarly Anglo-Saxon, a set of silk tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold associated with the embroideries offers a missing link in the surviving corpus of Anglo-Saxon braids. The ‘David silk’ with its Latin inscription and distinctly western European design dating from the eighth century or the early ninth offers a rare witness to the art of silk-weaving in the West at so early a date. Thevelamenof St Harlindis, more or less intact, represents a remarkable early medieval vestment, garment or cloth made up of two types of woven silk cloths, tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold, gilded copper bosses, pearls and beads. Thevelamenof St Relindis, in contrast, represents the stripped remains—reduced to the lining and the fringed ends—of another composite textile. Originally it was probably luxurious, so as to match the two other composite early medieval textile relics from Aldeneik. As a whole, the group contributes greatly to knowledge of early medieval textiles of various kinds.

Bede on the Jewish Church

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Conor O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church

We upon whom the ends of the ages have come can love with sincere affection those faithful who were in the beginning of the world, and receive them into the bosom of our love … and believe that we are also being received by them with a charitable embrace.Bede (d. 735) is renowned as the first Englishman to write seriously about the history of the church in England. But the Ecclesiastical History of the English People was not the only work of his to address the history of the church, and his interest in the past extended far beyond that book’s temporal and spatial boundaries. He saw the Anglo-Saxon church as part of a universal church whose origins lay in the pre-Incarnation past. The above quotation from his commentary On the Tabernacle, a work interested in the religious institutions of the Israelites, portrays Jews from before the Incarnation as Bede’s fellow members of that church.

An Eighth-century Poem on St. Ninian

Antiquity ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 280-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Levison
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Spiritual Instruction ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Whithorn in Galloway and Kirkmadrine nearby are famous to the archaeologist and historian as the homes of the oldest Christian monuments in Scotland, namely the memorial stones still to be found there. They were erected in a district where the church history of Scotland originated through the efforts of St. Ninian. A few lines in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, III, 4, contain the earliest traditions about him which have come down to us. According to this late record, ‘Nynia’ was a British bishop who brought the Christian faith to the southern Picts (australes Picti). He had got his spiritual instruction in Rome, and had his episcopal see and his last resting-place amidst other saints-at Whithorn, Ad Candidam Casam, so called after the church dedicated to St. Martin which he built of stone, a fashion unusual to the Britons. As to his age, Bede merely says that he was at work a long time before St. Columba came to the northern Picts in 565. The intercourse with Rome can hardly have been later than the fifth century; a dedication to St. Martin who probably died in 397, cannot have been made before the same century. When Bede finished his History in 731, Whithorn was under Northumbrian rule, belonging to the northern ‘province’ of Bernicia. An English episcopal seat had been erected there shortly before, having Pecthelm as first bishop (Hist. eccl v, 23); he had been a long time deacon and monk in Wessex with Aldhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, famous for his writings, who died in 709. Pecthelm was one of Bede’s authorities (ib., v. 13, 18); so it has been suggested that the latter was indebted to Pecthelm for his knowledge of Ninian. Pecthelm was one of the correspondents of St. Boniface who also came from Wessex, and who wrote him a letter on a question of canonical law shortly before he (Pecthelm) died in 735. It must also be noted that Bede distinguishes clearly between Whithorn, situated amongst the British, and the Pictish country, the scene of Ninian’s missionary efforts.

scholarly journals GENDERED NETWORKS AND COMMUNICABILITY IN MEDIEVAL HISTORICAL NARRATIVES

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (03) ◽  
pp. 2050006
Author(s):  
S. D. PRADO ◽  
S. R. DAHMEN ◽  
A. L. C. BAZZAN ◽  
M. MACCARRON ◽  
J. HILLNER
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Power

Since the 1970s, scholars have begun to pay attention to the presentation of women in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the main source for the early history of Britain (from the first century BC to the eighth century AD). Vastly different conclusions have been drawn, ranging from positivist approaches which saw the period as a golden age for women to rather more negative assessments, which argue that Bede suppressed the role of women. By analyzing the concept of communicability and relevance of certain nodes in complex networks, we show how Bede’s Ecclesiastical History affords women complex and nuanced social roles. In particular, we can show the independent importance of certain abbesses, which is a significant result and challenges much of the existing scholarship on Bede’s attitude to female power.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Material Conditions of Anglo-Saxon Life

1979 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Joel T. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

The author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People was the greatest historian writing in the West between the later Roman Empire and the twelfth century, when we come to William of Malmesbury, Otto of Freising, and William of Tyre. Bede's qualities as a historian are well known and widely appreciated, and they need no further exposition here. Instead, we propose to be perverse and to attempt to read Bede's text as though he had been a sociologist or an economic anthropologist: What can we learn from him about the “material conditions” of life in post-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England, especially about life in the sixth and seventh centuries. This is surely a strange purpose for which to use the Ecclesiastical History. We do so both to show that Bede is so rich and so multifaceted that he is immensely valuable for many purposes besides those of greatest obvious interest to him, and because the sources for social and economic life in those years are so poor that everything available is legitimate grist for the mills of our analysis.Actually there are two reasons why Bede might have furnished us with the kind of information we are seeking. One is that among classical and early medieval historians there was a considerable tradition of describing the barbarian world, of paying particular attention to the institutions, mores, and customs of the Germanic people or whoever might be the subject of the tale.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document