How, When and Why did Bede Write his Ecclesiastical History? by Shaw HB..

Name: How, When and Why did Bede Write his Ecclesiastical History? by Shaw HB..
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

Bede\u2019s Ecclesiastical History is our main source for early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, but how was it written? When? And why? Scholars have spent much of the last half century investigating the latter question \u2013 the \u2018why\u2019. This new study is the first to systematically consider the \u2018how\u2019 and the \u2018when\u2019. Richard Shaw shows that rather than producing the History at a single point in 731, Bede was working on it for as much as twenty years, from c. 715 to just before his death in 735. Unpacking and extending the period of composition of Bede\u2019s best-known book makes sense of the complicated and contradictory evidence for its purposes. The work did not have one context, but several, each with its own distinct constructed audiences. Thus, the History was not written for a single purpose to the exclusion of all others. Nor was it simply written for a variety of reasons. It was written over time \u2013 quite a lot of time \u2013 and as the world .