Bede

Do you suppose a boatload of Anglo-Saxon royal family came sailing up the Deben and thought, whoopee, this is the place for me, got off the boat and set up their kingdom here?

The origin myths that we have, recorded by people like Bede, do seem to indicate that in the 5th century boatloads of royalty did row up and think, well, I will create my kingdom here.

But we just don't have any archaeological evidence to back that up at all.

What seems much more likely is that...

It was only in later centuries that the complex details of this process were transformed into a captivating story.

History books can be dangerous things, especially when they're brilliantly written.

In 731, a Tyneside monk named the Venerable Bede finished his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which still forms the basis of modern history lessons.

But Bede, like all historians, had his own particular axe to grind.

By the conversion of Edwin, Christianity gained the support of the most powerful of the English kings.

Bede reckons him, along with Ella, Ethelbert and Redwald, among the seven kings who were recognised as superior in kingdoms beyond their own dominions.

and says that he exercised authority over all the kingdoms of the Britons and of the English except Kent, where it is said he did not require submission on account of his marriage with Ethelbur.

Yes, I suppose that you don't need to submit to your father-in-law because submission is assumed the point of marriage, I imagine.

It seems, before Edwin's conversion, to have been his ally as well as one of his subordinates, for Edwin's first wife was, it will be remembered, a Mercian lady.

this alliance may have led to his war with the west saxons the neighbours and constant enemies of the mercens and he defeated them and forced them to acknowledge his superiority in northumbria his rule was strict and orderly to a degree hitherto unknown among the english Travelling became safe.

The roads which the Romans had carried over the wild moorlands and through the thick forests of the north were again frequented and Bede records that in his time it was a common saying that in Edwin's reign a woman with her newly born child might cross the island from sea to sea and none would do her harm.

Bede of course was very you know wanting to sell edwin because he was considered as a wonderful king because he became a christian so with all this remember that obviously william hunt was writing a long time ago and he was giving his own views and the views of others and there's a lot there's there's some inaccuracies and there are also lots of personal views but anyway i'm sure you've worked all that out Edwin was careful for his people even in small matters, and caused posts to be set up at the springs along the high roads, each with a brass cup hung upon it for the use of travellers, and such was the love or fear that men had of him that these cups were neither injured nor stolen.

Medieval singers used the Guedonian hand as a way to learn to read music.

Bede taught monks to calculate the date of Easter through finger reckoning.

Renaissance readers in the West and the East consulted images and palmistry treatises to define fortunes in the lines of their hands.

mnemonics, calculation, teaching, divination.

Medieval singers used the Guidonian hand as a way to learn to read music.

Bede taught monks to calculate the date of Easter through finger reckoning.

Renaissance readers in the West and the East consulted images and palmistry treatises to define fortunes in the lines of their hands.

Mnemonics, calculation, teaching, divination.

So he named them.

For midsummer, he chose Litha, and for the spring equinox Ostara, both reaching back to old Anglo-Saxon month names that a monk called Bede had written down in the eighth century.

And for the autumn equinox, he chose Mabon.

Why Mabon? Kelly wanted the autumn festival to carry the feeling of the Greek story of Persephone, the daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter, taken down into the underworld, while her mother's grief turned the whole earth cold and barren until she was returned.

For Bonaventure, this is prefigured by the rainbow in the Noah story, sign of the eternal covenant.

We can see Bonaventure doing systematically what Eusebius and Bede did as an incidental embellishment of their narratives.

On a larger scale, the Tanakh narrative of the punishment of sinful kingdoms comes into its own.

This time, it is the fate of the northern kingdom of Israel rather than the end of Judah that is significant.