Main Text
St Bede begins his famous ‘History’, written in AD 731, with an open letter to the King of Northumbria, Ceolwulf, explaining that history, rightly told, teaches us to refuse the evil, and choose the good. King Ceolwulf later resigned his throne to become a monk, and a saint.
Translated from the Latin.
I WARMLY welcome the genuine eagerness with which you not only apply yourself to listen most attentively to the words of Scripture, but also make the effort to acquaint yourself in detail with the sayings and doings of earlier generations, and particularly the famous men of our own nation.
For if history relates good things about good men, the attentive listener is stirred to imitate what is good; whereas if it records the evil done by wicked men, the listener or reader who is of a religious and devout disposition, keeping his distance from whatever is harmful and corrupting, will himself be all aflame to pursue, more skilfully than before, those things which he knows are good and worthy in God’s eyes.
