The Lessons of History

England’s first and greatest historian explains why history is so important.

731

Modern history... High Petergate in the city of York, with its mediaeval gatehouse. York was the capital of Ceolwulf’s Northumbria, but these walls are ‘late’, dating mostly from the 12th to the 14th century.

Introduction

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.

by St Bede of Jarrow 672-735

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.

by St Bede of Jarrow 672-735

Translated from the Latin

From ‘A History of the English Church and People’, by St Bede of Jarrow (early 8th century). Translated from Bede’s Latin.

That is, the Kingdom of Northumbria, at its height a kingdom reaching from the what would now be Hull in the south to Edinburgh in the north. See A map of the Kingdom of Northumbria ca. 700. As a very young child, Bede was sent by his well-to-do parents (they lived on Church land) to study at the Benedictine monastery of St Peter in Monkwearmouth, a few miles northeast of Durham just across the River Wear from what is now Sunderland. He subsequently moved to the monastery’s sister house of St Paul at Jarrow, today a suburb of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Précis

St Bede wrote to Ceolwulf, the King of Northumbria, in 731 to explain the purpose of his History of the English Church and People. After commending the King for taking an interest in Scripture and in Northumbrian history, he assured him that the examples set by history’s heroes and villains would inpire him to choose rightly between good and evil.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

How had King Ceolwulf made a good impression on Bede?

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

We read about heroes. They inspire us. We try to imitate them.

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