Bede Account Of Augustine's Mission
In order to examine the perspective and purpose of Bede’s account of Augustine’s mission as described in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, it is imperative to critically consider the motives and cognitive framework working to inform the Historia’s author Bede. However, this task in itself proves challenging, as nearly everything that is known of Bede’s life is given in a limited amount of conscientiously crafted autobiographical remarks in the last chapter of the Historia. From this information it can be gathered that Bede was born in 673 and had lived at a monastery in Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, in Northumbria, from the age of seven. In his Historia, Bede is notorious for being impartial and even-handed with his recounts of English history,
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Though Bede portrays the English peoples’ history as “a national history of salvation organized around the triumph of Christianity and its beneficent effects,” he nevertheless overlooks the existence of Romano-British Christianity already present in England prior to the Augustinian mission, albeit acknowledging its existence in the short mention of King Æthelbert’s Christian wife, her bishop Liudhard, and the Christian church of St. Martin. Though Bede admits that Æthelbert had some knowledge about the Christian religion due to his wife, he nevertheless depicts Æthelbert as ignorant and superstitious upon his meeting with Augustine once the mission had arrived in Kent. The Historia tells that Æthelbert “took care that they should not meet in any building, for he held the traditional superstition that, if they practiced any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered.” Considering that Æthelbert had already been living with his Christian wife and her bishop, his fear of Christian magic seems questionable. For this reason, this episode within Bede’s account of Augustine’s mission is most likely embellished, and better serves as an example of Bede’s inventional rhetoric and underlying motives rather than a true factual account of Augustine’s meeting with Æthelbert. The questions that remain, however, are why Bede had intentionally downplayed the Anglo-Saxon king’s knowledge of Christianity, and why had Bede not spent more time explaining the matter and nature of the Romano-British Christianity that had predated Augustine’s mission? What may be indicated by the little attention the Historia devotes to preexisting Christianity in England
Though Bede portrays the English peoples’ history as “a national history of salvation organized around the triumph of Christianity and its beneficent effects,” he nevertheless overlooks the existence of Romano-British Christianity already present in England prior to the Augustinian mission, albeit acknowledging its existence in the short mention of King Æthelbert’s Christian wife, her bishop Liudhard, and the Christian church of St. Martin. Though Bede admits that Æthelbert had some knowledge about the Christian religion due to his wife, he nevertheless depicts Æthelbert as ignorant and superstitious upon his meeting with Augustine once the mission had arrived in Kent. The Historia tells that Æthelbert “took care that they should not meet in any building, for he held the traditional superstition that, if they practiced any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered.” Considering that Æthelbert had already been living with his Christian wife and her bishop, his fear of Christian magic seems questionable. For this reason, this episode within Bede’s account of Augustine’s mission is most likely embellished, and better serves as an example of Bede’s inventional rhetoric and underlying motives rather than a true factual account of Augustine’s meeting with Æthelbert. The questions that remain, however, are why Bede had intentionally downplayed the Anglo-Saxon king’s knowledge of Christianity, and why had Bede not spent more time explaining the matter and nature of the Romano-British Christianity that had predated Augustine’s mission? What may be indicated by the little attention the Historia devotes to preexisting Christianity in England